Benson may have been targeted by Texas cops

Reports are conflicting, but there is strong evidence that Cedric Benson may have been the target of overzealous Texas police. Eyewitnesses report problems every time Benson used his 30-foot boat. Police frequently stopped him for inspections. Read more

Bulls court Suns’ skipper D’Antoni

ESPN: At the start of the 2007-08 NBA season, the Chicago Bulls were considered a strong contender for the Eastern Conference crown.

However, the season turned out to be a disaster. Coach Scott Skiles lost his job in December; several of the young players regressed; and the Bulls ended up in the lottery. Now they stand at one of the most important crossroads in their franchise’s history.

Chicago already has interviewed several coaching candidates, and signs are pointing to a possible marriage with Phoenix Suns coach Mike D’Antoni.

Read more of Chad Ford’s report here…

Who’s to blame?

At this point, it’s clear that the Clinton camp is delusional. The party is over and they’re flat out refusing to leave. It isn’t fair then to pick on her anymore. She doesn’t even know where she is. Her friends, though, are another matter.

If Hillary’s superdelegates would urge her to begin to exit this race in a dignified manner, she’d have to oblige. They, and their silence, are the only things keeping Republican hopes alive. If they speak out, the race will end. If they don’t, the questions will continue to be asked and McCain will continue to benefit.

Is that what the less hardcore Clinton “supers” really want?

IS THIS THE END?

Several reports have surfaced that report that this race is over. Clinton’s camp is quiet, NBC’s influential host of Meet the Press, Tim Russert, is calling it. Even Matt Drudge is saying it. Read more

Mint Condition is back!!!

You know you remember 1991’s Breakin’ My Heart (Pretty Brown Eyes); 93’s U Send Me Swingin’; 96’s What Kind of Man Would I Be?; and 1997’s You Don’t Have to Hurt No More.

If you don’t know, well, go ask somebody. Mint Condition is back.

NPR Music: News & Notes , May 6, 2008 - The R&B band Mint Condition has released their ninth album in 18 years — but this one was produced by wielding the power of the Web.

Farai Chideya sits down with band members Stokley Williams, Homer O’Dell and Jeffrey Allen, who weigh in on their longevity in the music business and the new album, E-Life.

Obama wins North Carolina, still too close in Indy

***UPDATE***
Hillary Clinton apparently has squeaked by in Indiana (NBC reports). Read more here.

Barack Obama won decisively in North Carolina tonight. All but erasing any dent Hillary Clinton put in his lead by her Pennsylvania performance. The drama of the night, however, came from Indiana, where even at midnight it was too close to call. Read more

Blue Briefs: Hillary’s Chant - “Yes We Will!”

Am I the only one who finds Clinton’s new chant, “Yes We Will!” to be a bit tacky and petty? It only makes sense in relation to Barack Obama’s wildly popular “Yes We Can!”

I know, I know. His is hardly the picture of originality, but seriously. What’s worse? The unoriginal, or the person who is so completely out of ideas that they copy the unoriginal. (Of course it isn’t as bad as when McCain tried to steal “Fired up and ready to go!”)

Just a thought.

Mandela concert line-up unveiled

Queen, Leona Lewis, Annie Lennox and the Soweto Gospel Choir are among the acts that will appear at a concert for Nelson Mandela’s 90th birthday in June.

The former South African president will travel to London for the 27 June event, which will also feature Dame Shirley Bassey, Simple Minds and Razorlight.

Tickets go on public sale on Friday and Hyde Park will host a crowd of 46,664 - Mr Mandela’s old prison number.

It is now the name of his Aids charity, which will get proceeds from the show.

Surprise stars

Organisers have promised further stars on the bill, with “several major artists keeping silent about their involvement in order to take both Mr Mandela and the audience by surprise”, a statement said.

Eminem, U2, Amy Winehouse and the Spice Girls are among the other acts who have been mentioned in the press.

Read the whole article by the BBC-UK here…

Darryl Fears: Critics of old guard take black activism online

The new black revolution, as singer Gil Scott-Heron famously predicted, is not being televised.

It is raging online.

A growing cadre of young black activists is using the Internet in an attempt to eclipse traditional civil rights organizations such as the NAACP and hit the refresh button on the civil rights movement. Bloggers with names such as the Cruel Secretary, and blogs called What About Our Daughters? and the African American Political Pundit, have railed against groups in the “black-o-sphere,” saying they do not understand young black Americans, are behind the times and react too slowly to incidents involving the younger generation.

Read this Washington Post article by Darryl Fears here…

Total Chaos: The Art and Aesthetics of Hip-Hop

Hip-hop is one of the most important global arts movements of the past two decades, moving beyond rap music to transform theater, dance, performance, poetry, literature, fashion, design, photography, painting, and film. Through essays, interviews, roundtable discussions, and more, Total Chaos provides a deep, incisive look at the hip-hop arts movement in the voices of its pioneers, innovators, and mavericks.

Buzz
“Total Chaos is Jeff Chang at his best: fierce and unwavering in his commitment to document the hip-hop explosion. In beginning to define a hip-hop aesthetic, this gathering of artists, pioneers, and thinkers illuminates the special truth that hip-hop speaks to youth around the globe.”
—Bakari Kitwana, author of The Hip Hop Generation: Young Blacks and the Crisis in African American Culture and Why White Kids Love Hip-Hop: Wankstas, Wiggers, Wannabes, And the New Reality of Race in America

“Jeff Chang, whose Can’t Stop Won’t Stop is nothing less than the finest rap history extant, envisions a future in which the four hip-hop ‘elements’-MC’ing, DJ’ing, B-Boying, graffiti-generate a polycultural, transnational, sampled-and-bricolaged vanguard in theater, dance, poetry, fiction, painting, and design. Uncommonly inspired anthology…readable and provocative.”
-Robert Christgau, Rolling Stone

Read more here…

Book excerpt:

Hip-hop is one of the big ideas of this generation, a grand expression of our collective creative powers. But, when recognized at all, the hip-hop arts have often been divided into subcategorical themes—”spoken word poetry”, “street literature”, “post-multicultural theatre”, “post-black art”, “urban outsider art”—by critics trained to classify trees while lost in the forest. Perhaps this is simply because the hip-hop arts movement did not undertake to formally announce itself in such circles, as in Antonin Artaud’s 1938 manifesto The Theater And Its Double or the 1971 Black Arts Movement anthology, The Black Aesthetic. Perhaps this is simply because, despite all the interest in the talking, the hip-hop arts movement has been chiefly concerned with doing, which is just what it has done, organically, for over three decades now.

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