July 31, 2015
Black, Child, Hood: From Vince Staples to James Baldwin
“The situation of our youth is not mysterious. Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them. They must, they […]
June 12, 2015
The Low Pass Theory, Part 2
Beyond the dense childhood memories of musical sound sieved through cinder block, another archetypal memory carried by a number of hip hop producers and artists—including KRS-ONE, the RZA, as well […]
June 11, 2015
The Low Pass Theory, Part 1
The scene is always the same. My feet are planted far too close to a tower of speakers, my head nodding with near-injurious enjoyment to some now-obscure track selected by […]
May 19, 2015
Basic Instructions for Being Human
These days, I’m thinking much about my love for liberal education and the ways in which it continues to be relevant in the world of screens, as the virtual begins […]
March 12, 2015
How to Write Human: Outkast’s Art of Storytellin’
Literature is at its best when it humanizes its characters and, by extension, its readers. The poetry of the duo Outkast, comprised of Big Boi and Andre 3000, peels back the […]
January 15, 2015
Catching Up on Bestsellers
As a kid, I never read novels, graphic or otherwise. My brother read comic books, choose-your-adventure stories, Edith Hamilton’s Mythology, an assortment of Afrocentric tomes from Black Arts Plus, down […]
January 8, 2015
A Physiology of Style: Asthma, Proust, Pharoahe Monch
“This asthma became part of his art—if indeed his art did not create it. Proust’s syntax rhythmically and stop by step reproduces his fear of suffocating. And his ironic, philosophical, […]
December 10, 2014
Earl Sweatshirt’s Bookshelf, and Time
Bookshelves do funny things to time. In a recent clip, rapper Earl Sweatshirt lets FADER TV tour his Hollywood bachelor pad. In a Cribs send-up, he guides the camera through […]
November 12, 2014
Dr. Murphy, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Writing Abstracts
Abstract is a misleading name for an abstract, for an abstract should not be abstract. Today, I will write an abstract for my next conference paper, and it feels a […]
September 2, 2014
The Wonderful Worlds of Borges
I recently came across an edited set of interviews with one of the true masters, Jorges Luis Borges. The book is Borges at Eighty: Conversations. I first encountered the Argentinian […]
July 4, 2014
Another Radiant Child: The Retropoetics of Joey Bada$$
One of America’s exciting young poets is 19 years old. Like several other innovators, who are among the greatest the country has ever produced–Notorious B.I.G., Jay-Z, Yasiin Bey (Mos Def), […]
June 17, 2014
Sugimoto’s Darkness
You’re unlikely to find a more beautiful book than Hiroshi Sugimoto, designed by Takaaki Matsumodo. The book is cloth-bound in shadow-blue, with a slight sheen, only a shallow stamp of […]