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Carrie Underwood Profile

Name: Carrie Underwood

Birth Name: Carrie Marie Underwood

Height: 5' 4"

Sex: F

Nationality: American

Birth Date: March 10, 1983

Birth Place: Checotah, Oklahoma, USA

Profession: musician

Education: Checotah High School (graduated in 2001)
Northeastern State University (majored in Mass Communications with an emphasis in Journalism; graduated on May 6, 2006; magna cum laude; BA)

Relationship: Chace Crawford (Gossip Girl cast member; born on July 18, 1985), Tony Romo (Dallas Cowboys' quarterback; born on April 21, 1980; broke up)

Claim to fame: American Idol 2005

Carrie Underwood Biography

Carrie Marie Underwood (born March 10, 1983) is an American pop country music singer-songwriter who won the fourth season of American Idol. Since then, she has become a multi-platinum selling recording artist. Her debut album, Some Hearts, was certified 7x platinum and is the fastest selling debut country album in Nielsen SoundScan history. Her debut album, Some Hearts, has yielded five #1 hits on the country charts in the United States and Canada: "Inside Your Heaven," "Jesus, Take the Wheel", "Don't Forget to Remember Me", "Wasted," and her biggest hit to date, "Before He Cheats." In addition, Underwood scored another Top 10 Billboard hit with her charity single, "I'll Stand by You." Some Hearts sold a total of 7 million Recording Industry Association of America-certified copies as of February 2008, in addition to being the best selling album by an American Idol contestant, in the United States, to date, it is also the best-selling solo female debut album in country music history.

Her second album, Carnival Ride (which is certified 2x Platinum by the RIAA) was released on October 23, 2007. It has so far sold over 2 million copies and has produced two #1 country hits, "So Small." and "All-American Girl", "All-American Girl" currently sitting at #1 on the Billboard Country chart. Underwood's Christmas single, "Do You Hear What I Hear?" peaked at #2 on the Billboard Adult Contemporary charts.

Aside from her vocals, Underwood's success is attributed to what many fans recognize as her wholesome image. In general, many of her songs also present inspirational and uplifting themes and messages. To date, Underwood has sold over 11 million copies worldwide in the last two years.

Carrie Marie Underwood was born to Stephen and Carole Underwood in Muskogee, Oklahoma, and was raised on her parents' farm in rural Checotah, Oklahoma. She has two older sisters, Shanna (born 1970) and Stephanie Underwood Shelton (born 1973). Underwood had performed at Robbins Memorial Talent Show in her childhood. As a young child, she sang in church, and for Old Settler's Day and Lion's Club, local events in Checotah. In 1996, when Underwood was 13, her manager at the time tried to get her a recording contract at Capitol Records. However, due to management changes at Capitol, it never materialized.

Underwood graduated from Checotah High School in 2001 as salutatorian. After high school, she attended Northeastern State University in Tahlequah. She graduated magna cum laude in 2006 with a bachelor's degree in mass communication and an emphasis in journalism Underwood is a member of the Alpha Iota chapter of Sigma Sigma Sigma sorority, For two years during the summer, she performed in Northeastern's Downtown Country show in Tahlequah. She also competed in numerous beauty pageants at the university and was selected as Miss NSU runner-up in 2004.

Franklin Raines Meet Willie Horton

from NewsOne.com

LEFT OF BLACK:
The Financial Meltdown and John McCain’s Willie Horton
by Mark Anthony Neal

As his poll numbers have declined and the strengths he possesses on the issues of foreign policy take a back seat to the economic crisis, it’s no surprise that Senator John McCain has resorted to the time-tested strategy of fear-mongering. When not referring to Democratic opponent as “that one” and depicting him as the boogey-man who will come into your house late at night and steal the very air you breathe hasn’t been enough, the McCain campaign has created surrogates to make Barack Obama guilty by association.

The newest boogey-man on the block is Franklin Raines. And Senator Obama’s purported relationship with the former chairperson and Chief Executive Officer of Fannie Mae (the Federal National Mortgage Association), has been at the cornerstone of attempts by the McCain campaign to depict Obama as dangerous for the American economy.

Raines elevation to “boogey-man” follows a pattern we’ve witnessed where Senator Obama’s opponents use figures like Reverend Jeremiah Wright and former Weather Underground radical William Ayers to question his preparedness, his judgment and his integrity.

Why not? It worked for Republican nominee George Bush’s anti-crime presidential campaign against Democrat Michael Dukakis in 1988, when a now-infamous television ad about a black felon named Willie Horton scared the living daylights out of white America.

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Classic "New Jack" Analysis from Barry Michael Cooper

from The Huffington Post

When Politics Became The New Hip Hop
By Barry Michael Cooper

The Gen-Y'ers have truly made the connection between Barack Obama and Hip Hop. They are his advance team on Facebook, My Space, and Friendster, an army of Millennials that has assisted the Obama campaign in raising hundreds of millions of dollars online. For this new paradigm--young white kids (and Asian, Latino, African-American, and multi-racial kids, too)--the culture of Hip Hop allowed them to embrace a black man without fear, suspicion, or loathing. These same Gen-Y'ers will go to a Jay-Z concert and know all the words to "Regrets" or "Lost Ones." Michael Phelps motored Beijing's Olympic blue cube -- stoked by the fires of Lil' Wayne lyrics playing in his head -- en route to a record eight gold medals. These same Millennials are also educating their parents around the breakfast and dinner table, letting them know that the Baby Boomer version of the American Dream, the Woodstock, flower power, peace, love, and Haight-Ashbury, has grown up in Eminem's 8 Mile of Detroit, Snoop Dogg's Long Beach, and Common's South Side of Chicago. Their world may not be a ghetto, but the Millennials have broadbanded it into their very own 3-G global 'hood. Which, incidentally, is Obama's hood, too.

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Broken Social Contracts--A Film Short by Laura L. Rahman

The Film discusses how two historically black colleges confront accusations of sexual assault on their campus. Broken Social Contracts depicts the necessity for conversations in the black community on our relationships. Can dialogue go beyond music videos and lyrics? Activists, students, and scholars weigh in our communities gender roles...trailer includes Mark Anthony Neal, Duke Univ. Prof.--Beverly Guy-Sheftall, Spelman Prof.,--Cynthia Neal Spence, Spelman Prof.--(Bilal) Mark King, Morehouse Prof.--Johnnetta B. Cole, President Emeritus (Spelman & Bennett),-- Pearl Cleage, Writer/Activist--M.Bahti Kuumba, Spelman Prof.--Patrica McFadden, Activist,---Andy Lowry, Spelman Prof.--Adia Harvey, Georgia State Univ. Prof--Mychael Bond, Britny Ray, Star Tolerson, Marcus Edwards, Tony Anderson, Tiara Dungy & Spelmans Violence Against Womens Class.

The Thug & The Candidate

from Vibe.com

***

CRITICAL NOIR:
The Thug(s) and the Candidate: Musings on Black Masculinity
by Mark Anthony Neal

"That black men who display hypermasculine characteristics fetishize--that is, simultaneously love and loathe--those considered less masculine or, to be explicit, that niggas covet faggots has been unmasked in insightful criticism. That faggots desire to be niggas has occasioned less critique..."

--Vershawn Ashanti Young, Your Average Nigga: Performing Race, Literacy, and Masculinity

***

One of the prevailing theses of the current election season is that Senator Barack Hussein Obama is not the round-way-brand of black man. Such a premise is palpable only to the extent that one chooses to read Obama against the image of marketplace confections of black masculinity, particularly those that legibly erect centuries' old tropes of danger, bestial behavior, and sinister eroticism. The idea that we should distinguish between the candidate and the thug(s) is one of the defining truisms of polite society--less a measure of the candidate's humanity and more so an index of the tolerance within said polite society.

But black men do not live in polite society--however effectively they earn their keep within those spaces--and even the candidate's wife understands this, telling CBS news months ago about her fears that her husband might get shot at a gas station in Chicago as opposed to being assassinated on the campaign trial by some desperate political actor yelling "traitor." As Chris Rock surmised some time ago, niggas don't get assassinated, they get shot--and there always been more of a chance that the Senator from Illinois's fate would be decided by a bullet intended for a nigga, as opposed to that intended for the candidate, because quiet as it's kept--Harvard pedigree notwithstanding--Obama never stops being a black man. And this is perhaps the implicit message of Byron Hurt's recent film short Barack & Curtis: Manhood, Power and Respect. The film is a brilliant and thoughtful intervention on the subject of black masculinity at a moment when Senator Barack Obama is poised to redefine black manhood for much of the world.

There is a telling sequence early in Hurt's Barack & Curtis, where radio journalist Esther Armah, states that "Barack equaled Harvard, someone like 50 Cent equaled hood; hood equaled virility, Harvard equaled impotence." That Armah's compelling observation is rarely disturbed speaks to the extent that many of our perceptions about black masculinity have been finely shaped by a market culture that makes it easier for us to go to sleep at night, because we can so effectively distinguish the niggas from the black men. As such Barack Obama and Curtis Jackson are little more than brands, in a highly volatile and fabulously lucrative, politicized marketplace.

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R. Kelly’s Closet: Shame, Desire and the Confessions of a (Post-Modern) Soul Man

R. Kelly’s Closet:
Shame, Desire and the Confessions of a (Post-Modern) Soul Man

A Public Lecture by Mark Anthony Neal

Professor of Black Popular CultureDepartment of African and African-American Studies
Duke University

Tuesday, October 7^th, 2008
The Annenberg School for Communication
University of Pennsylvania
3620 Walnut Street
Philadelphia, PA 19104
Room 109

Reception: 5:15 – 6:15pm

Lecture: 6:15 – 7:30pm

The Return of Eric Benet & Kenny Lattimore

from the Root.com


Eric Benet and Kenny Lattimore have returned just in time to save R&B from the children.

Music for Grown Folk
by Mark Anthony Neal | TheRoot.com

Sept. 30, 2008--More than a decade after their solo debuts, Eric Benet and Kenny Lattimore have managed to survive a recording industry hopelessly invested in the whims of young listeners and the apparent pursuit of ringtone sales. Years before "grown and sexy" became a marketing scheme to sell music to 30-somethings, Benet and Lattimore both made music for grown folk. Though neither became a recognizable star on the level of some of their peers such as R. Kelly and Maxwell, each has nevertheless had a solid, if not stellar, career. As much of contemporary R&B harks back to a distant past—if we are to listen to the likes of Solange and Raphael Saadiq—it is fitting that Benet and Lattimore are also looking back on their new recordings, Benet's Love & Life and Lattimore's Timeless.

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