Ever since his 1994 debut, the mighty Illmatic, Queensbridge, N.Y.’s Nasir Jones has been hip hop’s Hemingway… No matter what Nas’s new disc is called, “it’s hip hop’s most cogent deliberation on the N word in decades” and it’s had the music press in an uproar.
Tag: 07.19.08
Bored By Classical Music? Think Again
“The century of modernism may have been bloody and ugly, but it was also full of beauty, and those who insist on closing their eyes and ears to it — whatever their reasons may be — are missing out on more than they know.”
Seattle’s War On Nightclubs (This Is A Music City?)
If Seattle government’s current attitude toward nightlife existed 20 years ago, Sub Pop would never have happened.
Matters Of Style – What Is The Grammarian To Make Of InternetSpeak?
“My problem with message-board language brings up a prior problem in journalism: the difficulty of translating spoken language into written language. Who wants to deny readers a chance to laugh and to get the full flavor of Internet-culture wackiness? It’s flat-out lying to pretend that everyone (or anyone) spells well online.”
Kudelka Speaks: Why I Left The National Ballet
It was a surprise to all when James Kudelka suddenly quit as director of the National Ballet of Canada in 2005. “When Kudelka looks back to that time, he sees a perfect storm of anti-creativity forces. Central to that storm were his fears that the new house would impact negatively on the company’s budget, siphoning funds away from its creative mandate.”
China To Ban “Threatening” Performers
China is tightening the screws on political expression, saying it will ban foreign artists and entertainers who have ever engaged in activities deemed to “threaten national sovereignty.” Artists that could theoretically be barred under the terms of the notice could include Hollywood heavy-hitters Steven Spielberg and Sharon Stone.
Actors Continue Hollywood Negotiations
“The stakes are too high to concede jurisdiction and residuals for programs made for new media. That future is now and, if we ignore it, it will pass actors by and this generation and future generations of actors will never recover.”
The Lang Lang Phenomenon
“At the piano, he is a ferocious competitor. Away from it, though, he seems to want to be all things to all men — just ‘one of the guys,’ as impressed by the rapper Snoop Doggy Dogg as by a performance of Enrique Granados’s treacherously beautiful piano suite Goyescas.”
The Wizard Of Oz As Cultural Critique
“L Frank Baum, the writer who invented Oz, moved his family to Chicago two years before in order to be there for the opening of the World’s Fair, and his Land of Oz is buoyed by the same determined optimism of America at the turn of the century.”