This Week in Indie Bookstores
Indie bookstore news from across the country and around the world!
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Posts Tagged: Jay-Z
This Week in Indie Bookstores
Indie bookstore news from across the country and around the world!
...more
If You Let Me Tell You a Story
Stories need concrete details to help you understand, don’t they?
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Reinventing the World: José Olivarez’s Citizen Illegal
If they come for one of us, they will come for us all.
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How to Steal a Frozen Burrito
If you ask me why I did it, I can’t give you a proper answer. I was hungry and didn’t have much money, but it wasn’t like I was homeless or went to sleep starving.
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Empathy Is Cheap: A Conversation with Brandon Harris
Brandon Harris discusses his memoir Making Rent in Bed-Stuy, gentrification in New York City and Brooklyn, the homogenization of American cities by corporate America, and whiteness of film culture.
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Where You Put It on the Line: A Conversation with Mychal Denzel Smith
Mychal Denzel Smith discusses his debut nonfiction book Invisible Man, Got the Whole World Watching, how the activist space has changed in recent years, and who he is writing for.
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On Self-Reliance: Frank Ocean as Emersonian Hero
As Emerson recognizes, someone who couldn’t care less about how they come across is all the more charismatic and convincing.
...moreHip-Hop for Clinton
Jay Z, Beyoncé, Chance the Rapper, J. Cole, and Big Sean performed at a Get Out the Vote rally in support of Hillary Clinton this weekend. Trump’s response: a critique of Jay Z’s use of “bad language.” Because he’s the best person to demand all people follow the rules of “proper conduct.” Watch clips from the performance after the jump.
...moreJay Z Nominated for Hall of Fame
Jay Z became the first rapper to be nominated to the Songwriters Hall of Fame this weekend, when he was named as a potential 2017 candidate alongside Madonna, Bryan Adams, George Michael, Gloria Estefan, Cat Stevens, Sylvester “Sly Stone” Stewart, Kenneth “Babyface” Edmonds, and Max Martin, Nigel Smith reports for the Guardian. That’s some serious competition in the […]
...moreEmpire State of Memoir
For Lit Hub, Edward White writes about Jay Z and Morrissey’s experimental memoirs, investigating how both artists indulge and subvert what readers want from a musician’s autobiography: Where Morrissey gives us a conventional autobiography in an unconventional way—no chapters, paragraphs that run for half-a-dozen pages, and seemingly no contribution from an editor—Jay-Z is more formally experimental, […]
...moreThis Week in Posivibes: Songs for Survival
In addition to his song “Spiritual,” which deals with the issue of police brutality, Jay Z has released a playlist of songs to get us through the crushing violence lately exposed by social media. “Songs for Survival” includes music by Beyoncé, Curtis Mayfield, James Brown, Common, Outkast, Gil Scott-Heron, Fela Kuti, Kendrick Lamar, Nina Simone, Marvin Gaye, Kanye West, and others. You can listen to […]
...moreSong of the Day: “Harlem River”
Of the countless homages to New York City, a multitude of styles and approaches could be cited, from Billy Joel to Lou Reed to Jay-Z. A 2013 album by guitarist Kevin Morby, known for his work with Woods and The Babies, adds an important and unique chapter to the story of New York-inspired art. The hypnotic bass and […]
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The Recipe to Decolonized Love is in Beyoncé’s Lemonade
“There is a curse that will be broken,” she promises.
...moreSong of the Day: “Can’t Get Used to Losing You”
In the furor surrounding the unexpected release over the weekend of Beyonce’s “visual album” Lemonade, the general attitude toward Queen Bey’s newest creation is surprise, exuberance, and unadulterated glee. Much of the groundbreaking project, which the mega-artist somehow recorded and filmed in secret over the course of a year, breaks new musical ground, not only […]
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The Saturday Rumpus Interview: Angela Flournoy
My ambition is personal. I don’t think I need to succeed so that the race can succeed.
...moreWhat Hip-Hop Owes David Bowie
The Internet has been (rightfully) full of David Bowie tributes in the last week, including a series of pieces about the icon’s influence on hip-hop music. Noisey traced Bowie’s public admiration for hip-hop, beginning with the 1993 clip of Bowie asking MTV why the network wasn’t featuring black artists that went viral following his death, […]
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The Rumpus Interview with Tyler Gartzman
Rapper Tyler Gartzman talks about getting high, hypothetically making out with George Bush, not getting laid since high school, and how a white, Jewish kid in Atlanta became a talented hip-hop wordsmith.
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Swinging Modern Sounds #60: On Mentorship
In an empirically-preoccupied world, mentorship appears to be unscientific, impossible to quantify, and perhaps even sentimental.
...morePutting Tracks on the Map
Jay Shells, an artist currently working in New York, is taking favorite rap lyrics and putting the tracks on the map … all over the Big Apple. This project, which Shells calls “Rap Quotes,” consists of homemade but very official-looking street signs bearing rap lyrics at the specific locations of the songs they appear in. For example, […]
...moreMaureen Miller Takes On Jay-Z
Have you heard Jay-Z’s “D.O.A. (Death of Auto-Tune)”? It’s a damn good track (though some take issue with Jay for swinging at certain artists while leaving other auto-tuners, read his friends, pretty much unscathed). Fair or not, all you really need to know is that the title of the song says it all: Mr. Shawn […]
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