Monica has written here before about her days as investigator for the Civilian Complaint Review Board, the NYC agency that looks into allegations from civilians about police misconduct. She dropped by NPR’s Code Switch — my day job — to talk about what it’s been like to watch all these videos of police officers choking Read More
Ms. Lake Dardanelle, Naomi Shure, really wanted to go in here… …but those bouncers were no joke, I guess.
Nicki Minaj’s filthy verse on Kanye West’s “Monster” — the crazy-ass voicess, the breath control — was the first moment a lot of people started to take her seriously as an MC. “Cups” was a many-lived ditty that achieved ubiquity after Anna Kendrick covered it in Pitch Perfect and used a plastic cup (and her hands) Read More
If the Foreign Exchange is coming to your town, you sorta gotta see them. They are one of the best live shows I’ve seen in years. (Seriously: during the encore, Phonte led the crowd at the Williamsburg Music Hall in a rousing rendition of Mark Morrison’s “Return of the Mack.”) Somehow I missed them when Read More
Tim Howard replaces Bob Marley in the Freedom Riders, because AMERICA. You’re all: “But, G.D., what about Nelson Mandela there in the back? He wasn’t American neither!” But that’s not Nelson Mandela. It’s Uncle Ben. Nice try, troll. Just as the foundations of the American hegemon rest upon the fruitless toil of the Negro, so Read More
I didn’t know much about the pair that makes up Sylvan Esso, or their work with their other bands before they teamed up for this collaboration. But “Coffee”, is one of those songs that makes you look up from what you’re doing, pull up the Shazam on your phone. UPDATE: The great Ben Greenberg hipped Read More
Most art historians consider this the most exemplary piece in Your Cousin’s red period. Nonetheless, many feel that her other pieces — most notably Michelle Obama Rubbing Amiri Baraka’s Feet After An Asteroid Impact — are more technically sophisticated works. When asked about her inspiration for The Poet And POTUS, Your Cousin said that it was her interpretation Read More
So we’ve been slacking on our recaps, but we’re back on it tomorrow. In the interim, here’s Kid Fury giving voice to the feeling that so many of us have been harboring for the last season and a half. Namely: WTF, Liv? (Oh, yeah. If your job isn’t the type of place amenable to F-bombs, Read More
Are you a young lady whose entire family has been butchered at the orders of the sociopathic little goon you’re about to marry? Or maybe you’re the last surviving member of some once-noble-but-incredibly-tacky aristocratic clan and, like, you’ve found out that you’re basically the only person who has any control over the last dragons in Read More
Some random observations from last week’s episode — just in time for this week’s episode!
