When you speak of Canadian Hip-Hop, people will mention the common names such as the more recent Drake to the older Main Source, but you gotta mention Swollen Members in the mix. Founding member Madchild, in the early parts of his music career lived in the San Francisco Bay Area (some of the early Swollen Members collaborations featured DJ Q-bert & Mixmaster Mike of the then ISP crew) before moving back to Canada and linking up with the other two …
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Asian Americans in Hip-Hop, the overlooked story. Bad Rap is a documentary that follows four seasoned and up’n’coming Asian American rappers: Dumbfounded (aka DFD, PARKER), Awkwafina, Rekstizzy, and Lyricks. Guest cameos interviews include other Asian American rappers such as Jin, Far East Movement, Jay Park, Traphik, Decipher and more. Right now producer and director Salima Koroma and Jaeki Cho are trying to crowd fund through Indiegogo for some monetary support to finish up this documentary (film more artists, travel, editing, post-production, marketing expenses, etc). …
Another interesting midseason sitcom picked up by ABC is Black-Ish. It’s about a suburban upper middle class black family living in a mostly white community. The Johnson family deals with issues of identity, culture, and class. The father character Andre wonders if his family is forgetting their black roots while in the process of quickly assimilating into an affluent lifestyle. Black-Ish is loosely based on the life of writer and producer Kenya Barris. The show is executive produced by the staring actors, …
Completing the trifecta of POC sitcoms coming soon to ABC, we have Cristela staring comedian Cristela Alonzo. This show is about a young Mexican American woman, a 6th year law student who’s stuck living with her family while she’s figuring out her future goals, and dealing with her identity as a Latina and American (navigating between two cultures). Cristela is co-written by Cristela Alonzo and Kevin Hench. The show’s cast includes Terri Hoyos, Roxana Ortega, Carlos Ponce, Andrew Leeds, Sarah Halford, and fellow comedian Gabriel Iglesias. Cristela Trailer …
In Japan you can’t walk into a cafe without either hearing Bossa Nova or Jazz. It’s like a permanent auditory fixture in just about any shopping center or restaurant. Professor E. Taylor Atkins talks about how Jazz came to Japan. By Patrick Jarenwattananon [NPR] “Over the years a racialized component emerges in such language—basically a kind of model minority discourse that presumes that Asians have no soul and have no business trying to be artists, especially in proximity to Blackness, which is, …
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