In ‘Mud Row,’ sisters argue about the meaning, value and future of a house

The decaying Pennsylvania house at the center of “Mud Row” stands in for the complicated legacies we inherit from our ancestors, including the potentially shameful parts. Do we keep the joint, rehab it and pass it on to the next generation? Or do we cash out and walk away?

Directed by Marti Gobel, this production of Dominique Morisseau’s drama with comic elements is the linchpin of the MKE Black Theatre Festival, which continues through August at several Milwaukee locations. “Mud Row” is being performed at Marquette University.

“Mud Row” shows us two generations in this same house. In the early ’60s, sisters Frances (Martilia Marechal) and Elsie (Ashley S. Jordan) share the home, which came from their mother’s earnings as a sex worker. Frances is a determined civil rights activist, while Elsie hopes to marry into a higher level of Black society. Despite those philosophical differences, Marechal and Jordan give us a pair of sweetly caring sisters, who face life under the motto “love, fight and togetherness.”

In contemporary time, their descendant Regine (Lillian Brown), an ambitious buppie, and her husband Davin (Ibraheem Farmer) turn up to look over the dilapidated property before selling it. But the fierce Toshi (Malaina Moore) and her streetwise boyfriend Tyriek (Marques Causey) are squatting in it. There’s a family connection and shared history between the two women, explored through intense and sometimes painful arguments.

While Morisseau’s play is certainly female-centered, it’s fun to see Farmer and Causey breathe life into their guys.

“Mud Row” is a declamatory play; some of that talking from both generations shouts out early 20th century thinker W.E.B. Du Bois’ concept of “the talented tenth,” his argument that a cohort of college-educated Black men should take the lead in advancing the Black community. Du Bois developed and adjusted his thoughts on that subject later in his life. If Du Bois were in the audience for “Mud Row,” I think he might quibble with use of that phrase as a mean-spirited epithet for Black elitism. But as the arguments in “Mud Row” demonstrate, both the fighters and the strivers in a family can learn something from hearing each other out.

If you go

Performances of “Mud Row” continue through Aug. 27 at Marquette University’s Helfaer Theater, 1304 W. Clybourn St. This play is part of MKE Black Theatre Festival 2023, present by Black Arts MKE and collaborators. For “Mud Row” tickets and info on other festival events, visit blackartsmke.org.

More:Sculpture Milwaukee’s new works for 2023 include a depiction of Michael Jackson that’s sure to generate talk

RankTribe™ Black Business Directory News – Arts & Entertainment

Beyoncé to bring Renaissance World Tour to Florida’s shores next week

Beyoncé is set to grace the Hard Rock Stadium in South Florida on Friday, August 18, as a segment of her Renaissance World Tour, which started in Stockholm in May.

As the Renaissance World Tour progresses, Queen B is not just scheduled to bring her celebrated album “Renaissance” to Miami, but also Tampa in the coming week.

Beyoncé fans in Florida are gearing up for a unique musical spectacle, anticipating the latest offerings from the iconic singer.

Beyonce
Photo: Kevin Mazur/Wireimage for Parkwood

Beyoncé’s historic milestones

– Advertisement –

Remarkably, even though she is just halfway through her tour, Beyoncé has already broken several records. She clinched the title of the highest-grossing Black artist in history after wrapping up her 33rd performance. 

Reports reveal that the Renaissance World Tour has amassed a staggering $296 million in gross revenue, as confirmed by Chart Data.

Spanning over 40 cities, the tour commenced in Stockholm, with performances in major metropolises such as Philadelphia, Louisville, Chicago, New York, and Boston.

Charting Beyoncé’s iconic journey

– Advertisement –

Beyoncé is not new to the limelight or leaving an indelible mark in the music industry.

As a pivotal member of Destiny’s Child, she contributed to a series of timeless tracks, with “Say My Name” topping the list. This iconic song propelled her to her first Grammy win in 2001. 

Beyoncé has solidified her place in history, becoming the most-awarded Grammy recipient to date.

Read more entertainment articles from CNW

RankTribe™ Black Business Directory News – Arts & Entertainment

Obama Portrait Artist’s Old Paintings Come Back to Bite Him: ‘Evil’

The Democratic Party’s obsession with skin color has plagued the republic for nearly two centuries. Democrats spearheaded Indian removal, promoted slavery and then defended racial segregation deep into the 20th century.

Today, that obsession takes a different form, but it remains as toxic as ever.

A bit of old news making the rounds on social media reminds us that many who associate with the Democratic Party still view the world through the lens of race. And that view often disturbs us.

On the social media platform X, formerly Twitter, an image of paintings by artist Kehinde Wiley has garnered 1.2 million views.

The left side of the image features a portrait of former President Barack Obama. The right side of the image shows two portraits of black women holding the severed heads of white women.

Trending:

Hawaii Wildfire Death Toll Rises As People Search for Loved Ones

End Wokeness, an X account with 1.5 million followers, posted the images Wednesday.

“Obama’s official portrait was painted by Kehinde Wiley, a black artist who loves depicting whites being decapitated. What would happen if the races were reversed and it was Trump?” the accompanying post read.

Wiley’s history of controversial paintings does not qualify as news. A story on the artist’s “past works featuring scandalous subjects” appeared in the U.K.’s Daily Mail in 2018.

Talking about the works in an interview with New York magazine in 2012, Wiley said, “It’s sort of a play on the ‘kill whitey’ thing.”

Meanwhile, the Obama portrait hangs in the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery.

Still, the side-by-side images of Obama and the two decapitations generated fresh outrage this week.

“Evil,” one X user tweeted.

Related:

Greg Gutfeld Takes Epic Swipe at Ex-Fox News Host Geraldo — Live Audience Bursts Into Laughter

Others found the paintings “disturbing” and “sick.”

On the question of what might happen if the portrait depicted former President Donald Trump and the races were reversed in the decapitation paintings, one person offered a guess.

“There would be an outrage and the portrait the artist painted would be removed immediately & there would be endless media reports & editorials about it,” the X user tweeted.

As a general principle, one does not begrudge Wiley or any artist an appropriate degree of license. His decapitations would provoke little outrage, for instance, if they represented a historical event or something equally authentic.

Do you find these paintings to be disturbing?

Yes: 100% (5 Votes)

No: 0% (0 Votes)

The artist, however, did not intend this kind of representation. Nor did Obama understand Wiley’s work in that context.

The former president, of course, bears no direct responsibility for Wiley’s past paintings. Neither, however, can he feign ignorance of those paintings. In fact, at the unveiling of his portrait, Obama praised Wiley’s body of artistic work.

“What I was always struck by whenever I saw [Wiley’s] portraits was the degree to which they challenged our conventional views of power and privilege and the way that he would take extraordinary care and precision and vision in recognizing the beauty and the grace and the dignity of people who are so often invisible in our lives and put them on a grand stage, on a grand scale, and force us to look and see them in ways that so often they were not,” Obama said, according to the National Portrait Gallery’s website.

[embedded content]

If this does not amount to a direct endorsement of Wiley’s violent depictions, it nonetheless proves Obama’s familiarity with the artist’s style and message.

Furthermore, readers will recognize the race-mongering phrases in Obama’s statement. The former president cited “conventional views of power and privilege” and “people who are so often invisible.”

Here he reflected modern Democratic thought, where things such as privilege and visibility depend on skin color.

For nearly two centuries, Democrats have pursued power by sorting Americans into categories based on complexion. They do not appear poised to stop anytime soon.

This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.

Submit a Correction

We are committed to truth and accuracy in all of our journalism. Read our editorial standards.

Tags:

, , , , , , , , , ,

Comment Down Below

RankTribe™ Black Business Directory News – Arts & Entertainment

Mondaii Shatters Stereotypes with Bold and Bouncy ‘Back N Forth’

Mondaii Shatters Stereotypes with Bold and Bouncy ‘Back N Forth’ – African American News Today – EIN Presswire

Trusted News Since 1995

A service for global professionals · Friday, August 11, 2023 · 649,428,815 Articles · 3+ Million Readers

News Monitoring and Press Release Distribution Tools

News Topics

Newsletters

Press Releases

Events & Conferences

RSS Feeds

Other Services

Questions?

RankTribe™ Black Business Directory News – Arts & Entertainment

Hip-hop at 50: How did entrepreneurs in the genre get their start?

Hip-hop all started — as the story goes — with DJ Kool Herc, spinning records at a party in the Bronx in New York on August 11, 1973.

Today, hip-hop is a multi-billion-dollar global phenomenon. Its artists are some of the world’s most popular entrepreneurs. They have fashion lines, alcohol brands and endorsement deals.

But that hasn’t always been the case for hip-hop’s musical talent.

Richard Simpson, better known as Chubb Rock, came up in the New York hip-hop scene in the 1980s. At the start of his career, he said that he had no idea how to break into the recording business. Instead, he started to create and produce music on his own.

“There was a place here in Long Island City that pressed records,” Chubb Rock said backstage at a hip-hop 50th anniversary event in Queens. “I remember buying — I think it was two boxes of records — and giving them to DJs. And hoping for the best.”

Richard Simpson, better known as Chubb Rock, is a bald Black man with a beard. HE is wearing a brown leather jacket and black-framed glasses. He is seen in front of a white background.
Richard Simpson, better known as Chubb Rock, said there’s still a lot of work to be done to make the business side more equitable, particularly for women musicians. “I hope that the younger women — they set it straight.” (Courtesy Chubb Rock)

Chubb Rock went on to nab a record contract at 17 years old. Hits like “Treat ‘Em Right” and “Just The Two Of Us” soon followed.

With the money from his first deal, his mom advised him to invest some of it — in a taxi business.

“And that’s really the business that helped us out because we went from that to opening a bar,” Chubb Rock said.

Early hip-hop pioneers, like Chubb Rock, may not have had a flashy headphone company like Dr. Dre, which later sold to Apple, or their own cognac brand like 50 Cent. But they knew a lot about salesmanship.

Writer and NYU professor Dan Charnas said those early Black artists had to become entrepreneurs because when they started recording their music in the late 1970s and early 1980s they were boxed out of the mainstream.

“That’s what hip-hop had to do in order to even survive,” said Charnas.

Eventually, big labels did see how popular hip-hop was becoming. And after securing high-profile contracts, more musicians ramped up their business aspirations in the mid-1990s.

It’s the era when Charnas said, “instead of hip-hop being a place of a lot of endorsement deals, it’s hip-hop artists forming their own companies — their own clothing companies and basically doing their own thing.”

It wasn’t only hip-hop artists who saw business opportunities.

Designer April Walker grew up in Brooklyn where hip-hop was everywhere — blaring from car stereos, in clubs and on the street.

“And it became the sound and the voice of what we were feeling in our neighborhoods and what we could not see or express or hear on the news,” Walker said.

Yet, “we could not go into stores and buy anything that told our stories visually,” she recalled.

Two mannequins show Walker Wear designs underneath a large poster.
April Walker’s Walker Wear designs displayed at The Rap Up, a hip-hop event at New York Public Library. (Trina Mannino/Marketplace)

Walker wanted to capture hip-hop’s spirit through clothes and went on to start the independent streetwear label Walker Wear in 1990. Her sweatsuits and oversized jerseys were sought after by hip-hop stars like Tupac and Biggie Smalls.

Streetwear is now so popular that in 2019 its global market sales were an estimated $185 billion, according to the consulting business Strategy&, a division of PwC.

Although hip-hop is still booming in many ways, Chubb Rock said there’s a lot of work to be done to make the business more equitable, particularly for women musicians.

“Right now, queens of hip-hop are the ones dominating the genre,” he said, pointing out that they still aren’t profiting from brand spin-offs as much as men in the industry.

“So I hope that the younger women — they set it straight.”

There’s a lot happening in the world.  Through it all, Marketplace is here for you. 

You rely on Marketplace to break down the world’s events and tell you how it affects you in a fact-based, approachable way. We rely on your financial support to keep making that possible. 

Your donation today powers the independent journalism that you rely on. For just $5/month, you can help sustain Marketplace so we can keep reporting on the things that matter to you.  

RankTribe™ Black Business Directory News – Arts & Entertainment

How Can Art Guided by Democracy and Community Survive?

A recent history of political activism and collective action in the now-gentrified London borough of Hackney is chronicled in an exhibition that reflects on how art and politics in the UK have drifted apart

On 20 November 1975, documentary photographer Neil Martinson wrote to Jo Spence and members of the Hackney Flashers, a feminist and socialist collective of photographers, about plans to reproduce images made by himself and the group on postcards. In principle, Martinson had no objection to the proposal, as long as the images were sold cheaply and made widely available. What must be maintained, he insisted, was a link between the political project of Hackney Flashers and its artistic output: ‘An image by itself cannot convey a message’.

Ostensibly, we are a group of people composed of who we are showcases artefacts produced by activists and artists working in and around the London borough of Hackney during the 1970s and 80s who share Martinson’s vision. It’s an attitude still espoused by many on the left today for whom political art must convey a moral message. But the period covered here (1971–85) was very different to our own. Unlike activists today, the Hackney Flashers (whose correspondence with Martinson and others is on display) weren’t doing politics in a period of widespread political disengagement: in the heady days between the administrations of Edward Heath and Margaret Thatcher, class struggle was alive and well, and antiracism was an attempt to defend the claim of former citizens of an empire in decline to the right to belong in a country whose history they had helped to forge.

The year 1971 marks the founding of Centerprise, the cooperatively run Hackney bookshop and community centre out of which much of the material on show here emerged, while 1985 saw the closure of both the centre and abolition of the Greater London Council, a political and administrative body that had provided funding for London-based artists. The archival material, documentary film and painting assembled in we are a group… opens onto a world in which, for a brief period at least, a serious attempt was made to overcome the tensions that continue to define culture and politics in Britain: the divisions between producers and consumers of culture, and the participants and objects of politics. At Centerprise, books published by photographer Ingrid Pollard could be found alongside posters created by the Hackney Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, both on display in the show. These materials are brought to life by the short documentary film On Day Off, which shows packed rooms of people discussing politics in the community centre. In one scene, a young woman says that, were it not for the centre, she would never have known about publications like Spare Rib, the feminist magazine that ran from 1972 to 1993.

we are a group of people composed of who we are installation view at Peer, London, 2023. Photo Andy Keate

These works and materials are displayed alongside two acrylic-on-wood paintings completed in 1975 by Dan Jones, an antiracist campaigner and artist. Prior to being shown here, they’d been hanging on the kitchen wall of the Cable Street house where Jones, now eighty-three, lives with his family. In their flatness and posterlike quality, they resemble the work of Lubaina Himid, another now-well-known artist involved in the black arts movement of the 1980s. As with Himid’s paintings, the lack of depth in Jones’s works makes the figures on display entirely outward facing. What the viewer is forced to confront in these paintings is a vision of a cosmopolitan East End in which throngs of people from different racial backgrounds of all ages march through the street, passing fascist graffiti and holding antiracist banners. Viewed today, the sentiment of these images is easy to incorporate into the hegemonic language of diversity and inclusion. But in the context of the letters and posters displayed, they give the visitor a sense of real political stakes of defending multiculturalism in an England in which these ideas had not yet won out.

The average house price in Hackney is now £650,000, over twice the national figure. Rising rents have driven many middle- and working-class people out of the borough, but a large stock of council-built housing, the majority of which is still occupied by social housing tenants, has ensured a continuity between the Hackney of the Centerprise era and the heavily gentrified area of today. Superficially, an art gallery like Peer, flanked on all sides by public housing, exists on a fault line in debates around the role of the culture industry in driving gentrification. The show responds to these discussions by showing that art, rather than representing the interests of the wealthy, is capable of chronicling social change, providing the viewer with a way of comparing the East London of the 1970s and 80s with the area today and asking what has been lost.

One of the new works commissioned for the show is a large mural by Jacob V Joyce, a political activist and artist, which decorates an outdoor wall adjacent to the glass frontage of the gallery. Among its images are Vivian Usherwood, a child poet who briefly became famous after having his verses published by Centerpise; the logo for Hackney Gutter Press, a now defunct radical book-publisher; and part of a poster for the Black Lesbian Group, a feminist collective active around the borough. Peer’s director, Ellen Greig, speaking ahead of the show’s opening, explained how common it was for people to stop and look at the mural, and to share their memories of Centerprise with her. Inevitably, these recollections turn to how much the borough has changed in the 38 years since the centre shut down, signalling the defeat of a project that attempted to offer a challenge from below to Britain’s closed and culturally homogeneous cultural sphere. The show’s chief intervention is to suggest that with the political defeat of the left during the 1970s and 80s came also the defeat of a model of art guided by a notion of democracy that valued the right of citizens to creative self-expression, and accepted the mixed results that this would produce.

we are a group of people composed of who we are at Peer, London, through 9 September

RankTribe™ Black Business Directory News – Arts & Entertainment

From Rick Rubin to Doja Cat, Jews have helped shape the first 50 years of hip-hop

(JTA) — Like many parents, Mickey and Linda Rubin indulged their only child Ricky’s various hobbies — magic, photography, music — while he was growing up in the 1970s on Long Island. Ultimately, they hoped he would set his artistic interests aside and choose the sensible career of an attorney.

Ricky famously stuck with music.

In 1983, when he was a junior at New York University, he borrowed $5,000 from his parents to record a song by a local rapper, T La Rock, and release it on his new label, Def Jam. The song, “It’s Yours,” was a hit and caught the attention of a businessman, Russell Simmons. The two would join forces and turn Def Jam into a hit factory. As a producer, Rick Rubin would go on to work with some of the most celebrated rappers of all time, including LL Cool J, Run-DMC, and Public Enemy.

“When I started Def Jam,” Rubin told the New York Times Magazine in 2007, “I was the only white guy in the hip-hop world.” 

He certainly was not, but he was one of the only white Jews making rap records until Michael “Mike D” Diamond, Adam “MCA” Yauch, and Adam “Ad-Rock” Horovitz — better known as the Beastie Boys — burst onto the scene. Rubin produced and released the group’s 1986 debut album, “Licensed to Ill,” which became the first rap album to reach No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart.

“If you want to talk about a singular Jewish contribution to hip-hop, it’d be Rick,” said Dan Charnas, a journalist and arts professor at Rubin’s alma mater, in an interview. “Instead of hip-hop being rapping over disco instrumentals, he conceived of it as sonic collage art.”

Fifty years ago, on Aug. 11, 1973, hip-hop was born (or so the origin story goes) when Jamaican Americans Cindy Campbell and her brother, a DJ who went by Kool Herc, hosted a back-to-school dance party in the recreation room of their Bronx apartment building. In its early years, rap was dismissed as street music by most music industry gatekeepers. It would take six years after that Bronx party for a rap record to get airplay on pop radio (Sugarhill Gang’s “Rapper’s Delight”).

Fast forward to 2023, and hip-hop is ubiquitous — not just on Spotify and TikTok, but across pop culture, from television to fashion.

Over the last five decades, many Jewish rappers from different backgrounds and nationalities have left their mark on hip-hop culture, from Drake to Doja Cat to Mac Miller to Nissim Black, to name just a few. In the early 2000s, religiously-observant artists such as Y-Love and Matisyahu carved out a niche for rap infused with Jewish wisdom and spirituality. Today, there are a number of rappers who make Judaism a prominent part of their stage personas, from Kosha Dillz to Lil Dicky to BLP Kosher; the latter dropped an album on Aug. 4 titled “Bars Mitzvah.” There is also a vibrant, multilingual hip-hop scene in Israel.

RELATED: The 10 most influential Jewish rappers of the past 50 years

But the biggest contributions that Jews have made collectively to hip-hop may have been on the business side, as managers and record label executives.

“White people have played more of a role on the business side than as artists because hip-hop is, for the most part, a Black art form,” explained Charnas, who worked in A&R (which involves seeking out new artists to sign) at Rubin’s American Recordings label in the early 1990s.

In his 2010 book “The Big Payback: The History of the Business of Hip-Hop,” Charnas shares the stories of the record label executives who commercialized hip-hop, including several Jewish ones: Roy and Jules Rifkind, owners of the label that released one of the first rap records in 1979, “King Tim III (Personality Jock)” by Fatback Band; Aaron Fuchs, founder of Tuff City Records, the first rap label to secure a major-label distribution deal; Tom Silverman, founder of Tommy Boy Records, whose roster of musicians included Queen Latifah, Coolio, De La Soul, and Naughty By Nature; Jerry Heller, co-founder of Ruthless Records with rapper Eazy-E; and Julie Greenwald, Def Jam’s head of marketing in the ’90s (who now runs the Atlantic Music Group).

Fuchs, who launched Tuff City in 1981, said by phone that he began working with hip-hop artists such as The Cold Crush Brothers at least a year before Rubin started Def Jam.

“I left my career as a writer and decided to run a record company on the belief that this Black music, like every other Black music in history, would be worth codifying,” he said. He later mentored Rubin and even produced some songs himself using the pseudonym Oliver Shalom, a play on the Hebrew honorific for the dead, “alav ha-shalom” (“peace be upon him”).

At 75, Fuchs still runs Tuff City and plans to release a four-part vinyl compilation of classic rap songs to which he owns the rights later this year. He described hip-hop as “a very, very, very important American expression.”

“I knew it would last, but I didn’t know that it would revolutionize music the world over,” he said.

In response to a direct message on Twitter, Chuck D of the influential group Public Enemy shared the names of the Jews he believes have made the biggest impact in hip-hop, in addition to Rubin: the Beastie Boys; MC Serch of interracial rap group 3rd Bass; Lyor Cohen, the son of Israeli immigrants who started as Run-DMC’s road manager and went on to run Def Jam after Rubin’s departure; and Bill Adler, Def Jam’s onetime director of publicity who helped Public Enemy weather an antisemitism controversy in 1989.

Def Jam Records publicist Bill Adler introduces Rapper Chuck D, left, of Public Enemy, as the latter prepares to fire bandmate Professor Griff for making antisemitic remarks, June 21, 1989. (Al Pereira/Getty Images/Michael Ochs Archives)

“What was interesting,” Chuck D wrote in a direct message, “was that everyone didn’t necessarily get along.” He described the 1980s rap scene as a “melting pot of personality, ego, pioneering, money, race, and everything else.”

Beyond the boardroom, Jews have also played a significant role in hip-hop as talent managers. Among the best-known are Heller (N.W.A.), Paul Rosenberg (Eminem, as well as Jewish rappers Action Bronson and The Alchemist), Leila Steinberg (Tupac Shakur, Earl Sweatshirt), and Todd Moscowitz (Gucci Mane).

Managers both inside and outside of hip-hop have long been vilified for profiting off of their artists’ creativity and labor, or worse. Some believe Heller stole from the members of N.W.A., but there is no evidence to support the claim. Steinberg’s story is different: She accepted very little money while working as Shakur’s first manager in Northern California because she did not want to be perceived as a white person taking undue credit for a Black person’s achievements.

“Back then, I really wanted to participate [in hip-hop] as an activist and couldn’t make sense of this being about money and business,” she said in an interview with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency earlier this year. “I’ve reshaped a lot of my thinking — if you’re not making money, you can’t make change in the world.”

In the realm of hip-hop media, two Israeli cousins — Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus — were responsible for producing the classic breakdance-themed musicals “Breakin’” and “Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo” in 1984. Keith Naftaly was the program manager who turned Bay Area radio station KMEL into the best place to hear new rap music in the late ’80s (he is now the head of A&R at RCA). Peter Rosenberg’s voice can be heard every morning on one of the biggest rap stations in the country, New York’s Hot 97.

Many of the culture’s most enthusiastic chroniclers, it turns out, are members of the tribe: Jonathan Shecter and Dave Mays, who co-founded the groundbreaking hip-hop magazine The Source — the most popular music magazine in the United States in the late ’90s — as undergraduates at Harvard; DJ Vlad (born Vladimir Lyubovny), whose YouTube channel features interviews with numerous rappers and has 5.5 million subscribers; Nardwuar (John Ruskin), a Canadian journalist whose unpredictable interviews with rappers receive millions of views on YouTube; and ItsTheReal (Eric and Jeff Rosenthal), who recently released a deeply-researched podcast about the heyday of rap blogs. And then there’s Charnas himself, who is 55 and was one of the first writers at The Source and a founding father of hip-hop journalism. (The album that made him fall in love with hip-hop: Public Enemy’s “It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back.”)

Charnas connects Jewish involvement in so many different aspects of hip-hop culture to the historical alliance between Jews and Black people.

“I think we were around because of our place in the American totem pole, and because of our cultural affinities,” he said. “We had geographical proximity to each other, so that has a lot to do with it. Obviously, Blacks and Jews were aligned politically.”

He added there has never been a “Jewish cabal” running the show — a charge that a small number of big-name rappers, including most recently Ye, formerly known as Kanye West — have made. In 2008, Jay-Z and Russell Simmons recorded a PSA about antisemitism geared toward hip-hop artists and fans that was produced by Rabbi Marc Schneier’s Foundation for Ethnic Understanding. Since then, Ice Cube, Nick Cannon, Jay Electronica, and, yes, even Jay-Z have all found themselves at the center of antisemitism controversies. (On a track on his 2017 album “4:44,” Jay-Z asked rhetorically, “You ever wonder why Jewish people own all the property in America?” He defended the lyric as an obvious exaggeration.)

“Jewish people have found important places and purchases in the business, but no more so than any other white folks,” Charnas said.

Y-Love, the trailblazing Black and Jewish rapper who is known for rhyming in Hebrew and Aramaic  — and who, at age 45, calls himself “the OG of Jewish hip-hop,” meaning “the original gangster,” or the elder statesman — said the rappers who have been accused of antisemitism are not saying anything original. They are simply parroting ideas circulating in American society at large, he argued.

“There needs to be a moratorium on the phrase ‘Black antisemitism,” he said. “It’s the same antisemitism.” The best response to the hate, he said, is for Black Jewish rappers with huge fan bases such as Drake and Doja Cat to stand up and say publicly: “When you talk about Jews, you’re talking about me.”

One of the positive legacies of hip-hop, he noted, is that it has allowed Black Jewish rappers like himself to get on stages and screens and show the world just how diverse Jews are. “I think that through embracing hip-hop, the Jewish community added a lot to its own continuity,” he said.

Where is hip-hop headed in the next 50 years?

“As the barrier to entry to putting music out there gets lower, we are going to see more and more people putting tracks out that speak to them, and more managers that are willing to help them do it,” Y-Love said, adding, “Maybe one day we’ll see a Jewish hip-hop category at the Grammys.”

RankTribe™ Black Business Directory News – Arts & Entertainment

Photos: ‘Mud Row’ (performed by Black Arts MKE)

Photos: ‘Mud Row’ (performed by Black Arts MKE)

USA TODAY Handout

The cast of "Mud Row": Ashley S. Jordan and Martilia Marechal, standing; Ibraheem Farmer and Lillian Brown, seated left; and Malaina Moore and Marques Causey.

The cast of “Mud Row”: Ashley S. Jordan and Martilia Marechal, standing; Ibraheem Farmer and Lillian Brown, seated left; and Malaina Moore and Marques Causey.

Jenny Plevin

Malaina Moore and Marques Causey go over their plan in "Mud Row," part of MKE Black Theatre Festival 2023.

Malaina Moore and Marques Causey go over their plan in “Mud Row,” part of MKE Black Theatre Festival 2023.

Jenny Plevin

Lillian Brown and Ibraheem Farmer have a heart to heart in "Mud Row," part of MKE Black Theatre Festival 2023.

Lillian Brown and Ibraheem Farmer have a heart to heart in “Mud Row,” part of MKE Black Theatre Festival 2023.

Jenny Plevin

Malaina Moore and Marques Causey, standing, consider what to do with the slumped Ibraheem Farmer in "Mud Row."

Malaina Moore and Marques Causey, standing, consider what to do with the slumped Ibraheem Farmer in “Mud Row.”

Jenny Plevin

Ashley S. Jordan imagines the future in "Mud Row," part of MKE Black Theatre Festival 2023.

Ashley S. Jordan imagines the future in “Mud Row,” part of MKE Black Theatre Festival 2023.

Jenny Plevin

© 2023 www.jsonline.com. All rights reserved.

RankTribe™ Black Business Directory News – Arts & Entertainment

Opinion: From Coleman Young to Big Gretch: Exploring Detroit hip-hop’s political evolution

On Aug. 11, 1973, an 18-year-old aspiring DJ named Clive Campbell — better known as DJ Kool Herc — hosted a party in his hometown of Bronx, NY.  

Kool Herc wanted to raise a little extra cash so his sister could get new clothes before school started. But instead of playing a song followed by another song, he mixed the instrumental break of each song (known as the “break beat”) into a continuous loop. By all accounts, using the break beat to create a song all its own gave birth to a new musical and cultural art form: hip-hop.  

Michael Griffie

Emcees would soon rhyme over these break beats, and would be called “rappers.” “Break Boys” (B-Boys) and “Break Girls” (B-Girls) would dance to those songs. Graffiti artists, fashion designers and film producers would later add to the fabric of this cultural movement. More than a musical genre, hip-hop would become a cultural bastion that has impacted American life at large as much as it did the African Americans communities that created it. 

Artists right here from Detroit have made indelible contributions to hip-hop as much as their Motown predecessors did for pop music in the decades prior. From J Dilla, Eminem, and Big Sean to next-generation artists like Sada Baby, Kash Doll and Tee Grizzley, Detroiters have always been able to tap into the vein of transcendent musical art forms. 

Hip-hop producer J Dilla, or Jay Dee, whose real name was James Yancey. The Detroit born and raised musician died in 2006 of complications from lupus. He was 32.

But the cultural impact of hip-hop in Detroit extends beyond those who created this music. The story of hip-hop in Detroit is about its political evolution, from cast-aside to the mainstream. 

Sweet 16

The year was 1988. Near hip-hop’s 16th birthday, its “gangsta rap” era began when a collection of young Black men from Los Angeles formed a group called N***** With Attitudes (NWA). O’Shea Jackson, the 19-year-old lyrical impresario better known as “Ice Cube,” penned a song in response to the police brutality he and other members of the group received that year. The song was not called “Black Lives Matter.” It was called “F*** Tha Police.” 

Groundbreaking rappers N.W.A. clashed with Detroit Mayor Coleman A. Young during the group's 1989 tour. Top, left-right: Dr. Dre, Yella. Bottom, left-right: Ice Cube, Eazy-E and M.C Ren

However shocking the lyrics of any particular NWA song — which at times have included misogyny and violence against women — Ice Cube harnessed an American ideal: He innately understood an inalienable right granted to all Americans that resides in the First Amendment — freedom of expression.  

But in the moment, and unsurprisingly, the song produced a national backlash that would eventually find its way to Detroit. 

NWA went on tour the following summer, playing “F* Tha Police” and other songs from “Straight Outta Compton,” the group’s debut album.  

Mayor Coleman Young is briefed on a new Detroit development project by Emmett Moten, the director of community and economic development.

When the tour hit Detroit on Aug. 6, 1989, they were met with opposition from Mayor Coleman A. Young.  

The night of the show, police presence around the Joe Louis Arena was ramped up, the Free Press reported. A DPD sergeant was told by Young’s gang squad leader, Benny Napoleon, to warn the group not to perform their most controversial song. According to Ice Cube, when the group disobeyed this warning and began to perform the song anyway, police standing backstage threw firecrackers, mimicking the sound of gunshots. Chaos ensued. NWA was whisked away, and would later be ticketed and fined. 

But Young himself had risen to power on a platform of anti-police brutality. One of his first actions as mayor was to eliminate the violent DPD STRESS unit known for viciously beating and killing unarmed Black Detroiters. 

NWA’s stop in Detroit shows us how hip-hop exposed a generational divide within the Black community. Detroit’s first Black mayor, an icon to me and Black households across southeast Michigan, used his power to silence young Black artists exercising their First Amendment rights on the subject of police brutality — an issue that continues to be a flashpoint more than 30 years later.  

But it wasn’t just Mayor Young who had an aversion to hip-hop culture and the messages it carried. Local urban contemporary R&B radio station Mix 92.3 advertised itself as the “Home of the lost 45s, and absolutely NO RAP.”  

As hip-hop neared its 16th birthday, we saw a new generation of artists rejected and castigated by their leaders and elders. But hip-hop (and what it represented) would soon rest at the seat of power. 

Not yet 30

In the fall of 2001, Detroiters elected 31-year-old Kwame Kilpatrick mayor.  

Kilpatrick was older than hip-hop, which had not yet reached its 30th birthday.  

I remember my father telling me how impressed he was by this young man, running for mayor, who had just visited Lessenger Middle School, where my father taught.  Several weeks later, as a college freshman in a crowded student center at Wayne State University, I bumped into then-candidate Kilpatrick. I mentioned what my father had told me, and as he recalled the visit in our short conversation, I can only compare the interaction to people who have spoken about meeting President Bill Clinton. That day, although hundreds of people were around, Kilpatrick made me feel like we were the only two people in the building — both members of a hip-hop generation. 

Months later, after Kilpatrick was elected, Def Jam Records co-founder Russell Simmons elected to hold a “Hip-Hop Summit” in Detroit. Simmons wanted to raise youth awareness about the political process, and encourage the younger generation to participate. Kilpatrick, given his age and his charisma, was a great ambassador for this opportunity. The Hip-Hop Summit was a success, attracting thousands of young people to register to vote.   

Hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons held the Detroit Hip-Hop Summit at Cobo Arena on April 26, 2003. Simmons dubbed Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick "the Hip-Hop Mayor," a nickname that did him no favors.

But at the event, Simmons made a proclamation that now lives in infamy, dubbing Kwame Kilpatrick America’s first “Hip-Hop Mayor.”  

Kilpatrick, sporting his trademark diamond earring, had been anointed the first hip-hop mayor by the first hip-hop mogul. 

Clearly, the “Hip-Hop Mayor” moniker did Kilpatrick no favors, and he did no favors to the moniker. His rise and fall have been extensively covered, and need not be re-examined here.  

But in 2002, as Kilpatrick was branded the Hip-Hop Mayor, hip-hop was still on the fringe. The nickname – which Simmons intended as an acknowledgement of a generation and culture’s ascendancy, offered a shorthand that reinforced a certain preconceived animus about a mayor who was young, Black and sometimes immature.  

Hip-hop was not yet 30, and was not ready for the mainstream. But things were changing. 

Big Gretch

In 2018, Michiganders elected Gretchen Whitmer to serve as the state’s second female governor. Whitmer, a magnificent retail politician who can connect with anyone, lights up a room when she walks in. With massive crossover appeal, Whitmer won Macomb County by nearly 5 points, only two years after Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton there by 10 points.  

Soon after her first term began, Whitmer was faced with a global pandemic that quickly made Detroit one of the first COVID-19 hotspots in our country. She was decisive, taking action to contain the pandemic, even as others questioned what she did to keep people safe.  

But Detroiters, who buried far too many loved ones, were grateful for her leadership. 

Not long after receiving national attention for her public opposition to Donald Trump in her handling of COVID-19, Detroit parody rapper GMac Cash wrote a song about Whitmer, giving her a nickname: “Big Gretch.” A GoFundMe campaign raised money to gift Whitmer a pair of Cartier buffalo-horn sunglasses, or “Buffs,” which retail at $2,500 and are a staple of Detroit’s hip-hop culture. 

In 2020, Detroit parody rapper GMac Cash released the song "Big Gretch," lauding Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer for her handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. Whitmer donned a pair of the Cartier C Decor buffalo horn sunglasses, a staple of Detroit hip-hop fashion, to tape the city's Everybody vs. COVID-19 festival, which aired May 29, 2020.

These gestures transcend hip-hop, speaking directly to Black culture itself. Earning a nickname is one of the highest praises someone can receive in the Black community. (In Whitmer’s case, the nickname could easily double as a rap stage name. See: “Big Sean.”) 

And Big Gretch embraced the cultural moment. While she redirected the funds intended for a pair of Buffs to a local community organization, she has never shied away from the Big Gretch moniker. In fact, her recent “Lil Gretch Barbie Campaign,” a play on the Big Gretch nickname, is proof that the most powerful political figure in Michigan openly accepts and embraces hip-hop culture, even as it transcends other messaging aims.  

Hip-hop, at 50, has become a mainstay in political and social discourse, and I am struck how these political figures are representative of hip-hop’s journey from counterculture to dominant culture. 

Like the Black youth that created it, hip-hop has grown up, with the same growing pains all of us have gone through. But hip-hop, somehow, has now become palatable. So palatable that prominent white political leaders can embrace this culture without consequence.  

With longevity, it seems, comes acceptance. 

From the outright hostility from Detroit’s first Black mayor, to the full embrace from our sitting governor, it’s a living testament.  

Something to witness, for all to see.   

Michael Griffie is an educator, lawyer, and infrastructure executive who ran for Congress in Michigan’s 13th Congressional District in 2022.

RankTribe™ Black Business Directory News – Arts & Entertainment

The Weeknd Stuns Fans By Holding High Note For 15 Seconds

The Weeknd isn’t one to play with when it comes to musical talent – something he reminded fans of when he recently hit and held a high note for a whopping 15 seconds on stage.

The feat happened during Abel’s After Hours Til Dawn international tour stop in Warsaw, Poland on Wednesday (August 9).

AD LOADING…

Fans in the crowd went crazy when they realized how long the singer was holding the note for – as it’s certainly no easy feat.

You can view the clip for yourself below.

The After Hours Til Dawn Tour took The Weeknd across North America between July and November 2022, while its international leg began this past June in Lisbon, Portugal.

Last month, it was revealed that the trek has become the best-selling tour in history by a Black artist with $350 million in ticket sales – beating out a tour record previously held by none other than the King of Pop himself, Michael Jackson.

Travis Scott Teases New 'Utopia' Single With The Weeknd & Bad Bunny

Travis Scott Teases New ‘Utopia’ Single With The Weeknd & Bad Bunny

MJ was previously the owner of the record with his 1987 Bad Tour, which grossed $311 million, adjusted for inflation. It came in support of his album of the same name and was the second highest-grossing tour of the ’80s behind Pink Floyd’s A Momentary Lapse of Reason Tour.

The Weeknd celebrated the achievement by posting a video on Twitter of him performing an emphatic cover of Jackson’s “Dirty Diana” during a tour stop.

AD LOADING…

“My king. then, now and forever. rest easy,” he wrote in the caption.

There are still a few months left on the massive 64-date trek, which ends on October 25 in Guadalajara, Mexico. Kaytranada, Snoh Aalegra and Mike Dean have served as the support acts after original opener Doja Cat was forced to pull out due to tonsil surgery.

AD LOADING…

The Weeknd has a long way to go yet before he claims the record for the highest-grossing tour ever, though. Currently, the coveted title belongs to Elton John’s recently wrapped-up Farewell Yellow Brick Road – which pulled in a staggering $910 million across 320 shows.

RankTribe™ Black Business Directory News – Arts & Entertainment