John Jackson, Jr. Weighs in on Celebrity, Beyonce Style

from The Chronicle Review

Knowles Knows
by John L. Jackson, Jr.

I had a long conversation with Essence magazine's Jeannine Amber last month. She was working on a cover story about Beyonce Knowles, and she wanted to chat a bit about how celebrities negotiate fandom, its commonsensical expectations and its worst excesses.

Part of the point of that Essence article, which has just hit newsstands, was to discuss Beyonce's attempt to maintain a modicum of privacy in an age of Reality TV'd hyper-access. She is known for being pretty cagey about the most basic facts of her personal life, including her marriage to hip-hop mega-star Jay-Z.

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Hudson Family Tragedy Puts Focus on Urban Violence

from NewsOne.com

Jennifer Hudson's Tragic Spotlight
by Stephany Rose

As a native of Chicago, my prayers and heart go out to Jennifer Hudson and her family. However, my sympathy and concerns are not reserved for the Hudson family alone. They stretch long and wide, covering the hundreds of victims and victims' families whose murders go unsolved and remain out of the national spotlight.

Amidst the details of America's DreamGirl Jennifer Hudson's tragedy, will the heinous incident turn a national eye upon a pandemic quite often ignored in urban centers across America?

When shots rang out in the vicinity of the 7000 S. block of Yale Ave, early Friday morning, residents nearby thought nothing of it; or if they did, chose to ignore them.

Such a response surprises few who live in or are aware of the temperament of Chicago's Englewood community. For many residents, violence in Englewood is to be expected. This sense of normalcy is one reason Hudson tried to persuade her mother to move. Her mother refused, wanting to remain close to family, friends and sense of being.

The Englewood community, once a thriving residential and business district only minutes from the Chicago Loop, today can provide a bastion of fodder for Hollywood financed gangster movies. Boarded and abandoned buildings line the avenues from 7000 to 5500 South, between the Dan Ryan Expressway and Western Avenue.

Drug transactions are as common, if not more, as grocery shopping. Additionally, the widespread collapsing of public schools and the demolition of public housing facilities have left redistributed gangs fighting for new and old territory.

Coined, "America's Midwest Bagdad," Englewood is a constant site of warfare. At one time it was racial aggression and systematic redlining inflicted upon African Americans who attempted to move into the predominately Irish Catholic community during the height of the Great Migration and then after World War II. Today, it is the site of black genetic annihilation couched within the phenomenon of the prison industrial complex, a breeding ground for behavior that leads to incarceration.

Read more @

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Stephany "Stiletto" Rose is a poet, performer, community organizer and author of Stilettoed Roses Bleed (Interstices, Inc. 2004). She is an Assistant Professor of English at Claflin University.

Born in the Bronx: The Cornell University Hip-Hop Conference

Cornell University Hosts Hip Hop Conference and Celebration

Celebrating Hip Hop History
October 31 - November 1, 2008

Afrika Bambaataa and other pioneers of hip hop will travel to Ithaca, N.Y., to speak at a two-day conference celebrating Cornell University Library’s acquisition of “Born in the Bronx: The Legacy and Evolution of Hip Hop,” a collection that documents the early days of hip hop with recordings, photographs, posters and more.

Events on Oct. 31 and Nov. 1 will include music, performances and lectures by several of hip hop’s founders, and roundtable discussions led by prominent speakers from the hip hop and academic communities. Cornell University Library will host the event, which will highlight the one-of-a-kind historical materials.

***

Conference Schedule

Thursday, October 30, 2008
Cornell Cinema, 7:00 p.m.

Wild Style with filmmaker Charlie Ahearn.
1983. USA. Directed by Charlie Ahearn. 1 hr 25 min. With Grand Master Caz, Cold Crush Brothers, Fantastic 5, Grand Master Flash

"Joyous, raucous, and explosive, Wild Style is the movie that made Hollywood wake up to hip-hop..." (Cinefamily). Many of the participants in the film will be on campus for Cornell's hip hop conference. Ahearn will also present Bongo Barbershop (2005, 8 mins), a return to the place where hip hop began. More information on hip hop film screenings at Cornell Cinema Oct. 24-30.

Friday, October 31, 2008
Bailey Hall, Cornell University

3:00 p.m. Welcoming Remarks

Johan Kugelberg, author and curator, editor of Born in the Bronx: A Visual Record of the Early Days of Hip Hop. Sean Eversley Bradwell, Assistant Professor, Center for the Study of Culture, Race, and Ethnicity, Ithaca College.

Hip Hop Histories

Jeff Chang, hip hop historian and award-winning author of Can't Stop Won't Stop: a History of the Hip-Hop Generation and editor of the anthology Total Chaos: The Art & Aesthetics of Hip-Hop.

4:30 - 6:30 p.m. In the Beginning: A Conversation with Hip Hop's Pioneers

Afrika Bambaataa, Grandmaster Caz, Grandwizzard Theodore, Roxanne Shante, Popmaster Fabel, Tony Tone, Pebblee Poo, Disco Wiz. Also: Images of the Bronx: Hip Hop Photographs by Joe Conzo. Please see participant biographies for more information. Registered participants at the conference have the opportunity to submit questions to the pioneers in advance. We encourage you to do so here. The moderator will take as many questions as time allows.

6:30 - 8:30 p.m. Dinner option for conference attendees

Robert Purcell Community Center (RPCC) Marketplace Eatery
Three amateur DJs from Cornell University and the region showcase their styles!
$10 Admission includes dinner at award-winning buffet including The Mongolian Grille, Ancho's Latino Cuisine, and more.

8:30 - 11:00 p.m. Music by Hip hop pioneers and others

Pioneers of hip hop culture will demonstrate old school D.J., M.C., b-boy/b-girl styles, with special appearance by DJ.J.Rocc.

Saturday, November 1
Alice Statler Auditorium, Cornell University

9:15 - 11:00 a.m. New Hip Hop Scholarship

Scholars, faculty and students present recent research on hip hop.

11:00 - 12:30 p.m. Teaching Hip Hop: A Lecture and Discussion

Mark Anthony Neal, Professor of Black Popular Culture at Duke University, "Teach the Bourgeois and Rock the Boulevard: Hip-Hop and the Academy."

12:30 - 2:00 p.m. Break

2:00 - 3:30 p.m. Hip Hop Futures: A Lecture and Discussion

Tricia Rose, Professor of Africana Studies, Brown University. Author of the influential and groundbreaking book, "Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America" will speak about the future of hip hop and share ideas from her forthcoming book: The Hip Hop Wars: What We Talk About When We Talk About Hip Hop and Why It Matters (Basic Books, December 2008).

Defending Palin? Challenging Media Sexism

from NewsOne.com


LEFT OF BLACK
Sexism, Misogyny and Sarah Palin
by Mark Anthony Neal

Much of the election news cycle these past few days has been devoted to wardrobe issues, specifically, the amount of money that the Republican National Committee has spent on clothes and makeup for the Vice-Presidential candidate, Sarah Palin. In addition, questions have arisen regarding Palin’s use of Alaska state funds for travel with her family, travel that may not be related to her official duties as Governor.

That many cable news networks felt compelled to devote air time to speculation about the cost of Palin’s wardrobe and her family’s travel itinerary is the by-product 24-hour news programming. This incessant need to fill every hour with content, no matter how trivial, contributes to the dumbing-down of an American electorate salivating for information. But there’s something more troubling at play here, an issue that has everything to do with the brave new world that Sarah Palin and Hillary Clinton have ushered in.

Senator Hillary Clinton and Governor Sarah Palin share very little ideologically or politically, but during the 2008 election cycle, they will be forever linked by the palpable sexism that has accompanied mainstream media coverage of their campaigns. Frenzy over the cost of Palin’s RNC sponsored wardrobe is not unlike the mocking of Clinton’s pantsuits. In a society largely concerned with the physical attractiveness of women, it’s not surprising that women politicians with national constituencies would also be subject to beauty contest standards, even by so-called respectable journalists. Indeed, the lack of mainstream commentary about the not-so-hushed descriptions of Palin as a “MILF” and Clinton’s lack of so-called MILF appeal speaks to how insulated many of us are to how these dynamics function in media coverage.

Read Full Essay@

Ebony & Pink for Breast Cancer Awareness

from NewsOne.com

LEFT OF BLACK
Pink Ribbons for Black Women
by Mark Anthony Neal

In 1979, R&B singer Minnie Riperton died of breast cancer at the age of thirty-one. With a five-octave vocal range, Riperton was best known for songs like “Memory Lane ” and “Lovin’ You.”

(She’s also the mother of Saturday Night Live alumnus Maya Rudolph). However, for many Americans in the 1970s, Riperton was more than just an incredible singer, but the public face of breast cancer.

Riperton understood that with celebrity came responsibility, so she publicly announced her trauma on national television, confiding in Tonight Show guest host Flip Wilson-and the rest of the country. Riperton would soon become the first African-American public spokesperson for the American Cancer Society, receiving the organization’s “Courage Award” at a White House ceremony with then-President Jimmy Carter. Nearly thirty years after her death, black women continue to be at the forefront of preventative outreach efforts.

In comparison to white women, black women are less likely to get breast cancer. However, black women are far more likely to die from it, in many cases because they are typically diagnosed at a much later stage than are white women. In addition, white women have longer survival rates once they contract the disease, even while black women are diagnosed at younger ages. To further complicate the situation, cancer tumors found in black women tend to be more aggressive than those found in white women.

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Change! (Makes U Wanna Reminisce)

Its been eight long years since the boys said wassup to each other. Even with the effects of a down economy and imminent change in the White House, the boys are still able to come together and stay true to what really matters.

Remembering Levi Stubbs

from Vibe.com


CRITICAL NOIR
Man Enough: Remembering Levi Stubbs
by Mark Anthony Neal

There are two recordings, both from the early-1970s, that perfectly capture the significance of Levi Stubbs, the long-time lead singer of The Four Tops who died on October 17th. "Keeper of the Castle" was the first single and title track of the Four Tops' debut recording on the ABC label in 1972, after a decade long stint at Motown. A year later the group recorded "Are You Man Enough?," which was featured on the soundtrack of the film Shaft in Africa. Both tracks, written by the team of Dennis Lambert and Brian Potter, presented a compelling view of masculinity in the early 1970s at a time when fictional and iconic figures such as Dirty Harry and Shaft were offering more animated and often unrealistic views of masculinity.

"Are You Man Enough?" easily tapped into the musical formula that fueled the success of Blaxploitation anthems such as Marvin Gaye's "Trouble Man," Curtis Mayfield's "Superfly" and Isaac Hayes's "Shaft," with Stubbs's vocals serving as the perfect conduit for the hypermasculine rhythms that the aforementioned Blaxploitation icons largely embodied. With box-office appeal--Berry Gordy initially approached Stubbs to play the role of Louis McKay in the film Lady Sings the Blues--and a rumbling baritone rivaled only by Barry White and Hayes, Stubbs easily fit alongside the sex symbols of the Soul era.

"Keeper of the Castle" told another story though, urging men "red, yellow, black, white, and brown," to be fathers to their children and a providers for their families. Despite this rather antiquated notion of manhood, at its core "Keeper of the Castle" celebrated loyalty and responsibility. These attributes best described the private Levi Stubbs, who despite the opportunity to seek solo success like so many of his peers--Smokey Robinson, David Ruffin, Eddie Kendrick and most famously Diana Ross--remained loyal to The Four Tops, fronting the group for nearly 50 years.

Read the Full Essay @

Hip hop, black masculinity, black femininity, race, class, R. Kelly, Obama . . .

The Morehouse College English Department presents

Dr. Mark Anthony Neal
Duke University

&

Dr. Stephane Dunn
Morehouse College


In Dialogue

Hip hop, black masculinity, black femininity, race, class, R. Kelly, Obama . . .

Thursday, October 23 2008, 2:30 pm
Morehouse College, Wheeler Hall

There is a market for everything man
There is a market for pet psychologists nigga. There is a market for twisted
shitfetish video's. For nipplerings, for riverdancing, for chocolate cupboard roaches..
But you can't find one for cultured hardcore reality and hiphop?

- Immortal Technique

Franklin Raines Meet Willie Horton

from NewsOne.com

LEFT OF BLACK:
The Financial Meltdown and John McCain’s Willie Horton
by Mark Anthony Neal

As his poll numbers have declined and the strengths he possesses on the issues of foreign policy take a back seat to the economic crisis, it’s no surprise that Senator John McCain has resorted to the time-tested strategy of fear-mongering. When not referring to Democratic opponent as “that one” and depicting him as the boogey-man who will come into your house late at night and steal the very air you breathe hasn’t been enough, the McCain campaign has created surrogates to make Barack Obama guilty by association.

The newest boogey-man on the block is Franklin Raines. And Senator Obama’s purported relationship with the former chairperson and Chief Executive Officer of Fannie Mae (the Federal National Mortgage Association), has been at the cornerstone of attempts by the McCain campaign to depict Obama as dangerous for the American economy.

Raines elevation to “boogey-man” follows a pattern we’ve witnessed where Senator Obama’s opponents use figures like Reverend Jeremiah Wright and former Weather Underground radical William Ayers to question his preparedness, his judgment and his integrity.

Why not? It worked for Republican nominee George Bush’s anti-crime presidential campaign against Democrat Michael Dukakis in 1988, when a now-infamous television ad about a black felon named Willie Horton scared the living daylights out of white America.

Read Full Essay @

Classic "New Jack" Analysis from Barry Michael Cooper

from The Huffington Post

When Politics Became The New Hip Hop
By Barry Michael Cooper

The Gen-Y'ers have truly made the connection between Barack Obama and Hip Hop. They are his advance team on Facebook, My Space, and Friendster, an army of Millennials that has assisted the Obama campaign in raising hundreds of millions of dollars online. For this new paradigm--young white kids (and Asian, Latino, African-American, and multi-racial kids, too)--the culture of Hip Hop allowed them to embrace a black man without fear, suspicion, or loathing. These same Gen-Y'ers will go to a Jay-Z concert and know all the words to "Regrets" or "Lost Ones." Michael Phelps motored Beijing's Olympic blue cube -- stoked by the fires of Lil' Wayne lyrics playing in his head -- en route to a record eight gold medals. These same Millennials are also educating their parents around the breakfast and dinner table, letting them know that the Baby Boomer version of the American Dream, the Woodstock, flower power, peace, love, and Haight-Ashbury, has grown up in Eminem's 8 Mile of Detroit, Snoop Dogg's Long Beach, and Common's South Side of Chicago. Their world may not be a ghetto, but the Millennials have broadbanded it into their very own 3-G global 'hood. Which, incidentally, is Obama's hood, too.

Read the Full Essay @

Broken Social Contracts--A Film Short by Laura L. Rahman

The Film discusses how two historically black colleges confront accusations of sexual assault on their campus. Broken Social Contracts depicts the necessity for conversations in the black community on our relationships. Can dialogue go beyond music videos and lyrics? Activists, students, and scholars weigh in our communities gender roles...trailer includes Mark Anthony Neal, Duke Univ. Prof.--Beverly Guy-Sheftall, Spelman Prof.,--Cynthia Neal Spence, Spelman Prof.--(Bilal) Mark King, Morehouse Prof.--Johnnetta B. Cole, President Emeritus (Spelman & Bennett),-- Pearl Cleage, Writer/Activist--M.Bahti Kuumba, Spelman Prof.--Patrica McFadden, Activist,---Andy Lowry, Spelman Prof.--Adia Harvey, Georgia State Univ. Prof--Mychael Bond, Britny Ray, Star Tolerson, Marcus Edwards, Tony Anderson, Tiara Dungy & Spelmans Violence Against Womens Class.

The Thug & The Candidate

from Vibe.com

***

CRITICAL NOIR:
The Thug(s) and the Candidate: Musings on Black Masculinity
by Mark Anthony Neal

"That black men who display hypermasculine characteristics fetishize--that is, simultaneously love and loathe--those considered less masculine or, to be explicit, that niggas covet faggots has been unmasked in insightful criticism. That faggots desire to be niggas has occasioned less critique..."

--Vershawn Ashanti Young, Your Average Nigga: Performing Race, Literacy, and Masculinity

***

One of the prevailing theses of the current election season is that Senator Barack Hussein Obama is not the round-way-brand of black man. Such a premise is palpable only to the extent that one chooses to read Obama against the image of marketplace confections of black masculinity, particularly those that legibly erect centuries' old tropes of danger, bestial behavior, and sinister eroticism. The idea that we should distinguish between the candidate and the thug(s) is one of the defining truisms of polite society--less a measure of the candidate's humanity and more so an index of the tolerance within said polite society.

But black men do not live in polite society--however effectively they earn their keep within those spaces--and even the candidate's wife understands this, telling CBS news months ago about her fears that her husband might get shot at a gas station in Chicago as opposed to being assassinated on the campaign trial by some desperate political actor yelling "traitor." As Chris Rock surmised some time ago, niggas don't get assassinated, they get shot--and there always been more of a chance that the Senator from Illinois's fate would be decided by a bullet intended for a nigga, as opposed to that intended for the candidate, because quiet as it's kept--Harvard pedigree notwithstanding--Obama never stops being a black man. And this is perhaps the implicit message of Byron Hurt's recent film short Barack & Curtis: Manhood, Power and Respect. The film is a brilliant and thoughtful intervention on the subject of black masculinity at a moment when Senator Barack Obama is poised to redefine black manhood for much of the world.

There is a telling sequence early in Hurt's Barack & Curtis, where radio journalist Esther Armah, states that "Barack equaled Harvard, someone like 50 Cent equaled hood; hood equaled virility, Harvard equaled impotence." That Armah's compelling observation is rarely disturbed speaks to the extent that many of our perceptions about black masculinity have been finely shaped by a market culture that makes it easier for us to go to sleep at night, because we can so effectively distinguish the niggas from the black men. As such Barack Obama and Curtis Jackson are little more than brands, in a highly volatile and fabulously lucrative, politicized marketplace.

Read the Full Essay @

R. Kelly’s Closet: Shame, Desire and the Confessions of a (Post-Modern) Soul Man

R. Kelly’s Closet:
Shame, Desire and the Confessions of a (Post-Modern) Soul Man

A Public Lecture by Mark Anthony Neal

Professor of Black Popular CultureDepartment of African and African-American Studies
Duke University

Tuesday, October 7^th, 2008
The Annenberg School for Communication
University of Pennsylvania
3620 Walnut Street
Philadelphia, PA 19104
Room 109

Reception: 5:15 – 6:15pm

Lecture: 6:15 – 7:30pm