tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-88403280223767733512024-02-19T08:10:57.284-05:00Hooked On The American DreamBmchttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17004250242744541801noreply@blogger.comBlogger779125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8840328022376773351.post-73747658619102649712014-02-18T00:46:00.000-05:002014-02-18T02:31:02.723-05:00Brooklyn Loves Michael Jackson 29 August 2009: Photography by Barry Michael Cooper<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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by Barry Michael Cooper</div>
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These are some photos I shot during Spike Lee's celebration of Michael Jackson's life-- an amazing event titled <b><i><a href="http://hookedontheamericandream.blogspot.com/2009/09/michael-jackson-agonistes-final-act-of.html">Brooklyn Loves Michael Jackson</a></i></b>--Brooklyn's Prospect Park on 29 August 2009. </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">photo by Barry Michael Cooper 29 August 2009</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">photo by Barry Michael Cooper 29 August 2009</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">photo by Barry Michael Cooper 29 August 2009</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">photo by Barry Michael Cooper 29 August 2009</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">photo by Barry Michael Cooper 29 August 2009</td></tr>
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Bmchttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17004250242744541801noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8840328022376773351.post-52224123245681509352014-02-10T17:19:00.000-05:002015-10-20T13:51:57.968-04:00Postcard From Cannes 2012: Photography by Barry Michael Cooper<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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by Barry Michael Cooper<br />
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Just a few of the photos I shot back in May 2012, during my trip to the 65th Cannes Film Festival in Cannes, France. I was working with mega-star music producer and business mogul Sean Diddy Combs on a project. These are stills from a mini-doc I shot while I was there titled "Postcard From Cannes 2012," which I may post sometime in the near future, GOD Willing. Cameras: Fuji Finepix HS 30 EXR, and a Motorola XPRT Smartphone (click on each photograph to enlarge the image).<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">photo by Barry Michael Cooper 19 May 2012<br />
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photo by Barry Michael Cooper 18 May 2012<br />
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photo by Barry Michael Cooper 17 May 2012</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">photo by Barry Michael Cooper 22 May 2012<br />
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photo by Barry Michael Cooper 18 May 2012<br />
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photo by Barry Michael Cooper 18 May 2012</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">photo by Barry Michael Cooper 17 May 2012<br />
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photo by Barry Michael Cooper 17 May 2012<br />
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photo by Barry Michael Cooper 17 May 2012<br />
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photo by Barry Michael Cooper 18 May 2012</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">photo by Barry Michael Cooper 17 May 2012</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">photo by Barry Michael Cooper 17 May 2012</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">photo by Barry Michael Cooper 17 May 2012<br />
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photo by Barry Michael Cooper 17 May 2012</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">photo by Barry Michael Cooper 17 May 2012<br />
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photo by Barry Michael Cooper 18 May 2012<br />
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photo by Barry Michael Cooper 23 May 2012</td></tr>
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<br />Bmchttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17004250242744541801noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8840328022376773351.post-58721612944157779812013-11-11T23:10:00.000-05:002014-02-19T23:59:25.495-05:00“Rick Ro$$”: A Novel by William L. Roberts<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333332;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">An essay by Barry Michael Cooper</span></span></div>
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<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">“When the streets changed, it seemed like the lyrics changed. Most people are going to listen to what’s going on in the streets first, before they listen to rap, to consider what’s real and what’s fake. So if it’s drugs in the streets, that sh*t is going to wind up in rap. And that made me say, ‘Fk that, let me start rapping.’ And being that people knew what I had went through, you already know it’s real. I ain’t got to yell at you to tell the truth. So when a cat grabbed a Mobb Style tape, they separated that from the other sh*t. ‘Yo, this is fact. This other could be fiction.’ It’s like the streets versus Sesame Street.”</span></i></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">Azie Faison, former Harlem cocaine kingpin, at the 12 September 2011 Paley Center <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciWzXSadQgU">roundtable</a> for the <b>VH1</b> documentary <b><i>Planet Rock</i></b>, and how his 1987 emcee crew Mobb Style, influenced Biggie, Tupac, Nas, Jay-Z, and Rick Ro$$.</span></blockquote>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">If Kendrick Lamar is Hip Hop’s Dylan (as <i>Rap Mu$ick, LLC</i> struggles not to go <i>blowin’ gently into the wind of that good night</i>), then William L. Roberts is its F. Scott Fitzgerald. His <i>Gatsby</i> is named <i>Rick “Rozay” Ro$$</i>. Unlike Fitzgerald, Roberts has stepped from behind the pen to actually and inhabit and breathe life into his fictional creation. Roberts’s Ro$$ is undoubtably one of the most fascinating, enigmatic, and controversial rap personas, in a grotesquerie populated with <i>ghettofabulous</i> mythologists.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">Like Prohibition in the 1920s, the American Crack Epoch of the 1980s birthed a generation of desperate young African American men swirling in the twisted dervish of a politicized and shadowy narco-economy. Emboldened by the <i>cri de guerre</i> of <i>Never Get High On Ya Own Supply</i>, this battalion of the disenfranchised, this army of <i>tabulae rasae</i> rewrote themselves into a dollar green team with triple beam schemes. Street-tested and <i>scarfaced</i> soldiers charging headlong into the battle for the American Dream.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><i>“To understand how crack came to curse black America, you have to go into the volcanic hills overlooking Managua, the capital of the Republic of Nicaragua.”</i></span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">Gary Webb<i>,”Trio Created Mass Market In U.S. For Crack Cocaine,” </i><b>San Jose Mercury News</b><i>, 22 August 1996</i></span></blockquote>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">The 1980s proved to be one of the most transformative eras in modern American history, especially for African Americans. The political fissure created by the calamitous Iran Hostage Crisis ushered in a former actor and laundry detergent shill by the name of Ronald Wilson Reagan. The election of the former governor of California was the coin of the realm for the <i>RRC </i>(The Republican Ruling Class), and a return to an America that was white, Republican, repugnantly racist, remunerated, and removed from plight of America’s working class and poor.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">Crack cocaine turned Reagan’s <i>Morning In America</i> into a terrifying <i>Mourning In Black America</i>, according to the late Gary Webb, and his acclaimed ”<i><b>Dark Alliance</b></i>” series of mind-blowing <a href="http://www.mega.nu/ampp/webb.html">investigative features</a> for the <b><i>San Jose Mercury News</i></b> in 1996. The amalgam of an alleged high-ranking narcotics trafficker—Oscar Blandon—members of the CIA, and (by inference) President Reagan giving the green-light to the CIA on 1 December 1981, to begin covert paramilitary operations to topple the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, buried inner cities across America under an asphyxiating tonnage of flaky, alabaster death. The murder rate skyrocketed in urban areas across all fifty states. Entire families were ravaged by the little white genie caged in blue and red-topped vials.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">Cocaine and crack cocaine also transformed five-dollar boys into multi-million dollar men. Men like Los Angeles crack kingpin Ricky Donnell Ross, a.k.a. Freeway Rick Ross, a.k.a, the <i>Real</i> Rick Ross (see Mike Sager’s feature in the October 2013 issue of <a href="http://www.esquire.com/features/rick-ross-drug-dealer-interview-1013">Esquire</a>), and Harlem, NY cocaine czar Azie “AZ” Faison. Both men rose from poverty to achieving riches nearly on par to those in RRC. The irony of it all.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">However, crack house <i>nouvelle riche</i> is not Park Avenue old money with the <i>right complexion</i> and political connections. Both Ross and Faison suffered as they climbed to the top of the world, only to slip, fall, and lose all of their ill-gotten gains. Ross spent most of his adult life in jail. Faison was shot nine times in a robbery/ambush in an apartment in the Bronx, NY, and left for dead. By the Grace of GOD, Faison is still alive, Ross is out of jail, and both men are walking cautionary tales of the life William L. Roberts’s persona as Rick Rozay Ro$$, seems to exalt and promulgate non-stop.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">It is widely known that Roberts (who was <a href="http://www.thesmokinggun.com/documents/crime/screw-rick-ross">exposed</a> by the snarky legal doc website TheSmokingGun.com, to have worked as a Miami correction officer in the ‘90s; a charge Roberts initially denied, but eventually owned up to), shoplifted his name and <i>d-boy</i> CV from the former LA coke dealer (Ross has taken Roberts to court over his unauthorized use of his name). But in a way, Roberts’s appropriation of Rick Ross’s identity has a lot more to do with homage than hubris. Although it is a misguided ideal to look up to Freeway Rick, Azie—or Leroy “Nicky” Barnes in my generation—as heroes, before the election of Barack Hussein Obama, some young black men like Roberts may have felt as if they didn’t have a lot of choices for role models. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">When crack infiltrated Hip Hop, many young black men adapted surnames such as Gotti/Montana/Gambino/Brown; a move which indulged their appetite for destruction, while attempting to devour <i>the world and everything in it. </i>So maybe Roberts’s transmogrification into Rick Ro$$ was his fabulist navigation on the <i>road to da riches</i>. Who knows?</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><i>“Not to dwell on the the past but to keep it real/I gotta represent for Emmit Till/All the dead souls in the field/Lookin’ at my Rolly it’s about that time/White man had a problem with mine/And we suppose to be shy/The revolution’s televised/Bobby’s still on the rise…”</i></span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><i>“Tears of Joy”</i>, Rick Ro$$’s <b><i>Teflon Don</i></b> (2011)</span></blockquote>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">William L. Roberts (who was born in Mississippi and reared in Liberty City, Florida) is an emcee from the <i>Dirty South</i> who knows just how dirty the South can be, when it comes to race. He offers an interesting posit in the <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSR3wKk84Ws">doc</a> from his appearance at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival. Eveloped in the misted anesthesia of <i>kush</i>, Roberts’s Ro$$ character gazes down from his luxe perch atop the legendary Eden Roc hotel, and configures the crowd of tanned and moneyed gawkers peering skyward at the tattooed and impeccably bearded mahogany Buddha:</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><i>“I know them white people are down there like, ‘Look at the big black nigger up there. <u><b>Who is he?</b></u>’ Yeah bitch, <b>I’m somebody…</b>”</i></span></blockquote>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">Crack may have made guys like Freeway Rick and Azie well-heeled for a short period of time, but the epiphany in their descent let them know it didn’t make them equal partners in the American Dream. Something they disdain in the fictional Ro$$’s constant exploits of narcotic opulence. I believe that all three men know that crack—as the chemical <i>jim crow</i>—took a major toll on African Americans. They also understand that race and class <i><u>does</u></i> matter in the USA, despite the fact that the Leader Of The Free World shares their same pigment. Both Ross and Faison travel from city to city, speaking to young people about their personal nightmares derived from cocaine’s <i>American Horror Story</i>. A horror story William L. Roberts—in character as Rick Ro$$—paints in the starkest terms on <i>Tears of Joy</i>:</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><i>“Lookin’ in the mirror but I don’t see much/Starin’ in the streets so I don’t sleep much/Watchin’ the snakes so they don’t creep up…”</i></span></blockquote>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">Move over Carolyn Scheufele and Chopard; Hip Hop has commandeered the 2012 Cannes Film Festival.</span><br />
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<a href="http://vimeo.com/79026181">Snippet from "Postcard From Cannes 2012" a film by Barry Michael Cooper</a> from <a href="http://vimeo.com/user10066296">Barry Michael Cooper</a> on <a href="https://vimeo.com/">Vimeo</a>.<br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">I am transfixed, as I watch Roberts’s Rick Ro$$ character ensorcel a crowd of international millionaires and billionaires at the tony Gotha Club on Promenade de la Croisette last year. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><i>“I think I’m Big Meech/Whuhh!/Larry Hoover,”</i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"> the crowd answers back, as Ro$$ leads them in a frenzied call-and-response of his digitized crunk-funk paean </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><i><b>B.M.F. (Blowing Money Fast).</b></i></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">Observing a room full of jet-setting one-percenters holla back at the stage, reminded me that crack not only made hip hop corporate, but very wealthy. From KRS-One to Rakim to Azie Faison’s Mobb Style crew; from Diddy, to 50 Cent, to Jay-Z, crack-cocaine took Hip Hop from the street corner to the <b><i><a href="http://www.blogger.com/"><span id="goog_1099562501"></span>corner office<span id="goog_1099562502"></span></a></i></b>. Cocaine rebuilt Hip Hop into a <i>pharm</i>-raised construct; a fantast tableau-vivant built on crack rocks. A fantasy that extended it’s reach far beyond the <i>g-code</i> of New Jack Cities in almost every zip code, to the suburban middle-class and affluent white kids who couldn’t get enough of an ethnology that both frightened and seduced them.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">Which also means, it doesn’t matter if this audience of the super rich is familiar with the real story of Chicago’s feared Gangster Disciple leader Larry Hoover, or the street saga of Demetrius “Big Meech” Flenory, paterfamilias of the powerful and legendary Black Mafia Family cocaine cartel. They are caught up in the moment of Roberts’s/Ro$$’s ornately fictive tapestry. The audience believes it, because Roberts’s character believes it with a passion. After his well-receved set at the Gotha Club, I’m sitting next to Roberts in the dining room of the mega yacht appropriately named <b>Ikon</b>. </span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Sean "Diddy" Combs and Barry Michael Cooper/Red Carpet-Cannes Film Festival/22 May 2012/photo credit: Rob Alexander</td></tr>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">It’s me and Puff, along with the hilarious Mike Epps (possibly the heir-apparent to Richard Pryor), some industry big wigs, and William Roberts and the crew from his Maybach Music Group. A luxury ship full of kids from the hood, eating chicken and waffles at 4AM, floating dockside in the </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><i>l’heure bleue </i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">of the French Riviera.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">There is a Dadist disconnect to the transcontinental reality of a manufactured Ro$$ chilling on a billion dollar yacht, and the authentic street dudes who had a payday during crack’s heyday. The same dudes who posed for the Polaroid paparazzo in front of clubs like the Rooftop in Harlem, kneeling on one knee—Rikers Island/<i>C-74 </i>style—in front of spanking brand new BMW’s, Volvos, and Benzes. The same dudes who copped, cut, weighed, bagged, kidnapped, and murdered their way into the fraudulent mindset of being formidable and </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><i>un-fk-widdable</i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">. The same Dapper Dan dudes overwhelmed by a fist-full of <i>benjamins</i> and spellbound with the new car smell of Rolls Royce dreams. These same <i>get-money</i> dudes wanted to make it to the French Riviera, too, and drink Krug until the sun winked at them over the Mediterranean. But these same dudes are now in jail, broke, or dead; framed by frayed Polaroids colored in the sepia recompense of vanquished memories. Milton’s street step-children; </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><i>Ghetto Paradise Lost.</i></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">Roberts told me he was a big fan of my 1991 screenplay <b><i>New Jack City</i></b>, and I told him that he is a great storyteller. He also has one of the sickest flows in the game. Roberts’s enunciations sounds almost like a countrified apostolic preacher; a glottis choked with mellifluous tears, laughter, pomposity, and madness, accented by his trademark <i>Whuhh!</i> That <i>Whuhh!</i> is Roberts’s article of faith.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">Despite his linebacker girth, Roberts seems to float weightless in the emotional fluids of some unidentified melancholy; his tales of <i>gutter glam</i> belie a foreboding sadness. Maybe it’s the balancing act of how his Ro$$ character can continue to talk about a life he may not have actually lived. Or maybe the veracity of an all-too-real </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><i>duffle-bag boy</i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"> past in </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><i>perico</i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">-ville adorns William L. Roberts’s memories like a mink jacket lined with daggers.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">Or maybe he has taken the real Rick Ross’s advise to heart, and Roberts is troubled by the promotion of a negative lifestyle to millions of impressionable young minds. I can’t call it (so I’ll stop dialing). But what would be <i>dope</i>—in this crack cocaine/Hip Hop version of <i>the strategy of attrition</i>—is if Roberts would collaborate with Rick Ross. William L. Roberts teams up with the </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><i>real</i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"> Rick Ross, and tells the real street story. The rise. The fall. The gift and the curse of having it all. That story of the ghost of </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><i>Crack Past</i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">, </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><i>Present</i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">, and </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><i>Future</i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"> staring right back in the mirror, whispering that </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><i>it’s all gone</i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">, right before the alphabet boys come crashing through </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><i>that door</i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">, guns drawn, warrants fluttering, and handcuffs swinging. That would be surreal recognizing real. And that would be so <i><a href="https://medium.com/american-dreamers/339c51c684a9">gangsta</a>.</i></span>Bmchttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17004250242744541801noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8840328022376773351.post-31568250216072672902013-01-16T19:39:00.001-05:002013-01-16T20:09:01.132-05:00New Jack, New Jack: Big City of Dreams<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-rnAwI33xxaM/UPdDkphQItI/AAAAAAAACz8/bRWaiAqDcfY/s1600/NewJackCityBmcAlPayneWesSnipes3June1990GrantsTombReDo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="248" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-rnAwI33xxaM/UPdDkphQItI/AAAAAAAACz8/bRWaiAqDcfY/s320/NewJackCityBmcAlPayneWesSnipes3June1990GrantsTombReDo.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Wesley Snipes, Barry Michael Cooper, and Al Payne at Grants Tomb, New York City; 1 June 1990, the day "New Jack City" wrapped production.</td></tr>
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<br />
By Barry Michael Cooper<br />
<br />
<i><b><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Originally published 16 March 2011, on citypaper.com. Part One of a new series on Hooked On The American Dream titled, "Hollywood (But Maybe She Won't)."</span></b></i><br />
<i><b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><br /></span></b></i>
<i>Glitteraticosis</i> is an opulent parasite that breeds in Hollywood’s narcissistic pools. It snarls with the delirious spume of mad fame and bites everyone in its path with the toxic infection of influence, money, and power.<br />
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Maybe that’s why on March 8, 2011—the 20th anniversary of 1991’s <b><i>New Jack City</i></b>—I still felt a bit woozy from that dazzling influenza. Sometimes I still can’t believe that <a href="http://hookedontheamericandream.blogspot.com/2010/01/new-jack-city-eats-its-young-original.html">“Kids Killing Kids: New Jack City Eats Its Young,”</a> the story I wrote for <b><i>The Village Voice</i></b>, became the source material for a screenplay that launched the film careers of Wesley Snipes, Chris Rock, Mario Van Peebles, Allen Payne, and Ice-T—and proved a reset for Brat Pack member Judd Nelson. It feels like only yesterday that I was sitting in one of the Enoch Pratt Library’s second-floor reading rooms in the winter of 1987, bringing Nino Brown, Gee Money, Scotty Appleton, and the Carter Projects to life on stacks of yellow legal pads.<br />
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-0Gt8oVlme5c/UPdGUqO1nRI/AAAAAAAAC0Q/_vAqSMav09U/s1600/WesNinoBrownCourtroomSceneWhiteBronzeReTouch.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="253" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-0Gt8oVlme5c/UPdGUqO1nRI/AAAAAAAAC0Q/_vAqSMav09U/s320/WesNinoBrownCourtroomSceneWhiteBronzeReTouch.jpg" width="320" /></a><br />
The engine that drove <b><i>New Jack City</i></b> was the late George Jackson, the film’s producer and a force of nature. A Harvard grad, George, like me, was a Harlem native. He worked for Richard Pryor’s Indigo Films and got his start on Pryor’s surrealist biopic <i><b>Jo Jo Dancer, Your Life is Calling.</b></i> I first talked to George on the phone from the loading dock of the Hecht Company at Lexington and Howard streets, where I worked in the stock department in 1986. He had read an investigative piece I wrote for Spin on Baltimore’s “Yo Boy” culture titled, <a href="http://hookedontheamericandream.blogspot.com/2011/10/new-jack-anthology-xcrpt-in-cold-blood.html">“In Cold Blood: The Baltimore Teen Murders.”</a><br />
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I had just come back with my lunch from Lexington Market. My supervisor handed me the phone and told it me was someone from the Howard Bloom PR firm in New York, and once I got on the phone, they conferenced me in with George from Pryor’s office. I thought it was a joke. George was very serious, though, and told me he read the Spinstory while he was waiting for a flight at Denver International Airport. He said the horrific tableau vivant of the locked-and-loaded corner boys on North and Pulaski I framed was so vivid that I should be writing movies. I told him thanks—I didn’t think he was serious—and said I would stay in touch with him.<br />
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Over the next two years, I found out just how serious he was. He introduced me to screenwriting, pairing me with director Roy Campanella II—son of the legendary baseball player and a prolific director of 1980s television—who turned me on to Bernardo Bertolluci’s <b><i>The Conformist</i></b>, screenwriter Mark Peploe, Roman Polanski’s Chinatown, and Robert Towne. I studied the work of auteurs like Hawks, Wilder, Scorsese, Coppola, Leone, Pasolini, Stone, and Friedkin. I remember watching <b><i>Wall Street</i></b> one weekend almost 30 times on the VCR, pausing it to determine the plot points and structure. <i><b>Wall Street</b></i> is the perfect script in terms of structure, so much so that it became a kind of template for <b><i>New Jack City.</i></b><br />
<br />
When George thought I was ready, he and another producer—Rudy Langlais, who had also been my editor at both the <i><b>Village Voice</b></i> and Spin and would later produce my screenplay <i><b>Sugar Hill</b></i>—approached me with a script based on the life of 1970s Harlem drug kingpin Leroy “Nicky” Barnes. It was written by Thomas Lee Wright, who had sold it to Paramount Pictures sometime in the early ’80s. It languished for a while, but then it got some heat because Eddie Murphy reportedly wanted to play Barnes, and Francis Ford Coppola was rumored to be interested in directing. But the script wound up going into turnaround, and another producer or studio could purchase it. Quincy Jones picked it up for his production company at Warner Bros., and George and Rudy told him they thought they had the perfect person to rewrite the film: me.<br />
<br />
By 1987, the plague of crack cocaine had turned New York and most of the nation upside down. It was spreading from the inner city into the suburbs and rural areas. I conveyed this to George and Rudy, and said that Barnes’ world of heroin needed to be updated to this new and more frightening idea of jumbo pieces of rock. They agreed.<br />
<br />
I wrote a 10-page treatment on spec. The intro was set in a private club/bar/hangout called the Spotlite on Lenox Avenue and 117th Street, which I based on an actual watering hole Barnes owned called Jagazzy’s, and showed the young post-teen crack pashas sitting around sipping on Moet splits, wearing gold-and-diamond medallions, with more money in their pockets than their parents had seen in a whole year. I wrote those 10 pages in the Enoch Pratt, working one afternoon until the 5 p.m. closing time. The Humanities room on the third floor of the Pratt, felt like Paris in Baltimore, and I was an expatriate of Harlem, recalling memories, senses, sounds, events from my formative years. Writing what would become <b><i>New Jack City</i></b> (initially it was titled <b><i>The Idolater</i></b>), felt like my take on <i>The Great American Novel</i> with notations for camera directions.<br />
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Nervously, I called George that night and read him the pages over the phone. When I was finished, there was a minute of silence. Crickets.<br />
<br />
<i>“Now that’s a movie!”</i> he finally said. <i>“Yeah! You did it! You did it Barry! That’s a movie!!”</i><br />
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The next week I went to New York to meet a guy by the name of Steven Starr, a William Morris agent. Forty-eight hours after meeting him, I had a check from Warner Bros. to commence writing a script that would completely change my life. Forever.<br />
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-vi9axgAKhms/Tnyr0aOcVnI/AAAAAAAACjU/A6CelXNbtRk/s1600/HookedOnTheAmericanDreamVol1NewJackCityEatsItsYoungCovrSkullAk47CrossBnsReTouch.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><br class="Apple-interchange-newline" /><img border="0" height="320" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-vi9axgAKhms/Tnyr0aOcVnI/AAAAAAAACjU/A6CelXNbtRk/s320/HookedOnTheAmericanDreamVol1NewJackCityEatsItsYoungCovrSkullAk47CrossBnsReTouch.jpg" width="195" /></a></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Be sure to order Barry Michael Cooper's debut anthology of street journalism from the 1980s (from his award winning reporting in The <b>Village Voice</b>, <b>Spin Magazine</b>, in addition to his more current essays on the <b>Huffington Post</b>), titled <b><u>"Hooked On The American Dream-Vol.1: New Jack City Eats Its Young</u></b>," which is now available on Kindle/Amazon. Don't have a Kindle? No problem; Amazon has a free app available for download, to read "Hooked On The American Dream-Vol.1: New Jack City Eats Its Young," on your PC, Mac, iPad, iPhone, and Android devices. Only $1.99! Click<a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/B005P3GUOM"> here</a> to go to the Amazon site. </span></div>
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Bmchttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17004250242744541801noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8840328022376773351.post-22201058864615866312012-12-30T07:52:00.001-05:002013-07-05T16:51:02.697-04:00Clarke Peters in Spike Lee's "Red Hook Summer": Spiritual Blackout in the Valley of the Shadow of Death<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-AiJbMcVRDfw/UN9fv8q9MPI/AAAAAAAACzE/oYW7kPHJyJY/s1600/ClarkePetersSpikesRedHookSummerBetterPhotoRedo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="236" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-AiJbMcVRDfw/UN9fv8q9MPI/AAAAAAAACzE/oYW7kPHJyJY/s320/ClarkePetersSpikesRedHookSummerBetterPhotoRedo.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The magnificent Clarke Peters as "Bishop Enoch Rouse" in Spike Lee's phenomenal "Red Hook Summer"/photo credit 40 Acres</td></tr>
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<br />
By Barry Michael Cooper<br />
<blockquote>
<b><i>"For such are false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into the apostles of CHRIST. And no marvel; for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light.Therefore it is no great thing if his ministers also be transformed as the ministers of righteousness; whose end shall be according to their works."</i></b> </blockquote>
<blockquote>
<b>2 Corinthians 11:13-15</b></blockquote>
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<i><b>"When you look into an abyss, </b></i><i><b>the abyss also looks into you."</b></i> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>Frederick Nietzsche </b></blockquote>
I'm just going to cut to the chase.<br />
<br />
Clarke Peters should not only be nominated for an <b>Academy Award</b> for <i>Best Actor, </i>for his bravura interpretation of a conflicted man-of-the-cloth in Spike Lee's gut-wrenching <i><b>Red Hook Summer</b></i>, but Clarke Peters should win. Hands down, his portrayal of the complex, multi-layered <i>preacherman</i> Bishop Enoch Rouse, is by far, one of the most virtuosic, skilled, and almost preternatural performances I have ever seen on film.<br />
<br />
<u><b>Ever.</b></u><br />
<br />
I say that having been previously awed by the following: Denzel Washington in both <i><b>Malcolm X </b></i>and <i><b>Training Day</b></i>, Daniel Day Lewis in <b><i>There Will Be Blood</i></b>, Al Pacino in <i><b>Godfather II</b></i> and <b><i>Serpico</i></b>, Michael Wright in <b><i>Streamers</i></b>, <i><b>Sugar Hill</b></i> and <i><b>The</b></i> <i><b>Five Heartbeats</b></i>, Wesley Snipes in <i><b>New Jack City</b></i> and<i><b> Sugar Hill</b></i>, Burt Lancaster in <i><b>Elmer Gantry</b></i>, Allen Payne in <i><b>New Jack City</b></i>, Gena Rowlands in <b><i>A Woman Under the Influence</i></b>, Chris Rock in <i><b>New Jack City</b></i>, Dirk Borgart in <b><i>Servant</i></b>, Diahann Carroll in <b><i>Claudine</i></b>, Simone Signoret in <i><b>Room at the Top</b></i>, George Sanders in <b><i>All About Eve</i></b>, Morgan Freeman in <i><b>Street Smart,</b></i> Julie Christie in <i><b>Darling</b></i>, Michael Douglas in <b><i>Wall Street</i></b>, Robert DeNiro in <i><b>Raging Bull</b></i>, Tom Cruise in <b><i>Magnolia</i></b>, Robert Downey Jr. in <i><b>Black and White</b></i>, Richard Gere in <b><i>Internal Affairs</i></b>, Keith Carradine and Robert DoQui in <i><b>Nashville</b></i>, Jane Fonda in <i><b>Klute</b></i>, and Sir Laurence Olivier in <b style="font-style: italic;">The Entertainer. </b><br />
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These are a few of the actors and performances that looped in the screening room between my ears, long after the end credits disappeared.<br />
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Still, I haven't seen anything quite like what Clarke Peters created for <b style="font-style: italic;">Red Hook Summer. </b>Of course, it helps that Peters was directed by Spike Lee, who, despite the firebrand label attached to him (and sometimes, rightly so for the right reasons), is one of the greatest filmmakers America has ever produced. James McBride is a screenwriter above and apart; he and Spike's screenplay is a Rorschach-blot-of-a-character study; a man who is a force-of-one against <i>himself</i>. Bishop Enoch Rouse is a lost soul searching for the sacred needle in the profane haystack of his existence.<br />
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-PtRrsy4a-N8/UN_-EYB4ZiI/AAAAAAAACzs/iZTtaHT-_to/s1600/RedHookSummer40AcrePoster.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-PtRrsy4a-N8/UN_-EYB4ZiI/AAAAAAAACzs/iZTtaHT-_to/s1600/RedHookSummer40AcrePoster.jpg" /></a></div>
Spike Lee cultivates some strong performances from his entire cast; Jules Brown as <i>Flik</i>, the pre-teen Nietzsche who hates GOD for taking the life of his dad in Afghanistan, while trying to suss out his preacher grandfather (Clarke's Bishop Enoch) and life's absolutes in the screen of his iPad 2; Nate Parker as <i>Box</i>, the neighborhood thug who terrorizes Bishop Enoch and Flik, while <i>ice-grilling</i> his imaginary hip hop career in the cruel summer of his vicious discontent; Toni Lysaith and Heather Simms as mother and daughter <i>Morningstar</i>, trying to <i>hold it down</i> and hold it together in the Red Hook Projects, pasting over their shared grief of a lost family member, with the spiritual epoxy of Bishop Enoch's Little Heaven Church; the always comically profound Thomas Jefferson Byrd, as <i>Deacon Zee</i>, a man who sees Wall Street dreams floating around bottom of a bottle of hard brown liquor; Colman Domingo as <i>Blessing Rowe</i>, the haunted messenger of a horrific plot twist <i><b><u>you may never forget.</u></b></i><br />
<i><b><u><br /></u></b></i>
Yes there is a plot twist, and it's one I won't reveal here. And there are signposts and people from previous <i>Spike Lee Joints </i>that you should discover on your own. I have read some of the reviews on Netflix (yes, <i><b>Red Hook Summer</b></i> is streaming on Netflix; they are stepping up their game), and they--like other critics--have bemoaned that Spike skips over important plot points. Not true; Spike Lee's films are more like works of art--similar to a painting by Basquiat, Bacon, or Picasso--whose narrative won't be understood on the initial viewing. The cognitive power of the story begins to pull focus in the second and third screening.<br />
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That's what <i>real art</i> is supposed to do; take root and blossom inside your head.<br />
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It wasn't until my second viewing of <i><b>Red Hook Summer</b></i>, that I heard Clarke Peters's Bishop Rouse lament, <i>"My own father didn't love me,"</i> and in another scene, <i>"Sometimes...I don't even like myself."</i> Listening to the tearfully sonorous rasp of Peters's dramatic <i>basso profondo</i>, there is a hint of several generations roiling in the muted shame of unspeakable atrocities. Which made the plot twist not only disgustingly real, but plausible.<br />
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However, it's Peters's explosive performance that brings this film alive. His body language speaks to a manic depressive flux of reactions, from rock bottom despair, to penultimate joy. Framed like a High-Baroque painting in 5D, by the sharp cinematography of Kerwin DeVonish, Clarke Peters's smooth mahogany face mirrors a grotesque mask of emaciated beauty; an open window to a very divided soul. Indeed, in the final moments of the film, when Box and his beat-down boys silently walk up behind Bishop Rouse in prayer at the altar, it's staged like a tableau of Red Hook's Sanhedrin about to administer judgment to a false Christ. I was reminded of Guido Reni's crucifixion painting from 1640, <b style="font-style: italic;"><a href="http://www.wikipaintings.org/en/guido-reni/ecce-homo-1640">Ecce Homo</a> </b>("Behold the Man")<b style="font-style: italic;">. </b><br />
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It is integral to the plot, that almost two thirds of <i><b>Red Hook Summer </b></i>takes place in the confines of Bishop Rouse's Little Heaven church.<br />
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The church is the building where Bishop Enoch Rouse hoped his soul would take flight from the transgressions of the past. The church is the building where Bishop Rouse has a vision of a parishioner's bountiful donation, but in actuality, it's the curse of a waking nightmare from which Rouse cannot escape. The church is the building where Rouse's inner conflict extinguishes his inner light as it blankets his <i>inner man</i> in the shadow of death. For Bishop Enoch, the church became not only his sanctuary, but his God, replacing the GOD of the Bible. A Bible Rouse carelessly tosses around the pulpit like a Truth too hot to hold.<br />
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Clarke Peters embodies an unforgettable character in <b><i>Red Hook Summer</i></b>, a Spike Lee film that I hope is not overlooked by the <b>Academy Awards.</b> <b><i>Red Hook Summer</i></b>--along with Ken Burns's <b><i>The Central Park Five</i></b>, and Ava Duvernay's <b><i>Middle of Nowhere</i></b>, in a three way tie--gets my vote for the <b>Best Film</b> of 2012. Peters's as Bishop Enoch Rouse is a frighteningly evil man, and all the more so, because on the surface he is kind, quiet, and gentle. A man who is <i>not</i> what he appears to be. A man who may garner your sympathy at the end of the film.<br />
<br />
Or maybe he won't.<br />
<br />
Bishop Enoch Rouse is a man who is devoured by appetites he could not control, an appetite that swallows him in his own abyss. An abyss that weighed Bishop Enoch's good intentions in the balance of the thoughts and intents of his twisted heart. And like King Belshazzar--who asked Daniel to interpret his nightmare in Daniel 6--Bishop Enoch Rouse has been found wanting and empty.<br />
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<i><u><b>*Postscript (3.January.2013)*</b></u></i></div>
<i><b><br /></b></i>
<b><i>Red Hook Summer</i></b> is a complex, disturbing, and brave masterpiece. Clarke Peters deserves an <b>Oscar</b>, because he was directed into delivering an indelible performance by one of the most prolific American filmmakers in the last two decades; Spike Lee. Spike is a dude that-- contrary to a few online <i>cinephiles </i>immolating in the <i>smoke and mirrors</i> of their own matchbox pedantry--has not <i>fallen off like a bad bag of dope; </i>instead, he has risen to the top of his game.<br />
<br />
Just like his beloved Knicks.<br />
<br />
If you haven't seen <b><i>Red Hook Summer</i></b>--or even if you have seen it--watch it carefully. Watch the film a second time, and look at the little hints; like the man sitting uncomfortably in the back of the church, as he shifts between elation and despair. Or Bishop Rouse's continuous declaration to Deacon Zee of <i>"I have a vision of a big donation to the church." </i>Or Rouse off-hand confession to his spiritually hardened grandson Flik, <i>"My father never loved me," </i>and <i>"Sometimes, I don't even like myself." </i><br />
<br />
Take note of the subtle looks exchanged between Rouse and his daughter Colleen Royale, in the hallway of his apartment, when she drops Flik off for the summer. Looks that may <u>imply</u> (but are never actually stated in the film) <i>Ok, Dad, you have been calling me, and telling me that you have changed; here is your chance to prove it. But...I still kinda hate you. </i>Consider Colleen's cautious and somewhat hesitant query with Flik during their iChat; <i>"I'm am going to ask you something, and I don't want you to lie to me..."</i> Colleen then changes her thought in mid sentence; <i>"...You been messin' around with any of them fast-ass girls?"</i><br />
<br />
Given what the plot twist, that is <u><i>Not</i></u> what Colleen wanted to <i><u>ask</u></i> her son.<br />
<br />
Take all of these tokens into consideration when the <i>MacGuffin</i> happens, and then think about all of the clues Spike and James have given the audience, <u><b>without giving the story away</b></u>. Then consider this is a similar device employed by the legendary Alfred Hitchcock in films like <i style="font-weight: bold;">The 39 Steps. </i>Also think about the character map of Bishop Enoch Rouse and it's analogy to <i>Marcello Clerici</i>, the misguided flashpoint of Bernardo Bertolucci's 1970 masterpiece, <b><i>The Conformist.</i></b><br />
<br />
This is movie-making at it's finest.<br />
<br />
Spike Lee's <b><i>Red Hook Summer </i></b>is a hard film to digest, especially for African-Americans--like myself--who were raised in the church. The church is that retreat, that shelter from the harsh rain of American Life, that has gotten us through the storm. It is sacrosanct. It is untouchable.<br />
<br />
For the longest time, I interpreted the church as the <i>"House of GOD, which is the church of the living GOD, the pillar and ground of the truth," </i>as the Apostle Paul tells us under the Inspiration of GOD in 1 Timothy 3:15. But with GOD's Grace and much careful meditation and study, I realized that it's not <b><i>the church</i></b> but the <b>living GOD</b>, which is <i>the pillar and ground of the truth.</i> Clarke Peters's stellar performance as Bishop Enoch Rouse underscores the fact that he felt that <i><b><u>he</u></b> </i>was the <i><u><b>pillar </b></u></i>of the church, and in turn, Rouse's <i>anointing</i> would absolve him from any, every, and all sin. Bishop Rouse really believed that he was above the law, even GOD's Law. Rouse's stunning hubris deceived him, which became the beginning of his end, because, <i style="font-weight: bold;">GOD Is not mocked; for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap </i>(Galatians 6:7)<i style="font-weight: bold;">.</i><br />
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I know there will be much disagreement with this, but that is ok, too. Just don't deprive yourself by dismissing <b><i>Red Hook Summer.</i></b> This is modern cinema at the highest level, by a director who continues to let us know that <i>he got mad game.</i><br />
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<br />Bmchttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17004250242744541801noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8840328022376773351.post-14975402567136150932012-12-25T21:14:00.001-05:002012-12-29T00:43:21.351-05:00"Django Unchained": Nino Brown was Not an Abolitionist<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-KwHEHBAmZTg/UNTlA7JEV7I/AAAAAAAACyM/kX2dU6ZsfQ4/s1600/JamieFoxxAsDjangoWeinsteinCompPhotoReDo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="199" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-KwHEHBAmZTg/UNTlA7JEV7I/AAAAAAAACyM/kX2dU6ZsfQ4/s320/JamieFoxxAsDjangoWeinsteinCompPhotoReDo.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">screen-shot from "Django Unchained"/TheWeinstein Company<br />
<br /></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
by Barry Michael Cooper<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b><i>"Fellow-citizens; above your national, tumultuous joy, I hear the mournful wail of millions! whose chains, heavy and grievous yesterday, are, to-day, rendered more intolerable by the jubilee shouts that reach them. If I do forget, if I do not faithfully remember those bleeding children of sorrow this day, "may my right hand forget her cunning, and may my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth!" To forget them, to pass lightly over their wrongs, and to chime in with the popular theme, would be treason most scandalous and shocking, and would make me a reproach before God and the world. My subject, then fellow-citizens, is AMERICAN SLAVERY."</i></b></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>-Excerpt from the speech, </b><b>"What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?"</b><b>Frederick Douglass, 5 July 1852 </b></blockquote>
<br />
We as a nation, are no longer interested in history; we have become bewitched and enthralled by <i>tweetstory; </i>the 140 characters (or less) social documentation of a retrofitted deconstruction of the facts<i>. </i>We will <i>make it up as we go along</i>, just to get some attention, some <i>wiki/google </i>pages, some dollars, and some relevance. Whether what we are transmitting is true...<br />
<br />
...Or not.<br />
<br />
The anthropological shorthand of Twitter has touched all aspects of our postmodern society; political, social, even personal. The spirit of Twitter's <i>blue bird of paradox</i>, has even flown into the gilded coop of Hollywood. How else can one explain the provocative, almost manic frenzy today--Christmas 2012-- across the country, over the release of director Quentin Tarantino's new film, <b>Django Unchained</b>?<br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
<br />
Let me make one thing clear; this is not a blogpost to disparage Tarantino, his film, or dissuade anyone from going to see <b>Django Unchained</b>. Hollywood has crowned the 49-year-old filmmaker as an iconic auteur, and he has the awards, clout, admirers, and money to back that up.<br />
<br />
Like Tarantino, I am an autodidactic film student. By GOD's Grace, I taught myself how to write the script for <b>New Jack City</b> by watching Oliver Stone's <b>Wall Street</b> one weekend almost thirty times on my VCR, playing and pausing scenes in the film, and even watching the entire film on mute,<i> </i>in order to<i> feel</i> the words of a film, as opposed to <i>hearing</i> them.<br />
<br />
To paraphrase James Baldwin's description of his hunger for the written word, my study of directors and films, became like a weird food to me. And though I am of the opinion that Quentin Tarantino is a bit overrated as a director (Spike Lee and Paul Thomas Anderson are both stronger and more original in their approach to cinema; while Tarantino candidly admits that he is more of a cineaste-DJ, who does a phenomenal job of sampling filmmakers like Stanley Kubrick, Don Siegel, Jack Hill, Jack Arnold, Jean Luc Goddard, and Park Chan Wook, to name a few. In fact, Jack Arnold's blaxploitation 1975 bounty-hunter caper, Boss Nigger, starring Fred Williamson, may have been a point of reference for Django), he is a brilliant storyteller. Hands down.<br />
<b>Django Unchained</b> boasts an all-star cast of some the greatest actors working today; Oscar-Winner Jamie Foxx, Samuel L. Jackson, Kerry Washington, and Leonardo DiCaprio. These are <i>actor's actors</i>, especially the incredible Jamie Foxx, probably the most talented actor in Hollywood, bar none. But the 20-minute clip of "<b>Django"</b> I saw during the Cannes Film Festival this year, was enough to turn me off from viewing this film today in it's entirety (despite an associate telling me the film has a strong and positive coda at the end).<br />
<br />
And if <b>Django Unchained</b> is Tarantino's attempt to historically obliterate the memory of D.W. Griffith's 1915 racist screed of a movie, <b>Birth of a Nation</b>, then I respect him even more.<br />
<br />
Even though Spike Lee beat him to the punch on rewriting that wrong on both <b>Malcolm X</b> (1992) and the soaring tone-poem-of-a-documentary, <b>When The Levees Broke: A Requiem In Four Acts</b> (2006), if Quentin Tarantino's mission in creating <b>Django Unchained</b> is his version of a visual anecdote to Griffith's bigoted poison, then he deserves all of the accolades being showered upon him.<br />
<br />
I have to admit, though (and maybe it's my <i>middle-aged-ness), </i>that <i>slave joints</i> are not part of my <i>get-down</i> anymore, especially an factually amended slave-era fable. And especially in the present day epoch of a Black Commander in Chief being voted into his second term, I am going to pass by the <i>ticket buyers line</i> for <b>Django </b>(but I would pay to see a revisionist <i><b>Godfather IV</b></i> joint, with Jeffrey Wright or Harry Lennix playing the Prez, and orchestrating with Melissa Leo playing Secretary of State Clinton, on how they were going to <i>slump&trunk</i> Osama bin Laden). The magnificent, storied, and ground-breaking television series <b>Roots</b>, from our <i>American Tolstoy</i>, Alex Haley, was a tremendous education and enlightenment for me.<br />
<br />
Which is why I believe, for all those interested--and especially young African Americans, and all Americans for that matter who are 20, 25, and 30 years too young to remember the importance of <b>Roots</b>--they should see <b>Django Unchained</b>, and then go back and watch <b>Roots</b>. And begin to read up on <a href="http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?document=162">Frederick Douglass</a>.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-RfZtc8w0-3k/UNpc5CMM7xI/AAAAAAAACyo/sm6uemfEbVo/s1600/TheHonorableFrederickDouglass.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-RfZtc8w0-3k/UNpc5CMM7xI/AAAAAAAACyo/sm6uemfEbVo/s1600/TheHonorableFrederickDouglass.jpg" /></a></div>
And John Brown, a white man that gave his life as an abolitionist. Or Harriet Tubman. Or Nat Turner. Or <a href="http://hookedontheamericandream.blogspot.com/2012/02/sojourner-truths-epic-aint-i-woman.html">Sojourner Truth.</a> And many other brave souls who were stolen from their land, only to be tortured, raped, and massacred. And then compare the revisionist <i>p.o.v.</i> of <b>Django </b>with the veracity of the martyrs of the American Slave Trade, this country's first excursion into Wall Street; trading human bodies as <i>stocks and bondage</i> (<i>Bid'em up, bid'em in!</i>, cried the slave auctioneers).<br />
<br />
The U.S. Slave Trade is also the matrix of this country's fascination with porn, as the auction blocks were the Original American <a href="http://hookedontheamericandream.blogspot.com/2012/02/american-mourning-song-of-martyrs.html">Peep Show</a>.<br />
<br />
The <i><b>actual history</b></i> of American Slavery.<br />
<br />
My only concern regarding <b>Django Unchained</b>, is Jamie Foxx <a href="http://www.theroot.com/views/jamie-foxx-django-fly-and-educational?page=0,1&wpisrc=root_lightbox">saying</a> he channeled the character I created, <i><b>Nino Brown</b></i>, as source material for his role as Django, the freed slave/abolitionist.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-fT4UW9sEtC0/UNpbvNigI0I/AAAAAAAACyc/M69asds2ATo/s1600/WesNinoBrownCourtroomSceneWhiteBronzeReTouch.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="253" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-fT4UW9sEtC0/UNpbvNigI0I/AAAAAAAACyc/M69asds2ATo/s320/WesNinoBrownCourtroomSceneWhiteBronzeReTouch.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
Nino Brown was <i><u><b>Not</b></u></i> an abolitionist.<br />
<br />
As the screenwriter of <b>New Jack City</b>, <b><i>Nino Brown</i></b> was my fictional assemblage of a real life, slave trader transposed to the modernity of the 1980s. Nino Brown was a dark knight in the fraternal, genocidal order of (not the KKK) the <i><b>CCC</b>; </i>the <u><i><b>Crack Cocaine Constructionists</b></i></u>. The progenitors (along with the Reagan Administration--knowingly or unknowingly--and Oliver North) of the second wave of American Slavery.<br />
<br />
An American Slave trade that came not with chains and whips but with crack rocks and AK-47s. Nino Brown was a chemical slave trader; something acknowledged by Pookie the Crackhead (deftly portrayed by the underrated Chris Rock) who says in one scene of <b>New Jack City</b>, <i>"Like Marvin said on that song, <u><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpcdBltxdkc">the boy who made slaves out of men. </a></u>That's Nino Brown!"</i><br />
<br />
As I note in the prologue to my <b>New Jack City Eats Its Young</b> <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Hooked-American-Dream-Vol-1-Young-ebook/dp/B005P3GUOM/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1319493652&sr=1-1">anthology</a> of my work as an investigative reporter in the 1980s:<i><b><br /></b></i><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i><b>"Crack was a circuit breaker in the psychic fuse box of African-American advancement. Crack rewired the motherboard of the descendants of the Motherland, reprogramming them into the 20th century slaves of a new pharm-land, where the cash crops of cooked cocaine had been reaped from the infertility of their very own hopes and dreams. Crack cocaine vaporized the ‘80s into a stagnant era odorized with the acrid, postmortem stank of aborted and unfulfilled wishes."</b></i></blockquote>
Without question, Nino Brown was both a drug dealer, and a pharmaceutical slave owner.<br />
<br />
In many ways, I penned <b>New Jack City</b> as an urban horror story. <b>Nino Brown</b> was a monster who destroyed lives and communities, and he deserved the eternal sting of death from that barrel of that old man's revolver at the conclusion of the film (and very fitting that his judgement took place in the courthouse staircase).<br />
<br />
All of which presents a bit of a dilemma for <b>Django Unchained</b>; if Jamie Foxx and Quentin Tarantino were using <b>Nino Brown</b> as some sort of paradigm for a <i>swaggy</i> abolitionist, then both their model and premise are truly flawed. Because Frederick Douglass, John Brown, Sojourner Truth, and all of those bleeding, children of sorrow, bound and brutalized by a chain, heavy and grievous, deserve much better than a <a href="http://bostonglobe.com/arts/movies/2012/12/25/tarantino-blows-spaghetti-western-django-unchained/hcwJVvWEtMNrlUlatAF1dK/story.html">spaghetti western</a> in the middle passage of <a href="http://hookedontheamericandream.blogspot.com/2012/12/django-unchained-nino-brown-was-not.html">tweetstory</a><br />
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-vi9axgAKhms/Tnyr0aOcVnI/AAAAAAAACjU/A6CelXNbtRk/s1600/HookedOnTheAmericanDreamVol1NewJackCityEatsItsYoungCovrSkullAk47CrossBnsReTouch.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-vi9axgAKhms/Tnyr0aOcVnI/AAAAAAAACjU/A6CelXNbtRk/s320/HookedOnTheAmericanDreamVol1NewJackCityEatsItsYoungCovrSkullAk47CrossBnsReTouch.jpg" width="195" /></a></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Be sure to order Barry Michael Cooper's debut anthology of street journalism from the 1980s (from his award winning reporting in The <b>Village Voice</b>, <b>Spin Magazine</b>, in addition to his more current essays on the <b>Huffington Post</b>), titled <b><u>"Hooked On The American Dream-Vol.1: New Jack City Eats Its Young</u></b>," which is now available on Kindle/Amazon. Don't have a Kindle? No problem; Amazon has a free app available for download, to read "Hooked On The American Dream-Vol.1: New Jack City Eats Its Young," on your PC, Mac, iPad, iPhone, and Android devices. Only $1.99! Click<a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/B005P3GUOM"> here</a> to go to the Amazon site. </span></div>
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Bmchttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17004250242744541801noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8840328022376773351.post-47151756441825962002012-12-14T19:24:00.000-05:002013-01-16T19:37:51.320-05:00Looking For Sanctuary Amongst the Towers of Ruin, Part 2 (The Wretchedness of All Things "Ratchet")<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ebs2kHVe6vk/UAupdZL26kI/AAAAAAAACuE/lF7mNrcWltg/s1600/DilapidatedSkyscrapersDetroitReDo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ebs2kHVe6vk/UAupdZL26kI/AAAAAAAACuE/lF7mNrcWltg/s320/DilapidatedSkyscrapersDetroitReDo.jpg" width="212" /></a></div>
By Barry Michael Cooper<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i><b>"The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?"</b></i></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>Jeremiah 17:9</b> </blockquote>
Going into eight more years of the <i>Obamian</i> trek known as the Starship <i>Yes We Can</i>, and we have crashed into the forbidden planet known as <i>What The F&^% Happened To Us?</i><br />
<br />
We are murdering our Mom at home, before walking into a <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/15/nyregion/shooting-reported-at-connecticut-elementary-school.html?hp&_r=0">classroom full of innocent babies</a>, and massacring them with high-powered guns, before turning the weapon on ourselves.<br />
<br />
We are excoriating our employees without mercy, when they fall for an <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2247848/Jacintha-Saldanha-Kate-Middleton-hoax-nurse-left-suicide-note-criticising-senior-hospital-staff.html">insensitive prankster's </a>phone call pretending to be royalty, and then left struggling for answers when an employee commits suicide.<br />
<br />
We are shooting people dead at point blank range, because <i><a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2248276/Jordan-Davis-White-software-engineer-charged-murder-shot-dead-black-high-student-window-SUV-playing-rap-music-loud.html">the music is too loud.</a></i><br />
<br />
We are <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2012/12/13/justice/texas-pentagram-carving/index.html">carving pentagrams into the backs of our children</a>, because we foolishly believe the numbers of a particular day will illuminate the dark shadows of our souls.<br />
<br />
We are eating each other's faces off.<br />
<br />
We are shooting babies and families and soldiers at midnight theater screenings.<br />
<br />
We are building collegiate sports powerhouses on the backs of sexually abused children.<br />
<br />
We are driven by unknown voices from demonic earpieces that whisper, "Pull the trigger; it's God's will," as we murder unarmed teens wearing hoodies.<br />
<br />
We are pushing this country to the brink of economic apocalypse just to get a political nut.<br />
<br />
Our Providential GPS is broken.<br />
<br />
We have lost our sense of direction.<br />
<br />
We are directed by dollars and cents.<br />
<br />
There is no more <i>True North</i>; only <b>True Blood.</b> Our fascination with vampires reflects our <i>undead</i> desire of wanting more and still not having enough.<br />
<br />
We laugh at our superheroes who are stuck inside the phone booth, while capturing that image on our iPhone/Androids and upload it as the trending topic <i><b>#Duh?Losing</b></i>.<br />
<br />
We have lost our authenticity as individuals in a maze of reality shows, which are just waiting to murder someone on camera; fraudulent reality shows that reveal the wretchedness of all things <i>ratchet</i> in us.<br />
<br />
We are <i>dub-stepping </i>to a <i>Mephisto Waltz</i> that is too loud, out of tune, and out of time.<br />
<br />
We are looking for the <i>"Like"</i> icon on the mirror for the image staring back at us, but we can't find it.<br />
<br />
We are losing our joy. And there is <i>no app for that.</i><br />
<br />
We are looking for sanctuary amongst the towers of ruin.<br />
<br />
GOD Help us all.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-vi9axgAKhms/Tnyr0aOcVnI/AAAAAAAACjU/A6CelXNbtRk/s1600/HookedOnTheAmericanDreamVol1NewJackCityEatsItsYoungCovrSkullAk47CrossBnsReTouch.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><br class="Apple-interchange-newline" /><img border="0" height="320" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-vi9axgAKhms/Tnyr0aOcVnI/AAAAAAAACjU/A6CelXNbtRk/s320/HookedOnTheAmericanDreamVol1NewJackCityEatsItsYoungCovrSkullAk47CrossBnsReTouch.jpg" width="195" /></a></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Be sure to order Barry Michael Cooper's debut anthology of street journalism from the 1980s (from his award winning reporting in The <b>Village Voice</b>, <b>Spin Magazine</b>, in addition to his more current essays on the <b>Huffington Post</b>), titled <b><u>"Hooked On The American Dream-Vol.1: New Jack City Eats Its Young</u></b>," which is now available on Kindle/Amazon. Don't have a Kindle? No problem; Amazon has a free app available for download, to read "Hooked On The American Dream-Vol.1: New Jack City Eats Its Young," on your PC, Mac, iPad, iPhone, and Android devices. Only $1.99! Click<a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/B005P3GUOM"> here</a> to go to the Amazon site. </span></div>
<br />Bmchttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17004250242744541801noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8840328022376773351.post-60097129128298536812012-07-22T04:10:00.000-04:002012-12-14T18:39:28.109-05:00Looking For Sanctuary Amongst the Towers of Ruin<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ebs2kHVe6vk/UAupdZL26kI/AAAAAAAACuE/lF7mNrcWltg/s1600/DilapidatedSkyscrapersDetroitReDo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ebs2kHVe6vk/UAupdZL26kI/AAAAAAAACuE/lF7mNrcWltg/s320/DilapidatedSkyscrapersDetroitReDo.jpg" width="212" /></a></div>
By Barry Michael Cooper<br />
<br />
Four years into the <i>Obamian</i> trek of the Starship <i>Yes We Can</i>, and we have crashed into the forbidden planet known as <i>What The F&^% Happened To Us?</i> We are eating each other's faces off. We are shooting babies and families and soldiers at midnight theater screenings. We are building collegiate sports powerhouses on the backs of sexually abused children. We are driven by unknown voices from demonic earpieces that whisper, "Pull the trigger; it's God's will," as we murder unarmed teens wearing hoodies. We are pushing this country to the brink of economic apocalypse just to get a political nut. Our Providential GPS is broken. We have lost our sense of direction. We are directed by dollars and cents. There is no more <i>True North</i>; only <b>True Blood.</b> Our fascination with vampires reflects our <i>undead</i> desire of wanting more and still not having enough. We laugh at our superheroes who are stuck inside the phone booth, while capturing that image on our iPhone/Androids and upload it as the trending topic <i><b>#Duh?Losing</b></i>. We have lost our authenticity as individuals in a maze of reality shows, which are just waiting to murder someone on camera; the <i>real money shot </i>that will drive ratings through the roof. We are <i>dub-stepping </i>to a <i>Mephisto Waltz</i> that is too loud, out of tune, and out of time. We are looking for the <i>"Like"</i> icon on the mirror for the image staring back at us, but we can't find it. We are losing our joy. And there is <i>no app for that.</i><br />
<br />
We are looking for sanctuary amongst the towers of ruin.<br />
<br />
GOD Help us all.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-vi9axgAKhms/Tnyr0aOcVnI/AAAAAAAACjU/A6CelXNbtRk/s1600/HookedOnTheAmericanDreamVol1NewJackCityEatsItsYoungCovrSkullAk47CrossBnsReTouch.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><br class="Apple-interchange-newline" /><img border="0" height="320" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-vi9axgAKhms/Tnyr0aOcVnI/AAAAAAAACjU/A6CelXNbtRk/s320/HookedOnTheAmericanDreamVol1NewJackCityEatsItsYoungCovrSkullAk47CrossBnsReTouch.jpg" width="195" /></a></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Be sure to order Barry Michael Cooper's debut anthology of street journalism from the 1980s (from his award winning reporting in The <b>Village Voice</b>, <b>Spin Magazine</b>, in addition to his more current essays on the <b>Huffington Post</b>), titled <b><u>"Hooked On The American Dream-Vol.1: New Jack City Eats Its Young</u></b>," which is now available on Kindle/Amazon. Don't have a Kindle? No problem; Amazon has a free app available for download, to read "Hooked On The American Dream-Vol.1: New Jack City Eats Its Young," on your PC, Mac, iPad, iPhone, and Android devices. Only $1.99! Click<a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/B005P3GUOM"> here</a> to go to the Amazon site. </span></div>
<br />
<br />Bmchttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17004250242744541801noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8840328022376773351.post-50837379580558383972012-03-27T22:22:00.000-04:002012-07-22T04:14:46.898-04:00"Justice In Sanford" (Hip Hop Please Don't Let U.S. Down)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-W9RGRLB9R7U/T3KCwtglQTI/AAAAAAAACtA/853aYcG9QFg/s1600/CoverForNiggasInParisReDo-2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-W9RGRLB9R7U/T3KCwtglQTI/AAAAAAAACtA/853aYcG9QFg/s320/CoverForNiggasInParisReDo-2.jpg" width="314" /></a></div>
By Barry Michael Cooper<br />
<br />
<i><b>"JUSTICE IN SANFORD (WATCH YOUR BACK); The New Hip Hop Benefit Concert Album Featuring Jay-Z, Kanye West, Rick "Rozay" Ro$$, 50 Cent, Young Jeezy, Lil' Wayne, T.I., Yasiin Bey and Talib Kweli (Black Star), Common, Outkast, Drake, Nicki Minaj, Nas, Lupe Fiasco, The Clipse, Eminem, Yellawolf, 2 Chainz, Pharrell, and Kendrick Lamar. Special Guest Appearance by Chuck D and KRS One. Intro by Black Thought, ?uestlove and The Roots. Produced by Sean "Diddy" Combs and Dr. Dre. Featuring the lead single, "A Hoodie Ain't A Hood (Watch Your Back)." Proceeds will benefit the Justice 4 Trayvon Fund.</b></i><br />
<br />
Dear Hip Hop:<br />
<br />
Yeah, I know this is wishful thinking. If politics in 2008 was <i>the new Hip Hop</i>, then Hip Hop is <i>the new political movement.</i> Peep it: this is <b><u>Your</u></b> <b>CDF</b>; <b><i><u>Career Defining Moment.</u> </i></b>And...we're waiting.<br />
<br />
Don't let U.S. down.<br />
<br />
Sincerely,<br />
<br />
<i>An Ol' Head from The Days of DJ Hollywood.</i><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Be sure to order Barry Michael Cooper's debut anthology of street journalism from the 1980s (from his award winning reporting in The <b>Village Voice</b>, <b>Spin Magazine</b>, in addition to his more current essays on the <b>Huffington Post</b>), titled <b><u>"Hooked On The American Dream-Vol.1: New Jack City Eats Its Young</u></b>," which is now available on Kindle/Amazon. Don't have a Kindle? No problem; Amazon has a free app available for download, to read "Hooked On The American Dream-Vol.1: New Jack City Eats Its Young," on your PC, Mac, iPad, iPhone, and Android devices. Only $1.99! Click<a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/B005P3GUOM"> here</a> to go to the Amazon site. </span></div>
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<br class="Apple-interchange-newline" /></div>Bmchttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17004250242744541801noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8840328022376773351.post-2281457488988813232012-02-29T19:21:00.000-05:002012-03-16T20:11:43.848-04:00Sojourner Truth's Epic "Ain't I A Woman" Speech (1851)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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by Barry Michael Cooper<br />
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Check it: if there was no Sojourner Truth (former slave turned-abolitionist and human rights activist from the 19th Century), there would be no Fannie Lou Hamer, no Shirley Chisholm, no Bella Abzug, no Betty Friedan, no Angela Davis, no Gloria Steinem, no bell hooks, no Hillary Rodham Clinton, no Sonia Sotomajor, no Oprah Winfrey, no Michelle Obama. Sojourner Truth was the blueprint for their skyscraper of empowerment, the rocket fuel in their socio-cultural jet-packs.<br />
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Ms. Truth was <i>the truth</i>; an eloquent Mistress of Historical Ceremony, whose <b><i>"Ain't I A Woman" </i></b>speech stands as a extemporaneously magnificent monument to her powerful emcee skills. <b><i>"Ain't I A Woman"</i></b> is a testament for all Americans--Black, White, Latino, Asian, Native American, men, women, young and old--who believe that freedom is a Providential right. Not a racially or gender-bound aristocratic privilege.<br />
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<a href="http://www.salemohiohistory.com/HistoryMakers/Marius-Robinson.aspx">Marius Robinson</a>--an abolitionist who worked with Ms. Truth and attended Women's Convention in Akron, Ohio, where Ms. Truth gave this stirring oration on 29 May 1851--recounted the historic event for the 21 June 1851 issue of the <i style="font-weight: bold;">Anti-Slavery Bugle. </i>Mr. Robinson wrote:<br />
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<i>"One of the most unique and interesting speeches of the convention was made by Sojourner Truth, an emancipated slave. It is impossible to transfer it to paper, or convey any adequate idea of the effect it produced upon the audience. Those only can appreciate it who saw her powerful form, her whole-souled, earnest gesture, and listened to her strong and truthful tones. She came forward to the platform and addressing the President said with great simplicity: 'May I say a few words?' Receiving an affirmative answer, she proceeded:"</i></blockquote>
<i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">"I want to say a few words about this matter. I am a woman's rights. I have as much muscle as any man, and can do as much work as any man. I have plowed and reaped and husked and chopped and mowed, and can any man do more than that? I have heard much about the sexes being equal. I can carry as much as any man, and can eat as much too, if I can get it. I am as strong as any man that is now. </span></i><br />
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<i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">As for intellect, all I can say is, if a woman have a pint, and a man a quart – why can't she have her little pint full? You need not be afraid to give us our rights for fear we will take too much, – for we can't take more than our pint'll hold. The poor men seems to be all in confusion, and don't know what to do. Why children, if you have woman's rights, give it to her and you will feel better. </span></i><br />
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<i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">You will have your own rights, and they won't be so much trouble. I can't read, but I can hear. I have heard the bible and have learned that Eve caused man to sin. Well, if woman upset the world, do give her a chance to set it right side up again. The Lady has spoken about Jesus, how he never spurned woman from him, and she was right. When Lazarus died, Mary and Martha came to him with faith and love and besought him to raise their brother. And Jesus wept and Lazarus came forth. And how came Jesus into the world? Through God who created him and the woman who bore him. Man, where was your part? But the women are coming up blessed be God and a few of the men are coming up with them. But man is in a tight place, the poor slave is on him, woman is coming on him, he is surely between a hawk and a buzzard."</span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">One more thought; there is on <i>"last day"</i> for Black History month, because African-American history--as it is with anyone's history--has no period at the end of its declaration. Only an <i>ellipsis</i><b>...</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">My debut anthology of street journalism from the 1980s (and more current essays), "Hooked On The American Dream-Vol.1: New Jack City Eats Its Young," is now available on Kindle/Amazon. Click<a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/B005P3GUOM"> here</a> to go to the Amazon site.</span></div>
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<br /></div>Bmchttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17004250242744541801noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8840328022376773351.post-62273169214196597492012-02-12T00:11:00.000-05:002012-02-29T18:58:52.224-05:00Whitney Houston (1963-2012): I Know Why The American Nightingale Sings<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">By Barry Michael Cooper</span><br />
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<b><i>"While I live will I praise the LORD: I will sing praises unto my GOD while I have any being." Psalm 146:2</i></b><br />
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<b><i>"Nightingales are named so because they frequently sing at night as well as during the day. The name has been used for well over 1,000 years, being highly recognizable even in its Anglo-Saxon form – 'nightingale'. It means 'night songstress'...Its song is particularly noticeable at night because few other birds are singing..." </i></b><br />
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<b>-Wikipedia entry for <i>Luscinia megarhynchos</i>, better known as the "Nightingale."</b><br />
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Less than twenty-four hours before the Grammy's, Whitney Elizabeth Houston--the pride of Newark, N.J., and the greatest singer of her generation--was found dead in a luxury suite at the Beverly Hilton hotel. Houston was 48-years-young. <br />
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GOD Rest her soul.<br />
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The cause of death at the time of this writing, is unknown and when it is known, it will still hold mystery. Mystery that the gossip (or <i><a href="http://bit.ly/uWuPP2">sloppit</a></i>, as I call them) mongers will try to unravel by rumor, innuendo, assumption, and ignorance. And even then, they <i>still</i> won't know. <br />
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However, Whitney Houston's death will <i>still</i> be our loss.<br />
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Like Michael Jackson, Marvin Gaye, Billie Holiday, Richard Pryor, Don Cornelius, Kurt Kobain, the painter Francis Bacon--and countless others--Whitney Houston died from a broken heart. Not drugs, not suicide, not a gunshot, not an Aston Martin gunning through a Laurel Canyon barricade into the twilight expanse of a callous Hollywood night. That detail is set aside for coroner reports, which in turn feed legal issues, mortuary documents, and gossip. The heart is another story altogether. The heart is the fleshy, fragile, and percussive trophy case of passion. A myocardial trophy case not built to withstand the arbitrary crosswinds of instant adoration, wealth, and ultimately, rejection. <br />
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Whitney sang from the heart. Even when her heart was knocked over--and splintered into pieces shaped like silver teardrops--Whitney continued to sing. Even when the silken-steel of her beatific contralto was choked with the monody of stardom, Whitney continued to sing. Singing was Whitney Houston's life; a life many--including family, friends, enables, sycophants, and fans, too--in some way, shape, or form, profited from. We loved her.<br />
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Sometimes a person can be loved to death. <br />
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GOD Willing, Sunday night's Grammy audience will be filled with those thinking about Whitney's cautionary tale, as they sit back and hold their collective breaths, anxiously awaiting to be rewarded with that tiny sculpture. A tiny sculpture that will catapult them into the firmament of pop culture's elite. A tiny sculpture that some hope will validate their reason for living. Some of them will recognize the <i>monster (</i>which Lady Gaga brilliantly I.D.'d as<i> Fame) </i>that chased Whitney for three decades, as the same <i>monster</i> that is hunting them, too. A <i>monster</i> that whispers sweet nothings with the hot breath of cool lies.<br />
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Despite all of her enormous achievements--don't forget the mind-boggling success of the hit film <b><i>The Bodyguard</i></b> and the song, <b><a href="http://bit.ly/wRegLz">I Will Always Love You</a></b>, which is still the best-selling single by a female artist in music history--despite her place as the most gifted singer on the planet in the last 30 years, despite the most dazzling, gorgeous smile, that lit up like the sun, Whitney Houston sang from the nighttime of her soul. <br />
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Whitney Houston was an <i>American Nightingale</i>.<br />
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Whitney was an <i>American Nightingale</i>, because she sang with unmistakable beauty from a really dark place, a place where few other birds are singing. That's why we heard her euphonic voice loud and clear. And now--though we won't hear it on this side of life's veil--Whitney sings a most beautiful song. She has gone to the place <i><a href="http://bit.ly/sJjTp">where broken hearts go</a></i>; back to the Open Arms of Love, back to the ONE who Blessed her to bless us all these years. Whitney Elizabeth Houston is now singing a song worth more than any Grammy Award. A song not meant for our ears.<br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">My debut anthology of street journalism from the 1980s (and more current essays), "Hooked On The American Dream-Vol.1: New Jack City Eats Its Young," is now available on Kindle/Amazon. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Click<a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/B005P3GUOM"> here</a> to go to the Amazon site.</span></div>
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<br /></div>Bmchttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17004250242744541801noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8840328022376773351.post-65117498301541198332012-01-28T23:03:00.001-05:002012-05-07T17:42:40.939-04:00They Shoot Black Movies...Don't They?<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-asKliGMlthY/TyIVi_gbLWI/AAAAAAAACq0/-LrrGpaD8Qs/s1600/OscarMichaeuxCollage.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-asKliGMlthY/TyIVi_gbLWI/AAAAAAAACq0/-LrrGpaD8Qs/s320/OscarMichaeuxCollage.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Pioneer African American Filmmaker, Oscar Michaeux</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>They Shoot Black Movies...Don't They? </b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>(The Realization of a Hustlerz Ambition)</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>By Barry Michael Cooper</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">At the dawn of the Black Hollywood Renaissance of the '90s, the sodality of filmmakers like Spike Lee, F. Gary Gray, The Hudlin Brothers, Bill Duke, Stan Lathan, John Singleton, The Hughes Brothers, George Jackson, Doug McHenry, Mario Van Peebles, Robert Townsend, Keenan Ivory Wayans, Kevin Hooks, Fred "Fab Five Freddy" Braithwaite, Charles Stone, III, Nelson George and this writer, to name a few, felt like the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. We--like Rossetti, Millais, and Hunt at the height of their artistic revolt in the U.K. during the late 1800s--were cinematic <i>reformers</i>, rejecting the cartoonish mythos of African American life, as depicted in the Black Exploitation flicks of the 1970s. In the 1990's we were Dr. Martin Luther King, we were Malcolm X, we were Gordon Parks, we were Melvin Van Peebles. We were insatiable <i><b>American Dreamers</b></i>, like Oscar Michaeux; albeit with limos, first-class, transcontinental transport, five-star luxury hotels and cuisine, Armani-Brioni-Versace-Zegna-Valentino-Ferragamo gear, expanding bank accounts, and cell phones. We had <b><i>Been To The Mountaintop</i></b> and had G.P.S.'d that noble glide-path while tracking the <i style="font-weight: bold;">Realization of a Negro's Ambition, </i>guided by the voice from an ancestral control tower which intoned, <i><b>By Any Means Necessary. </b></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">We just knew <i>The Dream</i> would last forever.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Twenty years later Spike Lee--one of the most talented and prolific directors this country has produced in the 20th Century--can't get a green light for the sequel to <b>Inside Man</b>, despite the fact that the original film grossed nearly $200 million dollars worldwide. Twenty years later, two supremely talented actresses--Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer--are given Oscar nods for their portrayals of wise but weathered Mississippi domestics in a highly praised film titled <i><b>The Help.</b></i> </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Twenty years many black filmmakers (including myself) haven't had a movie financed by a major studio in over twenty years.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Twenty years later and America has its first African American President of the United States, seeking re-election for a second term at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Twenty years later, African American filmmakers navigate a course that is slightly sticky, smelly, and saggy, the aftermath of an exploding <i>Dream</i> deferred by Hollywood's <i>Grand Illusion of Inclusion.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Twenty years later, is this the way it's supposed to be?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Twenty years ago, it was a heady time in Hollywood for a young black screenwriter like me. To be honest, it was unbelievable, and it's almost like it never happened at all. Sitting in meetings along with the late, great film producer George Jackson (and his partner Doug McHenry) at Warner Brothers in Burbank, California, was nothing short of surreal. Months earlier, George Jackson--who read my May 1986 <b>Spin Magazine</b> cover story on the <a href="http://hookedontheamericandream.blogspot.com/2011/10/new-jack-anthology-xcrpt-in-cold-blood.html">Baltimore "Yo Boy" </a>drug gang culture while changing planes in Denver--hired me away from the loading dock of the Hecht Company department store in Baltimore, to write the script of a movie that became the <i>Rosetta Stone</i> for modern urban culture; 1991's <b><i>New Jack City</i></b>. As the first black screenwriter in history to have two films--<b><i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107079/">Sugar Hil</a></i></b>l and <b><i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0109035/">Above the Rim</a></i></b>--released not only in the same year (1994), but 30 days apart from each other, I felt weightless in Hollywood's zero-gravity of glitz, fraudulent gravitas, and artifice.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">As Biz Markie once said (describing the ego-toxic euphoria dispensed by the laughing gas known as <i><b>The Vapors</b></i>), "<i>Damn it feels good to have people up on it..."</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I wasn't alone; Spike had <b><i>Malcolm X,</i></b> <i><b>Jungle Fever,</b></i> <i><b>Mo Betta Blues.</b></i> Singleton got an Oscar nod for <b><i>Boyz n the Hood,</i></b> and continued building his visual corpora with <b>Poetic Justice, Higher Learning, Rosewood, Baby Boy</b> and many other films. F. Gary Gray--one of the most originative and diversified American filmmakers of the last two decades--made indelible comedies that celebrated the 'hood (<b>Friday</b> with Chris Tucker and Ice Cube), complex character studies that celebrated the strength of women (<b>Set If Off</b> with Queen Latifah, Jada Pinkett-Smith, and Viveca A. Fox), and masterful, mainstream Hollywood caper films (<b>The Italian Job</b> with Mark Walhberg, Mos Def, and Charlize Theron) that celebrated the box office.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The Hudlin Brothers created a franchise with <b><i>House Party</i></b>, and Reggie Hudlin directed one the best American romantic comedies in the last 30 years (and one of Eddie Murphy's greatest performances) with <b><i>Boomerang</i></b>. The Hughes Brothers ignited their spectacular career with <b><i>Menace II Society</i></b>. Nelson George penned the wildly successful west-coast rap spoof <b><i>CB4</i></b> (which featured two <b><i>New Jack City</i></b> stars, Chris Rock and Al Payne). </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The success story of African-Americans in Hollywood in the 1990s, was the result of a cultural harvest planted a century earlier, by Oscar Michaeux, the African American filmmaker who changed the game, at the beginning of the Twentieth Century. Born on 2 January 1884 in Murphysboro, Ill., Michaeux was the son of a former slave from Kentucky. Using funds he saved up from shining shoes in a white barber shop in Chicago, and work as a Pullman porter and a homesteader in the Southwest, Micheaux channeled his love for communication as a journalist (for the <b>Chicago Defender</b>), a novelist, and then a director. His first two films, <b><i>The Homesteader</i></b> (adapted from his novel, <b><i>The Conquest</i></b>) and <i><b>Within Our Gates</b></i> (which many observers at the time felt was Michaeux's answer to D.W. Griffiths anathematical racist epic, <b><i>Birth of a Nation</i></b>), not only blew the explosive depiction of African-Americans as nannies, coons, and sambos to anthropological smithereens, it defined black folk as human beings who wanted to be accorded the same dignity and rights as their white counterparts. Oscar Micheaux's films were pointed at the dead center/critical mass of Jim Crow's diseased heart of darkness, which made him more than just a courageous and acclaimed filmmaker, and his movies more than just entertainment. Micheaux's work was also a political statement. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">And maybe, the decade-long dearth of African American films in recent years, is Hollywood's political statement to Black Americans. Maybe it's Hollywood's way of saying, <b style="font-style: italic;">Listen, my niggas; you got a black President, stop yer yappin'!! You <u>overcame</u>! Do you know how many unreported suicides and heart attacks took place in the Deep South (and the Northwest, too) among the offspring of Klansman and racial hate mongers, the night of 4 November 2008? Do you know how many good 'ol boys woke up, thinking they were having a nightmare about some darkie winning the White House...only to wake up and find out that a darkie was <u>really gonna be in the White House?!</u> Don't you see how those white Congressmen and Senators look at Obama when he's up on the podium giving the State of the Union Address to the entire world! The entire f---ing world! This is a guy who should be driving them to the airport, not sitting in the motherf---ing Oval Office! But he is, so please, cut us some slack. We're not green-lighting anymore black films right now; and especially films directed, written by, or produced by Blacks. With your boy Obama as President, now we have a <u>pass</u> to go <u>back to the past</u>, back to this nation's <u>comfort zone</u>, and you all can't say a damn thing about it! You had a ten-year run! You had your day! Be happy! </b></span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">From left to right: Barry Michael Cooper, Sean "Diddy" Combs, MC Lyte, Chaka Zulu, L. Londell McMillan, Chris "Ludacris" Bridges, Queen Latifah-Photo Credit: Zelena Williams</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I remember moderating a panel on Hip Hop at Howard University back in 2009, the day before President Obama's Inauguration. It was part of an all day conference titled </span><i style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Refresh Everything</i><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">, and it was sponsored by Spike Lee, Pepsi, and Howard University. I had an illustrious panel of guests: Sean "Diddy" Combs, Queen Latifah, Ludacris and his manager Chaka Zulu, noted lawyer and entertainment executive L. Londell McMillan, and MC Lyte. It was a spirited conversation, and my Hip Hop panel got a lot of attention; all 1508 seats in Howard's beautiful Cramton Auditorium were filled, and people were standing in the aisles. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">A few days later, I remember emailing my thanks to Spike--the both of us basking in the radiantly historic glow of a <b><u>Black President of the United States of America</u></b>--and me thinking that <i>now...in 2009...with a President Barack Hussein Obama,</i> that Hollywood was going to be wide open for us. <b><u>Wide open!</u></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">What a difference three years can make.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Last week, the critics at the Sundance Film Festival did their best to <i><a href="http://insidemovies.ew.com/2012/01/23/sundance-spike-lee-red-hook-summer/">tweet and feather</a></i> Spike Lee and his film <b><i>Red Hook</i></b> (written by Lee's talented collaborator <a href="http://hookedontheamericandream.blogspot.com/2012/01/james-mcbride-being-maid.html">James McBride</a>, and financed by Lee himself). <b><i>Red Hook</i></b>--a controversial coming-of-age story about a young black teen and his life-altering summer vacation in Brooklyn's Red Hook projects--seemed to make critics uneasy. Many critics at the Sundance screening condemned Lee's film outright, as opposed to taking the time to discuss with their readers, what elements of the film made them squirm. Which is what <i>real</i> critics are supposed to do. Which begs the question: had this been Gus Van Zandt or Quentin Tarantino with the exact same film, would there have been a different reaction?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Last week, two of <i><b>The Help</b></i>'s stars--the gifted Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer--were given well-deserved Oscar nominations for playing maids during the heat of civil rights unrest. Hollywood insists on rewinding those anachronistic <i>ghost clocks of Mississippi</i>, as long as the timekeepers are sympathetic white characters who retrofit the story from their sanitized and patronizing, p.o.v.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Last week, I had an interesting conversation with a well-known and visionary television producer--who is also white--who told me in no uncertain terms, "<i>Barry, I don't have to tell you, the era of the 'hood movie, is pretty much over. The executives at the studios won't even take a meeting on that genre any more. Black films are having are hard time finding a home at the studios. If its not a big bucks sequel, or something that fits into their formula of huge box office, it's not going to get a green light. Which also includes small and really good films by white directors, too. It's a new day in Hollywood."</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">So are African American filmmakers still writing and shooting great Black films? Of course: Spike Lee just did it with <b><i>Red Hook</i></b>, Dee Rees did it with <b><i>Pariah</i></b>,</span><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">and Ava DuVernay made history at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival, when she won the Best Director prize. It's truly inspiring that Tyler Perry, the Hughes Brothers and John Singleton are creating incredible, viable, big budget studio films. However, Black filmmakers need to cultivate even more diverse content. </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">And if </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">it means that other African-American filmmakers have to go back to the grind of digging into their own wallets--</span><i style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>She's Gotta Have It </b></i><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">and </span><b style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-style: italic;">Hollywood Shuffle</b><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">-style</span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">--and <i>making it happen</i> with a Canon 5D camera and a bare bones crew, <u>then so be it.</u> There is a gorgeous freedom of expression with that kind of cinema, and most assuredly, there is a growing audience in the millions (and a potential global audience in the hundreds of millions or even billions) who want view their work. And that growing audience is responsible for the emergence of streaming video services like Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime Videos, and Vudu, which in a few years--GOD Willing--may make cable television obsolete.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">However, Hollywood is not completely out of the <i>'hood</i> film <i>bidness.</i> Imagine if you will, some of those same bright-eyed number and career crunching studio execs, who publicly claim they are true blue Democrats--but surreptitiously vote crimson red G.O.P.--</span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">orchestrating attack ads portraying President Obama as a Harvard-educated <i>Nino Brown</i> and the White House as his very own </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i style="font-weight: bold;">New Jack City? </i>A menace to their polite society; a</span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> <i>"Nino Obama" </i>who<i> </i>pushes <i><b><u>their</u></b></i> great country into the </span><i style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">crack house of oblivion.</i><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> Hyperbole, you say? Perhaps. But if I'm not mistaken, Newt "The Notorious N.E.W.T." Gingrich recently labeled (or is it libeled?) </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">President Obama as the <i><a href="http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/01/23/1057543/-Newt-Gingrichs-Obama-is-the-food-stamp-president-line-founded-on-afalsehood">"Food Stamp President."</a></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Those of us--no matter what race, social stratum, religion, or whoever we are--who want four more seasons of <i><b>That Virtuous Brother Doing His Thing in the West Wing (And Trying To Make It Work For Everyone)</b></i>, need to show up at polls in droves (just like last time, with lines around the block), just to make sure that the GOP's post-mod minstrel show they are putting into production at this very moment, doesn't get that<i> <u>green light.</u></i></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Be sure to order Barry Michael Cooper's debut anthology of street journalism from the 1980s (and more current essays), titled <b><u>"Hooked On The American Dream-Vol.1: New Jack City Eats Its Young</u></b>," which is now available on Kindle/Amazon. Don't have a Kindle? No problem; Amazon has a free app available for download, to read "Hooked On The American Dream-Vol.1: New Jack City Eats Its Young," on your PC, Mac, iPad, iPhone, and Android devices. Click<a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/B005P3GUOM"> here</a> to go to the Amazon site. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>Bmchttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17004250242744541801noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8840328022376773351.post-21326492545853794762012-01-25T20:58:00.000-05:002012-08-08T18:43:33.211-04:00James McBride: "Being a Maid"<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The late, great Oscar-winning African American actress, Hattie McDaniel<br />
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><i>This is a powerful and thought-provoking essay written by the brilliant screenwriter and Spike Lee collaborator James McBride--his produced work includes "Miracle At St. Anna, and current Sundance Film Fest lighting rod "Red Hook"--regarding Hollywood's retrograde state-of-affairs, when it comes to African American film. It almost seems as if Hollywood--like the GOP--is lobbying for a new "Jim Crow" in Hi-Res HD. McBride's commentary is a most cogent and brutally honest assessment of life on the celluloid plantation, in the era of a Black Commander-In-Chief.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Last night, President Obama, our first African American President, delivered his third State of the Union address. On that same day, the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences nominated two gifted African American actresses, Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer, for Oscars for playing maids in The Help. This is 73 years after the first African American to win an Oscar, Hattie McDaniel, garnered the award for the same role – as a maid, and a slave maid at that, winning the Oscar in the Best Supporting Actress category on Feb. 29, 1940.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">And here we are, in the year of our Lord, Jan 25, 2012. Maybe I’m getting old, but the irony of this is too much. Or perhaps I’ve heard this song before. In the 1970’s, when I was a freshman at Oberlin College, my white friends and I used to sit up and talk about racism and solving society’s problems all through the night until the sun rose. Not much good came from these talks, the least of which is I hoped to get laid, which rarely happened. But on those cold nights, I was convinced that when I walked out of college, racism would be just about finished. Instead, it smashed me across the face like a bottle when I walked into the real world. Now, 33 years later, I find myself talking about the same thing I talked about when I was a college freshman.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">I have no take with Ms. Davis and Ms. Spencer. They’re outstanding actresses. But the nomination of these two women by the Hollywood community 73 years after Hattie McDaniel won for the same role speaks for itself. As co-writer and co-producer of Spike Lee’s newest film “Red Hook Summer,” and his previous feature film “Miracle At St. Anna,” I have a clear eyed view of what the cultural display of African American life means to hearts in Hollywood, a land of feints and double meanings and as tricky to navigate as anything inside the Beltway. I wish someone had told me this when I was a freshman at Oberlin.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">America is a super power not because we make the biggest guns. We’re a superpower because our culture has saturated the planet: Levis, Apple, Nike, Disney, Coke, Pepsi, McDonald’s, Jazz, Rhythm n Blues, Rock ‘n Roll, and Hip Hop. Our culture dominates the world far more than any nuclear bomb can. When you can make a person think a certain way, you don’t have to bomb them. Just give them some credit cards, a wide screen 3D TV, some potato chips, and watch what happens. This kind of cultural war, a war of propaganda and words, elements that both Hollywood and Washington know a lot about, makes America powerful beyond measure. The hard metal of this cultural weaponry, much of it, emanates from the soul of Blacks, the African American experience in music, dance, art and literature.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">But this kind of cultural war puts minority storytellers – Blacks, Asians, Latinos and people of color – at a distinct disadvantage. My friend Spike Lee is a clear example. Three days ago, at the premiere of Red Hook Summer at The Sundance Film Festival, Spike, usually a cool and widely</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">accepting soul whose professional life is as racially diverse as any American I know– lost his cool for 30 seconds. When prompted by a question from Chris Rock who was seated in the audience, he blurted out a small, clear truth: He said one reason we did Red Hook Summer independently was because he could notget Hollywood to green light the follow-up to “Inside Man” – which cost only $45 million to make and </span><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">grossed a whopping $184,376,240 million domestically and worldwide – plus another $37 million domestically on DVD sales. Within minutes, the internet lit up with burning personal criticism of him stitched into negative reviews of “Red Hook Summer” by so-called film critics and tweeters. I don’t mind negative reviews. That’s life in the big leagues. But it’s the same old double standard. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">The recent success of “Red Tails” which depicts the story of the all black Tuskegee Airmen, is a clear example. Our last film, “Miracle At St. Anna,” which paid homage to the all-black 92nd Division, which fought on the ground in Italy, was blasted before it even got out the gate. Maybe it’s a terrible film. Maybe it deserved to bomb. The difference is this: When George Lucas complained publicly about the fact that he had to finance his own film because Hollywood executives told him they didn’t know how to market a black film, no one called him a fanatic. But when Spike Lee says it, he’s a racist militant and a malcontent. Spike’s been saying the same thing for 25 years. And he had to go to Italy to raise money for a film that honors American soldiers, because unlike Lucas, he’s not a billionaire. He couldn’t reach in his pocket to create, produce, market, and promote his film like Lucas did with “Red Tails.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">But there’s a deeper, even more critical element here , because it’s the same old story: Nothing in this world happens unless white folks says it happens. And therein lies the problem of being a professional black storyteller– writer, musician, filmmaker. Being black is like serving as Hoke, the driver in “Driving Miss Daisy,” except it’s a kind of TV series lasts the rest of your life: You get to drive the well-meaning boss to and fro, you love that boss, your lives are stitched together, but only when the boss decides your story intersects with his or her life is your story valid. Because you’re a kind of cultural maid. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">You serve up the music, the life, the pain, the spirituality. You clean house. Take the kids to school. You serve the eggs and pour the coffee. And for your efforts the white folks thank you. They pay you a little. They ask about your kids. Then they jump into the swimming pool and you go home to your life on the outside, whatever it is. And if lucky you get to be the wise old black sage that drops pearls of wisdom, the wise old poet or bluesman who says ‘I been 'buked and scorned,’ and you heal the white folks, when in fact you can’t heal anybody. In fact, you’re actually as dumb as they are, dumber maybe, because you played into the whole business. Robbing a character of their full dimension, be it in fiction or non fiction, hurts everyone the world over. Need proof? Ask any Native American, Asian, Latino, Gay American, or so called white “hillbilly.” As if hillbillies don’t read books, and Asians don’t rap, and Muslims don’t argue about the cost of a brake job.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">There’s nothing wrong with being white. I’m half white myself and proud of it. There isn’t a day passes that I don’t think about my late white Jewish mother and the lessons she taught me about humanity. But bearing witness to this kind of cultural war over the course of a lifetime will grind a man or woman down in horrible ways, and that’s my fear. I remember as a young saxophonist, just out of Oberlin, standing at a tiny jazz club in West Philadelphia watching the great jazz tenorman Hank Mobley in his last days, sick, broke. It was a jam session, and he strode onstage to reach for the magic one more time, to conjure up the power of his younger years when his mighty tenor powered Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers and Miles Davis when those guys were the toast of Europe. Drink destroyed him. He was helped onstage by the kind musicians around him, and he stood there swaying, barely able to hold up his horn in that rancid little joint. When he put his mouth to his horn to play, it broke my heart. I felt like I was being strangled. His ability to play had vanished, and I saw my future.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">It was terrible lesson for a young man fresh out of college and I did my best to forget it. But I understand it then and I understand it now: This is what happens when you walk through a supermarket and hear muzak playing ninth chords borrowed from your history; when you see instructions books made from the very harmonic innovations you created, and in my case, when you spend a lifetime watching films that spoof your community. Your entire culture is boiled down to greasy gut bucket jokester films, pornographic bling-rap, or poverty porn.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">I used to think that if only there were a peaceful way, we could make Hollywood listen to the sound of America’s true drumbeat: the voices of working class poor, blacks, Asians, Latinos, Native Americans, and the so-called rednecks of this country; the people that walk the land, work in the K-Marts, run the fast food joints, drive the trucks, stand in line at 4 a.m. for the i-phones, go to church for redemption, and sell the knockoffs on ebay. But the new breed of Republicans have taken that high ground. They’ve gotten rich off it. That leaves me with nothing but the notion that Washington and Hollywood may be just alike. They’re engaged in a cultural war. They take your gun and use it on you, and it makes you sorry you drew your gun in the first place. It makes you wish you were a maid.</span></div>
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<br /></div>Bmchttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17004250242744541801noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8840328022376773351.post-28867795099013121352011-12-08T04:49:00.001-05:002012-12-05T19:16:49.308-05:00"The Peace Sign" (Barry Michael Cooper's 1990 Directorial Debut)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-uTkssUkM0hw/TuCIEbovxsI/AAAAAAAACoo/-m6MgRzwSD8/s1600/PeaceSignStillPhoto7Dec2011ReTouch.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-uTkssUkM0hw/TuCIEbovxsI/AAAAAAAACoo/-m6MgRzwSD8/s1600/PeaceSignStillPhoto7Dec2011ReTouch.jpg" /></a></div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">By Barry Michael Cooper</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>"The Peace Sign"</b> was the first film I ever directed. Watching Mario Van Peebles--who was not only gracious enough to invite me to the set of <b>"New Jack City,"</b> the screenplay I wrote for Warner Brothers in 1987, which became a hit film in 1991 and ignited the careers of Van Peebles, Wesley Snipes, Ice T, Allen Payne, and Chris Rock--but he allowed me to watch him work as he set up shots with the DP Francis Kenny, block scenes with the actors, and masterfully helm a movie that became a classic. </span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-A3qtNv_gSBw/TuGwn1YbmEI/AAAAAAAACow/9ud6MuD7AwA/s1600/DavidMillsPeaceSignFilmReTouch.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-A3qtNv_gSBw/TuGwn1YbmEI/AAAAAAAACow/9ud6MuD7AwA/s1600/DavidMillsPeaceSignFilmReTouch.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">photo still of David Mills, "The Peace Sign," 1990</td></tr>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">After </span><b style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"New Jack City"</b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> wrapped production in early June 1990, I took a two-week crash course in filmmaking at the School of Visual Arts on 23rd Street in Manhattan. I began to read books like </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Sarris" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Andrew Sarris's The American Cinema: Directors and Directions</a>. <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I also picked the brain of a man who I consider a cinematic mentor, the prolific director and TV producer </span><a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0490133/" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Stan Lathan</a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">, in addition to devouring up to three films a day.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-1VHjkqRR8po/TuGxQSxRHOI/AAAAAAAACo4/RuYbAL69uMI/s1600/EricDanielsPeaceSignFilmReTouch.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-1VHjkqRR8po/TuGxQSxRHOI/AAAAAAAACo4/RuYbAL69uMI/s1600/EricDanielsPeaceSignFilmReTouch.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">photo still of Eric Daniels, "The Peace Sign," 1990</td></tr>
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<b style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"The Peace Sign" </b><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">was the result of this intense celluloid immersion. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Visually, I was influenced by a lot of the </span><b style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">British New Wave's</b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span><i style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>"Angry Young Man"</b> </i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">cinema. Two films come to mind during this time; </span><a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0002338/#Director" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Jack Clayton's</a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> powerful </span><b style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"Room at the Top"</b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> (starring Lawrence Harvey and Simone Signoret; I am going to post a more in-depth essay on this film at a later date, GOD Willing), and the legendary </span><a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001486/" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Sidney Lumet's</a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> striking </span><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0059274/" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"The Hill"</a> (<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">an American director's take on the <b>British New Wave</b>), </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">underscored by the knockout performances by the late, great Ossie Davis and a very un-<i>James Bond</i>-ish Sean Connery. </span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-tvqSDpp7dCs/TuG2snQqLbI/AAAAAAAACpI/rVmERXz9tqk/s1600/DerrickRobertsPeaceSignFilm1990ReTouch.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-tvqSDpp7dCs/TuG2snQqLbI/AAAAAAAACpI/rVmERXz9tqk/s1600/DerrickRobertsPeaceSignFilm1990ReTouch.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">photo still of Derrick Roberts, "The Peace Sign," 1990</td></tr>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I loved the iconic camera artistry of the UK DP's like </span><a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0005807/" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Oswald Morris</a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> (</span><b style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"The Hill"</b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">), and </span><a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0005711/" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Freddie Francis</a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> (</span><b style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"Room at the Top"</b><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">). Th</span><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">e </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">clinical beauty of their B&W photography, in tandem with their use of E.C.U's (extreme close-ups) turned their coverage of the actors, into a psychic X-Ray of their souls. The work of these filmmakers--then and now--had a great impact on me.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-fnqAQ9nw6uo/TuG3BkgfcKI/AAAAAAAACpQ/VbaBrtxhGuk/s1600/BrentJCooperPeaceSignFilm1990ReTouch.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-fnqAQ9nw6uo/TuG3BkgfcKI/AAAAAAAACpQ/VbaBrtxhGuk/s1600/BrentJCooperPeaceSignFilm1990ReTouch.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">photo still of Brent J. Cooper, "The Peace Sign," 1990</td></tr>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I had a lot of help on </span><b style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"The Peace Sign". </b><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I am forever grateful to a </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">group of amazing first-time actors--David Mills, Derrick Roberts, Eric Daniels, and Brent J. Cooper--who effortlessly brought the characters I scripted on the page to life in ways I never dreamed possible. I learned a lot from my cinematographer, Tim Naylor, who is one of the most sought-after DP's in the business. Working as my tenacious assistant director, was a super- talented Spike Lee protege named <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0126032/">Jeff Byrd</a>--who kept the shooting schedule of <b>"The Peace Sign"</b> on time and within the budget--who would later go on to become a great director and filmmaker in his own right. Tracy Daniels, my co-producer, did a phenomenal job of turning a $5,000 investment (the entire budget of <b>"The Peace Sign"</b>) from Steven Starr (who was my first agent at William Morris), into an ambitious, seven minute film about how different people can bring radically different points-of-view to a single object. I had a great time creating </span><b style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"The Peace Sign."</b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> It was and still is, a project very close to me.</span><br />
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-PUGL56zmtkw/Tr28k8-y8PI/AAAAAAAACmk/IM1xgVTLtYY/s1600/HookedOnTheAmericanDreamVol1NewJackCityEatsItsYoungCovrSkullAk47CrossBnsReTouch.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-PUGL56zmtkw/Tr28k8-y8PI/AAAAAAAACmk/IM1xgVTLtYY/s320/HookedOnTheAmericanDreamVol1NewJackCityEatsItsYoungCovrSkullAk47CrossBnsReTouch.jpg" width="195" /></a></div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Be sure to pick up my new anthology, </span><b style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"Hooked On The American Dream-Vol.1: New Jack City Eats Its Young,"</b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> available exclusively on Kindle/Amazon. Amazon/Kindle has a </span><b style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><u>free</u></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">, downloadable app for all computers and mobile devices. Click </span><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Hooked-American-Dream-Vol-1-Young-ebook/dp/B005P3GUOM/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1319493652&sr=1-1" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">here</a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> to go to the "Hooked On The American Dream-Vol.1:New Jack City Eats Its Young" Kindle store site.</span>Bmchttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17004250242744541801noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8840328022376773351.post-87329903310791685812011-11-14T21:05:00.000-05:002012-07-15T01:29:08.636-04:00More Video From The Planet Rock Panel@The Paley Center-12.September.2011:Melle Mel<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-zGl_qdknVQk/TsHIrC-RL3I/AAAAAAAACm0/WpzJ2n3r_fQ/s1600/MelleMel6PaleyCenterPlanetRockPanel12Sept2011ReTouch.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="180" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-zGl_qdknVQk/TsHIrC-RL3I/AAAAAAAACm0/WpzJ2n3r_fQ/s320/MelleMel6PaleyCenterPlanetRockPanel12Sept2011ReTouch.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">By Barry Michael Cooper</span><br />
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<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melle_Mel" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Melle Mel:</a><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>"Child is born/with no state of mind/blind to the ways/of mankind..."</i></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Melle Mel is to Hip Hop/Modern American Music, what Miles Davis is to Jazz, what Bob Dylan and William "Smokey" Robinson are to Rock&Soul, what Huddie William "Leadbelly" Ledbetter and Woody Guthrie are to Folk and Blues, and what Beethoven is to Classical; Melvin "Melle Mel" Glover--of the storied Hip Hop collective known as </span><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grandmaster_Flash_and_the_Furious_Five" style="font-weight: bold;">Grandmaster Flash</a><b> and the </b><a href="http://rockhall.com/inductees/grandmaster-flash-and-the-furious-five/" style="font-weight: bold;">Furious Five</a><b>--</b>is a composer of unparalleled excellence. Melle Mel <i><u><b>is</b></u> </i></span><i style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Blueprint </i><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">for an MC</span><i style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">. </i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Melle Mel represents </span><i style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Beginning.</i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> If there was no Melle Mel, if there was no</span><i style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Hip Hop Rosetta Stone</i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> known as </span><b style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"The Message,"</b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> there would be no Jay-Z, no Yeezy-Weezy-Jeezy, no KRS-1, no LL Cool J, no Rakim, no Big Daddy Kane, no Biggie, no Tupac,</span><u style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> no nothing</u><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">. In the grand hall of cultural mirrors that comprise<i> The Great American Songbook,</i><b> "The Message"</b> reflected the dark light which cast shadows from the inner city's abyss. It was an <i>S.O.S.</i> at the <i>crack of the dawn of the dead,</i> in President Reagan's <i>Mourning In America.</i></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">My world changed back in the summer of 1981, when I was in Bobby Robinson's record store on 125th near 8th Avenue, hanging out with another legendary MC by the name of Gabriel "Spoonie G" Jackson. Bobby Robinson, who owned the <b>"Enjoy"</b> label, was Spoonie's uncle, and Spoonie's half-brother--Poochie Costello--was the house percussionist for <b>Enjoy. </b>Poochie also manned the cash register at the record store. <b>Enjoy</b>, along with <b>Sugar Hill Records</b> of New Jersey, were the first rap record labels in the country. Spoonie and I had just finished a grits and whiting fish lunch at M&G's Restaurant a few doors down on St. Nicholas Avenue, and we were discussing the track I wanted to produce for him for Aaron Fuchs's fledgling <b>Tuff City</b> imprint. While we were dicing it up, Poochie put an <b>Enjoy </b>production on the turntable that changed the way I listened to music forever.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It was called <b>"Super Rappin'."</b> </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The group was <b><a href="http://grandmasterflash.com/">Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five</a>.</b> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Though I had heard the song before--via "the boombox express," or dudes blasting music on their Sanyo's and JVC's as they passed in transit, between 1979 and 1981--I finally<b> <i>listened</i></b> to it that day at Bobby's Record Shop.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">When I listened to Mel, his brother Kidd Creole, another vocally adroit MC named Keith "Cowboy" Wiggins, and the always funky Rahiem and Mr. Ness (a.k.a Scorpio), I just shook my head. It wasn't just the tight interlocking rhythms between the emcees that was nothing short of seamless; nor was it Flash's surgical turntable technique. It was the lyrics, of a ghetto child who lived fast and wild, until</span><i style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> he took the elevator to his own homemade gallows </i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">in a prison cell; the imagery was chilling. I could almost imagine the heat of Melle's lyrics turn into the white fog of winter air, as he described the icy finality of death; </span><b style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>"You was cold/as your body swung/back and forth." </i></b><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I looked at Spoonie and Poochie, and they just smiled. "My man Mel wrote that joint," said Spoonie, as he and Poochie watched me slowly shake my head. They knew my brain was spinning. I stepped outside in the mid-August steamroom of 125th Street; "Super Rappin'" had knocked the wind out of me.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">From that day forward, Hip Hop took on a deeper meaning in my life.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As Melle Mel critiqued the current state of Hip Hop during<b> VH-1's</b> <b>Planet Rock Documentary</b> panel that I moderated at the Paley Center (12.September.2011), his commentary was direct, sometimes biting, but always spoken with a brutal honesty, and in the spirit of tough love. Because more than anything, Melle Mel <u><b>loves</b></u> Hip Hop. No matter how far Hip Hop strays from its origins, no matter how much gaudy make-up she may adorn, Melle Mel <b><u>still</u></b> <b><u>loves</u></b> <i><b><u>H.E.R.</u></b></i> Hip Hop is his muse, his mistress, his life. Listen to Melle Mel's <i><b>message </b></i>to Hip Hop: </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A big shout-out to the producers of the documentary </span><b style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"Planet Rock: The Story of Hip Hop and the Crack Generation"</b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">; Ice T, Martin Torgoff, and Richard Lowe (who also directed the film), and </span><b style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">VH-1</b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">'s executive producers Stephen Mintz and Brad Abramson. This is one of the best </span><b style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">VH-1"Rock Docs"</b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> ever made, and I am honored to have been a part of such compelling television history. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Many thanks to the professional and gracious folks at<b> The Paley Center For Media in New York</b>, and especially to Ms. Maria Pagano for allowing me to use these video clips on my<b> Hooked On The American Dream</b> blog.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Be sure to pick up my new anthology, </span><b style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"Hooked On The American Dream-Vol.1: New Jack City Eats Its Young,"</b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> available exclusively on Kindle/Amazon. Amazon/Kindle has a </span><b style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><u>free</u></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">, downloadable app for all computers and mobile devices. Click </span><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Hooked-American-Dream-Vol-1-Young-ebook/dp/B005P3GUOM/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1319493652&sr=1-1" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">here</a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> to go to the "Hooked On The American Dream-Vol.1:New Jack City Eats Its Young" Kindle store site.</span></div>Bmchttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17004250242744541801noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8840328022376773351.post-19818082616946297262011-11-11T21:44:00.001-05:002012-07-15T01:29:31.148-04:00More Video From The Planet Rock Panel@The Paley Center-12.September.2011: Azie Faison<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Dp6PvrkFKs8/Tr3dlW_UgmI/AAAAAAAACms/3fpjXMj9Pqs/s1600/Az2PaleyCenterPlanetRockPanel12Sept2011ReTouch.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Dp6PvrkFKs8/Tr3dlW_UgmI/AAAAAAAACms/3fpjXMj9Pqs/s1600/Az2PaleyCenterPlanetRockPanel12Sept2011ReTouch.jpg" /></a></div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">By Barry Michael Cooper</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Azie "AZ" Faison.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Former street entrepreneur/coke dealer, intelligent MC, author, screenwriter, filmmaker, urban griot, survivor. Azie Faison has lived a lot of lives in his young 47 years. He has seen death up close and personal; he was shot nine times back in 1987, when his drug stash house in the Bronx was robbed. The botched robbery quickly dissolved into a bloody massacre which left three people dead, and three people fighting for their lives, including AZ. Three years later, Azie's best friend and fellow drug dealer Rich Porter--along with Rich's little brother Donnell--was kidnapped and brutally murdered, in a horrifically tragic story, that commanded front page bold print, and took the lead on nightly newscasts across the country.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If anyone knows the meaning of a cautionary tale, it is Azie. He lives it everyday. Using art to get his message across to the youth, Azie has transposed the poetic misery of the street both musically--as an influential rapper in the definitive Hip Hop crew <b>Mob Style</b> (and their haunting and compelling 1991 single, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=flZ1sk1T6yo"><b>"What's Going On Black?"</b></a>)--on the big screen, with the critically acclaimed film, <b><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0259484/">"Paid In Full,"</a></b> and in his best selling memoir,<b> <a href="http://books.simonandschuster.com/Game-Over/Azie-Faison/9780743282314">"Game Over," </a></b>written with Agyei Tyehimba (published in 2007).</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It was during the initial stages of <b>"Paid In Full," </b>that I had the honor of both meeting and working with Azie on a very early draft of the script, tentatively titled at the time, "The World Is Yours," which was a nod of course, to the 1983 Brian De Palma film <b>"Scarface."</b> Oliver Stone's gut-wrenching screenplay, and Al Pacino's iconic performance as a Cuban <i>emigre'</i> who comes to take Miami by storm via an avalanche of cocaine, became a de facto <i>'hood</i> recruitment film for young and economically disenfranchised men like Azie. Young men desperate to map out a journey on streets supposedly paved with gold, only to find out that the road to the riches was littered with dead bodies and lost souls.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Listen close to Azie, and you hear a calm voice laced with the wisdom of being Blessed by GOD with another opportunity to find life's higher vibration. Listen close to Azie, and then you can understand why legendary emcees from Jay-Z, to Biggie, to Nas, to CL Smooth--and even an East New York rapper who called himself "AZ"--took a page out of Azie's life-style book. Azie Faison talks with authenticity about real life that can lead to real death. He eloquently described both in the great <b>VH-1</b> <b>Rock Doc</b> <b><a href="http://www.vh1.com/shows/vh1_rock_docs/episode.jhtml?episodeID=183554">"Planet Rock: The Story of Hip Hop and the Crack Generation,"</a></b> and on the panel I moderated after the premier of the film at the Paley Center in New York (12 September 2011). In the video here, Azie breaks down the difference between real and fraudulent Hip Hop:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A big shout-out to the producers of the documentary "Planet Rock: The Story of Hip Hop and the Crack Generation"; Ice T, Martin Torgoff, and Richard Lowe (who also directed the film), and VH-1's executive producers Brad Abramson and Stephen Mintz. This is one of the best VH-1"Rock Docs" ever made, and I am honored to have been a part of such compelling television history. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align: -webkit-auto;">Be sure to pick up Barry Michael Cooper's (The screenwriter of "New Jack City," "Sugar Hill," and "Above The Rim") new anthology of '80s street reporting from the crack-era, </span><b style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align: -webkit-auto;">"Hooked On The American Dream-Vol.1: New Jack City Eats Its Young,"</b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align: -webkit-auto;"> available exclusively on Kindle/Amazon. Only <b><u>$1.99!</u></b> Amazon/Kindle has a </span><b style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align: -webkit-auto;"><u>free</u></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align: -webkit-auto;">, downloadable app for all computers and mobile devices. Click </span><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Hooked-American-Dream-Vol-1-Young-ebook/dp/B005P3GUOM/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1319493652&sr=1-1" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align: -webkit-auto;">here</a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align: -webkit-auto;"> to go to the "Hooked On The American Dream-Vol.1:New Jack City Eats Its Young" Kindle store site. Thank you for visiting <b>Hooked On The American Dream </b>and please...buy the book. Have a Blessed day.</span>
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</div>Bmchttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17004250242744541801noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8840328022376773351.post-82357886475082279122011-11-11T01:51:00.000-05:002012-07-15T01:30:09.676-04:00More Video From The Planet Rock Panel@The Paley Center-12.September.2011: Nelson George<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-qdNZBztslYU/TrzDzbuMYmI/AAAAAAAACmc/Kza6_FiFAAM/s1600/NelsonGeorge3PlanetRockPaley12Sept2011RETouch.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-qdNZBztslYU/TrzDzbuMYmI/AAAAAAAACmc/Kza6_FiFAAM/s1600/NelsonGeorge3PlanetRockPaley12Sept2011RETouch.jpg" /></a></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">By Barry Michael Cooper</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Nelson George.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Prolific author, prescient cultural critic and American historian, visionary filmmaker, director, and television producer. For over thirty years, Nelson has not only established himself as a preeminent composer of <i>American Literature </i>(from the <b>Amsterdam News</b>, to<b> Billboard</b>, to the <b>Village Voice</b>, to the <b>New York Times</b>, <b>Playboy</b>, best selling books, including his latest masterpiece, a novel titled <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Plot-Against-Hip-Hop-Novel/dp/1617750247/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1320994028&sr=1-1">"The Plot Against Hip Hop"</a>), but he has also inspired a generation of African American writers to literary excellence. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As one of the most sought-after commentators on television and various panels around the country, Nelson has the uncanny ability to contextualize even the most complex subject matter, and frame it in a tableau that is mesmerizing, informative, and in the case of this particular clip--from the spirited panel I moderated at the Paley Center, after the screening of VH-1's powerful <b>Rock Doc</b>, <b><a href="http://www.vh1.com/shows/vh1_rock_docs/episode.jhtml?episodeID=183554">"Planet Rock: The Story of Hip Hop and the Crack Generation,"</a></b> produced and narrated by Ice T--truly poignant, especially when Nelson describes in vivid detail, how the crack cocaine epidemic impacted his family. The audience hung on to his every word. After viewing this clip several times, I almost think Nelson can add another dash to the ever-expanding hyphenation of his storied career; a one man, Off Broadway show about his remarkable and dynamic life. A post-mod Samuel Beckett from <i>Do or Die Bed Stuy. </i></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Check out Nelson's unforgettable segment right here:</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A big shout-out to the producers of the documentary "Planet Rock: The Story of Hip Hop and the Crack Generation"; Ice T, Martin Torgoff, and Richard Lowe (who also directed the film), and VH-1's executive producers Brad Abramson and Stephen Mintz. This is one of the best VH-1 "Rock Docs" ever made, and I am honored to have been a part of such compelling television history. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Be sure to pick up my new anthology, </span><b style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"Hooked On The American Dream-Vol.1: New Jack City Eats Its Young,"</b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> available exclusively on Kindle/Amazon. Amazon/Kindle has a </span><b style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><u>free</u></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">, downloadable app for all computers and mobile devices. Click </span><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Hooked-American-Dream-Vol-1-Young-ebook/dp/B005P3GUOM/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1319493652&sr=1-1" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">here</a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> to go to the "Hooked On The American Dream-Vol.1:New Jack City Eats Its Young" Kindle store site.</span></div>Bmchttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17004250242744541801noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8840328022376773351.post-75653843644549503402011-11-06T00:10:00.003-04:002011-11-06T13:00:17.769-05:00AP: Blogger Attacked At KFC-Points Finger At Hip Hop Star<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-pHqhq4vZLuw/TrROCb4wJ5I/AAAAAAAACl0/Ml7GgzYdWyE/s1600/KentuckyFriedChickenReTouch.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-pHqhq4vZLuw/TrROCb4wJ5I/AAAAAAAACl0/Ml7GgzYdWyE/s1600/KentuckyFriedChickenReTouch.jpg" /></a></div>
<img src="http://l3.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/kjmVjizroQE0M3Nlej7hqQ--/YXBwaWQ9eW5ld3M7Zmk9Zml0O2g9Mjc-/http://media.zenfs.com/en_us/News/logo/ap/ap_logo_106.png" /><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">By TOM HOWE-VERHOVIK and MALINDE WHALUM</span></b><br />
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<b style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">BRONX, NY (AP)-</b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Almost twenty-four hours after one of the most bizarre press conferences in recent NY history, gossip blogger Sharon Thorne--the woman who many believe incurred the volatile actions of controversial hip hop star Malachi Joye, by sarcastically questioning his botched suicide attempt in Paris last week--was attacked by two unidentified women at a Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant in the Bronx's Fordham Road neighborhood.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Thorne--45--and her scandulous</span><b style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> imtellinonem.com</b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> blog (which reportedly receives nearly 1 million page visits a week) seems to have locked the troubled Joye in her online crosshairs for the past six months, with stories that have questioned his sexual preference, alleged drug use, poor business acumen, and lagging album sales. When Thorne questioned Joye in yesterday's press conference at the Jacob Javits Center in Manhattan, about why he would try to burn his underwear instead of having them cleaned, and referred to him by a somewhat veiled scatological term (Thorne called Malachi Joye, "Boo Boo," and said she meant that "literally and figuratively"), Joye seemed to snap emotionally, and threw a chair into the crowd of reporters, while hurling a profanity-laden diatribe at Thorne, as his manager Walden "Whip" Underwood, </span><b style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Dead-On</b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> label CEO Edgar "Spank" Jordan, and his security team, escorted Joye out of the building.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">However, today was supposed to be an escape from the glare of the entertainment spotlight, or so thought Sharon Thorne. She went to her favorite place to eat, KFC, to get her favorite snack--a box of chicken gizzards and backs with a biscuit and slaw--and the place was crowded. When two women behind her realized that Thorne had purchased the last batch of gizzards and backs (portions Kentucky Fried Chicken sell as a "special order" because, said a KFC spokesperson who spoke off the record, "It's a part of the chicken that's not as popular in African-American neighborhoods in the post millennium, as it was, say, back in the '60s and 70s. Blacks are more health conscious these days, and lean more towards white meat, like breasts and wings. But from time to time, we get a requests for gizzards, so we make those on a limited basis."), the women became incensed and grabbed Sharon Thorne, by her coat collar, and started beating her along the face, and then snatched her take-out order of gizzards and backs, ran out of KFC, and disappeared into the crowds along the Grand Concourse. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Sharon Thorne was taken to Lincoln Hospital on 149th Street, treated for minor cuts and bruises on her face, and released. When these reporters reached her a few minutes ago, her statement was very brief. She told the AP, that, "I know that coward Malachi Joye, sent those two foolish women to do his dirty work! I know this!," Thorne said heatedly over the phone. "I don't blame those two hoodrats. They got bills to pay and Lotto's to play. Malachi paid them broadies off. This wasn't about no gizzards and backs. This was about a falling star who doesn't want the world to record his crash back to a harsh reality. This is about--and has always been about--Malachi Joye. Malachi even threatened me yesterday at the press conference, saying, he was 'gonna see me.' I grew up in the Drew Hamilton projects on 143rd Street in Harlem, I know what </span><i style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">'I'm gonna see you'</i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> means. I ain't stupid. And to make it simple and plain, one of the women--right before she snatched the box of gizzards and backs away from me--whispered in my ear, </span><i style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">'Skiddy says hello.'</i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Skiddy. As in, 'Skid marks?' Hello?! Okay?! And now my lawyers are gonna say, 'Hello.' That's all I want to say. I'll have more to say on my blog in the next few days, after I heal."</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And with that last remark, Sharon Thorne ended her conversation with two reporters from the Associated Press. But many believe, this string of strange events between these two media figures, is far from over.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">You just read Part Three of:</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b><u>Murder, <i>Ink. </i></u></b></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b><u>(An Episodic Short Story About</u></b></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b><u>The Soap Opera</u></b></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b><u>Formerly Known As Hip Hop.)</u></b></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b>By Barry Michael Cooper</b></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Be sure to pick up my new anthology, <b>"Hooked On The American Dream-Vol.1: New Jack City Eats Its Young,"</b> available exclusively on Kindle/Amazon. Amazon/Kindle has a <b><u>free</u></b>, downloadable app for all computers and mobile devices. Click <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Hooked-American-Dream-Vol-1-Young-ebook/dp/B005P3GUOM/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1319493652&sr=1-1">here</a> to go to the "Hooked On The American Dream-Vol.1:New Jack City Eats Its Young" Kindle store site.</span><br />
<br />Bmchttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17004250242744541801noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8840328022376773351.post-32052789462547760612011-11-05T01:56:00.000-04:002011-11-05T06:56:20.299-04:00New Jack Epoch (2008 Liner Notes From New Jack Swing Gold Anthology)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b><u><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">NEW JACK EPOCH</span></u></b></div>
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<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">(Liner notes to the 2008 New Jack Swing Gold Anthology on Hip-O)</span></b></div>
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<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">By Barry Michael Cooper</span></b></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><u><i>1987.</i></u></b></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As the country did its best to slush through its extended winter of discontent created by the perfect storm of Louis XVI-like Reaganomics, the filthy lucre of junk bonds, and the Inner City's <i>basso-profundo</i> waltz of automatic gunfire underscoring the horror film known as<i> Monster Crack</i>, there was a hint of life as a rose grew in the bricks of cooked cocaine.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It was the Spring of New Jack Swing.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Horticultured by Teddy Riley, New Jack Swing was a colorful urban opera, a musical con-flux of robotic R&B, cool jazz glissandi, hip hop kick-snare-cut-scratch and claw chorused with sanctified church vocals. Drums that could make Nijinsky leap and strings that could make Verdi weep, New Jack Swing was the soundtrack for a <i>Me Decade</i> in manic-depressive flux. From the <i>Glick</i>-ish, Wall Street upstarts knocking back magnums of Krug and snorting Peruvian flake in the tony, Modernist zoo known as The Royalton--grazing in the <i>Hey!-Look-At-Me!</i>-ride of new money before burning it in the nihilist bonfire of their own vain excesses--to the dope money <i>Glitter Kids</i> trying to glow in the shadows of the ghetto. In their attempt to inhale the richly oxygenated atmosphere of the <i>Grand Bourgeois</i>--breathing the million-<i><b>aire</b></i>--this <i>Generation of the Discarded,</i> these <i>Children Of The Disconnect</i> burned their lungs with the noxious gas of twisted ambition and unbridled greed that silently suffocated their souls. Hip Hop's court jester, Biz Markie, had the perfect name for this condition.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Biz called it <b><i>The Vapors. </i></b></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Burdened with a fatherless home front, overworked/or welfare enabled and quite possibly drug addicted mothers, dismal school environs, a non-existent job market, New Jack Swing became an anthem for these needy urchins orphaned by an 80s Republic enamored and blinded in the abysmal flashpoint of <i>Mourning In America</i>. With the added malady of short term memory loss and even shorter fuses, these wealthy young beggars attended a banquet of spiritual famine, waiting on just deserts served with a sprinkle of teflon coated bullets from the mouth of an Uzi. In a hurry to taste the world and everything in it, these Affection-Deficit Babies were all dressed up--in $50,000 gold cable chains, Versace, Hugo Boss and Louis Vuitton--with nowhere to go and needed New Jack Swing's new breed of soulful <i>Yowsa!-Yowsa! </i>as a temporary distraction to their permanently scarred lives. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Rewinding Ellison’s<b> Invisible Man</b> coda, Teddy Riley's New Jack Swing spoke for these Lost Boys and Girls on the lower frequencies. Super-fluent in this new rap language, Riley-driven compositions like Keith Sweat's <b>"I Want Her,"</b> Johnny Kemp's <b>"Just Got Paid,"</b> and Guy's <b>"Groove Me"</b> (just to name a few on this phenomenal New Jack Swing Gold Compilation) became the <i>Sound of a New America</i> borne of a contemporary Harlem Renaissance by way of a hard knock life in New York City. However, New Jack Swing transcended the regional: it became the sound of Oakland (En Vogue's <b>"Hold On,"</b> and Tony! Toni! Tone'!'s <b>"Feels Good"</b>), Oklahoma (Color Me Badd's <b>"I Wanna Sex You Up"</b>), Waco (Hi-Five's <b>"I Like The Way/The Kissing Game"</b>:GOD Rest the soul of Tony Thompson), Charlotte (Jodeci's <b>"Come And Talk to Me"</b>), Boston (Ralph Tresvant's <b>"Sensitivity"</b>), and Philadelphia, too (Boys II Men's <b>"Motownphilly"</b>). </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">New Jack Swing introduced us to Andre Harrell's <b>Uptown</b>, the label that created superstars out of Riley, Al B. Sure!, Heavy D, Mary J. Blige, and Jodeci. New Jack Swing made the two premiere production teams of the day--L.A. and Babyface, and Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis--re-evaluate, retrofit, and even re-invent their approach to the music. New Jack Swing snatched off the Kangols and Addidas and replaced them with high top fades, Gucci loafers and Ralph Lauren Rugby shirts. New Jack Swing pulled the frozen-mugged corner boys and salty around-the-way-girls off the wall and melted their ice-grills with the sweat of the Running Man and the Shaka Zulu on the dance floor. New Jack Swing resuscitated a flat-lining R&B with the brand new tenor melodies of Aaron Hall and Jeff Redd.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">New Jack Swing even made the late Johnny Carson--the reigning King Of Late Night television-- look over his shoulder to see a grinning set of gums known as Arsenio Hall bearing down on his Tod-shod heels. That landmark year, 1987, that Spring Of New Jack Swing is the reason for this season of Bling 20 years later: the reason why Jay-Z became <i>Jigga-national</i>, the reason why Puff rocked shiny bespoke Valentino and won Coty Awards, the reason why Timberland and the Neptunes and Kanye, and Beyonce and Justin and Missy and Christina stepped fashion forward just to bring sexy back. The reason why <b>VH-1 Hip Honors </b>has inducted both Teddy and Andre into the Hall Of Fame this year. The reason why Jeff Redd could rock a crowd at Lotus in the summer of 2007 with <b>"You Called And Told Me"</b> and then that same New Jack-themed party hosted by legendary novelist and filmmaker Nelson George and New Jack Swing impresario Andrew Knyte (his wildly popular NJS4E.com website has generated an international resurgence of the genre) get almost 20,000 hits on <b>You Tube</b> in less than three days. New Jack Swing is a music born from the streets but it in reality it was the orchestration of a New Hustle. New Jack Swing has grown from impetuous youth into cautious Grown and Sexy, a glistening, V-12 ideal. New Jack Swing is both soundproof and timeless.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Rolls Royce Movement has crossed the Rubicon.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Bentley Brookland's are burning, burning, burning, on Amagansett Beach.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And let us all say,<i> Yup-Yup.</i><br /><br />Barry Michael Cooper<br />21 August 2007<br />Baltimore, Md.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Be sure to pick up my new anthology, <b>"Hooked On The American Dream-Vol.1: New Jack City Eats Its Young,"</b> available exclusively on Kindle/Amazon. Amazon/Kindle has a <b><u>free</u></b>, downloadable app for all computers and mobile devices. Click <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Hooked-American-Dream-Vol-1-Young-ebook/dp/B005P3GUOM/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1319493652&sr=1-1">here</a> to go to the "Hooked On The American Dream-Vol.1:New Jack City Eats Its Young" Kindle store site.</span><br />
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</div>Bmchttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17004250242744541801noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8840328022376773351.post-8669849238022492402011-11-02T23:32:00.000-04:002011-11-06T00:13:05.371-04:00AP Exclusive: Hip Hop Star Melts Down In Press Conference After Botched Suicide Attempt<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Q5YAWgXt0W4/TrHEamOUwBI/AAAAAAAAClU/bnwxD6BaO1Y/s1600/ReportersAtPressConferenceReTouch.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="226" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Q5YAWgXt0W4/TrHEamOUwBI/AAAAAAAAClU/bnwxD6BaO1Y/s320/ReportersAtPressConferenceReTouch.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<img src="http://l3.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/kjmVjizroQE0M3Nlej7hqQ--/YXBwaWQ9eW5ld3M7Zmk9Zml0O2g9Mjc-/http://media.zenfs.com/en_us/News/logo/ap/ap_logo_106.png" /> <b style="font-size: x-small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">By TOM HOWE-VERHOVIK and MALINDE WHALUM</span></b><br />
<b style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">NEW YORK (AP)-</b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Just minutes after touching down from Paris, France at New Jersey's Teeterboro Airport, troubled Hip Hop megastar Malachi Joye was rushed from the descended staircase of his Gulfstream G550, into a waiting Aston Martin Rapide, and into the crowded press area of Manhattan's Jacob Javits Center on 34th Street.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Somewhat shaky--but still defiant--as he took the podium, the 43-year-old Joye, was flanked by his manager, Walden "Whip" Underwood, the CEO of his Dead-On record label, Edgar "Spank" Jordan, his PR team, and his security. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As Joye began to speak, the barrage of HD minicams, iPhones, Androids, and SLR's began to illuminate the platinum selling artist (whose new release, "My Ride Is My Kasket," just moved two million downloads on iTunes, after reports of his botched suicide attempt) like a luminescent moth, burning in the tainted alabaster flame of ultra celebrity. Joye removed a folded sheet of paper from his stylish black double-breasted Hermes raincoat, and read from a prepared statement.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"Sean Diddy Combs and Christopher Notorious B.I.G. Wallace," Joye began in calm voice, "once mused, </span><i style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">'Mo Money, Mo Problems.'</i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> No truer words about this business of music, have been spoken. The </span><i style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Sloppit Mongers</i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">--those who masquerade as journalists and so called, 'gossip bloggers'--who trade in innuendo, slander, and straight out lies, are truly dangerous people in this 25/8 culture of non-stop information. </span><i style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Sloppit Mongers</i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> are like citizens who have deputized themselves to be journalistic police, but who are unauthorized and unlicensed to carry dangerous weapons, and who recklessly fire those weapons into the crowd, killing innocent bystanders. Those weapons in question being the </span><i style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Sloppit Mongers's</i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> convoluted and confusingly biased opinions, being deployed as actual news and accurate journalism. The innocent bystanders in question, are the millions of readers who log on to their pig pens every single day, and die from the venomous ammo launched from their poisonous pens of lies, that they thoughtlessly aim in all directions, murdering their readers' sense of balanced reporting..."</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Just then, a stylishly dressed and very full-figured African American woman, who was later identified as the notorious gossip blogger Sharon Thorne--whose imtellinonem.com website, has had Malachi Joye in her crosshairs for some time now, with a string of malicious, unsubstantiated accusations involving his sex life, and the strange, pyrotechnic fetish involving Joye's underwear among other things--interrupted Joye's pointed monologue.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"I'm sorry," Thorne began, with a smile that failed to mask the verbal toxin in her voice, "I don't mean no harm, but you was paying like seven gees a night for that Coco Chanel Suite at the Ritz. With all that damn change you kickin' out, you mean to tell me you did have no maid service, no laundry or valet service, so you had to stoop to burning some damn skid marks in your drawers, Boo-Boo? And I do mean Boo-Boo, literally, and figuratively. That's some fooly-fool stuff you did in Paris, if I ever heard of some!"</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It was at this moment, when the press conference took on a surreal and frightening turn of events. Malachi Joye began to sob, very loud, and then he picked up a chair near the podium, and threw it into the crowd of reporters, who gasped, screamed, and scurried for cover (including these two reporters). It was then when Joye's manager Underwood and his security, hurried the emotionally beleaguered star off-stage, as Joye began to rant and curse at Thorne.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"You big fat-back, greasy-ass, lopsided titty b--ch!," Joye fired back in a near scream, "Titties lookin' like two f--kin' broken door bells! You bug-eyed, motherf--ker! Lookin' like Felix The Motherf--kin' Cat after Boris hit him with a hammer! Righty-O! Another bucket of chicken, please! B---ch was a stand-in for 'Precious,' but they fired your big black, under-the-cover-of-darkness ass, because you keep eatin' all the gizzards! Shoes so damn runt-over, it looks like you ran 5,000 Boston Marathons in your Payless Shoes! In one day! Bunions so damn big, it looks like a linebacker trying to break tackle in them damn runt-over shoes! F--k you, you bum b---ch! Somebody is gonna see your <i>Biggest Loser</i> ass <u>real soon</u>, okay?! Okay?!!"</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">After Joye was quickly escorted out of the building, Thorne smiled, and briskly walked to another exit, not taking any questions from the reporters who anxiously scurried in her direction.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">bizarre news conference indeed, but one should expect no less from the controversial and reigning star of Hip Hop, Malachi Joye.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">You just read Part Two of:</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b><u>Murder, <i>Ink. </i></u></b></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b><u>(An Episodic Short Story About</u></b></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b><u>The Soap Opera</u></b></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b><u>Formerly Known As Hip Hop.)</u></b></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b>By Barry Michael Cooper</b></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Be sure to pick up my new anthology, <b>"Hooked On The American Dream-Vol.1: New Jack City Eats Its Young,"</b> available exclusively on Kindle/Amazon. Amazon/Kindle has a <b><u>free</u></b>, downloadable app for all computers and mobile devices. Click <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Hooked-American-Dream-Vol-1-Young-ebook/dp/B005P3GUOM/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1319493652&sr=1-1">here</a> to go to the "Hooked On The American Dream-Vol.1:New Jack City Eats Its Young" Kindle store site.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;"><b><br /></b></span>Bmchttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17004250242744541801noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8840328022376773351.post-87532828033359527232011-10-30T00:17:00.001-04:002013-06-05T00:45:04.091-04:00Breaking News: Hip Hop Star Found Dead In Paris<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-gZvduWbRhrE/Tqz1e4N9aGI/AAAAAAAAClM/pLUJHWu2ipQ/s1600/PoliceInParisReTouch.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="247" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-gZvduWbRhrE/Tqz1e4N9aGI/AAAAAAAAClM/pLUJHWu2ipQ/s320/PoliceInParisReTouch.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<b style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">PARIS (REUTERS)</b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">-The most controversial rapper and producer in Hip Hop was found dead this morning, at a five-star hotel in Paris, France.</span><br />
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-d4GR8LkJVE8/TqxtI_cDFiI/AAAAAAAAClA/RURo8_Qh4_8/s1600/CoCoChanelSuiteFloorParis.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-d4GR8LkJVE8/TqxtI_cDFiI/AAAAAAAAClA/RURo8_Qh4_8/s1600/CoCoChanelSuiteFloorParis.jpg" /></a></div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The body was discovered near the balcony in the luxe Coco Chanel suite of the Ritz hotel, sometime around 5:15 AM, by the concierge.</span><br />
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-djgEH8rn0Ww/TqxrLvYTKOI/AAAAAAAACk4/vRJsRzLbMTI/s1600/CoCoChanelSuiteRitzParis.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="252" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-djgEH8rn0Ww/TqxrLvYTKOI/AAAAAAAACk4/vRJsRzLbMTI/s320/CoCoChanelSuiteRitzParis.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Though there were no bruises, marks, wounds, puncture holes, or any apparent trauma found on the body, there was a pool of black, digital ink that had coagulated underneath his head.<b> </b></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Laying on the opposite side of the rapper's head, was an iPad, which had a screen which displayed the homepage of a popular African-American gossip site, where a photo of the rapper splayed on the front page with this headline:</span><br />
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<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">HIP HOP MEGA STAR'S </span></b></div>
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<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">FLAMING UNDERPANTS RITUAL CAUGHT ON CAMERA!</span></b></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Next to the iPad was the rap star's iPhone; on the screen was an email that had been sent--according to sources close to the ongoing investigation, who spoke under the condition of anonymity--to a list of popular African-American bloggers in the U.S. The email--according to these same sources--was angry, desperate, and fearful. It reads:</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">"To All Of The <i><b>Sloppit Mongers</b></i> Out There:</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">You so-called "<i>Gossip Bloggers</i>," this one's for you. And you. And you. And you, too.</span> </blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">You are not Gossip Bloggers; instead, I call you <i>sloppit mongers</i>, because you bathe in innuendo, false information, skewered facts, gossip, and lies, the same way pigs wallow in sh-t and mud. It's not gossip.<i> It's sloppit. </i>And y'all need to stop it.</span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">All of you are swine. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Every last one of ya.</span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I'm writing this missive on behalf of myself and others like me, who have been the target of your vitriol. I'm writing this on behalf of myself, and others like me, who, though our lives may appear to be a bed of roses (with the illusion of all of our money, fame, power, and influence), it is really a mattress of thorns. Like Puff and Big said, <i>mo' money, mo' problems.</i> But our lives are made even thornier by the dirt you feed to the public every f---in' day. All of you have been a thorn in my side, and a thorn in the sides of many other Black celebrities.</span> </blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Y'all have even <i>gone in</i> on the President of the United States, a Black man who has enough on his plate, as he sidesteps racists, political haters (some even in his own party) and armchair pundits who second-guess his every move, all while President Obama seems to bear the weight of the world on his shoulders. So is the life of a celebrity a bed of roses? Naaaah; roses might bed red, but they are also fertilized with sh-t, the same ingredient that informs the content of both your blogs, and your character. Roses might be red, but you all are smothered in the deepest hue of green envy. Violets are blue, and violence is a bruising shade of black and blue, and your blogs are devoted to character assassination.</span> </blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">All of you are merchants in the same business; <i><b>Murder, Ink.</b></i> </span> </blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Some therapist may conclude that you all are enmeshed in the miserable velcro of a severely detached state of psychosis. I just think y'all are a bunch of professional f---in' haters.</span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Another thing, while I'm in my bag; y'all are some of the ugliest motherf---ers I have ever seen in my life! You look like homely, nerdy-ass cartoon characters. Is that <i>raison d'etre </i>(by the way, that's French for <i>reason for existence;</i> I know your dumbasses wouldn't know what that meant, because you are too busy digging up sh-- on people that's not true) for the hateful blogs? Wait, let me guess; it's because you got your lunch money took everyday? Or how 'bout, you were constantly bullied at school without mercy? Or is it because of your family and acquaintances (and I say acquaintances, for you have no real friends; only people afraid that you will write something bad about them), who say that they love you, <i>despite how you look?</i> Or is it because you cry each and every time you look in the mirror? Well???...</span> </blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">...Whatever <i>it</i> is; don't take that bullsh-t out on me. Handle that. You are getting enough crazy revenue from your blogs (the millions of pages views and visits to your blogs that click on the embedded ads) to see a professional. But what's even uglier, is what's inside of you; your soul, your heart, your motivation. That's what's really grotesque. But only a HIGHER POWER Really Knows what's really inside all of us. However, <i>you are what you write,</i> and all of you write some sickening, disgusting untruths. I'm just saying.</span> </blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">If I'm going to keep it on the <i>really-real</i>s, you all didn't invent gossip. Neither did Hedda Hopper or Walter Winchell (or his celluloid interpretation in <b>"Sweet Smell of Success," </b><i>J.J. Hunsacker</i>). Gossip has been with us from the beginning--that is, if you believe that <b>Eden</b> <u>was</u> the beginning--when a supernatually ambitious and demonic serpent whispered a lie to an unsuspecting wife in Genesis chapter 3, verse 4: <i>Ye shall not surely die.</i> Gossip is the piecemeal account of the truth batter-dipped in a lie, and then deep-fried and served piping hot, to feed the ravenous appetites of those hungry for the destruction of others. Gossip is a vacuous landscape populated with ear-hustlers, swagger-jackers, and lurid spectators, whose only goal in life is to be sucked up into the gory details of someone else's misery. </span> </blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">But what really pisses me off, is the fact that you hacked into my iPhone, and leaked my private videos! So what I like to pour lighter fluid on the skid marks on my drawers, and then set my grown man Underoos (custom made by Hermes, if you must know) on fire in my hotel suite, and then do my little dance around the drawers, while singing "I'm A Little Teacup" in a high pitched, foreign accent while they burn? So what I like to film that sh-t and laugh about it later? So f---in' what?! I been a pyromaniac since I was six motherf---in' years old. That's my private pleasure--and the people I share it with--and it's <u><i>my business!</i></u> </span> </blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Did y'all forget that we had an agreement? I wired you guys $5,000 a month, paid your overhead, sent you bonus checks on the holidays, and planted crazy stories about my sex life, my fake beefs with other celebs (which drove your blog traffic through the f---in' roof!), and leaked info on other celebs! You were a means to an end; an additional stream of exposure to keep my name ringing, because when your name stops ringing, that means the line to your <i>shine</i>, your fame, and your celebrity <i><u>has been disconnected</u></i>. That means the game is over. So it's not like I liked y'all anyway, you served a purpose; in addition to my P.R. team, your blogs served as an extra layer of publicity for me. Nothing more. And you were cheaper than PMK and Scanlon. <u>You were supposed to play your position because you got paid to do so, you remember that sh-t?!</u> All y'all had to do was keep your mouth shut and stay away from the <i>real stories</i> that could <u>hurt </u>or <u>damage</u> me! </span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Do y'all remember any of this?! Hello?!!</span> </blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">And now y'all wanna get fly, and freestyle on a nigga by hacking my phone and leaking sh-t without my permission?!</span> </blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Are y'all serious?!!!</span> </blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I mean, how the f--k are your cornball asses able to lease that <b>Infinity</b>, that <b>Lexus</b>, that<b> BMW</b>, that<b> Benz</b>? You are able to do these things, because me and other celebs have been paying the bills for you pieces of garbage while you sling the dirt we provide for you! Understand?! You <i>ooogly</i> motherf---ers are living lovely because I provided y'all with the pretty things that fill bank accounts! But no, you couldn't stay in your lane! You had to leak the video of me singing and dancing around my burning drawers, and <b><u>that</u> <u>was</u> </b><b><u>private</u></b>! I mean, I told y'all if you cross the line, you won't be writing any more blogs, <i>you won't be doing anything,</i> because you won't be <i>above ground</i> anymore. And if either one of y'all would disappear tomorrow, do you really think anybody would shed a tear? I mean, <i>really doe...</i></span> </blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Who likes a gossip?</span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Nobody. </span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Anyway, I just took a bunch of pills; my album is tanking, and despite all of my grind, my career is falling off like a bad bag of dope. Y'all better hope I don't wake up in the morning, 'cause if I do, then y'all won't be celebrating Thanksgiving or Christmas this year. </span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">And if I don't then...hey. I guess you got a pass.</span> </blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">This time.</span> </blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">But because all of you are so thirsty for attention, money, and self-worth, you <u style="font-weight: bold;">will</u><span style="font-weight: bold;"> </span>try it again; you will keep stepping over the line, until <i>that same line</i> slices your trifflin' asses in half. Soon people will forget about you. And contrary to y'all thinking that me and others like me are hardcore narcissists, <b><i><u>its really all of you </u></i></b>who need the constant attention. The constant reinforcement from a bored public who are out of work, depressed, angry, confused, and use your blogs as a diversion from the pain and despair in their own lives. But when they move on--and trust me, they <u style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">will </u>, because they always do--and you become irrelevant, then what? Nobody cares about nare-a-one of you losers. They only care about the dirt you dig.</span> </blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Not those who dig it. </span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">And then you will be buried by the same sh-t y'all dumped on everyone else; but in this case, no one will hear your screams.</span> </blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Or maybe the avid readers of your gossip just won't care. </span> </blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Think about it.</span> </blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>Abeintot.</i> Scumbags."</span></blockquote>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Breaking news update: <b>Hip Hop Mega-Star Miraculously Revived at Paris's Pitie-Salpetriere Hospital! Has Harsh Words for African American Gossip Bloggers. Mega-Star's New Album sells 1 Million units the week after suicide attempt...</b></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">You just read Part One of:</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b><u>Murder, <i>Ink. </i></u></b></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b><u>(An Episodic Short Story.)</u></b></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b>By Barry Michael Cooper</b></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Be sure to pick up my new anthology, <b>"Hooked On The American Dream-Vol.1: New Jack City Eats Its Young,"</b> available exclusively on Kindle/Amazon. Amazon/Kindle has a <b><u>free</u></b>, downloadable app for all computers and mobile devices. Click <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Hooked-American-Dream-Vol-1-Young-ebook/dp/B005P3GUOM/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1319493652&sr=1-1">here</a> to go to the "Hooked On The American Dream-Vol.1:New Jack City Eats Its Young" Kindle store site.</span><br />
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<br />Bmchttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17004250242744541801noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8840328022376773351.post-90668810792666077072011-10-25T22:36:00.001-04:002013-07-04T20:08:27.835-04:00"New Jack" Anthology Xcrpt: In Cold Blood (The Baltimore Teen Murders)<br />
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<b><u><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">In Cold Blood: The Baltimore Teen Murders</span></u></b></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>By Barry Michael Cooper</b></span></div>
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<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">(Published in Spin Magazine May 1986)</span></i></div>
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<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">God Almighty, you can get killed in Baltimore--for no reason at all.</span></b></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Say that to yourself a few times. Gargle it, and choke on the terror. If you look at a kid too long, or the wrong way, you could get killed. For no reason at all. If you bump into a kid on the street, if you only lightly brush up against him, and even if you apologize, it could be the last thing you ever do.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In Baltimore, 14-and15-year-old boys are killing each other on rundown basketball courts, in high school gyms, in poolrooms, on row house porches, in garbage strewn back alleys. In the last 14 months there have been almost 20 murders of young kids by other kids. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Baltimore is known in the tourist trade as <i>Charm City. </i>But do not come down here looking for charm right now, and whatever you do, don't <i>disrespect </i>the killer children on the corners.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The media in Baltimore have hardly covered this story. True, the TV news reports the murders, but it does so statistically, dispassionately, on its way to the weather; the newscasters appear numbed by it all.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Black congressional leaders, pastors and concerned citizens address the problems by generalizing it and in a sense dismissing it as a black on-black crime situation, by making defensive comparisons to other cities' crime rates, by covering up, and sometimes by lying.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Atlanta child murders were a horror--someone was out there kidnapping and killing young kids. But with one arrest, it was over. Here, in Baltimore, the killing never ends. It goes on, a reign of terror. Over the past few months, much of my time has been spent watching these kids. Moving from club to club, hanging out on street corners. I've met the killers, and sadly, I think I've also met kids who will most likely be victims.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">How do I describe for you the real terror, the real horror of all of this? is it by reams of graphic police reports? Do you need to see block upon block of bloodstained sidewalks, curbs, and stoops? Should I tell you about the mothers who wake up in the middle of the night, hearing what they imagine are the screams of their children being shot down in the street? Or a playground?</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">When I began several months ago, it was because with a bizarre regularity, I heard the reports of more and more killings. When I began, I heard, saw, and experienced things that I will never be able to overcome. And maybe because of that, and because I needed to understand what was going on, I went out into the streets to meet the Yo Boys, the young killers.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">On a Saturday afternoon there are 10 of them on the northeastern corner of Pulaski and North. Their walk is a cross between a hard looping bop and a crippled pigeon's wobble. When they stand still, they hunch their shoulders and karate-chop the ice-cold air with dramatic gestures that underline the fearlessness they want to portray.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">They're dressed in low-cut black Fila sneakers with two white-red lines around the sole. sweat suits in white, red, green--hard, sharp tones that complement the night, that flash warning signals--and oversized coats and hunting parkas with big pockets on the chest and at the waist that hold bullets, when necessary. On the insides are even larger pockets--"gun pockets"--that can hold several handguns at once, even an Uzi.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">They move like vultures on the corners, in a circular death pattern, waiting for something to happen. The thick gold chains around their necks signal success, but at the same time weigh them down. They're the dogs of war.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Sitting through a Saturday-night movie marathon, they want to live the twisted interpretations of Al Pacino's <i>Scarface</i> and Schwarzenegger's <i>Terminator</i>. In the balcony of the dilapidated Hippodrome Theater, absorbed in the moving shadows on screen, sniffing $20 caps of "caine" (cocaine) to bring the images to life, their visions are of blood lust--$5 boys looking for million-dollar manhood in the barrel of a gun. Their dreams are to have it all, like Scarface Montana--"The world and everything in it," y'aw--even if it means going down, kicking it live, in a barrage of gunfire. These are the <b>Yo Boys</b>.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The situation here reminds me of the Harlem I grew up in during the early '70s. King Heroin reigned then.You had to worry about junkies walking up behind you and sticking a gun in your back. It was the era of the street gang: the Black Spades, Savage Skulls, the Glory Stompers.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If you weren't in any of those, you found alternative routes home from school, stayed upstairs on weekends, and read Iceberg Slim and Richard Wright, and danced to James Brown and B.T. Express, but you didn't go outside. Those years also birthed the dopeboys, kids who came to school with Elliot Ness shoulder holsters, "strapped," as we used to say, packing trey-five-sevens under $400 cashmere Cortefiel coats. You felt the fear in Harlem, but you knew the knuckleheads would examine all options before pulling the trigger.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Baltimore is different. There are no options to weigh. I want mine, I want it now, and I'll get it anyway possible. The boys here live from a whisper to a scream, no middle ground, no gray. Just pull the trigger. And keep on stroking.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">North Avenue, the heart of black Baltimore, is a horizontal stretch of ghetto, rubberbanding from east to west. It's not a harsh layout. There are a few sections of burned-out, abandoned buildings that look like postwar Berlin, but some of the tan, red and blue row houses look like Japanese watercolors, soft city pastels. Still, you get a sense from the people that something is missing here, as if the empty rhetoric and fallen heroes of the civil-righteous '60s sucker-punched them silly.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">On every other block are the obligatory bar-liquor-drugstore combos--which double as dream factories where you can float on a sea of booze and million-dollar lottery fantasies--laundromats, and Korean greasy spoons, known as carryouts. Cheeseburgers, cheesesteaks, crab cakes, french fries; some of he foreigners behind the Plexiglas walls can barely pronounce the menu, let alone understand many of the orders, but as long as the kids are hustling on the corners, the carryouts will be open. Twenty four hours.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Sun Carryout, on Pulaski and North Avenue, is crowded this Friday night, as usual. The odd, lyrical strains of Korean opera are suspended near the ceiling, counterpointing the popping grease from the grill and the conversation below.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"Hey, y'aw, gimme a four-piece wing-ding."</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"Hot saw, kethchuh, sall-peppuh?" asks the blank-faced little man behind the plastic shield.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"Yeah, all that," mouths the kid in the burgundy acrylic parka. He nudges his partner and goes back to his conversation.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"We don't have to double-team him, y'aw. I got my shit on me. I'm gonna shoot him in his fuckin' head."</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Both boys look to be about 13 years old, but I am not surprised. This is one of the hottest corners in the city. I order some french fries, and then I spot Tommy Wilson. Tommy manages the Sun Laundrymat across the street, giving out change, bleach, and soap powder, and sweeping up after closing. He's an intelligent, honest, hardworking 22-year old. I treat him to some fries and a Coke. It is unusually warm--almost 60 degrees--so we go outside to talk.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"A lot of people think a Yo is a rapper," he says, "or has something to do with rap music. It's not about that. Yo is a code word for a young drug dealer. When you want to buy some 'get high', you just go on the corner and ask, 'What you got, y'aw?' or 'You got that stuff, y'aw?' They sell their drugs in vitamin capsules you can buy in any health food store."</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"You can always spot an Yo. Anytime you see a 15-or16-year old boy, like them kids over there"--Tommy points across the street to a swarm of kids lined up in front of Cyrus Israel's Dayland Records, a video/poolroom--"wearin' two and three 'Mr. T' solid gold chains around their necks--and them chains go for no less than $1500 a piece--you know them boys is sellin'. Anytime you see a boy on a Honda scooter, and his supplier bought the scooter to transport his merchandise. Some of the older Yo's around 18, 19, drive Mazdas, Cressidas and Maximas.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"A lot of these boys is addicts themselves. You don't have to sell drugs to make money; some boys become 'testers', and rent out their arms and noses to sell product, especially heroin. But that's dangerous, because if the heroin is too potent, or if a dealer is using rat poison, then it's over. The boys who use their own product are the ones to watch out for. They are the type who spend all their money on drugs, using product, buying more product, and when they don't have enough for clothes or whatever, they'll go an kill somebody, and take what they need.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"About three months ago, two boys tried to take me off, right on the corner. It was about 1 in the mornin', and I was comin' from this girl's house. I had on this brand-new leather coat, which cost me $300. Then these two big boys"--Tommy is about 5'4"--"both of them was over 6 feet and 200 pounds, walked up on me. They looked young, maybe 16, and they had the big 'dukey' "--referring to the size of the links on the chain, which look like steel--"rope chains. I knew what was up.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">One boy stood in front of me, the other went behind me. The boy in front had real puffy hands, like balloons, and I knew he was an addict. He told me, 'Gimme your coat.' I said, 'You gonna have to kill me and take it.' I always carry a .22 on me when I'm out late like that. Not that I'm tryin' to be a gangster or nothin', but I work too hard for people to be takin' my stuff. So when this boy made his move, I pointed my coat pocket at his chest and shot him twice, right through the coat pocket. When he dropped, I swung around and shot his boy in the leg once, and he went down screaming. I started to run, but the police car rolled up behind me. Ain't that a bitch? They had seen the whole thing, but they didn't try to stop it. I guess they like to see us killing each other.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"The first boy I shot admitted to the cops that was trying to rob me. He only did that because he thought he was going to die that night, one of the cops told me later. They charges have been dropped."</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Tommy says it's easy to get a gun, as simple as going to any corner and asking for it.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"I could go down the street right now," he says, "and get almost any kind of gun I want. A .22 will run you no more than $30. A .357 or .38 automatic, no more than $75. Nine-millimeters and Uzi's go for about $130."</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I ask him what the parents have to say about their kids selling drugs and killing people.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"You might not believe this," he says with a half-smirk, "but some of the parents are in on what their kids are doing. A lot of boys come from welfare families, and the parents let the boys sell drugs to fill in for the time the check money is not around. The money is good, up to $300 a day, maybe more. The parents even hook up a special room for the customers and show their kids special knocks on the door to tell the difference between customers and neighbors.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"I know a girl on Division Street whose family got busted in a surprise raid--everybody in her family was selling or helping her two brothers, who are 15 and 18--because the family across the street set them up. They were jealous of all their customers, and they didn't have any business."</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It is 1:30am, and Tommy and I are standing outside the carryout watching a group of boys outside of Cyrus Israel's doing a real cool shimmy-and-shake to the gunshot funk of Schoolly-D's "P.S.K." I notice a mountain of a teenager, standing by himself on the corner. He's about 6'4" and can't weight less than 230 pounds of pure muscle. He is aloof, guarded, unaffected by the music, danger, or the block itself. <i>I exist, therefore, I am. </i>He is dressed in a black leather jacket, black hooded sweat shirt, and black Filas, and he is holding a long white flower box.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"Who is that?," I ask.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"He owns Pulaski," says Tommy, "The boy don't play, neither. He has killed seven or eight people and ain't been caught yet. Don't mess with him, he's the <i>man.</i> He'll take you out in a minute. That's FTD."</span><br />
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<b><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">...P is for the people</span></i></b><br />
<b><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Who can't understand</span></i></b><br />
<b><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">How one homeboy became a man</span></i></b><br />
<b><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">S is for the way</span></i></b><br />
<b><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">You scream and shout</span></i></b><br />
<b><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">One by one</span></i></b><br />
<b><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I'm knocking you out...</span></i></b><br />
<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">--Schoolly-D, <i>"P.S.K.--What Does It Mean?"</i></span></b></blockquote>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The 8pm sun settles behind Douglass High School, slower than a red-ball jet, faster than a puff of rosy smoke from a Chinese cherry bomb. Jogging on the school's running track in mid-August is an uphill battle against sticky sweat, choking heat, and terrorist gnats, but the rings of fat hula-hooping my waist force me to fight back. It's my 31st time around, and just one more lap--that elusive eighth mile--will be my last.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">At the halfway point, I notice three boys, no older than 15, rattling the wobbly fence surrounding the track and football field like caged, chubby, pimple-faced adolescent animals trying to escape their own fears, anxiety, boredom. Deep down I can sense that they want to jeer, to try to test me. <i>Chump the sweaty, out-of-breath sucker's hand, push his buttons, and see if the jack-in-the-hot-box pops up with any static. Just because he's big don't mean he can fight. Homeding is probably a toy. Let's wind him up, y'aw.</i></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"Hey-hey-hey/It's F-a-a-a-t Albert/And I'm gonna lose some weight too-day-hay..." the "fatboys" sing in unison. I try to ignore them, but they keep it up. A crowd starts to gather from the bus stop nearby. My ignorance and ego take over. I run over to the fence, and we trade a few choice words. Slowly the boys back away from the fence. Sensing the worse, the crowd begins to dissolve.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"Hey, stay right there, Fat Albert,if you think you so bad!" says one of the boys as they walk away. "I'm gonna go home and get my shit, OK? So wait there, OK?"</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">My heart races and my temple throbs. I know that this kid, barely out of childhood, is talking about getting his gun. Shaken and dizzy, I try to finish the lap, but instead I run upstairs and off the track, all the way to my house.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Later that night, I hear on the 11 o'clock news that there were two more murders on Pulaski and North avenues a few blocks away from where I'd been running. The victims are black boys, 16 and 17. There are no suspects, but police have a description of a young black, between 15 and 16. I turn off the TV, and the room shrinks into silent darkness.</span><br />
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<blockquote>
<b><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">...Went to the bathroom</span></i></b><br />
<b><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">to wash up</span></i></b><br />
<b><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Put some soap on my face</span></i></b><br />
<b><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And put my hand upon a cup</span></i></b><br />
<b><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I said "Mirror mirror</span></i></b><br />
<b><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">On the wall</span></i></b><br />
<b><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Who is the top choice of them all?"</span></i></b><br />
<b><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The was a rubble dubble</span></i></b><br />
<b><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Five minutes it lasted</span></i></b><br />
<b><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The mirror said</span></i></b><br />
<b><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"You are, you conceited bastid"...</span></i></b></blockquote>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Yo Boys are standing in front of Cyrus Israel's video parlor. Israel, a handsome man of medium height with salt and pepper hair and a sandalwood complexion, doesn't allow them to sell drugs inside, so the Yos, congregate in front of the store's gunmetal gray doors. For months I have been anxious to go inside and look around, but I needed someone to watch my back in case something happened. I had offered to pay to older guys who had grown up on the streets and who were weekend "horse heads" (heroin sniffers) to go in with me, but, perhaps out of fear, they never showed up when it was time to meet.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Around 5 one afternoon I decide to go in alone. The place is dotted with a few boys playing video games. As I hit the door, one boy eyes me coldly, all the while chalking his cue at the pool table. The room is small, and the stench of incense pulls the walls closer together. There is a long, rectangular slice of mirror on onew of the paneled walls, thrown at a crazy slant that gives the place the off-balance feel of a carnival fun house.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The guttural, slurred northern drawl of the boys on the video machines captures my attention. They talk strange in Baltimore: "Ay, Larh-ee (Larry),why you tryin' to dug (dog) me, boo-ee (boy)? Watchu tryin' to dew, y'aw?"</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"Hey," I tough in a voice I hope won't break into falsetto,"you know a girl named Lee-Lee?" I proceed to describe this fictional character. "She owes me some money." </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As I approach the pool player--this 15-year-old kid with the eyes of a mako shark--his attitude says, "Back off!"</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"No, I ain't seen her. Never heard a' no Lee-Lee."</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"OK, thanks, cheese."</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I start to turn my back to leave, but this kid is looking at me so hard that that might be foolish. So I back out of the door slowly.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A few days later, SPIN photographer Robin Graubard arrives to take pictures. She wants to take shots at night. So we hire a cab and tell the driver, "North and Pulaski."</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"I don't know," the driver hesitates, gripping the wheel more tightly. "I don't know about this. You know, a black man, a white woman with a camera, taking pictures in a cab at night."</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The cab cruises down Pulaski while Robin adjusts the flash, seemingly impervious to the real and present danger around us. We come to the hot corner and Robin says, "Could you like, uh, slow down some more? Like, to a crawl?"</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It's starting to get scary. And the driver is the first to sense it. "They pay people, spotters, to look out for snoops and things like this!" he says. "They can take the number on this cab and have me killed!"</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"Like, nobody is thinking about taking your number," says Robin.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"How would you know?" I explode. "You're going to check out Amtrak in a few hours. You don't have to live here. Hey, <i>we could</i> get killed!"</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"Nobody is gonna get killed!" she counters.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"Hey driver, forget it, this is crazy."</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"No! Don't forget it, I've got a job to do! Let's do it!" protests Robin. This is happening as we ride down Pulaski. Robin places her lens on the edge of the car window and aims. FLASH! FLASH! The camera lights up the corner like an instant sunrise.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"Hey! What the fuck you doin'!" comes a curdling scream from the corner.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"Man, that was nothin', that was nothin'," Robin grumbles. "I gotta do it <i>again.</i> Could you almost not move at all? Can you understand that?"</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"Can you understand that this is some wild shit?" I scream. "Please driver," I say reluctantly, "go around once more. I promise, it's the last time."</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The driver grits his teeth. "I gotta family, you know? I don't wanna die tonight!"</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"Me neither," I say.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">We go around once again. Robin aims. FLASH! FLASH! FLASH!</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"Hey, bitch," yells the same kid. "If you take another picture, I'm gonna shoot you!"</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">We take off.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Later, halfwitted and bathing in the eerie glow of my TV set, I hear what I don't need to hear. There was another killing. Two kids, between 17 and 18 years old, were shot on the steps of a house on Ettings Street, a few blocks from where we were tonight. I turn off the set and stare into the darkness. It just wasn't our time yet. But it was close enough.</span></div>
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<i><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">...I should shoot you dead</span></b></i></div>
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<i><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">P.S.K., we're makin' that green,</span></b></i></div>
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<i><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">People always say</span></b></i></div>
<i><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">What the hell does that mean...</span></b></i> </blockquote>
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-dcpraR2XM7o/TqX61ZO-XKI/AAAAAAAACkU/iwoKkHBz5W0/s1600/HookedOnTheAmericanDreamNewJackCityEatsItsYoungBookCoverReTouch.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-dcpraR2XM7o/TqX61ZO-XKI/AAAAAAAACkU/iwoKkHBz5W0/s320/HookedOnTheAmericanDreamNewJackCityEatsItsYoungBookCoverReTouch.jpg" width="196" /></a></div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Read the entire<b> In Cold Blood: The Baltimore Teen Murders</b> cover story from the May 1986 issue of Spin Magazine, in my new anthology, <b>"Hooked On The American Dream-Vol.1: New Jack City Eats Its Young,"</b> available exclusively on Kindle/Amazon. Amazon/Kindle has a <b><u>free</u></b>, downloadable app for all computers and mobile devices. Click <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Hooked-American-Dream-Vol-1-Young-ebook/dp/B005P3GUOM/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1319493652&sr=1-1">here</a> to go to the "Hooked On The American Dream-Vol.1:New Jack City Eats Its Young" Kindle store site.</span></div>
Bmchttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17004250242744541801noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8840328022376773351.post-51984357693391050122011-10-24T18:04:00.003-04:002012-02-02T11:40:22.424-05:00"New Jack" Anthology Xcrpt: Mourning In America (The Crack of the Dawn of the Dead)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-WMNlRxFRfAQ/TqXaU4nZzPI/AAAAAAAACkE/bFjXruCqOkE/s1600/HookedOnTheAmericanDreamNewJackCityEatsItsYoungBookCoverReTouch.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-WMNlRxFRfAQ/TqXaU4nZzPI/AAAAAAAACkE/bFjXruCqOkE/s320/HookedOnTheAmericanDreamNewJackCityEatsItsYoungBookCoverReTouch.jpg" width="196" /></a></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b><u>Mourning In America </u></b></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b><u>(The Crack of the Dawn of the Dead)</u></b></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><u>An Essay By Barry Michael Cooper</u></b></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><i>"The velocity of history will either break your back or give you wings"</i></b></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The '80s is dead, y'all, and crack cocaine murdered it. Crack both disfigured the <i>Belle Epoque </i>of the 1980s and wind-sheared the wings on the American Dream, sabotaging it’s flight path and fracturing it almost beyond recognition. Crack created a mass grave filled with the time-eaten corpora of our communal selective memory; a grave twenty-five years deep and a quarter-century long. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">For some, the 1980s were the dawn of an America the <i>RRC</i> (Republican Ruling Class) thought they had lost in the 60s with the election of Kennedy--John F. and almost Robert F.--the proliferation of Dr. Martin Luther King’s multi-colored Dream, and the specter of Malcolm X’s Black Nationalist resolve stamped, <i>By Any Means Necessary.</i> By the time Jimmy Carter--the son of a peanut farmer who became a Naval officer--was elected President of the United States in 1976, the American Dream was beginning to have the potential retrofit of a land filled <i>liberty and justice for all.</i> The Carter Era--not Jigga or Weezy’s but Jimmy C.’s--was a prodigious time for us <i>Mountaintop Children</i>. The <i>Mountaintop Children </i>(or <i>Black Boomers</i>, if you will) are that progeny--primarily African-American--born at the rise of the Civil Rights movement; children of cultural privilege and promise, hoisted onto the shoulders of history by ancestors who struggled, bled, and died to make this <i>One-Nation-Under-GOD -With-Liberty-And-Justice-For-All-</i>America, a level playing field. </span></div>
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Even in the<i> "imaginarium"</i> of television, Black people had visions of a better life. Florida Evans and her <i>familia</i> of J.J., Michael, and a married Thelma were no longer <i>scratchin' and survivin',</i> and finally moved out of the Cabrini-Green Houses in Chicago. George and Louise Jefferson were the proprietors of a chain of successful dry cleaners, that allowed them to move on up and live among the wealthy on the Upper East Side of New York City.</div>
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But the <i>good times</i> were cut short by the Iran Hostage Crisis in 1979, which ushered in a former actor, laundry detergent shill, and poster boy for the Republican Ruling Class, by the name of Ronald Wilson Reagan. The <i>Reagan Ideal</i> was a <i>get-one-for-The-Gipper </i>return to an America the RRC was more comfortable with; white, Republican, racist, repressively transgressive, remunerated, and <i>removed.</i> Removed from the plight of the poor (Black and White folks, too), the blight of minorities, and the financial apoplexy of the middle class. The Reaganites were a coterie who took their <i>White Parties</i> on Sutton Place and in Santa Barbara, <i>literally and seriously. </i>This was an America the Reaganites saw as the dawning of a new day for old prejudices wrapped in a new ideology. President Reagan called it, <i>"Morning in America."</i></div>
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However, for many others, that <i>"Morning"</i> became their own personal <i><b>Mourning in America</b></i>, and crack was the assassin. Crack was the explosion that shook fear into the Black Boomers and began to turn the purpose of the <i>Mountaintop Children</i> into an avalanche of nightmarish apathy. In the African-American community, crack was a dream-killer, a bank (and drug proceeds) builder, a cradle-robber, and prison-stocker, and a tomb-filler. </div>
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Crack was a circuit breaker in the psychic fuse box of African American advancement. Crack rewired the motherboard of the descendants of the Motherland, reprogramming them into the 20th century slaves of a new pharm-land, where the cash crops of cooked cocaine had been reaped from the infertility of their very own hopes and dreams. Crack cocaine vaporized the ‘80s into a stagnant era odorized with the acrid, postmortem stank of aborted and unfulfilled wishes. Crack created a generation that swooned in the ferocious vertigo of convoluted American game theory; game theory played out on invisible Ouija boards located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, DC, with pieces marked <i>“Oliver North,” “Contra,” “Guns,”</i> and <i>“Cocaine.”</i> A rigged contest with politically loaded dice, prejudicially marked cards, and scores tallied (and settled) by the finality of zero-sum conclusions.</div>
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The splintering of the RRC’s erstwhile <i>pursuit of happiness</i> in this New Republic, was divvied up in a variety of ways; to whom and how that pursuit of happiness was dispensed depended on what portion of the social prism you belonged to. The darker the pigmentation in that social prism, ofttimes, the more oblique the despair during the 1980s.</div>
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Ironically, it is in this death-star environment of crack, that I became an investigative reporter, who would go on to write three well-known films; <b>“New Jack City,”</b> the 1991 Warner Brothers production that made stars out of Wesley Snipes, Chris Rock, Ice-T, Allen Payne, and Mario Van Peebles, and 1994’s duo of <b>“Sugar Hill,”</b> (which also starred Snipes along with Michael Wright, Clarence Williams, III, the late O.L. Duke, and the Abe Vigoda of <b>“The Godfather” </b>fame), and <b>“Above The Rim,” </b>which starred the late Tupac Shakur. Examining the scourge of crack helped shape my voice, point-of-view, and career as an investigative journalist in the mid-to late ‘80s...</div>
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-WMNlRxFRfAQ/TqXaU4nZzPI/AAAAAAAACkE/bFjXruCqOkE/s1600/HookedOnTheAmericanDreamNewJackCityEatsItsYoungBookCoverReTouch.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-WMNlRxFRfAQ/TqXaU4nZzPI/AAAAAAAACkE/bFjXruCqOkE/s320/HookedOnTheAmericanDreamNewJackCityEatsItsYoungBookCoverReTouch.jpg" width="196" /></a></div>
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Read the entire <b>"Mourning In America"</b> introductory essay, in my new anthology, <b>"Hooked On The American Dream-Vol.1: New Jack City Eats Its Young,"</b> available exclusively on Kindle/Amazon. Amazon/Kindle has a <b><u>free</u></b>, downloadable app for all computers and mobile devices. Click <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Hooked-American-Dream-Vol-1-Young-ebook/dp/B005P3GUOM/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1319493652&sr=1-1">here</a> to go to the "Hooked On The American Dream-Vol.1:New Jack City Eats Its Young" Kindle store site.</div>
</span>Bmchttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17004250242744541801noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8840328022376773351.post-51640484652520257252011-09-23T12:02:00.000-04:002012-07-15T01:28:32.903-04:00Video of Barry Michael Cooper Moderating The Planet Rock Doc Panel @ The Paley Center 12 September 2011<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-BywlwTWj-W0/Tnycb0qIdDI/AAAAAAAACjE/rVp54Y00JsQ/s1600/MelleMelMartinTargoffRichardLoweNelsonGeorgeAzieFaisonIceTBmcPlanetRockPaleyCenter12Sept2011.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="178" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-BywlwTWj-W0/Tnycb0qIdDI/AAAAAAAACjE/rVp54Y00JsQ/s320/MelleMelMartinTargoffRichardLoweNelsonGeorgeAzieFaisonIceTBmcPlanetRockPaleyCenter12Sept2011.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">from left to right: Melle Mel, Martin Torgoff, Richard Lowe, Nelson George, Azie Faison, Ice T, Barry Michael Cooper-photo credit: Paley Center</span></td></tr>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">By Barry Michael Cooper</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Last Monday (12 September 2011), I was blessed to moderate the panel for the screening for VH1's groundbreaking documentary on the history of crack cocaine in America, "Planet Rock: The Story of Hip Hop and the Crack Generation."</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Barry Michael Cooper-photo credit: S. Mack/Wireimage</td></tr>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Narrated and executive produced by actor, emcee, and burgeoning media mogul Ice T, and produced by Martin Torgoff and Richard Lowe, "Planet Rock," is an unflinching and in depth examination of the crack cocaine epidemic in America during the 1980s, and the sweeping, cataclysmic effect it had on politics, economics, culture, and society as a whole. I was also honored to be a participant (and unofficial consultant) on the VH1 "Planet Rock" documentary.</span><br />
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Get More: <a href="http://www.vh1.com/shows/dyn/vh1_rock_docs/series.jhtml" style="color: #439cd8;" target="_blank">VH1 Rock Docs</a>, <a href="http://www.vh1.com/shows/" style="color: #439cd8;" target="_blank">TV Shows</a>, <a href="http://www.vh1.com/video/full_episodes.jhtml" style="color: #439cd8;" target="_blank">Full Episode Video</a>, <a href="http://www.vh1.com/shows/" style="color: #439cd8;" target="_blank">Reality TV Shows</a></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Speaking of culture, crack cocaine had an enormous impact on Hip Hop, and more than 25 years later, how we listen and respond and absorb the music now, is much different from the time when rap music was about having a good time and positive empowerment (mainly among disenfranchised African-Americans and Latinos) during the regressive political construct engineered by the Reagan Administration.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-VSwKzhudN9M/TnyiRi-QZTI/AAAAAAAACjM/LBgpsaIOn2w/s1600/NelsonBmcAzieFaisonIceTPlanetRockPaleyCenter12Sept2011.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="288" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-VSwKzhudN9M/TnyiRi-QZTI/AAAAAAAACjM/LBgpsaIOn2w/s320/NelsonBmcAzieFaisonIceTPlanetRockPaleyCenter12Sept2011.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Left to Right: Nelson George, Barry Michael Cooper, Azie Faison, Ice T-photo credit: Getty Images</span></td></tr>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">If you haven't seen "Planet Rock" yet on VH1--it premiered last Sunday night on 18 September 2011--do yourself a favor and not only watch it, but DVR-it, too; it is informative, educational, and truly inspiring, television. The filmmakers--writer-producer Martin Torgoff, and director-producer Richard Lowe--and the executive producers Ice T, Brad Abramson, and Stephen Mintz, are to be commended creating such a memorable, important, and historic film. I would not be surprised if they were nominated for an Emmy in 2012, GOD Willing.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-jYb8mhFGPyc/TnylDSzRMtI/AAAAAAAACjQ/H8wrNDAE2sw/s1600/BmcandiceTPlanetRockPaleyCenter12Sept2011.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="213" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-jYb8mhFGPyc/TnylDSzRMtI/AAAAAAAACjQ/H8wrNDAE2sw/s320/BmcandiceTPlanetRockPaleyCenter12Sept2011.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Left to Right: Ice T, Barry Michael Cooper-photo credit: Michael Priest Photography/Paley Center</span></td></tr>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Immediately after the 12 September "Planet Rock" screening at the breathtaking Paley Center in midtown Manhattan, I hosted an engagingly intuitive and cogently spirited panel, which consisted of a few of the participants in the film; the producers Ice T, Martin Torgoff, and Richard Lowe, Hip Hop legend Melle Mel, former crack dealer-turned filmmaker, author, and keen socio-observer Azie Faison, prolific author, filmmaker, cultural critic, and television producer, Nelson George. The discussion was dynamic, reflective, edgy, and honest. I was given an hour, but that passed like a minute. The audience wanted more, and so did I. Underneath this graph is a short clip from that night, and I am in the process of acquiring more clips from that momentous night. I will post more clips in the days/weeks to come, GOD Willing. In the meantime, you can live vicariously through this blog post. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Be sure to pick up Barry Michael Cooper's (The screenwriter of "New Jack City," "Sugar Hill," and "Above The Rim") new anthology of '80s street reporting from the crack-era, </span><b style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"Hooked On The American Dream-Vol.1: New Jack City Eats Its Young,"</b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> available exclusively on Kindle/Amazon. Only <b><u>$1.99!</u></b> Amazon/Kindle has a </span><b style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><u>free</u></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">, downloadable app for all computers and mobile devices. Click </span><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Hooked-American-Dream-Vol-1-Young-ebook/dp/B005P3GUOM/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1319493652&sr=1-1" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">here</a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> to go to the "Hooked On The American Dream-Vol.1:New Jack City Eats Its Young" Kindle store site. Thank you for visiting <b>Hooked On The American Dream </b>and please...buy the book. Have a Blessed day.</span></div>
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</div>Bmchttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17004250242744541801noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8840328022376773351.post-22433530072642953952011-09-20T21:13:00.000-04:002011-09-26T04:16:18.365-04:00Xcrpt From The "New Jack City Eats Its Young" Anthology<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">The <b>Carter Era</b>--not Jigga or Weezy's, but Jimmy C.'s--was a prodigious time for us <i>Mountaintop Children.</i> The <i>Mountaintop Children</i> (or <i>Black Boomers</i>, if you will) are that progeny--primarily African-American--born at the rise of the Civil Rights movement; children of cultural privilege and promise, hoisted onto the shoulders of history by ancestors who struggled, bled, and died to make this <i>One-Nation-Under-GOD-Indivisible-With-Liberty-And-Justice-For-All-</i>America, a level playing field.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Even in the <i>"imaginarium"</i> of television, Black people had visions of a better life. Florida Evans and her <i>familia</i> of J.J., Michael, and a married Thelma were no longer <i>scratchin' and survivin'</i>, and finally moved out of the Cabrini-Green Houses in Chicago. George and Louise Jefferson were the proprietors of a chain of successful dry cleaners, that allowed them to <i>move on up</i> and live among the wealthy on the Upper East Side of New York City.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">But the <i>good times</i> were cut short by the Iran Hostage Crisis in 1979, which ushered in a former actor, laundry detergent shill, and poster boy for the Republican Ruling Class, by the name of Ronald Wilson Reagan. The <i>Reagan Ideal </i>was a <i>get-one-for-The-Gipper </i>return to an America the RRC was more comfortable with; white, Republican, racist, repressively transgressive, remunerated, and <i>removed. Removed </i>from the plight of the poor (Black and White folks, too), the blight of minorities, and the financial apoplexy of the middle class. The Reaganites were a coterie who took their <i>White Parties</i> on Sutton Place and in Santa Barbara, <i>literally</i> and <u>seriously</u>. This was an America the Reaganites saw as the dawning of a new day for old prejudices wrapped in a new ideology. President Reagan called it, <i>"Morning in America."</i></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">However, for many others, that <i>"Morning"</i> became their own personal <i>Mourning in America</i>, and crack was the assassin. Crack was the explosion that shook fear into the <i>Black Boomers</i> and began to turn the purpose of the<i> Mountaintop Children </i>into an avalanche of nightmarish apathy. In the African-American community, crack was a dream-killer, a bank (and drug proceeds) builder, a cradle-robber, and prison-stocker, and a tomb-filler. Crack was the circuit-breaker in the psychic fuse-box of African-American advancement. Crack re-wired the descendants of the Motherland, reprogramming them into the 20th Century slaves of a new <i>pharm-</i>land<i>, </i>where the cash crops of cooked cocaine had been reaped from the infertility of their very own hopes and dreams...</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">My debut anthology of street journalism from the 1980s (and more current essays), "Hooked On The American Dream-Vol.1: New Jack City Eats Its Young," is now available on Kindle/Amazon. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Click<a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/B005P3GUOM"> here</a> to go to the Amazon site.</span></span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><i><br /></i></span>Bmchttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17004250242744541801noreply@blogger.com2