To Pimp a Mockingbird: A Lesson Plan
Literacy, you know firsthand, is a tool, is a motivator, is the beat of education.
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Posts Tagged: kanye west
Too Close to Home
I can’t relax. Bullets are on my mind.
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The Rumpus Poetry Book Club Chat with Hanif Abdurraqib
Hanif Abdurraqib discusses his new collection, A FORTUNE FOR YOUR DISASTER.
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An East African Girl and Her White Troubadours
I was a lonely, dreamy, occasionally silly girl.
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Swinging Modern Sounds #92: Perfection
You will now find some version of the list below. It is imperfect.
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No Pressure: Bieber, Blackness, the Cult of Perfection
Bieber is like a prism that reflects back whatever you want to see.
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Swinging Modern Sounds #82: Joni Mitchell’s Court and Spark: A Symposium
…yet she did what she did, and in the process made the most successful album of her career.
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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.
...moreAlbum of the Week: Arca by Arca
In 2012, after leaving their homeland Venezuela for New York City and then London, Alejandro Ghersi began playing music under the stage name of Arca. A former child star, Ghersi has collaborated with Bjork and Kanye West. Now, the twenty-six-year-old producer and composer is releasing their third, eponymous album—the first via XL Recordings, and the […]
...moreAlbum of the Week: Sampha’s Process
After collaborating with the likes of Beyoncè, SBTRKT, Jessie Ware, Drake, Kanye West, Frank Ocean, and Solange, 28-year-old British singer, songwriter and producer Sampha has finally released his first solo album, Process, via Young Turks. A significant and evocative title, anticipating the changes happening as listeners work through the LP’s forty minutes: the personal growth Sampha undergoes in taking his […]
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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.
...moreSuperman Is a Bad Translation
For Slate, Shon Arieh-Lerer and Daniel Hubbard provide a video rundown of pop culture’s use of Nietzsche, starting with contemporaneous forces made his philosophy be mangled by Nazi power and ending with True Detective and Kanye.
...moreSong of the Day: “8 (circle)”
It takes courage and artistic vision to take risks with music that has already won you commercial success, but lasting artists persist in doing just that. Bon Iver’s third album, 22, A Million, supports this view. The familiarly warm and affecting melodies of song writer Justin Vernon’s earlier work are reinvented here, nested in a cocoon […]
...moreThe Rumpus Interview with Abigail Ulman
Abigail Ulman talks about her debut collection Hot Little Hands, the limitations of the cultural narrative, her paralyzing pre-publication fears, and why she loves adolescent narrators.
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Kahlo vs. Kardashian: The Subversive Potential of the Female Self-Portrait
Where does the line between the self-portrait and the selfie fall?
...moreThis Week in Posivibes: A Frank Ocean Bonanza
It’s not hyperbole to say that everyone is losing their minds over Frank Ocean’s release of Endless, Blonde, and Boys Don’t Cry Magazine. After a four-year wait between albums, this outpouring offers a lot of incredible material to unpack. Blonde’s credit list alone makes perfect fodder for music writers, listing David Bowie, Brian Eno, Kanye West, Jamie xx, Kendrick Lamar, Elliott Smith, Beyoncé, the Beatles, André 3000, and Pharrell, among others. Add in Ocean’s […]
...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 […]
...moreLiving Performance Art
The Internet’s been freaking out about Kanye West’s latest bid to be the center of all things surreal about our culture: his video for the track “Famous” features breathing sculptures of celebrities who may or may not have given permission for their likenesses to be represented naked, as if asleep, and in bed together. West supposedly […]
...moreSong of the Day: “Heavenly Father”
Justin Vernon, the songwriter and front man for inimitable indie group Bon Iver, has had a busy few years. Aside from curating his second homegrown Wisconsin music festival this year along with The National’s Aaron Dessner, he’s also performed in several high-profile collaborations with Kanye West, been parodied by Justin Timberlake on SNL, and starred in an ad for […]
...moreThis Week in Posivibes: Arthur Russell
A new treatise on the importance of the genre-melting artist has been published by the New York Times, inspired by the New York Public Library’s acquisition of Arthur Russell’s archives. The acquisition itself is massive, sprawling, and difficult to catalogue, according to the NYT piece: [It] includes a thousand-or-so reels, cassettes, DATs, Beta and VHS tapes with hundreds […]
...moreZane Lowe Interviews Chance the Rapper
Following the release of his latest mixtape Coloring Book, Chance the Rapper spoke with Zane Lowe in a lengthy interview about the work, the recording process, and the artist’s growing collaborative relationship with Kanye West. Listen to the full conversation via okayplayer and stream the mixtape here.
...moreSong of the Day: “Devil In A New Dress”
We can accuse Kanye West of a lot of things—arrogance, insensitivity, paranoia, ingratitude… the list goes on. But one thing he is not guilty of is dishonesty. The longer he spends in the international media spotlight (and he’s going on thirteen years now), the more the confessional side of his music seems to be emphasized. What makes the 2010 song […]
...moreThe Cultural Significance of Whitney Houston
At Vela Magazine, Danielle Jackson discusses Whitney Houston as an embodiment of black excellence, and the continued erasure of black artists’ contributions to commercial music: Houston and the entire lineage of black women performers that preceded her invented techniques and sounds that have been endlessly covered and riffed upon, but they are generally under-acknowledged for their […]
...moreThe First of Summer’s Festival Lineups
The lineups for two of the summer’s biggest festivals have been announced, with many more to come. Coachella is boasting the first reunion of Guns N’ Roses original members in twenty years, along with the return of LCD Soundsystem, who have been on a break for five years, Consequence of Sound reports. CoS also recently published […]
...moreSwish Is Coming
Kanye West finally announced the release date for his much-anticipated upcoming album, Swish. Fans can expect the album on February 11th, Complex reports. The announcement came with the release of another track: “Real Friends,” which you can listen to after the jump. Read a review of the song over at Pitchfork.
...moreObama Offers Kanye Campaign Advice
President Barack Obama appeared at a Democratic National Committee fundraiser at San Francisco’s Warfield Theater this weekend, and took the opportunity to give Kanye West, who was performing later in the night, some advice for his potential 2020 campaign. Read what the President counseled after the jump, and watch a video of the President speaking and […]
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Sound & Vision: Dana Nielsen
GRAMMY-nominated mixer, engineer, producer, and musician Dana Nielsen talks about his career, his music, and his new collaboration with Crown and the M.O.B., All Rise, which he co-produced.
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The Saturday Rumpus Interview: Jacob Wren
Jacob Wren discusses his newest novel, Polyamorous Love Song, the relationship between art and ethics, and whether Kanye West is a force for good in the art and music world.
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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.
...moreThe Literary Meet Market
At The Millions, Matt Seidel has some thoughts on the “author x meets author y” formula, and he “set[s] out to conceive of and review the most convivial work imaginable, The Summit (an entirely fictional work of fiction).”
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