I’ve known Homeboy Sandman for quite sometime now. We actually met at an outdoor concert thrown by our homie Tah Phrum Duh Bush in Downtown Brooklyn about seven years ago. I had heard his name swinging around a bit before hand so when I saw him actually rock on stage I was impressed. Sometime that day we fell into a casual conversation and the fact that I was a producer came up, now at that point I mainly had done only production …
Tag: race
I talked to vlogger and fashion designer, Reggie Casual for Tokyo Weekender, read it here. Reggie’s videos are a gulf of information and insight into Japanese fashion. While I enjoyed watching them and I think The Casual is one of the most unique vlogs in Japan, I couldn’t get away from the obvious influence of the black aesthetic on this country’s pop culture. Granted, The Casual is about Japanese fashion, but for him to not address the obvious is what …
There are tracks that sound like a stunned body in perpetual fight or flight mode. Its skull reverberates from voices shouting, “get up… get out.” The neighborhood is a kill box and the “Only one way out/of course is man made/looking down the tunnel, endless/don’t see a damn thing,” Curly Castro raps on “Night Terra Fabulous,” off his sophomore project Tosh. He’s the son of Barbadian immigrants who raised him on planet Brooklyn but for years Philadelphia has been his …
Three weeks ago when my latest Tokyo Weekender piece, “A Shut Door: ‘Japanese Hip-Hop Has Sectioned Itself Off’” was published online, it got more attention than I anticipated. I got to talk on The BBC. The article was to expose an extension of Japan’s xenophobia and its rejection of multiculturalism, even while it is straining western influences through a Japanese filter. To avoid talking about it is like braving a sand storm. Taping one’s windows, doors, and air vents still …
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