82 Search results for "underground"

Recently, I’ve decided to chop off 2/3 of my natural hair that I’ve been growing for the last 7 years. Many people are asking, “Why would I do such a thing to such beautiful and lush hair?” And, I say with a resolved grin because I need change and what’s easier than changing one’s hair. […]

Ever since Spike Lee and Michael Jordan graced my television screen and told me to “just do it” back in the early 90’s, I’ve been following sneaker culture. As a youngster I can vividly remember having verbal spats with my fellow peers at lunchtime about whether the Bo Jackson Nike Air Trainers made you run […]

In the 1994 movie DROP Squad, an underground militant organization spots Black Americans who have sold out, exploited or otherwise turned their backs on their race and then puts them through a rigorous D.R.O.P. (Deprogramming and Restoration of Pride). Every time I watch Bruford Jamison Jr. get dropped, I wonder who among us deserves to […]

One of the first memories I have of my first year in college is Jell-O wrestling.  I have absolutely no idea how, on the last Saturday night before classes started, my new roommates and I — perhaps on our way to some black(er?) social event — ended up amongst a crowd of fellow co-eds, standing […]

Assata Shakur, like many of her contemporaries, is a product of her circumstances. As the hopeful and peaceful Civil Rights era gave way to the more ardent struggle for Black empowerment, Shakur was at a critical time in her life. Campuses and cities across the country were struggling with the Vietnam War and the continued […]

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thzHCAjOgAI There is a “moral panic” that Keysha Whitaker highlights in “Latin Female Artist draws criticism for Times Square Mural” brewing on the streets of Times Square where Sofia Maldonado, a young Puerto Rican-Cuban woman, is under fire for creating a mural that for many embodies the sins of rap videos . . . big […]

Concrete Jungle stuns, inspires and enthralls from beginning to end, and confirms without question that Nneka has the potential to be among the most vital and fascinating voices of pop music in the years to come. Believe the hype.

Anytime an underground art becomes commercialized it is simultaneously at risk of becoming compromised. We saw this happen in the ballroom scene, rap music and hip hop culture. The same issue surfaced in the poetry scene when Russell Sims began to take spoken word and turn it into a commercialized art. Nothing is wrong with […]

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bg-zTiHSYMM Over the past month I have been writing on the good and bad of “The Ballroom Scene.” Now I want to take a moment to explain more about the rising underground dance, that is becoming one of the new “black arts.”  If homophobic, masculine idolizing, intolerant schools like Morehouse would be a little more […]

Some people just don’t know how to quit. Brett Favre, Joe Paterno, and Bobby Brown are just a few people who clearly can’t fathom taking a seat. There are other folks who retire prematurely before they reach their peak. Then there is Jay- Z. To put it crudely, Jay is kicking ass and taking names […]