May 2012
1 post
6 tags
Creativity & Humanity: Nas, the Father
By Derek Beres
Aging is an interesting thing. Observing your personal metamorphosis as the years unfold offers great insight into your ability to evolve. Do you adapt as time rolls on? Are there ‘rules’ that you stick by no matter what? Do you roll with the changes, or fight them every step of the way? The only thing scarier than accepting change is not being willing to at all.
Watching artists...
March 2012
5 posts
Why Trayvon Martin Became a Cause Célèbre, And Not...
By Dax
For me the 2012 edition of Black History Month will be hereinafter bracketed by the murder of two unarmed boys. The first, 18 year-old Ramarley Graham, on February 2. The second, 17 year-old Trayvon Martin, on February 26. Taken together the stories of Ramarley and Trayvon paint an alarming picture of the all-encompassing existential risks associated with being young, black and male.
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4 tags
Kicking America to the Curb with Rick Santorum
By Derek Beres
There’s nothing like spending an entire day working hard on projects that are attempting to bridge cultures only to find one of the most touted names in American politics is doing his best to kick our country to the curb.
Due to an odd law that allows US territories like Puerto Rico to vote in primary elections but not presidential ones, Republican candidates have been...
4 tags
Why The Book of Genesis is Wrong...Again
By Derek Beres
I’m not sure what happens in Oklahoma. I’ve never been to the state. I don’t purposefully avoid it, and would certainly visit for good reason. But if the fact that the residents of the state elect a senator like James Inhofe to represent them, I might just have to permanently delete the region from any travel plans.
In his new book, The Greatest Hoax: How the...
February 2012
12 posts
Beyond Beef: Re-imagining Black Power for the 21st...
By Dax-Devlon Ross
Remarks delivered during keynote address at the Third Annual Is Hip Hop History? Conference at City College of New York on February 25, 2012
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A few months ago I was introduced to Malcolm X’s third daughter, Ilyasah Shabazz. She’d just seen Jay-Z and Kanye West in concert at Madison Square Garden....
Beyond Beef: Re-imagining Black Power for the 21st...
Remarks delivered during keynote address at the Third Annual Is Hip Hop History? Conference at City College of New York on February 25, 2012
____________________________________________________________________
By Dax-Devlon Ross
A few months ago I was introduced to Malcolm X’s third daughter, Ilyasah Shabazz. She’d just seen Jay-Z and Kanye West in concert at Madison Square Garden....
Dax @ CCNY's Third Annual "Is Hip Hop History?"...
Nas, Jay-Z ‘Battle’ Examined at CCNY Hip Hop Conference
Dax-Devlon Ross (top) and Pete Rock are keynote speakers for the Third Annual “Is Hip Hip History?” conference, February 24 - 25 at the Center for Worker Education.
Technology and the deejay, the battle between rappers Nas and Jay-Z, B-girls in a male dominated hip-hop world and a retrospective on graffiti are among...
Classic Material: Really Rich Russian Says He'll...
By Dax-Devlon Ross
New Jersey Nets owner, Mikhail Prokhorov, is Russia’s third- richest man and Vladamir Putin’s opponent in Russia’s increasingly rough and tumble presidential race. Prokhorov recently said that he will give $17 billion of his $18 billion fortune to charity if he wins the presidency next month. “I’ll sell everything, all my assets when I become president and...
8 tags
The Latest Casualty of the Stop and Frisk Regime
By Dax-Devlon Ross
Two days ago I was leaving an event at a Harlem youth organization when I came face to face with the tail end of an encounter between the police and a teenager. As I approached the corner one plain clothes cop appeared to be issuing a final statement/warning to the teenager in question while two others hovered outside of an unmarked car parked at a reckless angle suggesting...
7 tags
What GOP Race Baiting Really Means (and What...
By Dax-Devlon Ross
In a recent op-ed NYT columnist David Brooks argues that an increasingly divided nation needs a national service program that would “force members of the upper tribe and the lower tribe to live together, if only for a few years.” In addition to the increased accessed to wealth, Brooks hints at a civilizing effect that this interaction can have on the lower tribe. He...
January 2012
2 posts
6 tags
Has Optimism Hurt Obama?
By Dax-Devlon Ross
“When the going gets tough,” neuroscientist Tali Sharot writes in her 2011 book The Optimism Bias, “we desperately start searching for the silver lining.” Sharot believes that optimism bias — “the inclination to overestimate the likelihood of encountering positive events in the future and to underestimate the likelihood of experiencing negative...
Essentials: 7 Albums I Couldn't Live Without
By Derek Beres
This first in my Essentials: Music Series was the hardest to decide. Later posts will be broken down into genre. Like those, this is not a complete “Greatest Hits” of albums, but more a compendium of albums that have such strong emotional pull in my life that I could, possibly, live without them. I just would never want to.
A Tribe Called Quest: Midnight Marauders Very few weekend...
December 2011
2 posts
7 tags
Why Occupy is Not the Tea Party
By Derek Beres
The answer in one word: creativity.
Yet nothing is so easy to understand. If you watch and read enough media outlets, you get the sense that American politics are divided into two extremes, with a hearty middle wondering which way the ship will tip. On one side, the Tea Party, responsible for everything from reviving and extremifying the right wing to pulling the puppet...
7 tags
Can 50 Cent Feed Africa?
Words & Pic by Derek Beres
The 1985 “We Are the World” campaign successfully implanted the idea of feeding “starving Africans” into the American consciousness. Over the past quarter-century, feeding the peoples of the African continent has been a celebrity cause du jour, a GMO company’s marketing nightmare, and for a few non-profit organizations, a daily struggle. Hip-hop emcee 50 Cent...