ERSEY CITY — The All Points West Music and Arts Festival aimed at separate sides of the brain for the first two of its three days at Liberty State Park here. Friday, headlined by hip-hop from
Jay-Z and rock from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Vampire Weekend, was for the left brain: verbal, analytical, conceptual. Saturday, featuring rock from Tool and My Bloody Valentine and Gypsy-punk party music from Gogol Bordello, was for the right brain: intuitive, holistic, more attuned to sound than to messages.
Friday was full of cleverness and constructed personas. (Its three headliners, along with the rappers Q-Tip and Organized Konfusion and the rock band the National, are all New Yorkers.) Saturday, from the three guitars and two drum kits of ... And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead in early afternoon to the pounding, droning, churning finale by Tool, was about reveling in the power of noise.
It was the second annual All Points West, the East Coast project of Goldenvoice, which produces the
Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival. The event, which was accessible from Manhattan by efficient ferries, is a work in progress.
Stages have been moved since last year but still aren’t ideally situated. Performers on the midsize Bullet Stage had to compete with sound from the main stage (the Blue Comet) as well as from a dance-music disc jockey nearby and from a sponsor’s speakers. Magnificent views of the Statue of Liberty and the New York skyline were given only to the performers and the video cameras behind them; audiences faced away from the water. Prime viewing areas and the paths between stages became mud pits after the deluges, something Coachella doesn’t have to worry about in the California desert.
Saturday’s concert was, literally, a blast when My Bloody Valentine performed. Its songs, which once layered distortion atop three-chord songs and lovesick lyrics, have turned even noisier since the band reunited last year. Unfortunately at All Points West vocals and melodies were almost completely buried in the exhilarating surge of chords. As usual at a My Bloody Valentine set the music culminated in a sustained roar — about 14 minutes long — as the full band strummed and pummeled the instruments on a chord dissolving into cacophony in “You Made Me Realise.” It conjured some elemental cataclysm, a purely visceral rock experience.
Tool, by contrast, had mapped out every jolt in its music. While video screens showed creepy, death-white anthropoids in constant metamorphosis, Maynard James Keenan sang with baleful melancholy about dread, fury and desolation over music that clanged and churned, melding hard-rock brawn and progressive-rock precision in gorgeous bitterness. St. Vincent, led by the guitarist Annie Clark, had its own eruptions of noise as Ms. Clark’s enigmatic pop songs, tinged by turns with 1960s whimsy and minimalistic patterns, rode upheavals of distortion from her guitar.
Performers facing soggy crowds on Friday worked hard to entertain. Jay-Z was a last-minute replacement for the
Beastie Boys; one member of the group, Adam Yauch (a k a MCA), needed surgery for cancer of the salivary gland. But Jay-Z brought his full tour production, including a band complete with rock guitar and horn section, his sidekick Memphis Bleek and a video display with montages of his rise from the Marcy Houses projects in Brooklyn to his current status as a hit maker and mogul.
It’s a triumphal tale that Jay-Z delivered with fastidious variations of meter, vocal tone and backup, whether he was keeping rap-rock alive or bouncing syllables off an exotic sampled vocal. He started the set graciously: rapping the Beastie Boys’ “No Sleep Till Brooklyn.”
Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs displayed the words “Get Well MCA” on her arm throughout her band’s set, while other adornments came and went: a glittery shawl that she wrapped around her face like a burqa, a black jacket with “KO” on the back in studs. Although the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ lyrics sometimes hint at strife, loss and longing, the songs were outright romps, with Ms. O skipping, strutting and twirling across the stage. The band socked out its grooves, switching frequently between its older post-punk guitar riffs and its newer synthesizer pulses, and Ms. O was all smiles. “It’s not wet enough up here!” she cackled.
Vampire Weekend remains nerdy and proud of it. In crisp, perky new wave tunes with an occasional hint of African guitar for embellishment, Ezra Koenig sings about collegiate characters, and a few songs that weren’t on the band’s debut album didn’t stray far from it; one was called “Ladies of Cambridge.”
As the sun set Sunday, members of the tight-knit Detroit hip-hop community gathered to pay tribute to one of Motor City rap's brightest stars.
Titus (Baatin) Glover, the Detroit rapper who cofounded the acclaimed trio Slum Village, was found dead at the age of 35 Saturday morning.
"He taught me so much, not just musically but about life," Miz Korona, the evening's host, said Sunday. "The way he was on his songs was the way he was in life."
Held at 5 Elements Gallery in Detroit, "Gone Too Soon: A Benefit for the Family of Titus 'Baatin' Glover" had drawn about 70 people by 9:30 p.m. and was expected to feature performances and DJ sets by Jessica Care Moore, DJ K-Fresh and DJ Sicari, who owns the gallery.
Ty Townsend, road manager for Slum Village the last 7 years, said he organized the benefit to help Glover's family. Townsend added that a second memorial is planned for the African World Festival on Aug. 14, which is to feature Detroit musician Amp Fiddler.
"When people talk about Detroit in hip-hop circles it was because of people like Baatin," said Kelly Frazier, DJ K-Fresh. "He brought so much energy. He was different. He was Detroit soul."
The Wayne County Medical Examiner's Office said Sunday it found no evidence of trauma on Glover's body and that toxicology tests results are pending.
The Detroit Police Department said it isn't treating the death as a homicide, unless the medical examiner provides information to the contrary.
Glover left Slum Village in 2002, later telling the Free Press he had been diagnosed with schizophrenia. He continued to record and play occasional solo dates before returning to the Slum fold for the group's upcoming album, "Villa Manifesto," due Sept. 22.
The group's 2000 national debut, "Fantastic Vol. 2," landed on critics' best-of lists and set the stage for Slum's highest-profile commercial release, "Trinity," two years later.
Wall Street banks that were bailed out by the government gave executives bonuses regardless of performance, it has been suggested in a report.
The report by New York Attorney Andrew Cuomo's office said there was "no clear rhyme or reason" for pay and it had been disconnected from performance.
Controversially, Congress is seeking to give government a direct say in what bank bosses are compensated.
Top US banks paid out huge bonuses despite gaining taxpayer bail-outs.
"Compensation for bank employees has become unmoored from the banks' financial performance" said the report.
The report - prepared over nine months - argues that some banks paid out larger bonuses than their profits, while simultaneously taking exceptional state emergency funds.
Difficult year
Ten banks were given money as part of the government's $700bn financial stimulus plan.
In 2008 Goldman Sachs paid $4.8bn in bonuses, representing more than twice its income. Similarly Morgan Stanley awarded bonuses of $4.475bn while earning just $1.7bn.
The government provided both firms with $10bn, as part of the its wider Troubled Asset Relief Program (Tarp). Goldman recently reported a better-than-expected net profit of $3.44bn for the three months to June.
Citigroup and Merrill Lynch paid bonuses of $5.33bn and $3.6bn respectively while seeing losses of more than $27m each, said the report.
"Other banks, like State Street and Bank of New York Mellon, paid bonuses that were more in line with their net income, which is certainly what one would expect in a difficult year like 2008".
The proposal in Congress has been opposed by many Republicans who think it gives the state too much control over private firms' pay.
"The problem with executive compensation is essentially, from the systemic standpoint, that it gives perverse incentives" said Barney Frank, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee.
He said the lack of penalties meant "heads you win, tails you break even".
It's no secret that Def Jam is not what it once was. The mighty and resplendent empire started by Rubin and Simmons back in '84 has been responsible for the careers of some of hip-hop's greatest icons, from DMC to EPMD to Hova. But Def Jam has been in decline, especially since the recent departure of its most important figurehead and president. With a dwindling roster that boasts only the lower echelon of next-gen talent (Big Sean, Ace Hood) with none of the more marketable and popular ones, and an insulting loss in the recent bidding war over the cash-cow Drizzy Drake, LA Reid is not a very happy camper. Meth and Red's Blackout 2, though a critically solid album, met lackluster sales. In order to avoid a poor yearly review that has been buoyed almost singlehandedly by The-Dream and Rick Ross, Def Jam needs another saviour. Indeed, the success or failure of this year now rests squarely on the shoulders of one man: Loso (in case you ain't know so).
So it's not surprising that Def Jam spared nothing for the release of Fab's fifth studio album, "Loso's Way," dropping Tuesday July 28th. The album, with a vague, hackneyed concept a la American Gangster, is supposed to recall the gangster classic "Carlito's Way," although the reality of this connection past the titles eludes even me. However this gangster-flick concept is not the only thing that Def Jam and Fabolous have borrowed from their dearly departed President. In classic Hova 90s fashion, Def Jam has released a movie with the same title to accompany the album. It falls somewhere between "Get Rich or Die Trying" and "Streets is Watching," but infinitely worse than both. Def Jam and Desert Storm Productions were nice enough to extend an invitation to the Bodega Fam for the press screening of said movie, a 30-minute flick starring Fabolous with guest spots by DJ Clue, Styles P, and some kid who I recognized from The Wire. Unfortunately, I was chosen to attend.
Not much really needs to be said about the movie itself. It contained every possible thug-life-rapper-drama cliche that has ever been written. During the course of a long 40 minutes, Fab is shot, arrested twice, hits the club, has baby-mama drama, converses intently with his Jewish attorney, deals with his burgeoning success, gets screwed over by his label, and has his authenticity questioned by real dudes in the street. Fab in the studio is spliced with a montage of kids playing in the Brevoort Houses of Bed-Stuy as wanton criminal activity occurs in broad daylight. The movie's saving grace comes in the form of Styles P, a disgruntled thug who releases a diss record hating on Fab's success and is later revealed to be the masked assailant responsible for the shooting. But despite the ridiculousness of the entire thing, I can't front that I enjoyed watching it. Thoroughly.
Which brings us to the album itself. Enter Loso, the young and talented rap star with a latent inferiority complex stemming from his inability to create a true classic. His problem: consistency. While we all know Fab can deliver the powerful punch lines and banging singles, his repetitive four-bar flow and mixtape style have never been able to really support a full album. His debut, "Ghetto Fabolous," is the only thing that comes close. So needless to say, on his fifth try, Fab has something to prove.
The album opens with "The Way," a cinematic, horn-laced production by StreetRunner. Loso comes out in character, firing shots at would-be adversaries and eager to solidify a spot as one of New York's most respected. And I would almost believe it, if it weren't for the 15 subsequent tracks. This is probably one of Fab's best lyrical performances on the album. The problem is, the next three songs are all different versions of this one--the shit-talk punchline tracks over southern-sounding synths and horns. Not that it's terrible, but unless the hook is really fire, it's easy to lose interest.
Fortunately, Loso brings in a dream team of R&B crooners (Ryan Leslie, Keri Hilson, Ne-Yo, Marsha Ambrosius, Jeremih, Trey Songz, The-Dream) to make the filler tracks more palatable. Most notably, Jeremih's banging chorus on the epic, triumphant-return track "My Time" shifts focus away from Fab's faltering lyrical quality. Instead of the witticisms we've come to expect, Fab insipidly rhymes "game so bickery/so full of trickery/nursery rhymin/hickory dickory/." Damn, from the guy who gave us "Seven Minutes of Death," this is a serious downgrade. But the track bangs, so whatever.
But don't get me wrong, Fab definitely has some killer punchlines on this album. On the requisite Wayne feature "Salute," he flips a crazy internal rhyme as he spits, "my money is yay tall/your digit stack is midget mack/ that mean its gon' stay small/ told em I dont see nobody im a rappin ray charles/." However, the relative infrequency of these stanzas leads me to one conclusion: the album succeeds where the hooks are good on the singles. The Ryan Leslie-produced "Everything, Everyday, Everywhere" continues the their great chemistry and brings Fab back to the formula that has worked for him time and again: a danceable pop beat, catchy R&B hook, and fairly meaningless rhymes with hot punchlines. Same goes for the lead single "Throw It in the Bag," an instant hit with a Dream-assisted chorus.
Generally the songs on this album fall into two categories: pop-bangers with catchy hooks, which are invariably incredibly enjoyable, or generic filler tracks, which get tiresome and frustrating when its clear Fab could be doing better. "There He Go" (the posse-cut) is a crowded mess and the Alchemist-laced "Lullaby" sounds like it was a beat that was thrown on the cutting room floor until Fab unwittingly picked it up--unfortunately his best verses are wasted on a lackluster beat. Add two R&B "for the ladies" tracks that come consecutively and could pretty much be the same song--"Makin Love" (feat Ne-Yo), and "Last Time" (feat Trey Songz)--and the middle of the album starts to falter.
However, when Fab trades swag for substance and embarks on more introspective and heartfelt topics, the album picks up again. "Stay" is a lush soundscape of electronic strings with a soulful, pleading chorus from Marsha Ambrosius where Fab wistfully reminisces about his absentee father and refuses to follow his footsteps. It's refreshing that Fab finally moves beyond the punchlines and you can hear some genuine emotion in his voice as he rhymes "to just walk away, like you ain't even my/ like, like i ain't even your/ I can't even say it/ I ain't even sure."
Similarly, on the Jay-Z-assisted "Money Goes, Honey Stay," Fab deals with the fair-weather wifeys over romantic strings, giving more cohesion to the concept element of the album--a semblance of a cohesive narrative. Finally, in the album's closer "I Miss My Love," Loso showcases his storytelling abilities as he paints a crime drama of hood intrigue, bringing life to a largely unimpressive beat. When Fab decides to show us his real skills instead of settling for trite, hastily written phrases and instant gratification, the result is phenomenal.
So maybe Fab hasn't fulfilled his dream of crafting a classic. Maybe, no certainly, this album does falter in spots--sometimes in beat selection, sometimes the R&B hooks veer into gratuitous excess, and sometimes his verses just sound lazy. But after listening to this album a few times, I began to understand Loso a lot better. Instead of being a one-dimensional, ego-driven pop sensation, he became a much more nuanced character, akin to the Carlito his album emulates. I realized that all the shit-talk, the ego and swag comes from that basic anxiety of acceptance, that nagging self-doubt, that need to validate one's own place in the pantheon of rap. As always, the talent is there but the vision is scattered. I can only hope the next LP unifies the two so that he can achieve what he truly deserves: something more authentic then pop success. Till then, I'll wait on the mixtape.
Ariel Fernández Díaz, a pioneer within the Cuban Hip-Hop movement, is not only a well respected DJ (DJ Asho), journalist, but also a true Hip-Hop historian. “I always explain in the context of Cuba, you cannot analyze the history of Hip-Hop culture in Cuba without analyzing the history of Cuba itself. Especially its relationship with the United States,” Ariel explains as we share a plate of yucca fries and enjoy cappuccino in a quaint Brazilian café in downtown Manhattan. Known as the “The Cuban Hip-Hop Ambassador” Ariel’s talent and passion for Hip-Hop culture has brought him to New York City, where he has been working extremely hard for the past four years.
Ariel’s relentless hard work has everything to do with his experiences in Cuba. Despite the difficult task of gaining access to American Hip-Hop music due to the embargo with America, Cubans managed to adopt and develop a Hip-Hop culture of their own. “In Cuba even today, 50 years after the revolution, there is not one record store, where you can buy an album from any country, not only American music or Latin music. There is not one record store in the entire country where you go with your money or your dollars and say okay I’m buying the last album of Michael Jackson or I’m buying the last album of Calle 30. The only way you get access to foreign music in Cuba is through personal relationships, personal connections, and friends from other countries that would send the music to you through mail or through a friend when they come. Or have family members who will send you the music. So you always need somebody who will provide the music to you, there is no other way to get it.” This inaccessibility defines Cuban Hip-Hop.
During the formative years of the Cuban scene listening to American Hip-Hop stations was illegal. Hip-Hop fans would illegally pick up Miami radio stations with combination of a good antenna, and even better weather. Hip-Hop in Cuba began during the “Special Period” in the mid 90’s when the Soviet Union fell and Cuba lost all economic support from the European socialist countries. Cubans who were once comfortable were instantly living in extreme poverty with barely any food or resources to live day to day. So not only was there an extreme lack of resources, but also a strained relationship between Cuba and America. “Cuba is always twenty years back in technology. So when America had cassettes, we had 8-track tapes. When America had CDs, we were using cassettes. Back in the day I used to have 8-track tape machine, a Russian machine from the Soviet Union with big tapes. What everybody was doing was connecting the machine to the radio to try to get the signal from the radio, and try to record the music straight from the radio station without commercials. That was basically a type of mixtape.” These Cuban mixtapes would then be shared at parties where people could enjoy their favorite songs. And since there was no vinyl, Cubans created their own way of DJing.
Ariel explains, “Then people started mixing with tapes. People would get a Walkman, and basically you were taking the cover of the Walkman so you can put the tape in easy without opening it. Two Walkmans keep them open, and put the tape in and you mark the tape where there is track and then there is a mixer in the middle. I started DJing like that.” This meticulous was the only way. With the mass production and commodification that is music in America it is hard for us to digest not having music at our fingertips, especially now with the Internet where one can find any song and album for free. In Cuba it was and is the opposite. It is possible for there to be one person that may be the sole owner of a particular album in the entire country. This made that person a carrier of extreme power.
Ariel: “I’ll tell you a funny story I remember one day somebody knocked on my door at 5 am just because he knew through gossip that I had the Common album ‘Like Water for Chocolate’. He knocked on my door at 5 o‘clock in the morning saying, “Yo man please lend me a copy of the CD. I know you have it. Somebody told me you have it. That was somebody so desperate to get access to music, the music that they love. It definitely created a passion, a real extra passion because you don’t have access to music. I think it’s a kind of beauty.”
Some people may describe Ariel Fernandez Diaz as “Afro-Cuban” others may call him Cuban because to them there is no separation of African identity and Cuban identity, but Ariel sees himself as a black man who is a part of the African Diaspora. For him Hip-Hop is a movement of the oppressed blacks within Cuba. “It’s definitely the voice of the oppressed people in the society, mostly the voice of the people who are left out in the society. And it happens that more than 95 percent of the people who are representing the Hip-Hop culture in Cuba happen to be black or African descent. I don’t think its coincidence.” Castro’s revolution in 1959 was about solidarity amongst Cubans, so the issue of race, which was viewed as a dividing factor during a time when Cuba especially needed strength and motives for unification, was swept underneath the rug. “And also we need to understand that most of the people who were down with Fidel and the revolution were people that came from the middle to high class. Fidel came from a rich family. He was really well educated, he was a lawyer, he was able to go to the university and had really good connections. The revolution, like some people say, was a class going over another class, the middle class going over the higher class. It was not the really poor people going over the high class. Definitely for Fidel and all the people who were involved with this process, race and justice of history was not a priority. People in the revolution had a priority about ownership of the land, about being proud of your connection with the land and the history of that land. Race was not an issue for them.” This proved to be a problem for the upcoming generation of blacks within Cuba who still felt racially oppressed and subjugated. Cuba has all the issues that a post-colonial nation has and it is clear that the issue of race is an uneasy one for most.
Because of the revolution Cuba never had the equivalent to a “Black power movement” that celebrated blackness, like we had in the U.S. Thus Hip-Hop provided a forum for efforts to gestate black empowerment. Ariel adds, “The main agenda of Hip-Hop was to bring the black issue up, more than anything. More about black identity, and the black movement.”
Ariel describes Hip-Hop in Cuba as “revolution within a revolution.” It served as a continuum of the political fight for justice and solidarity within the country. There were no get rich schemes or big record deals, because it was just not possible, so Hip-Hop was used as a political tool for a lost generation. “There are a lot of things in Cuba that we like. We like to have free health care, free education, we like that the streets are safe. But we also want more business, we also want access to Internet, we also want freedom to travel. So when I say a revolution within revolution is that we wanted to keep the benefits of the system but at the same time update the system. I am going to bring to my generation what my generation needs.” In a stagnant Cuba that still idealizes Castro and the revolution, Ariel and the Hip-Hop generation provide a voice that respects Castro’s endeavors but knows that Cuba needs to move forward.
Great news. Ma Dukes and Dilla's heirs have finished a year-long battle with the estate's executors to retain full control. It's a great day and much deserved.
From Okayplayer...
"We received good word in an email from the homey Jeff at Stones Throw last night that Ma Dukes and J Dilla's other heirs have recently succeeded in their legal battle against the executors of J Dilla's estate. The previous executors have resigned and a new administrator has been appointed who is looking forward to working closely with the family throughout the process...Be on the lookout for an official statement from the new executors of the J Dilla estate, coming soon."
CONCERT promoters tend to have a few standard goals, like turning a profit and keeping a show running smoothly. But for the organizers of All Points West, the three-day, 60-band event this weekend in Liberty State Park in Jersey City, there is another hope: to break the curse of the New York rock festival.
Forty years ago, with Woodstock, New York gave the world what many call the archetype of the outdoor rock festival. In the last decade, though, as musical lollapaloozas have sprouted around the country, the region has largely missed out. One event after another has either been scrapped early or flamed out; for promoters the list is like a litany of war dead:
Bonnaroo N.E., Field Day, Vineland, Creamfields, Across the Narrows, among others.
Planned as an East Coast cousin of the
Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, All Points West began last year in Liberty State Park in Jersey City, a lip of green across the Hudson River with inspiring views of Lower Manhattan and the Statue of Liberty. Its second iteration opens on Friday with
Jay-Z, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Vampire Weekend as first-night headliners, continuing with Tool, My Bloody Valentine, Gogol Bordello and Neko Case on Saturday; and Coldplay, Echo and the Bunnymen and MGMT on Sunday.
It’s an impressive lineup, made even more impressive by the last-minute addition of Jay-Z: he replaced the
Beastie Boyslast week after that band had to cancel when one member, Adam Yauch, said he had to undergo treatment for cancer. But, as All Points West organizers and many other concert executives say, a good lineup alone does not guarantee success in New York.
“It’s one of the toughest markets to do a three-day festival,” said Paul Tollett, president of Goldenvoice, the Los Angeles-based promoter (also behind Coachella) that presents the festival with AEG Live, its corporate parent. “When you do a show in the thick of a city, there’s inherently going to be more restrictions. That’s the trade-off of it being so close.”
Compared with the rural or otherwise sparsely populated areas where most other big events are held — like Coachella, in Indio, Calif., or Bonnaroo, on a 700-acre farm in Tennessee — New York poses major hurdles to any would-be promoter. Labor and equipment are significantly more expensive here; pressure from residents over noise and congestion can be strong; and the market is saturated with top talent 365 days a year.
Space itself is a scarce commodity. “There’s no land, baby,” said Ron Delsener, the longtime rock promoter who is now chairman of the New York division of Live Nation. “There’s not 3,000 acres. There’s tunnels and bridges and millions of people walking around here.”
Red tape also tends to get in the way, and at All Points West last year one particular problem led to a lot of bad publicity. Since the festival was held at a New Jersey state park, drinking was permitted only in a small area, and with a limit of five drinks a customer. That may sound fair, but for one number-crunching commenter on the music blog
Brooklynvegan.com, it was intolerable: “What if you got there at noon? One beer every two-plus hours. Yikes.”
Mr. Tollett acknowledged the beer issue and other problems, like the official ferries to the festival from Manhattan, which cost $30 round-trip on the day of the show and had long lines.
“We didn’t make it as fun as that show could be,” he said, and added that many kinks have been worked out.
Round-trip tickets for the ferry service offered by the festival have been cut by $5 ($20 in advance, or $25 the day of the show), but the festival still neglects to mention on its Web site that other, cheaper ferry operators are available. And the beer limit is now seven.
Bureaucratic problems have sunk many a local rock festival. In 2003 a two-day, $3 million camping event called Field Day was planned for the North Fork of Long Island, with acts including the Beastie Boys,
Radiohead and Beck. But it fell apart after a last-minute battle with Suffolk County over permits, and it was relocated — with an abridged lineup and low attendance — to Giants Stadium. Other promoters took notice, and some canceled plans.
“Watching what they went through, and the politics, and the indeterminacy of the permitting process, caused us to pull out,” said Ashley Capps, one of the promoters behind Bonnaroo, who had been planning a satellite event on the Field Day site.
Despite the headache and high risk of putting on big festivals, many promoters simply can’t resist the challenge. Last year Madison Square Garden Entertainment bought 910 acres outside of Albany that it plans to use for a festival in 2010. Jim Glancy, a partner in The Bowery Presents, the operator of Terminal 5, the Bowery Ballroom and other spaces in New York and New Jersey, said that it was considering a festival venture, though he declined to elaborate.
Also this year, All Tomorrow’s Parties, a New York-area offshoot of the popular British festival, will return for a second year at Kutsher’s Country Resort in Monticello, N.Y., from Sept. 11 to 13, featuring the
Flaming Lips, Sufjan Stevens,
Animal Collective and other bands.
To draw crowds, a prominent festival depends on its atmosphere, concert executives say. That is especially true in New York, where many bands on a bill may well have booked other recent — and cheaper, and more intimate — shows on their own. MGMT, for example, played at Prospect Park in Brooklyn this month; Ms. Case played two nights at the Nokia Theater in Manhattan in April; and Coldplay toured New Jersey last fall and Connecticut this spring. Festival promoters complain that this pattern makes it difficult to book any truly noteworthy or unusual act.
Damn, so they're STILL trying to profit off of this great man's untimely death. However, this seems to be a little different, and perhaps with a little more integrity, than the other posthumous releases thus far. Interestingly enough, these recordings are acapella joints that were recorded in 1988, when a 16-year old Tupac was part of a group called Born Busy and went by the moniker MC New York. The album will be called "Shakurspeare," a reference to Pac's teenage dream of becoming a Shakespearean actor. This is definitively a piece of hip-hop history and will probably be an essential artifact for any collector or avid head. The tracks were recorded in Baltimore with Pac's lifelong friend and collaborator Darrin Keith Bastfield, CEO of Born Busy Records. Now Bastfield has decided to remaster and release the verses, set to contemporary music. Chronicling the process, Bastfield explained, "Through technology the vocals were able be extracted, digitally mastered, and put to contemporary music that was produced in 2008. I wanted to keep the recordings as close to the vein of our ideas from back in the day. As far as new material to assist with the concept of the album as being like an audio documentary, I chose to work with producers and artists in my own backyard which are native of Baltimore, Maryland which includes International Jazz recording artist Maysa. My life and times with Tupac Shakur all happened in Baltimore, so I wanted the spirit of the Shakurspeare album, just as the book, to stay consistent." This looks like it could either be crazy good or a terrible flop. We'll just have to wait and see. Either way it is a testament to the prolific spirit of Pac's legacy.
CHICAGO — Dissatisfied with long hours, churning turnover and, in some cases, lower pay than instructors at other public schools, an increasing number of teachers at
charter schools are unionizing.
Labor organizing that began two years ago at seven charter schools in Florida has proliferated over the last year to at least a dozen more charters from Massachusetts and New York to California and Oregon.
Charter schools, which are publicly financed but managed by groups separate from school districts, have been a mainstay of the education reform movement and widely embraced by parents. Because most of the nation’s 4,600 charter schools operate without unions, they have been freer to innovate, their advocates say, allowing them to lengthen the class day, dismiss underperforming teachers at will, and experiment with merit pay and other changes that are often banned by work rules governing traditional public schools.
“Charter schools have been too successful for the unions to ignore,” said Elizabeth D. Purvis, executive director of the Chicago International Charter School, where teachers voted last month to unionize 3 of its 12 campuses.
President Obama has been especially assertive in championing charter schools. On Friday, he and the education secretary,
Arne Duncan, announced a competition for $4.35 billion in federal financing for states that ease restrictions on charter schools and adopt some charter-like standards for other schools — like linking teacher pay to student achievement.
But the unionization effort raises questions about whether unions will strengthen the charter movement by stabilizing its young, often transient teaching force, or weaken it by preventing administrators from firing ineffective teachers and imposing changes they say help raise achievement, like an extended school year.
“A charter school is a more fragile host than a school district,” said Paul T. Hill, director of the Center on Reinventing Public Education at the
University of Washington. “Labor unrest in a charter school can wipe it out fast. It won’t go well for unions if the schools they organize decline in quality or go bust.”
Unions are not entirely new to charter schools. Teachers at hundreds of charter schools in Wisconsin, California and elsewhere have long been union members, not because they signed up, but because of local laws, like those that extend union status to all schools in a state or district.
Steve Barr, the founder of one large charter network, Green Dot, said his group operates its 17 charter schools in Los Angeles and one in the Bronx with union staff because it makes sense in the heavily unionized environment of public education.
In recent months, teachers have won union recognition at schools including the Boston Conservatory Lab School, a school in Brooklyn that is part of the
Knowledge Is Power Program, an Afro-centric school in Philadelphia, four campuses in the Accelerated School network in Los Angeles, and a Montessori school in Oregon. Moves toward unionizing have revealed greater teacher unrest than was previously known.
“I was frustrated with all the turnover among staff, with the lack of teacher input, with working longer and harder than teachers at other schools and earning less,” said Jennifer Gilley, a social studies teacher at the
Ralph Ellison Campus of the Chicago International Charter School, who said she made $38,000 as a base salary as a starting teacher, compared with about $43,500 paid by the Chicago Public Schools.
The potential for further unionization of charter schools is a matter of debate.
“They’ll have a success here and there,” said Todd Ziebarth, a vice president of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. “But unionized charters will continue to be a small part of the movement.”
Randi Weingarten, president of the
American Federation of Teachers, called the gains of the past year “a precursor.”
“You’re going to see far more union representation in charter schools,” Ms. Weingarten said. “We had a group of schools that were basically unorganized, groups of teachers wanting a voice, a union willing to start organizing them, and now money in our organizing budget to back that up. And all of that has come together in the last 6 to 12 months.”
She quoted
Albert Shanker, her union’s founder, as saying charter schools should be “incubators of good instructional practice.”
“I’m adding to the argument,” Ms. Weingarten said. “Let them be incubators of good labor practice.”
The largest teachers union, the National Education Association, has no national charter organizing campaign. But some of its state affiliates have helped charters unionize.
Some recently unionized charters say they are feeling their way forward.
The Knowledge Is Power Program, known as KIPP, which operates 82 mostly high-performing charter schools nationwide, is facing first-time negotiations with teachers at its KIPP Amp Academy in Brooklyn, where teachers this spring won affiliation with the
United Federation of Teachers.
KIPP is also facing demands for higher pay at its high-performing Ujima Village Academy in Baltimore, which has been unionized under Maryland law since its founding.
“Our schools had largely been left alone,” said Steve Mancini, a KIPP spokesman. “Now we’re getting all this union attention.” One goal KIPP will seek in negotiations in New York and Baltimore, Mr. Mancini said, is to preserve the principals’ right to mold their teams.
Whether KIPP can maintain that posture in its negotiations remains to be seen. Another question is whether the strains of unionization will affect the culture of collegiality that has helped charter schools prosper.
Here in Chicago, where students at several Chicago International campuses have scores among the city’s highest for nonselective schools, teachers began organizing last fall after an administrator increased workloads to six classes a day from five, said Emily Mueller, a Spanish teacher at Northtown Academy.
“We were really proud of the scores, and still are,” Ms. Mueller said. “But the workload, teaching 160 kids a day, it wasn’t sustainable. You can’t put out the kind of energy we were putting out for our kids year after year.”
Some teachers disagreed. Theresa Furr, a second-grade teacher at the Wrightwood campus, said she opposed unionization.
“Every meeting I went to,” Ms. Furr said, “it was always ‘What can we get?’ and never ‘How is this going to make our students’ education better?’ ”
For Joyce Pae, an English teacher at Ralph Ellison, the decision was agonizing. Her concerns over what she saw as chaotic turnover and inconsistency in allocating merit pay led her to join the drive. But after school leaders began paying more attention to teachers’ views, she said, she voted against unionization in June.
Union teachers won the vote, 73-49.
“If nothing else,” Ms. Pae said, “this experience has really helped teachers feel empowered.”[gallery]
Few artists today understand the simple value of hard work like Blitz the Ambassador. In the age of studio rappers, blog mixtapes, and fly-by-night success, Blitz yearns for something more substantial--longevity. And he is not afraid to hyperextend his heart, soul, and mind toward that end. As he puts it, "There are no handouts. You have to show up for your interviews, you have to shoot your own video, you have to pass out your own flyers, you have to book your own tours...I designed that image you're looking at, that's my visual art. I design the live show, I write the horns. I'm that dude at prospect park passing out flyers. And that's the kind of shit that, if you're a lazy dude in the game, you have no chance, period."
And it makes sense, too. But in America, sometimes we need an outsider to tell us those basic things. See, Blitz the Ambassador may rap like Black Thought and produce hard-hitting, horn-laced tracks like Pete Rock, but he's no ordinary rapper. He has come farther than most of us could ever fathom--from the dirt roads of his native Ghana to halls of an American University in Ohio to the concrete jungle of hip-hop's hallowed Mecca: Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn. Consequently, his artistic evolution and influence has been similarly varied. For Blitz, "there's three stages of my life its like: the High Life stage, the Hip-Hop stage, and then the alternative rock stage." What rapper today can boast such credentials--a cross-cultural upbringing and a hip-hop style that synthesizes pretty much everything under the sun, from his native Ghanain High Life music to American alternative rock. As Blitz defiantly affirms, "What I try to do as much as possible, from a purely artistic standpoint, is to be as diverse, so nobody can throw me in whatever little shithole box they want to put me in."
Understandably, you may wonder: how did Blitz get here? How did a man cross oceans, cultures, and musical styles to end up in the incessant grind of today's hip-hop world? The answer is surprisingly simple. When asked about the local scene growing up in Ghana, Blitz replied, "At some point it seemed like everybody, at a certain age, was an MC of some sort. I dont think it was any different from what was going on here. The only difference was, we didn't have access, to all of the tools or all the new music and art that was popping at the time. So you know, a few ppl that was able to get a tape of a Public Enemy or KRS-One, that was like, a huge thing. We all sat around, we all dubbed it. So as far as the scene, it thrived. We grew up with it vicariously. I mean, I think it really made us appreciate every piece of it we had, because, you couldn't just walk up to the store and get the new Ice Cube tape. It was like, somebody had to travel here, you know, get a copy of it, and every kind of digs it." Though we are separated by immense cultural and socioeconomic gaps, there is something universal in hip-hop. It was precisely that something that drew Blitz to the culture and compelled him to create a unique blend of African musical tradition, American soul and jazz music, and purist hip-hop. And for Blitz, the synthesis is natural. "Creating now is just tapping into all that."
But relocating from Ghana to Brooklyn via Kent State University is no easy task, and such experiences taught Blitz the value of the grind and intensified his artistic dedication. As an emerging local star in Ghana, Blitz garnered a significant popular following by following the same route as his counterparts in the states. As he describes, "I got on the radio, I battled, I battled for my stripes. I played shows, whatever I could do...when I was like 12 or 13, I won a Ghana Music Award for a tune called 'Daba,' and that was like a local hit."
But in New York City's cutthroat hip-hop climate, it seemed that his previous achievements receded into the realm of personal nostalgia. Indeed no one knew, much less cared, about young teen's local buzz in a faraway country. Not only that but, as Blitz describes, "the average guy can rap circles around you, just based on the fact that english is his first language. So, I mean, it made me really have to work hard. I had to step up my vocabulary. I read the dictionary daily...that really helped me step up my game immensely. "
Fortunately, Blitz's four year collegiate sojourn in the wholly unfamiliar land of middle America was a blessing, not just in the form of an accredited bachelors degree. He received invaluable experience rocking shows for a less discerning and declamatory audience than in New York. In the bustling musical scene of a college town, Blitz thrived: "I had four and a half years to get a degree and those years was when I really learned how to perform. You know, because the pressure, if I get a show here in New York, so much is expected of me, and people assume you are of a certain caliber, thats why you're getting to play with Rakim. In Ohio I was getting to open for whoever came to town, because the competition wasn't as stringent."
This self-immersion in the completely foreign culture of white America's educational system, although sometimes difficult to digest and comprehend, helped Blitz reach a new artistic plateau. "Now when I record, I can relate to a lot more people. I've met a host, a wide variety of people in my lifetime. Its like conversating with people, you know, you can't only speak to a certain group of people. Eventually your art is going to implode. I've talked to doctors, lawyers, dude's who sell crack on the block, dudes who take care their families in Ghana."
This wide-ranging set of experiences is what inspired the title of Blitz's latest LP "Stereotype," set to drop in September. And with the release of his third album and the beginnings of a strong buzz on the underground scene, Blitz has no intention of being confined by those stereotypes he seeks to overhaul. In fact, he couldn't be more timely. His all-inclusive music and personal philosophy are ideally suited for our present "iPod age."
He's very optimistic about the future, putting his full faith in the intelligence and sophistication of his audience. When asked about his ability, as an African MC with an incommensurable style, to penetrate an American hip-hop market, he replied: "Today's audience are not genre-slaves, you know what I mean. Once upon a time we were, and I hardly bought anything that didn't say hip-hop on it. As he says, "there are kids with ipods today with 5000 songs on them, and I can guarantee that a majority of that shit is not one type of music. It's a barrage of shit. Why, becuase people have broken free...and that's why these fools cant sell 9 million, 10 million copies anymore. Because the kids are not one-mind trapped anymore. They're diverse, they're ready to evolve, they're more international than they used to be. They think outside the box...the audience that I came to see were very a evolved, sophisticated audience, that understands that, yes you can be from Africa, without necessarily wearing a Dashiki. You know what I mean, that's a stupid stereotype"
And maybe for a cynic like me, this all seems imbued with a sense of misguided optimism. Blitz is bringing something entirely fresh, something that hip-hop desperately needs: a cross-cultural ambassador. As he puts it, "a living, breathing person, that can actually be a liaison." But what I wonder is not whether hip-hop requires it, but whether we are ready. Hip-hop needs to know, needs to understand that "the problems that affect you in Brooklyn are the same problems that affect the next guy in Bangladesh, the next guy in Cambodia, the same issues." And if anyone will teach us that, Blitz is the man for the job.
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