Motown's Forgotten Revolution/Blaze's 25 Years Later

from Vibe.com

CRITICAL NOIR
Motown's Forgotten Revolution
by Mark Anthony Neal

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The 12-inch recording of Public Enemy's "Fight the Power," from the soundtrack of Spike Lee's film Do the Right Thing was released on the Motown label in the summer of 1989. Arguably the track was the most incendiary political recording in the Motown catalogue at the time of its release. Motown's release of "Fight the Power" occurred a year after Gordy has sold the label and Motown was very much in the business of establishing its legacy as a quintessential American brand. Nevertheless the label was still committed to releasing music that was relevant to young Black Americans. It was in this context that the label signed a then little known production collective from New Jersey known as Blaze. In the fall of 1990, Blaze released their only Motown recording, 25 Years Later.

In a period that was marked by renewed expressions of black pride and Afrocentric thought, 25 Years Later essentially recalibrated Motown's relationship to the legacy of black struggle, by wedding the classic Motown sound with post-Civil Rights era black nationalism. 25 Years Later was released at a time when mainstream black popular culture was dominated by so-called conscious rap acts like the aforementioned Public Enemy, KRS-One (whose brilliant Edutainment was released the same year as 25 Years Later), the Five-Percent nations musings of Rakim (with Eric B), Brand Nubian, and Poor Righteous Teachers and the decidedly Womanist politics of Queen Latifah as well as the DIY cultural nationalism of black filmmakers like Spike Lee, Matty Rich, Julie Dash, Robert Townsend and Haile Gerima. As such 25 Years Later was an earnest attempt to capture the full complexities of the moment by mixing snippets of melodramatic exchanges with inspirational music that covered the full gamut of black popular music. In many ways 25 Years Later was a precursor to a Web 2.0 phenomenon like R. Kelly's Trapped in the Closet. Particularly remarkable about 25 Years Later, as political scientist Richard Iton notes in his recent book In Search of The Black Fantastic: Politics and Popular Culture in the Post-Civil Rights Era , is that it recorded at time when R&B as genre had retreated from political themes, allowing hip-hop to carry the water for a popular black political perspective.

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John Murph on PPP (Platinum Pied Pipers)

from The Root

Motown 2.0
by John Murph

Detroit supergroup PPP’s new album, ‘Abundance,’ celebrates the Motown sound with a snazzy hipster edge.

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R&B albums rarely combine the multiple musical legacies of one given city and catch the zeitgeist of its time as masterfully as PPP’s sophomore disc, Abundance (Ubiquity). As the title suggests, producer Waajeed and multi-instrumentalist Saadiq—the group’s two brainiacs—pack so much historical reference, so much modern perspective, so much deft musicality, so much lyrical ingenuity, and so much vivacity that Abundance is full of artistic riches.

Hailing from Detroit, it comes as no surprise that PPP (formerly Platinum Pied Pipers) bolsters much of Abundance with the epochal sounds of Motown, which celebrates its golden anniversary this year. But Motown, particularly its ’60s halcyon years, has informed a motherlode of recent albums, notably Amy Winehouse’s 2006’s breakout disc, Back to Black (Island), Solange Knowles’ nifty Sol-Angel and the Hadley Street Dreams (Music World/Geffen, 2008) and Raphael Saadiq’s fawning The Way I See It. Referencing Motown now seems purely trendy if not passé.

Although syncopated handclaps, snazzy snare-drum intros and soulful doo-wop harmonies rouse songs like “Go Go Go,” “Countless Excuses” and “Rocket Science,” Abundance channels more of Norman Whitfield’s urgent soul psychadelica that he wrote for the Undisputed Truth and Edwin Starr rather than Holland-Dozier-Holland’s sweet innocence that other current Motown-inspired discs bite.

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ALSO

from NPR

Platinum Pied Pipers: In Pursuit Of 'Abundance'
by John Murph

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

&

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.”

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Hilary Duff - Black & White Photo Shoot

Hilary Duff Profile

Name: Hilary Duff

Birth Name: Hilary Ann Duff

Height: 5' 4"

Sex: F

Nationality: American

Birth Date: September 28, 1987

Birth Place: Houston, Texas, USA

Profession: actress, musician

Education: home-schooled since the age of 10

Relationship: Joel Madden (member of Good Charlotte; born March 11, 1979; announced
their relationship in June 2005; split November 27, 2006), Aaron Carter (actor, musician; born December 7, 1987; dated in 2003)

Father: Bob Duff (a convenience store owner)

Mother: Susan Duff (producer; born May 12, 1953)

Sister: Haylie Duff (actress, musician; born on February 19, 1985)

Claim to fame: Titular character on The Disney Channel's Lizzie McGuire

Hilary Duff Biography

Hilary Erhard Duff (born September 28, 1987) is an American actress, and singer-songwriter. After working in local theater plays and television commercials in her childhood, Duff gained fame for playing the title role in the television series Lizzie McGuire. Duff went on to have a film career; her most commercially successful movies include Cheaper by the Dozen (2003), The Lizzie McGuire Movie (2003), and A Cinderella Story (2004).

Duff has expanded her repertoire into pop music, with three RIAA certified Platinum albums and over thirteen million albums sold worldwide as on February 2007. Her first studio album, Metamorphosis (2003), was certified triple platinum and she followed it up with two more platinum albums, Hilary Duff (2004) and Most Wanted (2005). Duff's last studio album, Dignity, was released in April 2007 and was certified Gold in August 2007.

She has also launched a clothing line, "Stuff by Hilary Duff", and two exclusive perfume collections with Elizabeth Arden. Duff and her mother were listed as producers for the movie Material Girls, As of September 2008[update], her upcoming films include animated comedy Foodfight!, and independent films Greta, Safety Glass and Stay Cool.

Duff was born in Houston, Texas on September 28, 1987. She is the second child of Susan Colleen, a homemaker and a film producer and husband Robert Erhard Duff, a partner in a chain of convenience stores, who resides at the family home in Houston to maintain the family's convenience store business. She has an elder sister, Haylie Duff, who is also an actress/singer. Duff's mother encouraged Hilary to take up acting classes alongside her elder sister, Haylie, which resulted in both girls winning roles in various local theater productions. At the ages of eight and six, respectively, the Duff sisters participated in the ballet, The Nutcracker Suite with Columbus BalletMet in San Antonio. The siblings became more enthusiastic about the idea of choosing acting as a profession, and eventually relocated to California with their mother. Duff's father stayed at the family home in Houston to take care of their business. After several years of auditions and meetings, the Duff sisters were cast in various television commercials.

Saadiq Cool

For all the talk about "Obama Cool," Saadiq's video for "100 Yard Dash" is a reminder of the ways black masculinity has historically been in conversation with the element of "Cool."

Jennifer Vs. Whitney?

from Vibe.com

CRITICAL NOIR
A Star-Spangled Debate?
by Mark Anthony Neal

Jennifer Hudson's rather spectacular performance of the "Star Spangled Banner" at the 2009 Super Bowl, immediately drew comparisons of Whitney's Houston's performance in 1991. Indeed Houston's performance is etched as a quintessential cultural moment in recent American history and a highlight of Houston's once charmed career. But few seem to remember that Houston's version occurred only a short time after the beginning of Operation Desert Storm (The Persian Gulf War), and was rolled out as little more than a commercial and music video for the patriotic fervor associated with the war. I suspect that without that context, few, except die-hard Houston fans, would remember the performance.

Read the Full Post Here

Solange, Smokey & Obama

from Piecing It Together

Solange, Smokey and Obama
by Tokumbo Bodunde

One of my favorite songs of 2008 was "I've Decided" by Solange (the much underappreciated younger sister of Beyonce) Knowles.

Weeks ago, while driving around in freezing Chicago, my sisters and I had the song on repeat, LOUD. It took me a minute to figure out why I liked the song so much. The Neptunes-produced single takes the most delicious, feet stomping part of The Supremes' "Baby Love" and loops it throughout.

Solange's song--as is evidenced by the video-- is very much of this moment, my generation (not sure what we're being called these days), searching for some kind of identity. Colorful and pastichey, the piece pays homage to all that is in this generation's cultural image-ination about the political culture of the Motown & beyond era. Quick flashes of raised-fisted Olympians from '68, Malcolm X, people being water-hosed, Rubik's cubes spinning, and the Berlin Wall falling appear amid Solange crooning and the stomping beat. To make meaning of the video is work, a student of mine complained.

There's a clear difference between the display of events being shown in the video for the Smokey Robinson & The Miracles' "Tears from a Clown."

Its three sequences reveal a clear narrative of the cultural turmoil and grief experienced by the moments/movements surrounding the JFK and MLK assasinations and the Vietnam War. "Smiling for the public eye," sings Smokey. "Don't let my glad expression give you the wrong impression." Very much a statement of the times--smiling outside but dying inside.

I was born in 1979, a decade plus after those assassinations and a few years post-Vietnam. Smack dab in the birth of hip-hop and advent of an extreme right-wing, fiercely developing global capitalist world (not unrelated phenomena in the least). The stylistic elements of Solange's song and video are telling, in that they represent how I and most of us under 30 understand the events of Smokey's song. The song's pulsating claps and the video's refusal to distinguish between cultural-poltical turmoil and social fads mute any sadness we might have even had.

It's all about that beat. Or not. At least, it shouldn't be. Not in this moment, the simultaneous 50th anniversary of Motown Records and the election of America's first black president. The final minute of Solange's video stands in abrupt contrast to the frenetic collage of iconic images of the past 40 years. Slower, more comtemplative and futuristic, its shades of blue-grays lets her imagine (at least in her love life), some other-world type sh*t. What will we do with the equally compelling and troubling elements of the world that we (and Obama) are inheriting?

Read the Full Essay Here

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Tokumbo Bodunde is a Professor of Communication and Women's Studies at Manhattan College and William Paterson University. She also works for the non-profit filmmaking organization, Chica Luna Productions. Her documentary, "Black Girls Face: R. Kelly" was featured in the Reel Sisters of the Diaspora Film Festival.She will be presenting at the Women, Action & Media Conference near Boston next month.