Making the World Safe

I suspect some dear readers out there, much as they like me, are getting sick of seeing my bristly face when they load the page, so I figured I’d get something else up here at the top, though I don’t have time for a proper post right now. One thing about those beard shots — […]

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Hurban Renewal

Ok, back to reggaeton. So, once again, back to questions of vitality and vocality. Or, how it’s doing and for whom & from whence it speaks. one way of looking at the “reggaeton” “crash” (and recovery?) I was tickled to see Birdseed name reggaeton genre of the year for 2009, fully contra Gavin’s provocative post […]

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Down Like the Economy

DJ Earworm offers up his latest year-end mashup retrospective, putting together the top 25 songs of 2009. For me, despite how remarkably well it all hangs together, this doesn’t quite have the magic of last year’s collage, but it’s still a great way — much as I would prefer to never hear those BEP songs […]

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Ain’t No Halfsteppin

Astoundingly, a full four months earlier than her sister did, Charlie has started walking — basically skipping the crawl, or scoot, altogether In response, Nico has gone incognito, posing as the matriarch of a local panda clan We could hardly feel prouder

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Loo$e Change, Tight Flick

I enjoyed this so thoroughly yesterday that I need to post it here. Thanks to Frank Roberts for the tip. Becca called this 15 minute film “pitch perfect,” and I think she’s right. Hope you dig this as much as we. Someone needs to give Mykwain Gainey the resources to produce a series or something, […]

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Is It Funky Enough?

When Guillaume was here last week, we discovered in conversation that we both had long been sitting on posts that centered on the question of Africanness and UK funky. I joked that we should both finally get around to finishing these posts and drop them on the same day, causing a ruckus on the ol’ […]

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Pass the Pod (Like They Used to Say)

I’ve been working on a talk/chapter called “Skinny Jeans and Fruity Loops” and while part of that has involved tracking floggers and tecktonik across Latin America, another part has required that I dig into LA’s similarly day-glo/geeky youthtube dance scene: i.e., jerkin. More on all of this research later. Meantime, I just want to share […]

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Hit Dat ___

Not sure what to make of the casual misogyny (metaphor?) at the heart of this — a generalizing of hoe — but, that aside (if I may), I gotta say that I can’t get enough of dudes dancing lithely on their front lawns (wait for 1:10 in the video below). Apparently, this joint’s on some […]

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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 […]

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Re-Meet the Beatles, *Really* This Time

Last night at Beat Research the employees of Cambridge-based video game makers Harmonix swarmed the E Room with their friends, their gadgets, and their various musical side projects. They put on quite a show, and to a packed house! Video killed the radio star, but Rock Band might make some rock stars yet. Harmonix is […]

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Gwada Blondinettes Have More Fun

White people can’t dance, you know — to be more precise, not if they’ve been raised in a place or community or family where they’re not socialized and enculturated into dancing, or don’t later make great efforts to correct such an impoverished upbringing. (& of course, that goes for ppl of any color.) This video […]

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Bearing Witness, or Not – Part 3

As many of you may have heard, the trial concluded on Friday with the absurd award of $675k in statutory damages to the RIAA — in other words, Joel Tenenbaum, a 25 year old physics grad student, was found liable, at the whopping cost of $22,500 each, for the willful infringement of the copyrights to […]

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Family Dem, Y’know

Charlie shares the latest product from our-man-in-JA, Kevin Wallen, who has in recent months — with the generous support of USAID — shifted his media-rich, tech-savvy, and yet rather holistic approach to education (i.e., Students Expressing Truth) from Jamaica’s prisons to its schools — and in particular to students on the verge of expulsion. Kevin […]

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Songs as Shared Things

charlie sporting a hat bearing the name of his boat, a name inspired by some songs No doubt most readers of this blog are aware that my father-in-law, Charlie Nesson (aka eon), is also very much IN LAW. And he’s been making the news a lot recently, mainly for defending (pro bono) Joel Tenenbaum against […]

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Pop Goes the World

There’s little I can add to all the tributes and reflections gumming up the web these days, but like so many others I feel compelled to say something. Inspired even. I found Andrew Sullivan’s and Jeff Chang’s posts pretty resonant, Jason King’s too, among others, and I’ve been particularly struck by all the MJ music […]

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Bots Burners

Botswana’s Ruff Riddims (now tweeting) have been putting in work lately. Now that the studio is up and running, they’ve been grinding out some promising stuff — a mix of kwaito and kwasa-kwasa, hip-hop and reggae — and they’re starting to reach out, nationally and internationally, to share their work with the wider world. Check […]

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Wordle Up

Raquel, mi querida co-editor, was recently in Puerto Rico to talk Reggaeton. Among a variety of venues, she also ended up on video — While watching I was surprised to see, suddenly in the mix, a wordle I made from my chapter in the book. A fitting backdrop, sin duda — Have you read it […]

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