All-Female Fanfare: Examining Marvel Fanfare #38
When it is a surprise to the editor that both stories in a comic are written and drawn by women, it takes an engaged reader to consider the actual significance.
Reachin’ Not Drowning: Songs in Conversation About Abortion
The personal is political and sometimes – as in the case of abortion – the political is personal.
“I Didn’t Mean to Turn You Kong” – Seeking out #MeToo in Pop Music
Listening to Cherrelle’s “I Didn’t Mean to Turn You On” in the #MeToo moment.
Imagining What Silence Looks Like: Prince & Queering the Popular Love Song
The dark sound and minimalist instrumentation on “If I Was Your Girlfriend” demonstrates Prince’s willingness to bend and distort expectations with a lyrical and sonic playfulness that challenges the listener to think beyond the obvious gender stereotypes inherent in most popular love songs.
“Nobody Speak” – Pulling Back the Curtain on Trumpist Politics
You wanna hear a good joke? Nobody speak, nobody get choked.
Hip Hop Levels Up: Sammus & Pieces in Space
Sammus embraces the kind of freedom afforded to grassroots, independent artists who don’t have corporate overseers menacing with strange gazes and mandates to sellout.
Songs in Conversation: Don’t Knock the Intimacy of Urban Sound
Tony Orlando & Dawn’s “Knock Three Times” vs. Suzanne Vega’s “Luka” in the soundscape of urban living.
“Forever is Already There” – On Thumb of the Maid
The best band no one has ever heard (or at the very least a quirky band whose one record brings me joy).
Songs in Conversation: Those are Some Fragile Men, Baby Doll.
Defamiliarizing gender to highlight its constructedness.
Back to the Old School: 5 Classic Hip Hop Albums You Need to Learn
“You know what you need to learn? Old school artists don’t always burn!”
“The Revolution was Postponed Because of Rain”
A song from ’95 about the state of Black Revolution in America in light of the appeal of consumerism and individual contentment.
“Hip Hop Started Out in the Art” – Tom Brevoort, Post-Racial Hip Hop & Comics
You can’t separate hip hop from race without looking like you’ve separated your head from sense.
1999: Radical Possibilities of Apocalypse
1999’s appeal emerges from a sense of danger, from the scandalous possibilities of a morality unbound by the coming apocalypse, disguised as synth-heavy dance pop
Songs In Conversation: I Can Go For Dialogics
Dialogics represent the rejection of a finality of meaning. It moves back and forth like a crossfade.
Turn Down For the White Gaze? Fuck That Noise!
Lil John’s question, “Turn Down For What?” is a challenge to the white gaze and respectability politics.
Cracking the Prototype: Serial Monogamy and the Pop Love Song
Songs that explore the more complex reality inherent in the tension between the intensity of romantic feelings and the experience of serialized monogamy.
So, You Say You Want a Revolution? It’s Gonna Be Alright, Just Buy Something.
The Nike commercial is simply a recapitulation of the song’s co-opting of revolutionary affect to sell popular music itself as a commodity and line the Beatles’ pockets.
The Who’s “I’m a Boy” as Transgender Anthem
Gender identity is over-determined.
Sympathy for “Sympathy for the Devil”
The finest trick humanity ever played was persuading itself that he devil was real.
“Movies, Museums and the Hall of Fame” – Beat Street & the Past Future of Hip Hop
Hip Hop got up big time, and I love that, but its focus on cultural production left its political potential untapped.
Rock On and Drive: Songs in Conversation
Rock n’ roll songs about rock n’ roll disillusionment.
