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Rap's Rape Culture: Ashley Judd Had a Point
Ashley Judd’s new, highly publicized memoir, All That Is Bitter & Sweet, has been in stores for a week, and the actress is already making waves for some harsh judgments she made about rap music in the book. Judd wrote that she was upset when she saw that Snoop and Diddy were performing at the…
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Saving the Summer, One Hero at a Time
Last spring I taught an English course called Black Heroes that explored how black heroes have emerged and are depicted in the public sphere. The course moved from the 19th century (Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, Frederick Douglass and Nat Turner), through the 20th (Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, Angela Davis and Assata Shakur). One…
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Untitled: The Album Formerly Known As
“Cause anytime we mention our condition, our history or existence/They calling it reverse racism.” —Nas’ “N.I.G.G.E.R. (The Slave & The Master)” Contrary to the recent flurry of reports regarding the name change of Nas’ ninth studio album from Nigger to Nas , Nas himself confirms a change, but sets the record straight about the record’s…
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On Rappers and Rap Sheets
The recent spate of rap stars making criminal justice news will come as a surprise to no one, especially those of you who equate hip-hop culture with prison culture. Nor will it surprise those of us who have accepted the fact that, in the black public sphere, record sales (or any sales for that matter)…
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You Know How We Do
For Whom the Bell Tolls (Part II) “Perchance, he for whom this bell tolls may be so ill, as that he knows not it tolls for him” – John Donne Part one of this essay appeared as a blog on Blackprof during the fall of 2007. At that time, the ‘Bell’ in the title referred…
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My Teletype Transformation
Over the last week, I have been seething about how the media has used de-contextualized clips from Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s sermons to hijack the public perception of Sen. Barack Obama’s historic run for the presidency. I was therefore eagerly, if anxiously, awaiting Obama’s formal response to this situation. Since I was en route to the…
Black News and Black Views with a Whole Lotta Attitude
