Notorious: A B.I.G. post. (Sorry, nothing to do with Obama).

The other night I asked a buddy – local literature professor and serious hip-hop head – if he wanted to check out Notorious. No way, says he. He’s boycotting it. Wants nothing nothing to do with the Hollywoodization of the great Biggie Smalls.  

Fair enough. As expected, Notorious is in fact a glossy, hagiographic biopic. (It could be seen as the flip side to Biggie’s doom-laden and autobiographical first album, Ready to Die). Its producers include Biggie’s mom, Voletta Wallace, portrayed by Angela Bassett as a more or less perfect single parent, and Puffy Combs, played by Derek Luke as the man any up-and-coming recording artist would want in his corner. There’s nothing unauthorized about any of it, and, as David Denby points out in The New Yorker, it has little provocative to say about the difference between Biggie the myth and Biggie the man. In Biggie parlance, there ain’t much to make you say “If you don’t know, now you know.”               

But damn is it fun, especially for those of us who worship at the altar of Big Poppa. Was he really as cuddly as newcomer Jamal Woolard makes him seem? Very doubtful; this is the guy who wrote “Gimme the Loot.” But in a culture where every musical large-liver seems to get a cleaned-up biopic, why not Biggie? Put another way: does anyone actually think Ray and Walk the Line were the real deal?

Let’s get to the meat of the matter: the music. Notorious is wise about the way it uses Biggie’s catalogue, for which we can probably thank Puffy/P-Diddy/Diddy/Whatever He’s Calling Himself This Month. It’s widely known that Biggie wanted the bangin’ hardcore anthem “Machine Gun Funk” to be the first single off Ready to Die, only to be overruled by Puffy’s pop sensibilities. So we see the big fella cringe at the idea of writing a rap song around the hook to Mtume’s “Juicy Fruit,” only to accept the challenge like a hip-hop viking: “I’m gonna need some Pepsi and some weed. And some females.” Hey, inspiration comes in all shapes and sizes. The result is “Juicy,” the boisterous apotheoses of rags-to-riches rap (“Birthdays was the worst days/Now we sip champagne when we thirst-tay”).

Maybe I’ve just written about Hollywood product too long to be appropriately cynical.  But Notorious made me want to go home and crank up Ready to Die and, hopefully, finish the paper I’m writing about the unparalleled hip-hop marriage of violence and humor in Biggie’s music. That’s a deadline for a rapidly approaching other day.

Black Nationalism: The End Game?

This is the last week of the fall semester, which means my fellowship is damn near half over. Sadness accrues as profs sum up their classes on the final day, usually met by the traditional round of applause, and the better ones find a way to both summarize and look ahead.

Philosophy and Af-Am professor Tommie Shelby is among the better ones (the cover of his book We Who Are Dark is shown above), and the finale of his Black Nationalism course offered some pointed questions about the subject. Here’s one: what does the election of a black president mean for a movement that thrives on racial solidarity and the assumption of inequality?

That wasn’t the actual subject of the final week’s reading, which featured feminist critiques of a staunchly masculine ideology offered up by Angela Davis, E. Frances White and Wahneema Lubiano. But those critiques aren’t irrelevant to the rise of Obama. Feminist critics of Black Nationalism argue that a movement that insists on collapsing the differences within a large group of people (say, African Americans) fails to account for individual difference and varying subsets. In other words, where is the space for difference within the larger group? What about black women, who have concerns all their own? And what about a half-Kenyan, half-American political master who rises to the highest office of the land? Does Obama mean, as Matt Bai has suggested, the end of black politics?

Doubtful. One election, no matter how historic, does not erase racism or identity politics. But the point is well taken. It’s a little harder (but obviously not impossible) to rail against the racist white power structure with a black man in the Oval Office. Shelby suggests that Black Nationalism, which had already seen a decline since the late-’60s/early-’70s heyday of the Black Arts Movement, may need to adjust its parameters and account for other variables – gender, class, power, sexual orientation -to roll to changing times. Race and ethnicity are still important, but as racism becomes rarer, or at least less overt, a monolithic conception of blackness becomes less useful.

And now, I figure out what to do with the next six weeks.

Meet the fellows: Ernie Suggs (with a cameo from the great Alvaro)

So I finally got me a Flip HD Mino, a tiny and ridiculously easy video camera that even the likes of me can use. Seems like a good occasion to start introducing you to some of my fellow Nieman Fellows. First up: Ernie Suggs, Enterprise Reporter for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

I am slightly embarrassed to report that I am in all of Ernie’s classes (although I like to think it’s the other way around). What can I say, we’re both all over the African-American Studies offerings. Fortunately he’s a very cool guy, even if he’s making the rest of us of look bad by doing most of his course work (dude, what ‘s up with that?). He went to North Carolina Central University, and he is allegedly studying historical black colleges here this year. We’ve been collaborating on a hip-hop presentation that we’ll drop on the Niemans this week. Word. Ernie is one of those genuinely curious and friendly guys who seems to have a kind word for everyone. Where I tend to shy away from people I don’t know well, Mr. Suggs is a social chatterbox (but far from a windbag).

In this video we talk about how the year is going, how cool it is that Ted Kennedy is speaking down the street from the party we’re at and other riveting subject matter (I’m definitely out of interview practice). The supporting player is one Alvaro Jimenez, husband of fellow and documentary filmmaker Margarita Martinez and a leading figure in the movement to ban land mines in Colombia. Also – sorry to be so predictable – a first-class mensch whose English is improving by the day.

The Swell Season at Boston University

I think you’re groovy (Fox Searchlight)

This was a pretty hardcore concert weekend for me, what with Dave Holland on Thursday and the Swell Season tour on Friday. For those not up on their Irish cross-over pop culture phenomena, the Swellness features Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova, the couple at the core of last year’s indie film sensation Once. The show was at the cavernous Agganis Arena, home of the Boston University ice hockey team (they’re called the Terriers if you’re scoring at home, or even if you’re alone). The venue swallowed up some of the duo’s winning intimacy, but there were still some magical moments including a yawlping set-opening cover of Van Morrison’s Into the Mystic and a welcome taste of spontaneity: Hansard invited a local busker (whom he met earlier in the day) onto the stage to play one of his own songs. Longtime Austinite Patty Griffin was a more than capable warm-up. What a voice. I actually liked her set better than the headliners. You can take the Vognar out of Texas but you can’t can’t take Texas out of the Vognar. Now that’s a scary thought.

Dave Holland Sextet kills it at Regatta Bar as blogger neglects his post

So I figured I’d be feeding this blog beast on a regular basis once I got out here. Fat chance. I’m remembering that blogging takes a little discipline, that you can’t just think thoughts onto your page (though I’m sure that particular bit of technology will be around any day now).

Anyway, I went to check out the Dave Holland Sextet Thursday night at Regatta Bar, a nice jazz room on the third floor of the Charles Hotel. One word: Damn. Holland is a British bassist who has been around forever, and he always surrounds himself with tremendous group improvisers who work together like the Showtime Lakers fast break. The most jaw-dropping component for me was trombonist Robin Eubanks, who took full advantage of Holland’s penchant for putting the trombone on equal thematic terrain with the alto sax. I had multiple goosebump moments, and would have stayed for the second set If I had a ticket.

For an equally enthusiastic take that focuses on sax man Antonio Hart, check out the review by the Boston Globe’s Steve Greenlee here.