They say that it takes about 7 years 4 u 2 recycle all the cells in your body. This took place abt 2 Pierre’s ago.
Chakaras & I went to art school together. We had several small adventures during the time we knew each other… our last big one was a road trip to the Million Man March in October 1995.
I was inspired to get this photo essay/album scanned and uploaded by his untimely passing last week. It’s dedicated to him, his memory, and all of those whose lives he touched.
You always hear the cliche about the journey and the destination. We’re all destined to end up in the same place, but i am thankful that our journeys crossed paths at some point. I am better because of it. Thank you, Chakaras. rest in peace.
Kenyan filmmaker Wanuri Kahiu takes the Afrofuturism genre one step further with her short SciFi film “Pumzi.” The dystopic flick is set in an enclosed, underground future society, “35 years after water wars have torn the world apart,” and chronicles the efforts of one young woman to bring life back to the surface of the planet.
Unique opportunity to see this groundbreaking, award-winning film this sunday in Brooklyn, NY — at a free screening hosted by mtkalla keaton sunday evening, april 18th. details below.
“Pumzi” Brooklyn Screening @ Le Grand Dakar (Grand ave and Clifton Pl)
Sunday April 18th @ 8pm.
Please RVSP via text (917 771 2747)
I’ve been doing some soul searching, I’m finding some good stuff. I’m being pushed reluctantly into the foreground, a place that i purposefully abandoned several years ago. However situations keep occurring where my hermit tendencies don’t serve me. I am also being informed that my style of perfectionism doesn’t serve me. My art is like a cockroach in that for every one piece of mine that you see there are about 30 that you don’t see. Growing up I used to throw away sketch books, rhyme books and journals because they were not “perfect.” It wasn’t till i got married that i really started to save my work & even then many things never saw the light of day. I learned that just because something comes easy to me doesn’t mean it lacks value. So here i am unwilling to put things out there that are not “perfect” but in desperate need to share and make room for all the new stuff. The first challenge I put to myself is to be “out there” more. I’ve decided to do so by starting a Video Blog (which i believe is called a V-log). It is tentatively titled “2 minutes with your imaginary friend Pierre!” I begin shooting later this week…see you soon..well…you’ll see me soon but you…you get it…so yeah.
Duke professor Mark Anthony Neal and Grammy winning producer 9th Wonder (pictured left) are using SunMoonChild – amazing song by imani uzuri, amazing video by Pierre Bennu – as part of the midterm exam for their course, ’sampling soul.’ The course is about black cultural production and the tradition of borrowing/remixing/sampling and how it all relates to today’s legal issues of intellectual property rights and copyright law. Since YouTube just removed SunMoonChild after three years this issue cuts particularly close for us.
He’s made the midterm public on his blog to encourage a wider dialogue and wider exposure to the ideas. Stop by and give it a read, comment if you can! )
–jb.
As a DJ, an artist, a sometime teacher, and the son of an academic, I will never get tired of marveling at the intersection of HipHop and academia. It’s an honor to have my work thought of as contributing to this discussion.
- Dear guy with missing tooth laughing at the duct tape situation my tail light is in: he who haseth not teeth is in no position to laugh publicly about anything.
- Dear record store I miss you.
- Dear ears, dude are you slowly going deaf? If so tell me but tell me really loud cause I can’t hear too good.
- Dear supermarket can we get rid of those dividers? Are they really necessary? This is my stuff right here, all that stuff way back there not touching my stuff is her stuff. I mean really, are you that fast that one day you just rang up everyone’s stuff together? [Read more]
- dear white cat. Please just give it up. No matter how slow you creep or how fast you pounce they see you coming a mile away. I hate to sound racist, but yes it’s because you’re white. you stand out against almost any background. PS the sound you hear as they fly away is not chirping it’s laughter.
- note to self: when you fall down in public again (and you will fall down in public again) DO NOT pop back up as fast as you can! Laughter directed at your pain and ripped clothing hurts your feelings instead… lie motionless for as long as possible hold your breath and when you can no longer do that roll your eyes to the top of your head and twitch violently till some one calls the ambulance. If you can muster up some drool that’s a plus. Then when you hear the paramedics, that’s when you pop up as fast as you can, dust yourself off and walk through the crowd surrounding you and off into the sunset. PS Remember to wipe the drool off.
- dear wife: 10 years! WOW that’s cool. but isn’t it kind of random how they only make a big deal on anniversaries that are divisible by 5? I say after this, let’s celebrate on years that are prime numbers.
- dear guy with one eye working at that place: I would think (seeing as how someone poked out your eye and you have no depth perception and you wouldn’t make a good eye witness and no one is really gonna see what your saying) that you would be a nicer less rude person…oh well guess I was wrong. I got my eye on you. [Read more]
On Monday, on WNYC’s Brian Lehrer show, Rosie Perez discussed the G word — gentrification — in Manhattan and in her childhood Brooklyn, specifically in Fort Greene and in Clinton Hill, where she now lives. You could say that Perez is on the anti-gentrification side of the ongoing citywide debate about how to preserve the old NYC while embracing the new. She complained that her neighbors don’t say hello to her. “When I walk out of my house, I used to know everyone on my block in Clinton Hill. I walk out there now, people move away from me because I’m a person of color and then once they recognize me, they go, oh. That’s a horrible feeling. That’s a feeling I didn’t grow up with,” she told Lehrer. This morning, at WNYC’s flashy new Jerome L. Greene Performance Space, the conversation continued, with Perez’s signature feistiness in full force. She hosted a broadcast debate in which community activists and city-landmark officials argued over the nature of this changing city. “Let me tell you, since I said that [on the radio], now everybody is saying hello to me,” she told her mostly amused audience (many of whom seemed to be from Fort Greene). “Be careful what you wish for.” [Read more]
Bullsh*t or Fertilizer, our 2001 self-help book, is back on our site by popular demand!
Originally self-published, this book was the reason we first built the site and ventured into e-commerce, back in the dial-up days in summer 2001. It was picked up and reissued by a US gift book publisher in 2003 and made available nationwide in a brand-new edition; in 2004 it was even translated into Japanese! Click here to enter the book’s site for info, reviews, an inspirational column from author Pierre Bennu, and photos.
Original copies are available at this page; leave a note with your order if you’d like it autographed by the author.
The show “all things considered” on NPR had a broadcast on about the history of BoomBoxes. For some reason it really struck a chord with me and I was actually quite moved by it. Read the article but be sure to watch the video.
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- Dear guy with missing tooth laughing at the duct tape situation my tail light is in: he who haseth not teeth is in no position to laugh publicly about anything.
On Monday, on WNYC’s Brian Lehrer show, Rosie Perez discussed the G word — gentrification — in Manhattan and in her childhood Brooklyn, specifically in Fort Greene and in Clinton Hill, where she now lives. You could say that Perez is on the anti-gentrification side of the ongoing citywide debate about how to preserve the old NYC while embracing the new. She complained that her neighbors don’t say hello to her. “When I walk out of my house, I used to know everyone on my block in Clinton Hill. I walk out there now, people move away from me because I’m a person of color and then once they recognize me, they go, oh. That’s a horrible feeling. That’s a feeling I didn’t grow up with,” she told Lehrer. This morning, at WNYC’s flashy new Jerome L. Greene Performance Space, the conversation continued, with Perez’s signature feistiness in full force. She hosted a broadcast debate in which community activists and city-landmark officials argued over the nature of this changing city. “Let me tell you, since I said that [on the radio], now everybody is saying hello to me,” she told her mostly amused audience (many of whom seemed to be from Fort Greene). “Be careful what you wish for.” 
Bullsh*t or Fertilizer, our 2001 self-help book, is back on our site by popular demand!
