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Go-Go: DC's Signature Sound in Photos
Natalie Hopkinson is a Washington, D.C.-based author whose current projects deal with the arts, gender and public life. She is the author of Go-Go Live: The Musical Life and Death of a Chocolate City. Follow her on Twitter. Go-go music is unique to D.C., but in my book Go-Go Live: The Musical Life and Death of a Chocolate…
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Goodbye to the Godfather of Go-Go
(The Root) — “I created this sound so I can eat — and everyone who plays in this band can eat.” —Chuck Brown, 2010 At a time when so much is changing in the once-Chocolate City, one thing remained constant in Washington, D.C.: Chuck Brown — who died May 16 at age 75 of undisclosed…
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A Child's Wisdom About Kony 2012
I had just whipped out my smartphone and settled a question about my 11-year-old son’s homework in record time. Impressed, he shook his head. How on earth did I manage to make it through high school without the Internet? “I feel sorry for you, Mom.” True — kids today can get to information much faster.…
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Chris and Rihanna Give Us the Blues, Again
He beats me up but how he can love I never loved like that since the day I was born I said for fun I don’t want you no more And when I said that, I made sweet papa sore He blacked my eye, I couldn’t see Then he pawned the things he gave to…
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In Defense of Hip-Hop Diplomacy
At a discussion after a Washington, D.C., screening of a new documentary on global hip-hop, The Furious Force of Rhymes, the audience was elated that the film showed Brooklyn, N.Y.-based emcee Toni Blackman performing in Kenya. But someone lamented that the U.S. State Department had sponsored her trip. An article at the webzine AlterNet similarly…
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Why Art Is Bananas
“Sounds like a lot of bulls—- to me.” —My mother, reacting to the explanation of an art piece at Art Basel Miami Beach For contemporary-art haters, Paulo Nazareth’s Banana Market/Art Market installation piece was low-hanging fruit. By that I mean the Brazilian artist shipped thousands of bananas to the cavernous Miami Beach Convention Center, which…
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Is Black Radio Beyond Redemption?
In an entry at The Root DC, blogger Natalie Hopkinson writes that she recently added D.C.’s two FM hip-hop stations to the list of items banned in her house because she grew tired of explaining raunchy lyrics to her children. … and when I heard the radio ad for The Stadium (yeah, that strip club)…
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Stop Picking on the Black Middle Class
Being pregnant is the perfect cover for all kinds of outrageous behavior. Bark unreasonable late-night demands to your husband, scarf down enough food to feed three starving men, go off on your boss … just blame it on the hormones. So when, just weeks away from giving birth to my daughter, I found out that…
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Did Malcolm X Hate Women?
Malcolm X was furious to learn at the last minute that a speaker had decided not to appear at a rally at the Audubon Ballroom in Harlem, N.Y., on Feb. 21, 1965. A flustered aide said that he’d phoned Malcolm’s wife, Betty, with the information, according to Manning Marable’s controversial biography, Malcolm X: A Life…
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Will White People Go to the National Black Museum?
The Anacostia Community Museum is one of the Smithsonian Institution’s grand, federally chartered Washington, D.C., museums, but it is located miles from the Mall’s gleaming white marble monuments where millions of eighth-grade history students pilgrimage each year. It is a world-class museum charged with interpreting and preserving the black experience. But it is tucked away…
Black News and Black Views with a Whole Lotta Attitude
