IN 1997’S MEN IN BLACK, Will Smith played a police officer who, subsequent to being secretly watched, is admitted into a “highly funded, yet unofficial government agency” that monitors extraterrestrial activity on earth. What’s important about this story is that it stands as the first mainstream film to give expression to black paranoia; that brand […]
Charles Mudede
Posted inMovies & TV
A Real Pisser
Even Drunk, The Replacements Still Sucks
GOOD FILMS DESERVE clear, competent examinations because they are complex and immortal; bad films deserve only experimental reviews, because, really, what else can you do with them except, as the British say, take the piss out of it. The Replacements certainly deserves the latter treatment, which is why Bruce and I decided to conduct a […]
Posted inMusic
Let’s Hear It For The Slum
Slum Village’s Antidote To the Sad State of Hiphop
AMONG THE MANY REASONS for hiphop’s current decline, the most obvious is its spectacular rise into the mainstream. Now, I’m not one to foist all of hiphop’s problems on entrepreneurs like Master P or Puff Daddy or Russell Simmons, and I especially dislike it when white critics censure them for making big money because really, […]
Posted inMovies & TV
Who’s the Man?
John Shaft and His Multiple Orgasms/Meanings
I WATCHED THE NEWEST VERSION of Shaft with my friend Eben Eldridge, who saw the original version when it came out in 1971 (I was still learning to talk at the time). After the movie we had the following conversation. Eben: John Shaft is a cold-blooded, calm, calculating avenger. He lives in a racially charged […]
Posted inMovies & TV
Pimp Role
Demystifying the Mack Daddy
THE HUGHES BROTHERS’ documentary American Pimp opens with a montage of middle-class white Americans expressing total contempt for the practice of pimping. What’s striking about this opening is not so much the angry and often ridiculous comments (it’s easy to get random people on the street to say stupid things), but that the outraged whites […]
Posted inMusic
The Art of Imperfection
Hiphop Doesn’t Avoid Errors; It Makes Them
IN HIS BOOK The Imperfect Art: Reflections on Jazz and Modern Culture, jazz aesthetician and historian Ted Gioia famously states that the conditions and creative pressures jazz artists work under night after night are “ridiculous.” They do not have the luxury of composing their works of art over long stretches of time, as painters, poets, […]
Posted inMusic
Ghost Dub
Inappropriate for Most Hair Salons
ANYONE WHO VISITS Britain for a few months is soon struck by the impact Caribbean culture–rhythms, language, food–has had on the island. It is hard to notice from afar, but the moment you are there, in the sound and mix of the streets, the clubs, the pubs, and the parties, you realize that the aesthetics […]