a video.
starring tyrese and jennifer hudson.
Tuesday, June 30, 2015
Monday, June 29, 2015
Friday, June 26, 2015
the mighty o.
a moment of clarity.
words.
from president barack obama.
“I think we are born into this world and inherit all the grudges and rivalries and hatreds and sins of the past,” he continued. “But we also inherit the beauty and the joy and goodness of our forebears. And we’re on this planet a pretty short time, so that we cannot remake the world entirely during this little stretch that we have. … But I think our decisions matter. And I think America was very lucky that Abraham Lincoln was President when he was President. If he hadn’t been, the course of history would be very different. But I also think that, despite being the greatest President, in my mind, in our history, it took another hundred and fifty years before African-Americans had anything approaching formal equality, much less real equality. I think that doesn’t diminish Lincoln’s achievements, but it acknowledges that, at the end of the day, we’re part of a long-running story. We just try to get our paragraph right.”
It turns out that this was not, for Barack Obama, a rhetoric of resignation at all, but a kind of resolve."
THE NEW YORKER: Ten Days in June
words.
from president barack obama.
“I think we are born into this world and inherit all the grudges and rivalries and hatreds and sins of the past,” he continued. “But we also inherit the beauty and the joy and goodness of our forebears. And we’re on this planet a pretty short time, so that we cannot remake the world entirely during this little stretch that we have. … But I think our decisions matter. And I think America was very lucky that Abraham Lincoln was President when he was President. If he hadn’t been, the course of history would be very different. But I also think that, despite being the greatest President, in my mind, in our history, it took another hundred and fifty years before African-Americans had anything approaching formal equality, much less real equality. I think that doesn’t diminish Lincoln’s achievements, but it acknowledges that, at the end of the day, we’re part of a long-running story. We just try to get our paragraph right.”
It turns out that this was not, for Barack Obama, a rhetoric of resignation at all, but a kind of resolve."
THE NEW YORKER: Ten Days in June
Thursday, June 25, 2015
'nuff said.
words.
"Kendrick Lamar, Killer Mike, Lauryn Hill, Common and John Legend, J. Cole, and just this week in light of the Charleston shootings, Kanye West have served as musical voices in the chapter of the Civil Rights story that’s playing out, violently, right now. Their efforts are not to be diminished, but there’s nothing to rival the sense of activism that permeated Simone’s work and life. As her daughter Lisa notes in the film, political tragedy sustained Simone — a quality that defines ‘Nuff Said, where her rage and sadness over MLK translates into one of her most dynamic live performances ever recorded. And this being Nina Simone, that’s no easy feat.
We need more radical black art to emerge right now — overtly political music that forces the white mainstream to see the world through someone else’s eyes, risk of audience alienation be damned. Lamar’s To Pimp A Butterfly or Cole’s “Be Free” feel like just the beginning in comparison to the sacrifices Simone made, as evidenced with great detail in What Happened, Miss Simone?."
FLAVORWIRE: The Civil Rights Movement of 2015 Could Use a Voice Like Nina Simone
a moment of clarity.
an ongoing discussion...
words.
"...But sitting in the van and watching people just living their lives, I started to see that these were just people. They weren’t that different from me. They had to pay rent. See their kids off to school. The main difference is that as a white kid growing up in my neighborhood, I was never going to get arrested for playing basketball in the street. I was never going to get patted down because I was standing on a street corner. There was no chance I was going to get a criminal record early on for basically being a kid. As a teen, I was never going to get arrested for having a dime bag in my pocket, because no one would ever have known. There was just no possibility that a cop was ever going to stop me and search me.
When you watch people for hours and hours like that, you start to see the big picture. You start to see the cycle of how these kids get put in the system at a young age, often for doing nothing wrong, and how that limits their options, which pushes them into selling drugs or other crime. You start to see that they never had a chance..."
THE WASHINGTON POST: An interview with the Baltimore cop who’s revealing all the horrible things he saw on the job
words.
"...But sitting in the van and watching people just living their lives, I started to see that these were just people. They weren’t that different from me. They had to pay rent. See their kids off to school. The main difference is that as a white kid growing up in my neighborhood, I was never going to get arrested for playing basketball in the street. I was never going to get patted down because I was standing on a street corner. There was no chance I was going to get a criminal record early on for basically being a kid. As a teen, I was never going to get arrested for having a dime bag in my pocket, because no one would ever have known. There was just no possibility that a cop was ever going to stop me and search me.
When you watch people for hours and hours like that, you start to see the big picture. You start to see the cycle of how these kids get put in the system at a young age, often for doing nothing wrong, and how that limits their options, which pushes them into selling drugs or other crime. You start to see that they never had a chance..."
THE WASHINGTON POST: An interview with the Baltimore cop who’s revealing all the horrible things he saw on the job
Wednesday, June 24, 2015
Tuesday, June 23, 2015
life.
an ongoing discussion/moment of clarity.
words.
"I asked another friend what it’s like being the mother of a black son. “The condition of black life is one of mourning,” she said bluntly. For her, mourning lived in real time inside her and her son’s reality: At any moment she might lose her reason for living. Though the white liberal imagination likes to feel temporarily bad about black suffering, there really is no mode of empathy that can replicate the daily strain of knowing that as a black person you can be killed for simply being black: no hands in your pockets, no playing music, no sudden movements, no driving your car, no walking at night, no walking in the day, no turning onto this street, no entering this building, no standing your ground, no standing here, no standing there, no talking back, no playing with toy guns, no living while black.
Eleven days after I was born, on Sept. 15, 1963, four black girls were killed in the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala. Now, 52 years later, six black women and three black men have been shot to death while at a Bible-study meeting at the historic Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C. They were killed by a homegrown terrorist, self-identifed as a white supremacist, who might also be a “disturbed young man” (as various news outlets have described him). It has been reported that a black woman and her 5-year-old granddaughter survived the shooting by playing dead. They are two of the three survivors of the attack. The white family of the suspect says that for them this is a difficult time. This is indisputable. But for African-American families, this living in a state of mourning and fear remains commonplace.
...We live in a country where Americans assimilate corpses in their daily comings and goings. Dead blacks are a part of normal life here. Dying in ship hulls, tossed into the Atlantic, hanging from trees, beaten, shot in churches, gunned down by the police or warehoused in prisons: Historically, there is no quotidian without the enslaved, chained or dead black body to gaze upon or to hear about or to position a self against. When blacks become overwhelmed by our culture’s disorder and protest (ultimately to our own detriment, because protest gives the police justification to militarize, as they did in Ferguson), the wrongheaded question that is asked is, What kind of savages are we? Rather than, What kind of country do we live in?"
THE NEW YORK TIMES: ‘The Condition of Black Life Is One of Mourning’
words.
"I asked another friend what it’s like being the mother of a black son. “The condition of black life is one of mourning,” she said bluntly. For her, mourning lived in real time inside her and her son’s reality: At any moment she might lose her reason for living. Though the white liberal imagination likes to feel temporarily bad about black suffering, there really is no mode of empathy that can replicate the daily strain of knowing that as a black person you can be killed for simply being black: no hands in your pockets, no playing music, no sudden movements, no driving your car, no walking at night, no walking in the day, no turning onto this street, no entering this building, no standing your ground, no standing here, no standing there, no talking back, no playing with toy guns, no living while black.
Eleven days after I was born, on Sept. 15, 1963, four black girls were killed in the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala. Now, 52 years later, six black women and three black men have been shot to death while at a Bible-study meeting at the historic Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C. They were killed by a homegrown terrorist, self-identifed as a white supremacist, who might also be a “disturbed young man” (as various news outlets have described him). It has been reported that a black woman and her 5-year-old granddaughter survived the shooting by playing dead. They are two of the three survivors of the attack. The white family of the suspect says that for them this is a difficult time. This is indisputable. But for African-American families, this living in a state of mourning and fear remains commonplace.
...We live in a country where Americans assimilate corpses in their daily comings and goings. Dead blacks are a part of normal life here. Dying in ship hulls, tossed into the Atlantic, hanging from trees, beaten, shot in churches, gunned down by the police or warehoused in prisons: Historically, there is no quotidian without the enslaved, chained or dead black body to gaze upon or to hear about or to position a self against. When blacks become overwhelmed by our culture’s disorder and protest (ultimately to our own detriment, because protest gives the police justification to militarize, as they did in Ferguson), the wrongheaded question that is asked is, What kind of savages are we? Rather than, What kind of country do we live in?"
THE NEW YORK TIMES: ‘The Condition of Black Life Is One of Mourning’
Monday, June 22, 2015
the pursuit of happiness.
FILE UNDER: an ongoing discussion/moment of clarity.
words.
"Obama’s election in 2008 undoubtedly marked a milestone, one I never dreamed I’d live to see. I wrote at the time that it felt like morning in America.
What I didn’t fully appreciate then was the extent to which the mere fact of a black family living in the White House would, at least in the short term, heighten racial anxieties and conflicts. I didn’t see that the spectacle of African Americans in power would apparently lead some whites to feel powerless, aggrieved and victimized.
In the long run, I’m an optimist. But a post-racial future will not just appear. There is urgent work to do.
...But we need to go beyond speeches and symbols. Law enforcement should subject white racist organizations to the same surveillance and scrutiny as groups devoted to jihad. Governments at all levels should enforce fair housing and employment laws as vigorously as they enforce the Patriot Act. Police departments and court systems must be compelled to administer justice equally — with African Americans, too, considered innocent until proven guilty.
Our society will end racism when it stops being racist. Not a minute sooner."
THE WASHINGTON POST: America will only end racism when it stops being racist
EARLIER:
guns & roses.
growing pains.
black.
white.
words.
"Obama’s election in 2008 undoubtedly marked a milestone, one I never dreamed I’d live to see. I wrote at the time that it felt like morning in America.
What I didn’t fully appreciate then was the extent to which the mere fact of a black family living in the White House would, at least in the short term, heighten racial anxieties and conflicts. I didn’t see that the spectacle of African Americans in power would apparently lead some whites to feel powerless, aggrieved and victimized.
In the long run, I’m an optimist. But a post-racial future will not just appear. There is urgent work to do.
...But we need to go beyond speeches and symbols. Law enforcement should subject white racist organizations to the same surveillance and scrutiny as groups devoted to jihad. Governments at all levels should enforce fair housing and employment laws as vigorously as they enforce the Patriot Act. Police departments and court systems must be compelled to administer justice equally — with African Americans, too, considered innocent until proven guilty.
Our society will end racism when it stops being racist. Not a minute sooner."
THE WASHINGTON POST: America will only end racism when it stops being racist
EARLIER:
guns & roses.
growing pains.
black.
white.
under neon lights.
starring the chemical brothers & st. vincent.
PITCHFORK: The Chemical Brothers and St. Vincent Team Up for "Under Neon Lights"
PITCHFORK: The Chemical Brothers and St. Vincent Team Up for "Under Neon Lights"
Sunday, June 21, 2015
guns & roses.
an ongoing discussion/moment of clarity.
words.
"America is living through a moment of racial paradox. Never in its history have black people been more fully represented in the public sphere. The United States has a black president and a glamorous first lady who is a descendant of slaves. African-Americans lead the country’s pop culture in many ways, from sports to music to television, where show-runners like Shonda Rhimes and Lee Daniels have created new black icons, including the political fixer Olivia Pope on “Scandal” and the music mogul Cookie Lyon on “Empire.”
It has become commonplace to refer to the generation of young people known as millennials as “post-racial.” Black culture has become so mainstream that a woman born to white parents who had claimed to be black almost broke the Internet last week by saying that she was “transracial.”
Yet in many ways, the situation of black America is dire."
THE NEW YORK TIMES: From Ferguson to Charleston and Beyond, Anguish About Race Keeps Building
SEE ALSO:
growing pains.
black.
white.
words.
"America is living through a moment of racial paradox. Never in its history have black people been more fully represented in the public sphere. The United States has a black president and a glamorous first lady who is a descendant of slaves. African-Americans lead the country’s pop culture in many ways, from sports to music to television, where show-runners like Shonda Rhimes and Lee Daniels have created new black icons, including the political fixer Olivia Pope on “Scandal” and the music mogul Cookie Lyon on “Empire.”
It has become commonplace to refer to the generation of young people known as millennials as “post-racial.” Black culture has become so mainstream that a woman born to white parents who had claimed to be black almost broke the Internet last week by saying that she was “transracial.”
Yet in many ways, the situation of black America is dire."
THE NEW YORK TIMES: From Ferguson to Charleston and Beyond, Anguish About Race Keeps Building
SEE ALSO:
growing pains.
black.
white.
Saturday, June 20, 2015
growing pains.
FILE UNDER: AMERICA
words.
THE NEW YORK TIMES: The Growing Right-Wing Terror Threat
SEE ALSO:
black.
white.
words.
THE NEW YORK TIMES: The Growing Right-Wing Terror Threat
SEE ALSO:
black.
white.
black.
a moment of clarity.
words.
"D’ANGELO Yeah. I say this in my song “The Charade”: “Crawling through a systematic maze of demise.” Because it really is a systematic decimation of us. And in order for us to change it, we’ve got to first realize that that’s what’s happening to us. It needs a true agenda, a central committee, some type of leadership. Otherwise it does just end up being a hashtag, #Black Lives Matter. I do think it’s more than a statement. It’s a movement. I’m scared, though, that it’s in danger of not going anywhere. It’s just going to fizzle.
SEALE You have to keep it going. You can’t let it quiet down."
THE NEW YORK TIMES: D’Angelo and Bobby Seale on the Past and Future of Political Protest
EARLIER:
white.
words.
"D’ANGELO Yeah. I say this in my song “The Charade”: “Crawling through a systematic maze of demise.” Because it really is a systematic decimation of us. And in order for us to change it, we’ve got to first realize that that’s what’s happening to us. It needs a true agenda, a central committee, some type of leadership. Otherwise it does just end up being a hashtag, #Black Lives Matter. I do think it’s more than a statement. It’s a movement. I’m scared, though, that it’s in danger of not going anywhere. It’s just going to fizzle.
SEALE You have to keep it going. You can’t let it quiet down."
THE NEW YORK TIMES: D’Angelo and Bobby Seale on the Past and Future of Political Protest
EARLIER:
white.
white.
a moment of clarity.
words.
"...While a terrorist may be white, his violence is never based in his whiteness. A white terrorist has unique, complicated motives that we will never comprehend. He can be a disturbed loner or a monster. He is either mentally ill or pure evil. The white terrorist exists solely as a dyad of extremes: Either he is humanized to the point of sympathy or he is so monstrous that he almost becomes mythological. Either way, he is never indicative of anything larger about whiteness, nor is he ever a garden-variety racist. He represents nothing but himself. A white terrorist is anything that frames him as an anomaly and separates him from the long, storied history of white terrorism.
...If white violence is unspoken and unacknowledged, if white terrorists are either saints or demons, we don’t have to grapple with the much more complicated reality of racial violence. In our time, racialized terror no longer announces itself in white hoods and robes. You can be a 21-year-old who has many black Facebook friends and tells harmless racist jokes and still commit an act of horrifying racial violence. We cannot separate ourselves from the monsters because the monsters don’t exist. The monsters have been human all along..."
THE NEW YORK TIMES: White Terrorism Is as Old as America
SEE ALSO:
SLATE: Brow Beat Slate's Culture Blog June 19 2015 3:07 PM Larry Wilmore’s Takedown of Fox News’ Charleston Coverage Was Exactly What We Needed
ROLLING STONE: The Charleston Shooter: Racist, Violent, and Yes Political
THE NEW YORKER: Charleston and the Age of Obama
words.
"...While a terrorist may be white, his violence is never based in his whiteness. A white terrorist has unique, complicated motives that we will never comprehend. He can be a disturbed loner or a monster. He is either mentally ill or pure evil. The white terrorist exists solely as a dyad of extremes: Either he is humanized to the point of sympathy or he is so monstrous that he almost becomes mythological. Either way, he is never indicative of anything larger about whiteness, nor is he ever a garden-variety racist. He represents nothing but himself. A white terrorist is anything that frames him as an anomaly and separates him from the long, storied history of white terrorism.
...If white violence is unspoken and unacknowledged, if white terrorists are either saints or demons, we don’t have to grapple with the much more complicated reality of racial violence. In our time, racialized terror no longer announces itself in white hoods and robes. You can be a 21-year-old who has many black Facebook friends and tells harmless racist jokes and still commit an act of horrifying racial violence. We cannot separate ourselves from the monsters because the monsters don’t exist. The monsters have been human all along..."
THE NEW YORK TIMES: White Terrorism Is as Old as America
SEE ALSO:
SLATE: Brow Beat Slate's Culture Blog June 19 2015 3:07 PM Larry Wilmore’s Takedown of Fox News’ Charleston Coverage Was Exactly What We Needed
ROLLING STONE: The Charleston Shooter: Racist, Violent, and Yes Political
THE NEW YORKER: Charleston and the Age of Obama
Friday, June 19, 2015
them changes.
starring thundercat & kamasai washington.
PITCHFORK: Thundercat Announces Flying Lotus Co-Produced Mini-Album, Shares "Them Changes"
PITCHFORK: Thundercat Announces Flying Lotus Co-Produced Mini-Album, Shares "Them Changes"
Thursday, June 18, 2015
a moment of clarity.
words.
"Call it what it is. Terrorism. Racism. Hatred. It is all of those things.
But there are things we should not call it: Random. Unpredictable. Isolated.
...People will tell me not to jump to conclusions, to wait until all the facts are in. Just like they told me about Ferguson, about Baltimore, about every other time a black person got killed by a white person. I will tell them that I think we have enough evidence to safely make that jump. I think we can hear words like “I have to do it. You rape our women and you’re taking over our country. And you have to go” and make some pretty safe goddamn assumptions about a pretty unsafe goddamn world.
People sometimes say that we overstate the race problems in America. That we complain about inequality where there is none, that we see racism around every corner. You want to know why we see racism around every corner? Because racism is around every fucking corner. You may not see it, but it’s there. You may think this is isolated, but it’s not. So blacks and other minorities live in fear. They live in fear of the angry gunman, of the paranoid neighborhood watch volunteer, of the police that should be protecting them. And all of those people — the gunman, the neighborhood watch, the cop — all of them became that way because of fear. The fear that society — that America has created..."
PAJIBA: I Don't Know How Much More Heartbreak I Can Take
"Call it what it is. Terrorism. Racism. Hatred. It is all of those things.
But there are things we should not call it: Random. Unpredictable. Isolated.
...People will tell me not to jump to conclusions, to wait until all the facts are in. Just like they told me about Ferguson, about Baltimore, about every other time a black person got killed by a white person. I will tell them that I think we have enough evidence to safely make that jump. I think we can hear words like “I have to do it. You rape our women and you’re taking over our country. And you have to go” and make some pretty safe goddamn assumptions about a pretty unsafe goddamn world.
People sometimes say that we overstate the race problems in America. That we complain about inequality where there is none, that we see racism around every corner. You want to know why we see racism around every corner? Because racism is around every fucking corner. You may not see it, but it’s there. You may think this is isolated, but it’s not. So blacks and other minorities live in fear. They live in fear of the angry gunman, of the paranoid neighborhood watch volunteer, of the police that should be protecting them. And all of those people — the gunman, the neighborhood watch, the cop — all of them became that way because of fear. The fear that society — that America has created..."
PAJIBA: I Don't Know How Much More Heartbreak I Can Take
Wednesday, June 17, 2015
conversations in a cafe.
FILE UNDER: COMING ATTRACTIONS.
RAP-UP: Janet Jackson Shows ‘Love’ to Fans on New Snippet
I wanna tell you how important you are to me! Love J. #ConversationsInACafe
https://t.co/hL2qtzC8If
— Janet Jackson (@JanetJackson) June 17, 2015
RAP-UP: Janet Jackson Shows ‘Love’ to Fans on New Snippet
Tuesday, June 16, 2015
Monday, June 15, 2015
Friday, June 12, 2015
Thursday, June 11, 2015
words.
a moment of clarity.
for your consideration.
VICE: My Life Driving Uber as an Iraq War Veteran with PTSD
Wednesday, June 10, 2015
Tuesday, June 09, 2015
usha.
New Daphni - Usha: https://t.co/q3gqaLysrt
It's free. Click the download button.
— Caribou (@caribouband) June 9, 2015
It's just two great tracks cut together - Usha Uthup 'Main Gul Badan' + Alex Israel 'Colugo'. I'm not claiming authorial input.
— Caribou (@caribouband) June 9, 2015
Please support the original tracks / artists.
— Caribou (@caribouband) June 9, 2015
Monday, June 08, 2015
Sunday, June 07, 2015
Friday, June 05, 2015
Thursday, June 04, 2015
devendra.
a short film.
with devendra banhart.
PITCHFORK: Devendra Banhart Is Putting Out a Book Titled I Left My Noodle on Ramen Street
with devendra banhart.
PITCHFORK: Devendra Banhart Is Putting Out a Book Titled I Left My Noodle on Ramen Street
Wednesday, June 03, 2015
Tuesday, June 02, 2015
Monday, June 01, 2015
orca.
a video.
from nicolas godin.
PITCHFORK: Air's Nicolas Godin Preps Debut Solo Album Contrepoint, Shares "Orca"
from nicolas godin.
PITCHFORK: Air's Nicolas Godin Preps Debut Solo Album Contrepoint, Shares "Orca"
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