Arts & Entertainment
If you left the Spurs/Heat Game early last night, good. you deserve to be locked out!
The large contingency of “if they’re losing I’m outta here!” Miami fans have been the only downside to this fantastic series NBA finals series. Not only are they bad
Lorne Michael’s new handpicked weeknight lineup: Fallon – Meyers – Daly.
I hope a woman once again gets to chair the “Weekend Update” desk and then one of these late night gigs as outside of Chelsea Handler on E! it’s all white and male. all over again. More of the same.
I think the Harlem Shake parodies are hilarious. I also understand that within the meme, cultural appropriation is occurring. A meme is essentially a parody of some element of culture. The “Harlem Shake” meme in of itself is a parodic response to a parody of the song Harlem Shake by Baauer.
I enjoy the excellent, correct, scientific, wonky and scholarly explanations of the origins of the Harlem Shake dance devised by Albert Boyce and originally called “The Al B” and the incongruence of the meme to a dance from Harlem and native to Hip-Hop (seriously, read them all!). These are facts that needed to precede a healthy discussion of Hip-Hop culture. I didn’t as much enjoy watching the disappointed, mildly disgusted and sometimes angry reactions of Harlemites to “Harlem Shake” parody videos. It felt the parodies were themselves presented without appropriate context in seeing the anger in some of the reactions.
But all Harlem Shake parodies are not equal and Hip-Hop culture, which birthed the “Harlem Shake”, remains a guerilla cultural appropriation of American life through the expression of breakdancers in the parks, boomboxes blaring music at basketball courts, graffiti tagged walls, bridges and subway trains and uncleared samples of every genre of music rapped over by emcees at parties. In this, people harken back to white artists that would take black artists music, dances and showmanship and then filter them for mass consumption and profit. The difference is today, the Hip-Hop movement has access to all the tools that made the “Harlem Shake” parody so popular: YouTube and people willing to start dancing in front of the camera.
In light of that I feel the folks, despite the undemocratic usage of a professionally remixed Hip-Hop version of the Baauer song, NY Radio station Power 105.1 were closest to the Hip-Hop appropriate response. After all: wouldn’t the best rejoinder to the culture appropriation of the “Harlem Shake” parodies be a “Harlem Shake” parody where dancers firmly rooted in Hip-Hop culture actually do the real “Harlem Shake”?
Don Cheadle on “Totally Biased with W. Kamau Bell”
As journalists like Soledad O’Brien are replaced by anonymous source parroters like Erin Burnett, CNN will become even less useful but find ratings hits around stories you could care less about like sh*t ships. It’s good to remember that Jeff Zucker was good at promoting exactly that type of news programming. He was the guy who turned around the Today Show in the early 90’s. It’s a conscious management decision to go with Zucker as the head of a worldwide news organization, and what they are conscious of is ratings. See the difference between O’Brien and Burnett below.
nothing else to say:
First Rap Category Grammy in 1989:
Reached by phone at his hotel room after he won the Grammy, Will Smith–the Fresh Prince of D. J. Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince–said he was “more than happy to accept it.” But, he added, “I’m not as happy as I could have been. . . . (The presentation not being televised) detracts from the excitement of the award.”
Smith, one of three nominees to boycott the ceremony, said he had no regrets about the action.
“Absolutely no second feelings. The way it happened was exactly the way I wanted it to happen.”
Smith also insisted he had no hard feelings toward Kool Moe Dee, a fellow nominee who didn’t participate in the boycott and who took over the presenter’s role (for R&B male vocal) that had been offered to Smith.
Said Smith, “Everybody to their own opinion.”
Kool Moe Dee, who used the televised slot to do a short rap portraying rap music as a positive influence, was critical of the boycott when meeting the press backstage.
“One management company started it and went to the papers and figured all the rappers would follow,” he said in reference to Rush Artist Management, which handles D. J. Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince and fellow boycotters Salt-N-Pepa and L. L. Cool J.
“It was wrong. They were trying to turn it into a race thing. . . . I felt it was a negative move not to come to the Grammys–like crying over spilled milk.”
via GRAMMYS ’89 : Backstage Harmony: Talk About Rap and a Boycott Flap . . . – Los Angeles Times
Rap and R&B Category Grammys in 2013 (Hosted by LL Cool J):
The 55th GRAMMY Awards is still yet to hit the main stage, but the Rap and R&B awards were just given at the Pre-Telecast.
[…]
Best Rap Performance: Jay-Z & Kanye West – ‘N***as In Paris’
Best Rap Song: Jay-Z & Kanye West – ‘N***as In Paris’
Best Rap Album: Drake –Take Care
Best R&B Performance: Usher – ‘Climax’
Best Traditional R&B Performance: Beyonce – ‘Love On Top’
Best R&B Song: Miguel – ‘Adorn’
Best R&B Album: Robert Glasper –Black Radio
I’m not sure how none of these award categories are popular enough to put on TV, especially when the 1st five acts listed are music award mainstays for years now, but what do I know?