…An Album By Its Cover

This is another segment on my blog covering album artwork and their allusions and meanings. Today’s post is about the controversial rapper Lil B‘s latest album cover for “I’m Gay (I’m Happy).” The artist, Uncle Grumpy, based his artwork for the album off of Marvin Gaye’s 1970 album, “I Want You.” Called the “Sugar Shack” […]

Congo Square

Amel Larrieux– Congo (this song is inspired by the New Orleans’ Congo Square) I started reading Leroi Jones’ (aka Amiri Baraka) “Blues People” a few days ago for my honors thesis and he mentioned the Congo Square in one of the first chapters. His reference reminded me of this post I read on Tumblr from […]

Otis

Otis Redding’s birthday was on September 9th and he would have been 70 years old this year if he had lived. I bet he would have been a greater legend than he is now. Here is my small tribute to him. First, Kanye West and Jay-z’s song “Otis.” I like the Otis Redding “Try A […]

Black Power Mixtape

Starting tomorrow, Lincoln Plaza Cinema and IFC Center in New York City will be premiering “The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975.” The film combines footage from a Swedish journalist (it was lying undiscovered in a basement of Swedish Television for 30 years) of activists, like Angela Davis and Stokely Carmichael, with contemporary interviews from African-American artists, […]

Kanye West and Jay-Z Turn the Tables…

Kanye West and Jay-z are stirring controversy in their new video for “No Church in the Wild.” Although I have my issues with the two rappers, every now and then they do something that is thought-provoking and I think this is one of them. Both the song and the video (which was created by High […]

Black Gold

“Not One Drop” Written by A. Sayeeda Clarke, this episode, called “White,” on the online show, Futurestates, is an appropriate and frightening story for our times with discussions on climate change, global warming and our dependency on oil and coal. Will melanin become the new “black gold” in the future? Will brown people be exploited […]

Robots of Brixton

In wake of the recent London riots, just 30 years after the 1981 Brixton riots, Kibwe Tavares released his animated afrofuturistic, sci-fi short film about the future of Brixton in which robots are disenfranchised and tensions between robots and police escalate into violence. The end quotation from Karl Marx reads: “History repeats itself, first as tragedy, […]

I’m An Alien Living In the Ghetto…

This song is called “I’m Excited” and it is by DJ Shadow and Afrikan Boy. The American DJ, Hip-Hop producer and songwriter is known as a prominent figure in the development of instrumental Hip-Hop. Olushola Ajose (aka Afrikan Boy) is a London grime/Afrobeat rapper originally from Nigeria and has worked with M.I.A. in addition to […]

Modern Griots: Ernesto Yerena Montejano

Born in the small border town of El Centro, California,the activist and artist, Ernesto Yerena Montejano, grew up regularly visiting his family in Mexicali, which is near the border, and crossing the border, which gave him a unique cultural outlook. Receiving a BA in Graphic Design, Montejano uses stencils, collages and rubyliths to highlight cultural subjects and […]

CARTOONS!!!!

Here are some satirical, political cartoons because one way to get history through people’s heads, or at least make them think, is through art and a little bit of dark humor: