I can’t help it. I love Alicia Keys. Her videos are thoughtfully created, and always tell a story. Cheers to the musicians who still contribute art and vision to the increasingly lame music video platform.

OoooWeeeeee!

This music feels so good. “Onwu Ama Dike” by St. Augustine & His Rovers Dance Band is the work-while-grinding-in-your-seat song of the day. This track was pulled from the compilation album, Nigeria Special: Modern Highlife, Afro-Sounds, and Nigerian Blues 1970-6, and is just one of many joyous songs featured on this two-disk dance fest. 

Here’s some background info, and a writer’s take. If you don’t already have this album, hurry up and join the party.

Sometimes space is limited when illustrating stories on the site. You just have to pick the best images, do a little Photoshop action, and move on.

The solution? Set up a Flickr page! 

Now you can experience everything in greater detail here. Think of it as a reservoir of images, perfect for those stories that spill out beyond the simple slideshow. 

Check out the images uploaded today, and listen out for more updates. Summertime is approaching, which means there will so many more exciting people, places, and events to capture. Stay tuned…

Lena Horne in London, 1964

The Brooklyn-born beauty passed on Sunday at 92 years-old, commemorating a life marked by activism, triumph, and elegance during a time in America when the opportunities for black performers were virtually nonexistent.

“You wouldn’t be allowed to get on a particular bus, but you’d be asked to sign your autograph,” Horne said in a 1998 interview with the Chicago Tribune.

Here’s to Lena Horne, and to all of the black actresses and entertainers who did the best they could despite the hostile circumstances. Your work, persistence, and energy will never be forgotten.

Read this glowing biography from the Chicago Tribune, and for the ’80’s babies who remember watching Lena Horne on The Cosby Show:

This post is about two months late (write me up a late pass please), but will continue to be a relevant conversation as ringtone rap still gets top billing across the nation and the world.

“To be lyrical, or not to be lyrical?”

That’s the question that blogger Jay Smooth kicked out to the web world in this recent video, made in response to Georgia rapper Waka Flocka Flame’s comment that he doesn’t care about lyrics, because lyrics won’t bring in the money. 

“I don’t got no lyrics. The n—as who they say is lyrical, they ain’t got no shows … that ain’t finnin’ to get you no money.”

Sigh.

Is it true that lyricism will leave you broke? Watch Jay Smooth’s commentary. It might surprise you…

Sadly, Waka Flocka Flame’s music is generally the only kind that gets the most love on local radio stations. It’s easy for fans to say, “Well, if you don’t like this music, just change the station!” That’s valid point, but what’s important is that with nearly 14,000 registered AM and FM stations in the U.S., that’s a lot of free programming, and a lot of targeted messages being sent across the airwaves to billions of people. Each of us memorizes through repetition, and if the same song gets played three times in an hour, imagine what we’re learning–or not learning–as a culture? The radio is a powerful medium, and according to this video, it certainly doesn’t play what listeners actually spend their money on.

Aside from the high school adventures of Archie and Jughead, I’ve never been much of a comic book reader or enthusiast. Last summer, while on a flight to Fort Defiance, AZ, I read an article in the New York Times about a new series set in Uganda that explores the country’s gruesome and violent 16-year civil war. Written by Joshua Dysart and published by an imprint of DC Comics, Unknown Solider explores the conflict and its influence through the eyes of protagonist Dr. Lwanga Moses, a Ugandan-born, United States-educated physician who returns to his home country in 2002, in the middle of the rampage led by the Lord’s Resistance Army.

Moses, who somehow gets caught up in the war, is depicted with bandages wrapped around his face—the result of hacking at himself to stop voices in his head. The author, who traveled to Uganda to conduct research for the series, notes that although the comic details violent encounters, many of the stories heard during his trip were just too gruesome to be included.

Unfortunately, since history is told from the perspective of the winners, my education of the Ugandan civil war is lacking. Our world history books and lessons only featured brief sections on ethnic groups residing beyond the borders of the US, and Uganda simply didn’t make the list. I’m interested in opening up a dialogue to learn more, and plan to visit Atomic Books in Baltimore this weekend to stock up on a few copies.

The latest installment, #19, was just published on April 28^th. A review to come…

The era of privacy is officially dead, and Joshua Harris, “the Warhol of the Web,” predicted it. This incredibly innovative, and equally twisted Grim Reaper was the subject of We Live In Public, a documentary released last year that eerily maps out our current relationship with the Internet—a decade before it all went down.

Sites like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube—platforms that feed our culture’s desire for celebrity and recognition—were built from the bricks that Josh Harris constructed and ultimately destroyed. In the early ’90s, Harris knew that television programming would gravitate to the web, and that with just the right platform and encouragement, regular people would willingly cash in their 15-minutes of fame card, and even the rights to their lives, simply to be publicly recognized.

During the years of the dot.com boom and bust, Harris, a successful tech dude, saw the still-maturing World Wide Web as an incubator for experimentation and millionaire status. In 1994 he created Pseudo.com, which was the world’s largest original producer of streaming video programming at the time, featuring dozens of interactive shows. Long before high speed Internet, Pseudo.com helped solidify the Internet as the go-to destination of the youth. The market crash and subsequent crumble of early web startups forced Pseudo into bankruptcy, but Harris had already moved on, catapulted into freaky-genius mode using the Internet and the audience that he helped nurture, to stage public demonstrations of personal sacrifice that he considered art.

Harris’ first project, called Quiet, packed over 100 volunteers into Big Brother-style underground pods in New York City for 30 days. The documentary details the madness that unfolded when unsupervised, uninhibited adults (and even a random kid), were given as much food, drugs, and even guns as they wanted, all while being filmed, from every possible angle, every hour of the day. It was a bizarre live-action social network gone wrong.

Participant Steven Kaplan wrote in a blog post,

“We were also constantly on camera, producing our own flow of images. Anyone at the central control booth could watch as we ate, shat, argued, made art, fucked, etc. Theoretically, anyone in the bunker, at any time, could tune into anyone else in the bunker.”

Sound familiar? The idea of people volunteering intimate aspects of their lives to total strangers is nothing new. An extreme case of this open relationship with the public was displayed in Harris’ next project, another Big Brother surveillance experiment that documented the lives of Harris and his girlfriend—pre-MTV’s The Real World. 

In a recent interview, Harris insisted that in a few years, “We are going to demand ’self surveillance.’” 

Honestly, I fear those days. If privacy is dead, I desperately want to grab my shovel and dig it up. Resuscitate the days when “dirt” unfolded behind closed doors, between journal pages, or in trashy supermarket tabloids that people glanced in passing, but rarely took home. I often get tired of hearing the random thoughts that burst from people’s minds and onto social networks. Where you’re having lunch, your frustrations with men, the latest phrase your child recited, the amount of alcohol you consumed at the glamorous party last night, your insecurities, indecisions, loves, successes and frustrations —are all valid experiences and emotions. I must admit, I’m guilty of life-farting on Facebook as well. And some people’s life-farts I enjoy breathing in, but when you do you draw the line? At what point are you forced to tune out and turn off, because the virtual conversations are just too loud and too noisy? On the other hand, being a social media maven is pretty much a prerequisite for any modern-day profession, especially in media.

This is a complicated, but never-ending conversation. In the meantime, check the documentary.

©Nicolas Karakatsanis

Good music and creativity is thriving across the globe. Thanks to Society HAE for introducing us to this Congolese Belgian artist. Watch Baloji’s latest video for “Indépendance cha-cha – Le jour d’après,” and discover more. 

M.I.A.’s new single, “Born Free,” is the kind of song that rattles your core. It’s the kind of music that makes you wanna shave your head, throw some punches, and take to the streets to fight the system.

Check the video to see what I mean:

M.I.A, Born Free from ROMAIN-GAVRAS on Vimeo.

Ill! from Rashid Zakat on Vimeo.

Filmmaker Rashid Zakat created this short documentary on “Philadelphia’s Most Respected DJ Crew,” the Illvibe Collective. As an undergrad youngin’ at Temple University, my friends and I would catch this five-person crew of turntablists/music magicians at a hole-in-the-wall spot called the Aqua Lounge on Girard Ave. (The owner was extra, extra cool and the energy was so chill. I officially rejected traditional nightclubs thanks to this place.) We would spend all night just having fun, and nodding, shaking, grinding, and two-stepping off the stress of finals and boyfriends. If you haven’t yet broken a sweat to these guys, watch the short film, download some music, and click here to find out where in Philly they’ll show up next.