Tara Reid Photoshoot In Black Dress

Donnie Unplugged

"I am in a tradition of making message music, which is Soul music, which is basically the bridge between the secular and sacred world"--Donnie

Listen to his interview with NPR's Farai Chideya

Soul & Prose: Chrisette Michele & Michael Eric Dyson in NYC

Soul & Prose
by Mark Anthony Neal

...The event promised to bring together a unique cadre of folk—teen shorties looking to get a glimpse of Chrisette, hip-hop heads, knowledge hungry grad students, members of the socialist workers party (lol), folk who just love some good music and some good talk and a bunch of other folk, who just happened to be passing through. But the already hyped energy went to another level when five minutes before Chrisette Michele began her four-song set, in walked Cornel West, Tavis Smiley, CNN’s Roland S. Martin—and a few minutes later, Essence Magazine’s Susan L. Taylor and her husband Khephra Burns.

Read and See more at CRITICAL NOIR @ Vibe.com

Nice Pics Of Elisha Cuthbert

Britney Spears - Armando Gallo Portraits

Lindsay Lohan

1967: The Summer of Soul

from NPR's Tell Me More w/Michel Martin

'Summer of Soul' Melded Music, Cultural Change

Tell Me More, July 20, 2007 · They called it the Summer of Love. Nostalgia for the summer of 1967 and its impact on American pop culture is spawning a string of ceremonial retrospectives, from New York's Whitney Museum of Art to an entire issue of Rolling Stone magazine. The season of "free love" rocked traditional norms of morality, strengthened the mainstream women's movement and fueled a newfound sense of independence among youngsters.

But many of the 40-year retrospectives have taken only a quick glance at one element of pop culture that forever changed communities of color: soul and R&B music.

The Summer of Soul was about music that was more hot-buttered than groovy. The songs were a soundtrack for a period of racial tension and political change that still resonates in many black communities.

In 1967, while her own community was going up in flames during the Detroit riots, a woman who wanted only one thing — respect — was introduced to the world.

"Literally, she just explodes. It's difficult to think of 1967 as not just simply the year of Aretha," says Duke University professor Mark Anthony Neal, author of Songs In the Key of Black Life: A Rhythm and Blues Nation.

Later dubbed the Queen of Soul, Aretha Franklin, a preacher's daughter, made an impressive mark on both music and the civil rights movement as she fused her gospel roots with the sounds of rhythm and blues.

Listen to the Full Segment...