2010-05-03

  
    I’m late for an interview with one of my favorite Chicago artists: Yaw Agyeman.  The Ghanaian seed that was nourished by the soil of his traditional parents and in the sunshine of the Low End of Chicago is a soul/hiphop/jazz/whatever-you-like kind of artist. A singer, MC, poet, writer—Yaw is a Renaissance Man in music—let’s just say, the guy is deep.  I rush up embarrassed about my tardiness and Yaw casually stands and informs me that “it’s cool.”  His navy blue blazer is covering his t-shirt and there’s a scarf around his neck, jeans and a t-shirt are at the core of this ensemble.  He’s so mellow it’s difficult now to imagine him as I first saw him: on stage, jumping up and down and wailing into a microphone with the energy to move the crowd, the power to shake the room and the reach to touch souls.

    
    The  thirty-two year old singer who first started his journey with music as a child singing into his father’s recorder is now regularly performing across the city of Chicago and potentially overseas as well.  Fufu and Spinach: A Mixtape makes it clear that there is no way to box in Yaw’s creations as one particular genre—he dabbles in, and mixes and matches many different kinds of music. The closest he comes to a particular genre would probably be some kind of neo-soul, but there is too much jazz, hip-hop and live instrumentation (to name a few characteristics) for it to be characterized as only that.  So we sat down to talk about his travels in and through music and I attempted to get a handle on the relationship—the affair—that he and his music maintained.  How the two influence and direct one another and how he’s been changing on his continued path to a better Yaw.

    Continue Reading...

Issue08

Fiction/Poetry

Authorized: Daunte Henderson

Lifestyle

Fun Stuff to Attend

Politics

Lady Justice, Hear My Plea

Music

The Understated Part of Music: Album Artwork Only

Movies

Date Night, How to Train Your Dragon, Clash of the Titans & More

Sports

Why People Cannot Be Happy with Duke

Issue08

2010-04-14 

Events that are happening at the University of Chicago and the greater Chicago area!

Continue Reading...

Issue08

2010-04-14 

MOVIES!!!

3 Real Detroit Weekly's Movie Reviews and a little somethin' somethin' from me

The Gods Must Be Lazy

Rating: ♣♣♣

Clash of the Titans

Starring: Sam Worthington, Liam Neeson, Ralph Fiennes and Mads Mikkelsen. Written by Travis Beacham, Phil May and Matt Manfredi. Directed by Louis Leterrier. Rated PG-13.
by Kirk Vanderbeek

If it does nothing else, Clash of the Titans will have at least provided the current generation of drunken frat boys with their go-to line when they’ve managed to convince a fall-down dizzy freshman into their room — because we all know that as his fly goes down, this dude is yelling out: “Release the Kraken!” Let’s just hope, for the poor girl’s sake, that her inebriated titan can turn in something better than a three-star performance …

Continue Reading...

Issue08

2010-04-14 

Whenever a seat opens on the Supreme Court, we know that the next few months will be filled with controversy and political bickering over the confirmation of a particular nominee for Justice. These confirmations are highly political from the very beginning, as Justices tend to retire when a President similar to their ideological leaning is in office. But this hasn’t always been the case. As the New York Times wrote a few days ago, “Justice John Paul Stevens who announced his resignation from the Supreme Court on Friday after 34 years, may be the last Justice from a time when ability and independence, rather than perceived ideology, were viewed as the crucial qualifications for a seat on the court.” So, we see that the political nature of Supreme Court nominations has been a relatively recent phenomenon.

The consideration of race and gender for judicial nominees has been another recent phenomenon. However, some people argue that this should not be the case. Holding to an older perspective of the court as an independent tribunal, these people say that the merit of the Justice is more important than their sex or race. While most can agree to this, there is an underlying assumption that the most qualified candidate is a white male. The response to this has been varied, but there is a growing suspicion that “merit” includes more than how good a “legal mind” a person is. Indeed, the two current female Justices have said some controversial, and insightful, things on the subject.

Continue Reading...

Issue08

2010-04-14
 

 
Authorized: Daunte Henderson

I recently met Daunte Henderson at Blacklight Magazine's Dissect the Mic Open Mic event about a month ago. Before performing, the recent Bradley University graduate announced that he was scheduled to publish his first book entitled Things I've Learned While Walking. The book is a semi-autobiographical narrative describing many of Henderson's views on current events in American society. Henderson makes no bones about it, he's a devoutly Christian. At a time where organized religion is coming under heavy fire, I wanted to explore the young author's journey to his own faith.

Continue Reading...

Issue08

2010-04-14 

The Album Artwork Only Post

Continue Reading...

Issue08

2010-04-08

Everyone enjoyed their taste of a true college athletics “playoff” system as the tournament concluded with the Duke Blue Devils winning (another) NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball championship. That civil unrest you hear in the distance is the sounds of Duke-haters not being able to shallow the reality of Duke being the last team standing and crowned champions. Although I am a certified Duke-hater (with other certification in the Lakers, Yankees, and Bears categories), I believe Duke did everything it needed to do to win fairly. This separates me from another category of Duke-haters, the popular “CBS is in love with Duke for television ratings and gave them a notoriously easy route to the Final Four and championship game” group. With a record of 29-5, Duke earned the third number one seed behind Kansas and Kentucky (both 32-2) and above Syracuse (28-4). The rest of the brackets are set using an S-Curve system slotting the remaining teams within a specific bracket based on wins, RPI, quality of schedule, etc. Luke Winn wrote a fantastic article explaining the process in 2005 and the process essentially has not changed. What does this mean for you and me? It means that Kansas would get the harder bracket because it was a better team and Syracuse the weakest bracket for it was the weakest number one. CBS’s sponsorship with the NCAA gives them the power to control game times with the purpose of maximizing ratings; this is why you saw Syracuse early in the day along with the overall number one team Kansas and Kentucky/Duke in primetime. Unless you want to suggest Duke playing later (and in primetime) gave them a significant advantage on the others, then the CBS ratings conspiracy is a tad bit flawed.

Continue Reading...

Issue07

Politics

 Tea Party Craze Hits a Fever Pitch

Sports

McNabb's Departure is the Right Decision

2010 March Madness

Movies

Throwback to The Last Dragon

Music

Who is Bruno Mars?

Fiction/Poetry

Dark Twain 

Issue07

2010-03-31

Donovan McNabb has been a polarizing figure among the Philadelphia Eagles’ fans ever since he was drafted second overall by the Eagles in the 1999 NFL Draft. Support for McNabb from the Philly fans has fluctuated from year to year but for the most part, he has not been warmly embraced by the “City of Brotherly Love”.
 
Nevertheless, the Philadelphia Eagles organization has maintained unwavering support for McNabb.
 

Well, not anymore.
 
According to several sports media outlets, McNabb has been placed on the trading block and it seems that a trade is imminent, with the Raiders being the leading candidate to land the six-time All-Pro.

Continue Reading...

Issue07

2010-03-31

For the most part, when I write about politics, I do my best to just lay out the issue. I'm rather transparently a liberal African-American, so no matter how hard I try to conceal it, my biases soon reveal themselves. In this article, I have to say, I'm not going to hide my biases.

The right wing fringe of the country is bringing in extremist rhetoric to a country that is vulnerable and desperate. I will admit that the health care bill, although expanding health insurance for 35 million more Americans, is still a disappointment on both sides of the party spectrum. For the left, it's a political victory that didn't achieve its ultimate goal of government run health insurance. For the Right, they succeeded in scathing off the public option, but they were unable to stop Obama's health care overhaul from passing. The Democrats won that battle, but the war still rages on.

Continue Reading...

Issue07

2010-03-30

I didn't know that there were people who had not seen or heard of the movie The Last Dragon aka Berry Gordon's The Last Dragon.  Yes, for those of you who have not seen it, Berry Gordon and Motown Productions made a movie.  

A young man searches for the "master" to obtain the final level of martial arts mastery known as the glow. Along the way he must fight an evil martial arts expert and an rescue a beautiful singer from an obsessed music promoter.

Continue Reading...

Issue07

2010-03-30 

2010 March Madness: Nothing more than a fluke.

As I look at my ESPN Bracket Challenge rankings I notice that my “friend” Catherine sits comfortably in second place – for the second year in a row no doubt – while I flounder away tied for eighth.  Now, I have been gone from college basketball all year but I did research for the tournament.  How many games has Catherine watched this year? 0!  How many did she watch last year? 0!  If you recall last year’s tournament you will remember that it was “chalk” all through the tournament; 2009 marked the first time that all the 1, 2, and 3 seeds made it to the Sweet 16.  This year all hell broke loose early and often with my Georgetown Hoyas losing in round one (along with 6 other teams losing to double digit seeds in round one).  Of course I waltzed myself right into Northern Iowa whooping up on Kansas in round two – destroying my bracket, dignity, CBS’ television ratings, and my remote.  St. Mary’s over Villanova?  Well, why not at this point.  Cornell beating Wisconsin? Sign me right up.  This would be the first time an Ivy League school has advanced in the tournament since the late 90s because it’s March Madness and anything can happen.  All this leads me to a final four featuring two number five seeds battling Michigan St. vs Butler and lone number one seed Duke vs. West Virginia.  Yippie!

Continue Reading...

Issue07

2010-03-30

One of our past music posts covered the latest Travis McCoy track, Billionaire, which featured Bruno Mars.  I had never heard of Bruno before but after finding the Travie track I was suddenly seeming to hear and see Bruno everywhere else too.  Especially as the buzz over the B.o.B song Nothin' On You, another song Bruno was featured on, started to grow.  Naturally I thought to myself "who is this guy?" "he kind of sounds like Frankie J...."  "I liked him on the Travie track, maybe he's generally a legit artist."

So I did some research. Bruno can be found on myspace, facebook, twitter and lastfm; I was able to find a solid 3 tracks that were actually his and not just him being featured; and for a while that was it.  But good things come to those who wait, so this is what I eventually got.

 Continue Reading...

Issue07

2010-03-30

 Authorized: Dark Twain

 
When I sat down with Marcus “Dark Twain” Wright, I worried that I wouldn't have enough to say for him to respond in an interesting manner. I'd seen Twain's videos online and have seen him perform in the quiet New York spoken word scene. He was far too interesting for just your run-of-the-mill questions, but I had nothing else, so I asked him to be prepared to just do some introductory material so I could get into a groove.
He'd been looking for a way to get his name from Lincoln University to Lincoln Park. Looking to carry the Dark Twain entity into Chicago, Twain has worked diligently on his performance craft, earning a spot in the Parle Poetry Tour.

I sat down with Twain, attempting to learn a little more about his attempt to popularize his brand. I soon found out that this interview would be a little different than others.

Continue Reading...