Música Negra to Pop Reggaeton

I think the jury’s still out on whether the so-called “Despacito effect” will translate into a sustained presence of Spanish-language hits in the Hot 100, in regular radio rotation, on top-level pop playlists (and not just reggaeton / Latin ones), and so forth. I’m sure the “YouTube factor” will continue to make these decisions increasingly […]

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Google Glance: “Beauty”

h/t Ferrari Shepherd, aka @stopbeingfamous— When I tried, I saw this — What do you see? (It changes all the time, and then again, it doesn’t.) For more Google Glances, see here.

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Welcome to Brownsville

Former wunderkind hip-hop critic and now English prof at Vassar, Hua Hsu asks some great questions in his hot-off-the-press Atlantic cover story, itself a question, “The End of White America?” — What will it mean to be white after “whiteness” no longer defines the mainstream? Will anyone mourn the end of white America? I especially […]

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White Rap Claptrap

As some might have noticed in a recent linkthink, “Ghetto Revivalist”® John Brown (aka, the King of da Burbz) — idiot-savvy hypeman extraordinaire — is promoting a new mixtape with a spoof commercial for a cereal product called “Ghetto Revive-Os” — Despite being at the center of a number of truly cringe-worthy moments in the […]

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linkthink #3954: Areas of Excerptise

SSRC Books » Blog Archive » Structures of Participation in Digital Culture “Structures of Participation in Digital Culture, edited by SSRC Program Director Joe Karaganis, explores digital technologies that are engines of cultural innovation…” (tags: academic book pdf digital culture research tech web2.0) Day 2 of the R. Kelly trial: The “Little Man defense” and […]

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linkthink #526373: It’s Meta, Baby

The Top 10 Rap Songs White People Love | Catsandbeer.com spot on (tags: hip-hop race whiteness pop videos humor) …My heart’s in Accra » Steve Bloomfield breaks new ground in Somalia reporting ethan z on somalia and US proxy wars: “I’m obsessed because I fear that Somalia is how America will fight wars in the […]

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I Am Curious! What Beat Does Your Soul Emanate On?

I think a lot of the critical hoo-ha that followed in the wake of SF/J’s miscegenationist broadside could have been averted had we all paid closer attention to the Monkees. Take the following clip, discussed by fellow Riddim Methodist Pacey Foster way back when, in which Charlie Smalls demos the difference between white and black […]

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Global Ghettotech vs. Indie Rock: The Contempo Cartography of Hip

“Hipster hedonism takes many forms,” wrote Ned Polsky in reply to Norman Mailer’s hipster manifesto of 1957. “Some hipster groups,” Polsky continued, “have everything to do with motorcycles, whereas others have nothing to do with them.” Similarly, but more in the abstract, in his genealogy of the hipster, “Hip and the Long Front of Color” […]

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Hallelujah Holla Black

Some readers might remember that I participated in a panel about ego trip’s White Rapper Show earlier this year at the annual meeting of IASPM-US. I’ve been wanting to share my thoughts / comments from that session here for a while, but haven’t had a moment to collect (or transcribe) them. Well, I just spent […]

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