“For Kane, as for James Brown, Hendrix, Coltrane, Beethoven (Black, caucasianized for the record), and other new music makers, here the future of music (dope) meets Black life's particularly present-day dick-downs (dog food).”
Originally published November 15, 1988
“The scene now is one of club kids who don't even have a 'fuck the rules' mentality — they don't know any rules to fuck. They manage to combine a youthful, energetic wholesomeness with a jaded sense of decadence, as typified by their major domo, 22-year-old Michael Alig”
Originally published December 20, 1988
“I like Christmas music. I like the schlock and I like the religion. I like sentimental innocence and I like trancing out on the same standards sung and resung. So here, with what I sincerely hope is the right mix of Christian charity and obsessed consumerism, is a guide to some of the season's better music”
Originally published December 23, 1981
“Incidents of violence against black people in the United States have reached epidemic proportions. When the police department — which is supposed to stop these crimes — is in fact implicated in them, genocide as official policy against black Americans cannot be far behind”
Originally published January 28, 1981
“At his best, Joseph Campbell was merely one of the greatest popular writers on mythology who ever lived.”
Originally published May 24, 1988
“These transcontinental urban griots echo the despair, pain, and anger of the South Bronx and Harlem (the world's two major rap centers), which a lot of the cool-jerk white liberals and b.s. black bourgeoisie don't want to hear.”
Originally published January 21, 1981
“With the gentrification of Chelsea came trouble. Gay witchhunts abound. There have been unprovoked attacks on gay males by bands of white teenagers, with robbery almost an afterthought”
Originally published November 26, 1980
Father Gigante has rebuilt much of the South Bronx. But who has profited more, his parishioners or the mob family run by his own brother?
Originally published March 7, 1989
“Verta maintains that the Gullah, who originally spoke a language they called Ngulla, were from Angola and that in prehistory — you know, when the continents were all attached — what is now South Carolina was joined to what is now Angola”
Originally published April 12, 1988
“People who don't know any better think Gullah people talk funny. Those in the know realize that Gullah is a bona fide dialect and are confident in the scholarly thesis that 'Gullah' is a contraction of 'Angola.'”
Originally published April 12, 1988