big gyptian (riddim meth0d repost)

[Ok, here’s another oldie-but-goodie from the Riddim Meth0d vaults. Plenty of readers are no doubt familiar with this post/mashup, especially since I’ve revisited the issue. In the time since I wrote it (almost 5 years ago!), I’ve also had the strange fortune of submitting a brief report — about the significance of “Big Pimpin” to […]

Read More →
That Which Cannot Be Bought Or Sold Or Destroyed

I was excited to find in my inbox today a link to a brand new LP by one of my favorite artists from whom I hadn’t heard much in a while: the mighty Mutamassik! It’s called That Which Death Cannot Destroy and the liner notes very plainly state that it “cannot be bought or sold.” […]

Read More →
Arab Face, Second As Farce

Thx to the ever-vigilant Ted Swedenburg for bringing to my attn the latest episode in the surreal and surprisingly sustained saga of “Arab Money” (click the non-HD version to stay here) — Video Games | GTA IV: Ballad of Gay Tony | Yusuf Amir Trailer XBox 360 | Playstation 3 | Nintendo Wii So there […]

Read More →
Music Unites Us, Gets Under Our Skins

I couldn’t be more thrilled to announce this — At a time when the arts community at Brandeis is feeling rightly beleaguered, it brings me no little satisfaction to know that we will be putting on a rather art-ful residency later this month, sponsoring the US premiere of such an exciting, provocative, and relevant group […]

Read More →
Iron Chic

Bidoun Magazine – Art & Culture from the Middle East | Twilight of the Iron Sheik | By Negar Azimi the story of the iron sheik :: 'An Iranian impersonating an Arab dressed as a Turk, he was part pirate, part djinn, all man. The WWF that Vaziri joined was in the midst of reinventing […]

Read More →
A3rab Money Refix?

would you prefer to listen while looking at an img of what may or may not be a swank Dubai livingroom? You may have heard — or at least heard about — the above, a remix of Busta’s infamous “Arab Money,” featuring Lil Wayne, Akon, Diddy, Swizz Beatz, T-Pain, & of course, Ron Browz. There […]

Read More →
Delayed Linkdump #2429

Changed my wordpress password over the weekend, which threw off my semi-automatic delicious blogging (aka, linkthink). So here’s a semi-manual collection of yesterday’s links — LRB · Slavoj Žižek: Use Your Illusions looks like zizek caught the hope (kinda); here is a sneeze: “Nothing was decided with Obama’s victory, but it widens our freedom and […]

Read More →
Make It Bahrain

Just in case ppl haven’t seen it yet, I wouldn’t want something so remarkable to get lost in the comments. Thanks to Kevin “Todomundo” Driscoll for the link and, yep, I’ve already put Ted “Kufiyah-Spotting” Swedenburg on the case — Can anyone tell me, though, how Al-Jazeera is [being used in?] framing this clip? I […]

Read More →
Half Baked Alaska

Worldmapper: The world as you've never seen it before "Worldmapper is a collection of world maps, where territories are re-sized on each map according to the subject of interest. There are now nearly 600 maps." (tags: world map visualization geography cartography) Dancehall.Mobi » Middle East Riddim 2008 middle east riddim relick, 4 years after the […]

Read More →
Don’t Start Thinking About Tomorrow

photo by {?N.tella} Flickr: The Hipster Intifada Pool "excellent hipster kufiya photos" (via hawgblawg) (tags: hipster kufiya photos flickr middleeast fashion babylonia) hawgblawg: back on the kufiyaspotting tip: "Hipster: The Dead End of Western Civilization" ted swedenburg on the hipster-kufiya connection, w/ a sharp critique of that adbusters piece: "I'm not sure that the kufiya […]

Read More →
YouTube, America, Distinguished Guests, Crumbs…

Spannered | Bobby Corridor | Hip Hop Megamix | Radio oh my god yes oh my god :: golden age beat madness and beyond! :: 600+ tracks in 90 minutes :: mixxtape of the summerrrrrrrr, for really tho (tags: hip-hop mix instrumentals production mp3) YouTube – Soulja Boy SHOCKING News! OMG WTF LOL! "youtube … […]

Read More →
Linkthink #0443: New American Menschery

hawgblawg: gothic bellydance per recent discussions, ted swedenburg links to a fascinating “goth bellydance” video, which is set, interestingly, to a custom refix by enduser of some _bollywood breaks_ material (tags: bellydance video arab middleeast US goth breakcore orientalism blogpost dance) YouTube – The Story of Rapper’s Delight by Nile Rodgers chic’s nile rodgers offers […]

Read More →
Where Do I Begin (To Tell the Story)?

As long as we’re on the topic of “Arab Face” I’ve decided to dust off and finish up this post that’s long been sitting in my drafts folder. (It’s post #100, and I’ve recently published #400, if that’s any indication of how long it’s been on a backburner.) There are countless twisty, tangly stories of […]

Read More →
linkthink#2931: On the Radio

Oxford University Press: Foundation: Joseph Schloss “Based on interviews with many of the dance’s most significant figures as well as on four years of on-the-ground research in New York City, [Joe Schloss’s] _Foundation_ offers the first serious study of b-boying…” :: go joe! this gonna be good (tags: breakdance book academic ethnomusicology hip-hop dance) Der […]

Read More →
Sticky! Sha3kira Ma3shup & “Arab Face”

Really enjoying the discussion on that sha3bi post — please help keep it going if ur so inclined. This post is mainly a way of bringing that discussion “to the top” but I might as well share a related find… It’s not embeddable, but this video mashup of a sha3bi song and a Shakira/Beyonce vid […]

Read More →
linkthink #8233: Time Passes and Things Look Different

Tomgram: Mike Davis, Welcome to the Next Epoch ‘Although the idea of the “Anthropocene” — an Earth epoch defined by the emergence of urban-industrial society as a geological force — has been long debated, stratigraphers have refused to acknowledge compelling evidence for its advent.’ (tags: climate oil energy history essay critique middleeast economics global) Fight […]

Read More →
8 Mile on the Nile

In my sha3bi searches last night I came across all kinds of odd & awesome stuff. And I don’t say ‘odd’ as an uninformed outsider (though I am one, relatively speaking), but b/c some of the cha3bi vids one finds are truly bizarre mashups of footage ranging from what looks like a Francophone African music […]

Read More →