The following article deals with one of the many elephants in the room, mental illness. The words are provided by a brilliant artist whose first hand experience gives us a unique insight into a world most of us know exists but choose not to address. Millions every year go undiagnosed particularly in the black & latino communities due the stigma attached. I thank Bassey Ikpi for sharing her story & I hope her piece helps provide a greater perspective.
-pierre bennu
Have you ever been eating with somebody & then they taste something disgusting and immediately offer it to you to share in the experience? “YUK! Here, taste this!” I have never understood that exchange.
I also have never understood why so many folks claim to despise negative stereotypical images fed to us, but continue to support them.
I believe Melvin Van Peebles was the one that once said Hollywood has an Achilles wallet: if it makes money no matter what it is they will make it. So it could be said that Hollywood and televison are artistically/politically/morally neutral – they couldn’t care less if it’s a movie about Madea or Mumia as long as it makes money. Examples range from corporate support and wide distribution of Michael Moore’s antiestablishment documentaries, to the Kwanzaa cups at McDonald’s. It could be further said that the responsibility lies with the audience then, to make quality decisions that in turn effect the quality and content of the material. But it seems to me that every time there is an award show on BET or a racist misogynistic reality show or a poorly written melodramatic farce celebrating contemporary coonery, folks FLOCK to it in unprecedented numbers.
Some claim intellectual curiousity, some say they can’t comment unless they see it, some just love it as a guilty pleasure – all of which are fine. My issue comes with the fact that if you put money into supporting these projects then they will continue to make them – even bigger and more frequently. My greater issue comes with the fact that we collectively as audience members don’t find and support the alternatives with the same amount of enthusiasm. We don’t search out and support and vote with our dollars for the films, shows, movies and art that enhance and cleberate our mythology. [Read more]
Writer, filmmaker, and radio host Nyree Emory on the role of the Law Of Attraction in interpersonal relationships.
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(Overheard on the 6:40 To Croton Harmon)
“She been at my house for a week my nigga…”
“A week?”
“Yeah, she been there since I had the cable cut off. I’m about to turn that shit back on though. Tired of that bitch being in my house…”
(5 minutes later…)
“Told you, my nigga, ignore that shit. Act like that phone ain’t even ring. When she say, ‘Why you ain’t call me?’ just tell her ‘I’m callin’ you now, right?’ And if she keep up with it, or say some shit you can’t come back from, hang up. Her insecurity will be eatin’ at her my nigga.”
“A new performance art project that we have been working on with RED CLAY called High and Low, the name is based on the Kurosawa film with the same title. We take High art to common places and see what reactions we get.” – Shawn Peters
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.
I was tweeting today in response to media coverage of a white, male suicide bomber who flew his plane into an IRS building in Texas, and the coverage of Tiger Woods’ press conference about his marital infidelities.
b/c that’s what i do, instead of blogging as often as i should. I tweet.
anyway, I wondered why so-called ‘news’ organizations were not treating the former as a terrorist attack, and why we were still hearing about tiger woods at all.
in my string of tweets, i mentioned racism as marketing, and one of my twitter folks asked for clarification. I doubted I could explain what I meant in 140 characters or less, so I wrote this post. enjoy.
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The mark of a great marketing campaign is when the idea or slogan transcends the product. it attaches to the cultural consciousness, and when attached to the product, makes the product greater.
During one of the long conversations I have with myself while doing chores a tangent formed in my head. The things that are now considered the elements of hip hop (among them breaking, mcing, graffiti) were part of street games I remember people playing like skelly or handball, street football etc. Well, while the guys were on one side of the street, what did we see the girls playing…DOUBLE DUTCH!
The thought that crossed my mind was what if Double Dutch was the thing what “blew up” instead of hip hop? Perhaps I’ve been watching too many twilight zones but what if hip hop were double dutch …the following were just the one i could remember from a very long list of very bizarre thoughts. Feel free to add on…
IF HIP HOP WERE DOUBLE DUTCH…
- The best that ever did it would have been from Brooklyn.
- There would be double dutch beefs.
- they would have platinum telephone cords ropes.
- They would objectify men in their videos.
- They would not give male jumpers the credit they deserve.
- There would be “positive” jumpers & “gangsta” jumpers.
- There would be jumpers that dumb it down by jumping with one rope.
- Turners would be replaced by something digital.
- it would be dead already.
- 40 year old women would be wearing Gucci print Jellys talking about they’re maintaining the culture.
You may be familiar with Elon James White from his ‘this week in blackness’ videocast… we thought this little essay was both amusing and quite to the point. Guess what? Black people are not a monolith. Yup. So now you know.
Writer, filmmaker, and radio host Nyree Emory on the role of the Law Of Attraction in interpersonal relationships. 
)
You may be familiar with Elon James White from his ‘this week in blackness’ videocast… we thought this little essay was both amusing and quite to the point. Guess what? Black people are not a monolith. Yup. So now you know.
