The 19th annual ASCAP awards were held Monday night at the Beverly Hilton in LA, a star-studded affair hosted by Ciara. LL Cool J received a Golden Note Award, and Bill Withers, author of hits like “Ain’t No Sunshine” and “Lean on Me,” took home the Heritage Award.
Accepting his Golden Note, LL free-styled, calling [...]

Rappers need beef for a healthy rap career. They beef with just about anyone. Most are publicity stunts and others are ridiculous, like rappers Ludacris, 50 Cent, Ice Cube, and others beefing with Oprah claiming she doesn’t support the hip hop community and only caters to her large white audience.
Yet when Bill O’ Reily [...]

Who gave U.S. Marine Corporal Joshua Belile permission to (1) compose music (2) play the guitar (3) sing in public (4) do any of those things in front of a digital camera and (5) even sort of resemble mega-cool Pixie’s dude Frank Black? Ugh. Yet another case of bad decision-making on the part of the [...]

June has been a bad month for social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace as well as for the people who use them to broadcast their debauchery or to stealthily stalk the innocent. First MySpace was sued by a 14-year-old who says she was assaulted by a guy she met there. Then Weight Watchers announced [...]

I don’t know how this went relatively unnoticed but it was reported on June 15 that the Supreme Court ruled that police no longer have to knock on alleged suspects’ doors when issued a search warrant.
The article on CNN.com claims this new ruling to be a “huge government victory.” Really? Who does this benefit?
The [...]

The Washington Post editorializes today on the dangers of encouraging critical thought in young people, citing a study that says the 48 percent of college-age people (that’s a lot!) who watch the Daily Show “develop cynical views about politics and politicians that could lead them to just say no to voting.” Um, maybe. On the [...]

The National Research Council today came out with a strong statement of scientific fact: “There is sufficient evidence from tree rings, retreating glaciers, and other “proxies” to say with confidence that the last few decades of the 20th century were warmer than any comparable period in the last 400 years.”
Read the news release and [...]

You’d think that as media conglomerates have recognized the money to be made by catering to racial and ethnic communities, that media products might grow more diverse. But just the opposite, reports Makani Themba-Nixon in the last issue of the Nation:
“Flagship properties that were once trumpeted as success stories in black ownership–BET and Essence magazine–have [...]

The LA police department’s drones have reportedly taken to the sky over the city. Q: How will I know when I see one? A: Well, you know that thing that’s been “stuck” in the tree outside your window for the last fifteen minutes? Well that’s one of them and it’s streaming your life live, Truman [...]

North Korea is testing missiles, Dan Rather quit, but screw all that…Screech is about to be homeless! Say it ain’t so!
Dustin Diamond, who as “Screech” on the early 90s teen comedy series Saved by the Bell, provided millions of kids with years of afterschool cornball humor (and if you wake up early enough, you [...]

Last week the song God Save the Internet was released online by Broadband, a folksie trio–Kay Hanley (pictured here), Jill Sobule and Michelle Lewis–now poised, if the swiftly climbing number of downloads is any measure, to rob the heart of America from the Dixie Chicks. Or not. The song seeks to inspire direct political action, [...]

Still two weeks to tune in Jeff Chang at the American ID Series, where he’s flexing interpretive muscle on contemporary evolving US culture. Here’s how he started off on June 9: “Hip-hop provided a way for invisible young people to make themselves known, to represent themselves.” Go Jeff! In this forum, he may be communicating [...]

Stream it now. Not later!
First get your M.I.A. groove on. Then check out Brit hipster girl Lilly Allen, who’s breaking out everywhere including here.Then you can go get dreamy at Saddle Creek in Omaha, Nebraska: click to stream Azure Ray’s first song and then from the stream-list you can fill a half-hour with interior gems [...]

In a recent issue of the Economist, the managing director of Louis Roderer Cristal, an expensive and popular champagne favored by millionairre rap stars, announced that the company’s association with hip hop is “negative attention.” Now Jay Z is boycotting Cristal after already giving them years of free advertising from name-dropping it in [...]

Earlier this month our friends at playahata blogged the opening of World Cup in Germany and the racist nature of soccer in Europe. Included was a mad time-lapse photo of Toni Braxton singing the grand opening number with the stiff opera quartet Il Divo. Braxton was fantastic and not just because her tiny skirt ended [...]