'Left of Black': Episode #26 featuring Professor Ebony Utley and Jasiri X

Left of Black #26
w/ Ebony Utley and Jasiri X
March 21, 2011

Left of Black host Mark Anthony Neal is joined via Skype by Professor Ebony Utley, who examines the proliferation of religious conspiracy theories about prominent hip-hop artists. Later Neal is joined by activist and hip-hop artist Jasiri X, in wide ranging conversation about socially conscious hip-hop in the age of Social Media.

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→Ebony Utley, an assistant professor of Communication Studies at California State University, Long Beach author of the forthcoming book Rap and Religion: Understanding The Gangsta’s God (Praeger 2012) as well as the co-editor of Hip Hop’s Languages of Love (2009). She has published in several journals including Black Women Gender & Families, Critical Studies in Media Communication, Rhetoric and Public Affairs, The Western Journal of Black Studies, and Women and Language. Follow her on Twitter @U_Experience.

→ Jasiri X is a Pittsburgh based hip-hop artist, activist and entrepreneur, who burst on the national and international Hip-Hop scene with the controversial “Free the Jena 6″ which was named “Hip-hop Political Song of the Year,” and won “Single of the Year” at the Pittsburgh Hip-Hop Awards. His recent videos include “What if the Tea Party was Black?,” “American Workers Vs Multi-Billionaires,” and “Wandering Strangers.” Follow him on Twitter @Jasiri_X

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Left of Black is a weekly Webcast hosted by Mark Anthony Neal and produced in collaboration with the John Hope Franklin Center at Duke University.

Why All the Silly Devil Talk Should be Taken Seriously

The selective nature of these vitriolic assertions reflects social anxieties. The perceived precarious position of Christian nationalism, white supremacy, and patriarchy requires its adherents to protect their identity by being intolerant of others.

Why All the Silly Devil Talk Should be Taken Seriously
by Ebony Utley

MC Hammer recently released a video “Better Run Run” [see below] where he insinuates that Jay-Z worships the devil.

But this is more than just regular rap beef, one artist’s put-down of another. If you know where to look, the internet is awash in conspiracy theories about pop culture icons (Jay-Z, Beyoncé, Kanye West, Lady Gaga, Rihanna, Britney Spears, etc.) and their affiliations with evil. The usual suspects, a crowd of virtual vigilantes, include The Vigilant Citizen, Marco Ponce, G. Craig Lewis, and Professor Griff.

If we look at this through the lenses of race, gender, and class identity in the U.S., we begin to see that it is no accident that talented, powerful, popular, and rich African American male rappers, along with female artists, are being targeted by these claims. There is no better way to temper black men’s influence on tween and teen audiences, for example, than by claiming they are evil. (MC Hammer is himself black, but he seems happy to undermine a fellow artist by perpetuating the stereotype that successful black men are associated with the devil.)

Claims about female popular culture superstars and the occult are equally disturbing. Historically, autonomous women who threatened patriarchal power were labeled witches—women who had sex with the devil in exchange for power and therefore had to be executed. Today’s claims about female popular culture icons eerily resurrect similar arguments.

Read the Full Essay @ Religion Dispatches

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Ebony A. Utley, Ph.D. is an assistant professor of communication studies at California State University Long Beach and the author of the forthcoming book The Gangsta’s God (Praeger). She resides on the web at theutleyexperience.com

'Left of Black': Episode #4 featuring Shayne Lee and Treva Lindsey

Host and Duke University Professor Mark Anthony Neal Discusses Sex-Positive Black Sexuality, Black Women and Popular Culture, Black Respectability and Bishop Eddie Long with Tulane University Sociologist Shayne Lee and University of Missouri Women's Studies Professor Treva Lindsey.

Professor Lee is the author of three books including Erotic Revolutionaries: Black Women, Sexuality and Popular Culture.

Professor Lindsey's research and teaching interests include U.S. women's history, black popular culture, black feminism, critical race and gender theory, and African diaspora studies. She blogs at The Diva Feminist.

Beyonce Matters

from The New Yorker

Pop Music
The Queen: Beyoncé, at last.
by Sasha Frere-Jones

Bruce Springsteen is the de-facto governor of New Jersey, and if America were Europe Aretha Franklin would have a duchy, so both obviously belonged at the joyous Obamathon. But what about Beyoncé Knowles, the twenty-seven-year-old who was chosen to sing for Obama at two inaugural events?

The world met Beyoncé in 1998 as the leader of Destiny’s Child, a girl group conceived in part and managed by Matthew Knowles, her father. Destiny’s Child was high-tech declarations of autonomy and flair: “No, No, No,” “Bills, Bills, Bills,” “Independent Women, Pt. 1,” and “Survivor.” To underestimate Knowles and her rotating cast of backup singers is to find yourself on the business end of a No. 1 song. (Destiny’s Child is the most successful female R. & B. group in history.) Yet none of this involved Beyoncé cursing, committing infidelity, or breaking any laws, even in character. The Knowles empire is delicately balanced on one of the thinnest-known edges in pop feminism: as unbiddable as Beyoncé gets, she never risks arrant aggression; and as much of hip-hop’s confidence and sound as she borrows, she never drifts to the back of the classroom. She is pop’s A student, and it has done her a world of commercial good.

She is also a strange and brilliant musician. Young black female singers rarely get past the red rope and into the Genius Lounge—the moody, the male, and the dead crowd that room. But with or without co-writers, Knowles does remarkable things with tone and harmony. The one time I met her, backstage at a Destiny’s Child concert in Peoria in 2000, she talked about listening to Miles Davis and Fela Kuti—affinities I didn’t know how to process until I heard “Apple Pie à la Mode,” from the following year’s Destiny’s Child album, “Survivor.” It’s a slinky song, something of a throwaway, except that Prince or D’Angelo could easily have done the throwing away. Who else in the stratosphere of R. & B. pop plays around with the conversational voice like Beyoncé? Who feels comfortable with adding so much unexpected, generous harmony to a trifle about a delicious crush? Anyone else with “Apple Pie à la Mode” in the bag would flip over backward, buy a retro-glam outfit, and construct an entire side project around it. Knowles simply kept moving.

Read the Full Essay Here

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from Vibe.com

The Big Idea: J-Setting Beyond Beyoncé
by Terrance Dean

From Doin’ Da Butt to the Bankhead Bounce, everyone loves to be up on the latest dance style. And usually, once the mainstream catches on, the true originators of the style are on to the next thing. But some dances are more than just slick moves, they’re the expression of a culture.

In 1990, Madonna introduced vogueing to the masses, bringing a phenomenon that had been popular in gay clubs since the 1970s to national attention. Now, nearly 20 years later, J-Setting, a popular dance in Southern black gay clubs, has made its way into the mainstream—largely, thanks to superstar Beyoncé Knowles, who’s been a gay icon pretty much since she sang “snap for the kids” in 2006’s “Get Me Bodied.”

Read the Full Essay Here

John Jackson, Jr. Weighs in on Celebrity, Beyonce Style

from The Chronicle Review

Knowles Knows
by John L. Jackson, Jr.

I had a long conversation with Essence magazine's Jeannine Amber last month. She was working on a cover story about Beyonce Knowles, and she wanted to chat a bit about how celebrities negotiate fandom, its commonsensical expectations and its worst excesses.

Part of the point of that Essence article, which has just hit newsstands, was to discuss Beyonce's attempt to maintain a modicum of privacy in an age of Reality TV'd hyper-access. She is known for being pretty cagey about the most basic facts of her personal life, including her marriage to hip-hop mega-star Jay-Z.

Read More @