Word: urbanism
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...post as chair of the English department at Chicago State University. "It's like Walt Whitman. 'Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself. I am large, I contain multitudes.'" West's old boss, Damon Dash, puts it a little differently: "He combines the superficialness that the urban demographic needs with conscious rhymes for the kids with backpacks. It's brilliant business...
That the "urban demographic" needs "superficialness" could be read as two euphemisms away from racism. But Dash, an African American who thinks exclusively in shades of green, is merely letting the world in on what's accepted as social fact by much of the record industry. Hip-hop was born in the '70s as party music and evolved in the '80s into that rarest of pleasures--socially relevant party music. But in the mid-'90s, the genre came to be dominated by people like Snoop Dogg (sample track: Murder Was the Case), the Notorious B.I.G. (Ten Crack Commandments...
...image in the media-if it appeared at all-was generally relegated to gardeners, maids and barrio gangsters. When sales of salsa overtook ketchup in the early 1990s only Heinz seemed to care. Then came Ricky Martin and his bilingual anthem to "Living La Vida Loca." The song redefined urban pop and Latinos, almost overnight, became cool...
...fence, which was built in 1994 to prevent terrorists crossing into Israel, gazes out over a sea of concrete. This is the village of Beit Hanoun, which merges with the massive refugee camp of Jabalya and, in turn, Gaza City itself. There is no break in the drab urban sprawl until our Twin Star chopper passes the dunes around the Israeli settlement of Netzarim...
Like the movie, however, the show is ultimately a tribute to the barbershop as a nexus of African-American life where professionals and hustlers, up-and-comers and down-and-outers, cross paths. "It's an urban comedy," says Ridley. "But it's also an urbane comedy. We do jokes about selling CDs out of the trunk of your car, but we've also got jokes about Tucker Carlson." Even more so, this appealingly motormouthed show is a celebration of language--boasting, blathering, put-down and pontification--and the new cast has an easy rapport and naturalness. It doesn...