Month: March 2018

Categories
Music Music Blog

George Clinton & Parliament Funkadelic: Keeping the Funk Alive

George Clinton

Tonight will be a watershed moment for lovers of the funk, as the Mothership descends once again on the Bluff City. I well recall when George Clinton and Parliament Funkadelic played the old Ellis Auditorium in 1991: the floorboards were literally bowing and bouncing to the beat. And that was just from the audience jumping to the band, who by now need no introduction, as pillars of American music history. The other day I had a chat with Danny Bedrosian, piano prodigy, synthesizer wizard, and fifteen year veteran of the band, about various new projects from the P-Funk collective and what funksters can expect from tonight’s show.

Memphis Flyer: So your first big work with the P Funk group and George Clinton was 2014’s First Ya Gotta Shake the Gate?

Danny Bedrosian: That’s the third P Funk album I was on. But I was much more involved with it than I was in the prior efforts. I came into the group as a studio musician first, which is kind of ironic. After being a studio musician with George for a few years, on and off while I was finishing college, I moved down to Florida where I live now, and where his studio is, and started working even more for George. And upon them liking what I did further and trusting me, they hired me into the group to go out on the road in 2003. Prior to that I was doing mostly just sessions. And being a session musician, you never really know how much of your stuff’s gonna end up on release. You also don’t know where things are gonna end up going. And I ended up doing a lot of work for a bunch of different associated acts all through those years as well, even while I was in the band. I played on George’s 2005 album, How Late Do U Have 2BB4UR Absent?, and I played on one song on his 2008 album, Gangsters of Love. And then I was very instrumental in the new Funkadelic album, Shake the Gate. I played on about 17 songs on that album. He also has a new Parliament album coming out called Medicaid Fraud Dog, which he’s really excited about. That’s coming out this year, the first Parliament album since 1980. We’re gonna have lots of horns, lots of that classic Parliament sound, and I’m also very conspicuous on that offering as well. I definitely contributed to more songs than there probably will be on the album, so…it’s another one that I’m really proud of, that’s gonna be coming soon from the P Funk camp.

You also contribute quite a bit to the new album Detroit Rising [released March 30 on Down Jazz Records], which features many P Funk players on it. Was that all recorded in Detroit?

No, the conceptual framework behind the project is the idea of the Detroit sound, being both the Motown sound and also United Sound, which was the studio where P Funk did a lot of its recordings back in the day. It’s the idea of the rising of that sound back into the forefront of American music and not just in these locales where it comes from. Although the title is a bit of a misnomer, because probably a greater portion of it was recorded in NYC. And probably an equal portion to the Detroit stuff was recorded in Florida as well. So it’s really a multinational offering, if you will. It was equal parts New York, Detroit, L.A. and Florida. So sorta all corners of the country. But the Detroit sound is really an important part of the P Funk sound, you know Motown and R&B and funk and all that stuff.

The idea of the concept was bringing back that sort of sound to the forefront and then adding something new to it as well. Because it’s definitely got a heavy East coast influence as well, with the jazz fusion thing. So it’s a pretty cool project.

A few tracks were done at United Sound, which is the longest running studio in the country. And it’s where P Funk did all of their big big albums back in the 70s, and also where a lot of the great R&B artists did their music. And so, the project started there and it evolved from there. I’m really proud of the music, I think it’s really dynamic and exciting musically.

What’s it like creating and recording tracks for a George Clinton album?

Working for George, he will have a complete concept in mind before coming in. So if it’s something we’re doing with George for a particular album or effort, he’s gonna be very specific about the concept and what it is that we’re doing and why we’re doing it. He’s still very much the producer in that way. For instance, we just did a session in Atlanta last night with the rhythm section, and we recorded a song that we’d been doing live that already exists in a track form; but he liked the way we did it live with the track so much that he’s having us recreate sort of a live version for the studio of this track. And so this was his vision for this, capturing that energy from a live version of a song that we never really put out live. We just played it live. We never put it out on an album. So he’s looking to create the live version of that as the studio version, if you will. And that was his vision last night.

It is collaborative, but he’s very focused, and it takes a long time. He cares about his product and how it’s crafted and how it’s made. He’s very on hand in the studio, always on point, very, very focused in the studio. You just get in there and take directions and see what happens. And then, he is also very collaborative in a way, where if we’re at his home studio in Tallahassee at the P Funk studio, we might be coming up with something sort of leisurely, and it’ll become something. That happens too in a very organic way. Or it could be something where one of us wrote a song and it doesn’t necessarily have a place yet, and he may fall in love with it and do some post production, add a bunch of stuff, take away some stuff, mix some stuff, do some things with it, and create something new with that. That happens very often too.

And then oftentimes he’ll put groups of us together to create something. So he’ll have a vision for a few of us from the group or from the organization to work together or create together in some way in a way that maybe we never would have thought of before because maybe it wouldn’t be someone you even knew before you came into this organization. He’s really connected a lot of people in that way. So the spirit of his production is just so more alive than maybe it has been in the past 20 or so years, ‘cos he’s just so focused now. And it’s really great to see.

It reminds me of Duke Ellington, who would craft compositions around the sounds and personalities of particular players in his group.

Yes, he’s very conscious about who it is that starts a particular song, and how it has that color because that person started it. And he’s equally conscious of how a track needs the color of this person, so we’ll get so and so to overdub on it. He’s very conscious about who starts it, who dubs in, how he wants it to be structured, how he wants the flavor of it to be.

Will Memphis get a taste of the new Parliament album?

Yes, we have released one single from the upcoming album already. It’s called “I’m Gonna Make You Sick.” And it is really really just a banger. It’s really a great funk song, the classic Parliament sound. It also features the rapper Scarface. and I played on it a little bit as well. We’ve been doing it live about four months. And it’s one of those songs that really gets the crowd going, which is great because it’s a new song. So, such a great continuum to see how it continues to thrive. So yeah, you will get a little bit of new Parliament album.

And of course some of the new Funkadelic.

Yep we’re gonna do probably five songs from that as well.

And dip into the hits?

Oh yeah. There’s always a strong inclination from the fans to do this song or that song. And the P Funk canon being so vast, you can never expect to get all the hits. It’s something like forty charted hits, six number ones, three platinum albums and additional maybe eight gold albums. Just so much of the stuff from that period that you can’t expect to hear all of them, but there are definitely ones that we can’t do a show without doing. And also, which makes me happy, is we tend to dig through the crates and go through a lot of lesser known album cuts as well from back in the day. Which I really like ‘cos I was such an album guy growing up when I was a fan of this band. I always liked a lot of the album cuts the best, even more so than some of the singles. So it’s really exciting to be able to do those as well.

I saw P Funk in 1991 and there was a descending Mothership…

Oh yeah! We probably won’t see the spaceship in this show. It is something that’s been talked about lately, about bringing the Mothership back, and you never know, it could happen. Right now the original Mothership is currently in the Smithsonian in Washington, which we’re really proud of.

How many of the current players go back to the early days of Parliament or Funkadelic?

We have Blackbyrd McKnight on guitar, he joined the group in about ’78. He’s with us. He’s also an original member of the Headhunters [backing Herbie Hancock], and played with Miles Davis. He’s a 30-plus year veteran of P Funk. Mister Lige Curry on bass, who’s the longest tenured bass player in the band’s history. He’s been playing for this group for 30 some odd years as well, joined in ’79. The horn section, Benny Cowan and Greg Thomas on trumpet and saxophone respectively. They both have been in the group some 40 years now, they came in the ’70s. Gary “Mudbone” Cooper, who has been with the group since ’73 and was also an original member of Bootsy’s Rubber Band, also is with the group. Tracey Lewis, who is George’s son, did a lot of work with them starting in the early to late ’80s. Steve Boyd, who started in the late ’80s, is also with us as well. So there’s quite a few people from that era. And it’s such a great thing to see how George has people from every decade of this group. I came in the 2000’s, and it’s interesting that I’m the only one left from that era. So it’s a kind of a microcosm where you see the different generations and how they impact the thing. I think we have maybe 3 people here from the ’90s. And then we have a slew of new people who’ve come in the 2010’s. Some of George’s grandchildren, they’re the new generation that’s coming up. So it’s really great to see it self-perpetuating.

It’s quite an American institution. Anything else we should know about P Funk projects?

I would like to say I have a new album that just came out as well, my solo album with my little trio called Secret Army. And the album is called 8finity. It’s our eighth album, and it’s myself and the bass player and the drummer from P Funk. So it’s basically the backbone of P Funk, we just put out this new album as well. George is on it too, and bunch of other members of the band. It’s a really nice effort.

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

A Lose-Win Proposition

Mark Cuban, the outspoken owner of the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks, got in trouble last week for remarks he made during a podcast interview with Hall of Fame great Julius Erving. Cuban’s statements were so out of line that Commissioner Adam Silver fined him $600,000 for “public comments detrimental to the NBA.”

What was Cuban’s speech-crime? He told the truth. He said he told his players the best thing for them to do for the rest of this season was to lose: “I sat down and I explained it to them,” he told Erving. Pretty expensive blasphemy.

The preferred term for trying to lose is “tanking.” The problem is that at least eight, and maybe nine, teams besides the Mavericks are tanking right now, including our beloved Memphis Grizzlies. That’s because the NBA’s draft lottery system rewards teams that finish the season with the worst records with the early picks in the post-season player draft. In short, the worse a team’s record, the better their odds of picking a good player in the draft. Hence this unseemly race to the bottom.

But with nearly one-third of the teams in the 30-team NBA now playing to lose, the regular season has simply become a farce. Consider: The nine openly tanking teams had lost a combined 44 games in a row, as of last weekend. That means if you’re a team that’s actually trying to win, your odds on any given night are about one in three that you’ll be playing a team that will be quite happy to let you do so. Throwing games on purpose used to be called cheating. Now it’s “strategy.”

Tanking is not so obvious as teams intentionally missing shots or making purposeful turnovers. Players would never “try to lose,” we are assured by everyone affiliated with the NBA not named Mark Cuban. No, the methodology is slightly more subtle. A team’s best players get lots of “rest”; they experience prolonged bouts of “illness” or suffer from “sore knees” that just don’t get better, darn it. Meanwhile, young bench-warmers and end-of-career veterans get most of the court time. They hustle and scrap, but they are cannon fodder — the Washington Nationals versus the Harlem Globetrotters — and they know it.

It’s a strategy that cheats everyone: The fans see a lot of non-competitive basketball games, often absent the stars they come to see. Teams that are actually fighting for playoff positioning get hosed when a team they are competing with in the standings gets to play a tanker while they’re playing against a team trying to win.

In this week’s cover story, Kevin Lipe offers five ways that Grizzlies fans can “enjoy” watching our tanking Grit ‘n Groaners. You know, watch the young players develop, celebrate their hustle, get excited for those nights when comebacks fall just short. Yada yada, yada. I say, if we’re going to tank, let’s tank. Let’s go all in. Let’s have fun with it. Let’s be like Cuban and tell the truth.

First, we need stop with the Kabuki theater of the pre-game shows, wherein Brevin Knight, Rob Fisher, and Chris Vernon assess the team’s chances on a given night and offer “three keys to victory.” Seriously? Everybody knows we’re trying to lose, so just go ahead and embrace it.

Knight: “Here are my three keys to a loss against the Magic tonight, fellas: 1) We need to have Deyonta Davis take as many three-pointers as possible; 2) No jumping; 3) Foul, foul, foul.

Vernon: “Good points there, Brevin. And I’d add we’re really going to have to resist the urge to take open shots.”

They could also analyze upcoming games a bit more honestly.

Fisher: “We’ve got some tough must-lose games coming up, fans. It doesn’t get any easier from here on out. The Griz shouldn’t have any problem losing to Houston tonight, but there are a few contests coming up that will put the Griz to the test. Home against Atlanta, for example. The Hawks are streaking with 14 straight losses and the Griz have lost 11 in a row, so something’s got to give. Should be a helluva game. … ”

Break out the “Grit ‘n Grind” towels, y’all. We can do this!

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

Honor the 3rd Amendment!

CREDIT: Andrei Calangiu | Dreamstime.com

For most of my adult life, I have been a staunch and passionate supporter of the 3rd Amendment. If I’m a single-issue voter, I’m a 3rd Amendment guy. No matter what else Congress or the courts say, I refuse to allow anyone or anything to trample upon my 3rd Amendment rights.

So, the next time the government tries to force me to quarter a soldier in my home during peacetime, they can pry the front door keys from my cold, dead hands. The feds don’t provide rent or board, nor bath supplies or uniform cleaning services, not to mention how those troops scruff up your rugs with their boots and cigarettes. I don’t care what the dad-blamed gub’ment says, I ain’t quartering no damn soldiers in my house. I am protected by the 3rd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which states, “No soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner (sic), nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.” 

My mother used to invite a couple of sailors from Millington over for Passover every few years, but that was a far cry from quartering. In fact, after my mother’s Passover meal, the sailors probably would have preferred to have been quartered. And due to the density of the matzo balls, when they awoke, they may have felt like being drawn and quartered.

If this all sounds ridiculous, it is. The Supreme Court has never decided a case on the basis of the 3rd Amendment. Since Congress passed the amendment in 1789, constitutional scholars and politicians alike have conceded that the law is too antiquated to be applicable today.

For a bit of history, however, we have to crack open our American history textbooks to Chapter One and check out the French and Indian War of 1754. When the Brits, with the help of their colonial musketeers, finally kicked out the French in 1760, they decided they needed to stick around for a while to police the new territories. Americans chafed at having to billet the Redcoats. They preferred local militias for their protection rather than professional soldiers. To further incite the colonists, the British Parliament passed the Quartering Act of 1765, which not only required the settlers to provide housing, but also “provisions, firewood, bedding, and beer.” The resulting rebellion against the presence of British troops and the high taxes imposed by the Crown to pay for the war culminated in the Boston Massacre of 1770 and led to the American Revolution.

Before the Bill of Rights was ever written, the state of Virginia passed their own Declaration of Rights in 1776, declaring “That a well-regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained to arms, is the proper, natural, and safe defense of a free state.” The Founding Fathers trimmed it down for the 2nd Amendment, passed in 1789, which said, “A Well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”

Do you see what’s happening here? The 2nd Amendment is merely a watered down version of the Virginia Declaration, which dealt with the regulation of militias and never once mentioned a Constitutional protection for firearms. The colonists believed that full-time, paid soldiers were only necessary to fight foreign enemies. For other emergencies, a militia of ordinary citizens who supplied their own weapons and received part-time training, could be depended upon. Even then, there were laws for the registration of civilian-owned guns deemed appropriate for the militia, sometimes with inspectors going door-to-door. Because of the fear of standing armies living among them, there were even certain laws requiring firearm ownership.

The kicker is that the antiquated and forgotten 3rd Amendment was passed by Congress, and then ratified by the states, on the exact same two dates as the 2nd Amendment. So, if we’re to apply the same logic to the 2nd Amendment that the founders used for the 3rd, everyone is required to purchase a musket, which must be properly cleaned and registered with the Federal Government. The owners of same weapon must periodically assemble for inspection and military training. In time of war, the government has the power to press them into service and regulate the militias. I didn’t say that; the Constitutional Convention did.

Andrei Calangiu | Dreamstime.com

So the entire NRA argument about the absolute American right to own any type of firearm is bullshit. The gun cultists conveniently forget the “well-regulated militia” part, ignore the context of the times, and revere the “shall not be infringed” phrase. Even with all the Founders’ brilliance, none could have envisioned modern military-style weapons or allowed them to fall into the hands of the untrained and unregulated. 

Since the most recent slaughter in Parkland, Florida, a new consciousness has arisen. Young people are rightly appalled at the ease with which any social misfit can acquire a killing machine. After each mass shooting, gun sales go up, weapons manufacturers’ profits rise, shareholders reap financial rewards, and the NRA is handsomely funded by the all-American gun cartels. It’s really not about the 2nd Amendment at all. It’s about profit margin. The NRA is now merely a lobbying group for American arms dealers.

The “most popular rifle in America,” according to the NRA, is the Colt AR-15, with over eight million sold. This semi-automatic rifle, and other brands similarly designed, were prohibited by the Assault Weapons Ban of 1994, along with large capacity magazines. Since the ban was allowed to expire in 2004, mass shootings have spiked. Consider the most recent stomach-churning massacres: 26 babies at Sandy Hook; 14 murdered at an office Christmas party in San Bernardino; 49 killed at the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando; 58 slaughtered at a Las Vegas music festival; 26 gunned down in a church in Sutherland, Texas; and now, 17 teenagers murdered in their school. They all share something in common. Each heartless killer used an AR-15 styled rifle as the weapon of choice.

Yet the NRA rolls out the same tired defenses to protect gunmakers and their profits. The 2nd Amendment is as primitive as the 3rd when it comes to guns, but this is the year the NRA may finally have met its match. Who could have believed it would arrive in the form of a children’s crusade? Go ahead and keep your long gun or handgun. But if nothing is done to re-instate the Assault Weapons Ban, your children are coming to bust up the NRA and send their paid congressional lackeys packing. 

Randy Haspel writes the Recycled Hippies blog.

Categories
Food & Wine Food & Drink

Here for the Beer

It’s around 4:30 p.m. on February 16th, opening day for Crosstown Brewing Co. Two lines stretched from the bar to the back wall. The place was packed.

Was this what Crosstown Brewing founders Clark Ortkiese and Will Goodwin pictured when they ditched their old lives — Ortkiese in something that has to do with chain-link fences and Goodwin in sand and gravel — to parlay their backyard brewing hobby into a livelihood?

Ortkiese and Goodwin certainly had a vision. They wanted to tap into Crosstown Concourse’s vibe. They saw neighbors walking to a brewery. Folks in their 20s and 30s, on the grass areas and the patio behind the building. “Bring your dog. Hang. Enjoy some beers; enjoy the sunshine,” says Ortkiese.

From backyard to Crosstown — Clark Ortkiese (left) and Will Goodwin

But first the logistics. Originally, they planned to be inside the concourse. With one million square feet, there should have been plenty of room. But being in the building would have meant driving beer through an atrium and down a hall to access a loading dock. Concourse pillars would have to be removed to accommodate the brewery. Chris Miner of Crosstown suggested building their own space on land behind the concourse.

They’ve got 10,000 square feet. At front is the taproom, designed by Hope Martin of gbsn Design. The mood is industrial, the furniture modular — the better to make room when crowds reach from the bar to the back wall.

The beer is brewed in a large brew room with gleaming equipment — 600 gallons at a time. The beer is available in retail spots, restaurants, and bars. Currently on tap are Crosstown’s two signature brews that will always be available: the Siren Blonde Ale, what Goodwin calls a “straightforward beer that you can take anywhere.” The brewery even sells a cool sling that holds a six pack, perfect for picnics and other outdoor events. The Traffic IPA is notable for its citrusy notes of tropical fruit and mango. Also currently on tap are the Crosstown Brown, which tastes of caramel and coffee, and the Boll Weevil Saison, with a floral/herbal finish but without the overly bitter taste associated with a saison.

The beer is brewed by home-brewing buddy Stephen Tate, whom they lured back to town from another brewery in Alabama.

One thing they had to figure out is how to scale up from backyard to industrial carbonators in a professional setting. They hired a consultant for that.

Ortkiese says one thing that separates Crosstown Brewing from the pack is its marketing and branding by Tom Martin. The Siren can comes in hot red and gold with aliens and spaceships that shout Metropolis. The Traffic has a warm turquoise-y blue with eyes looking at a rear-view mirror and hands clutching a steering wheel. They look like they could use a beer.

Ultimately, though, Ortkiese says it boils down to the beer. “Our beer is as good as anybody’s in town,” says Ortkiese. “Once you taste it, you’ll want to come back for more.”

Crosstown Brewing is open Wednesday through Friday, 4 to 10 p.m., and Saturday and Sunday, noon to 10 p.m.

Crosstown Brewing 1264 Concourse Avenue, 529-7611

Around this time last year, a name was engraved on an old gray ice bucket and presented to the winner. This year, the same thing will happen, another (same?) name on the same ice bucket. It’s like the Stanley Cup.

The Flyer‘s annual Beer Bracket Challenge launched last week. 28 beers going for glory.

Last year’s winner was Ghost River’s classic Gold, the old reliable of Memphis Beers.

This year, three new breweries are heading into the fray: Meddlesome, Crosstown Brewing, and Boscos. Toby Sells explains that Boscos, while not new, wasn’t included last year because he featured only breweries with beers readily available in stores and bars/restaurants. But this year he figured, “You like beer, you need to have Boscos.”

Round One began last week, with the Final Two starting Wednesday, February 28th, at 8 a.m., and running through March 1st, midnight. The winner will be announced in the Flyer‘s March 8th issue.

Sells says he has plenty of favorites among the 28, though he’s not rooting for one beer over the other. “There’s so much good stuff out there. We’ll see how it goes.”

In addition to revealing the winner, the March 8th beer-iffic cover will examine the state of the Memphis beer scene. Can Memphis accommodate more breweries and beers from outside the area? Have Memphis beer-drinkers changed since the scene exploded in 2013?

Check it out and stay tuned for Beer Bracket-related events.

If you are serious about whiskey, you should seriously already have your tickets to the Flyer‘s Whiskey Warmer, set for March 23rd at Overton Square. Twenty-five-plus whiskeys will be available to sample. Those include George Dickel, Old Dominick, Johnnie Walker, Bushmills, Wild Turkey, and more. There will be food from Babalu, live music, and cocktails, with proceeds going to Volunteer Memphis. Tickets are $34 and can be bought at whiskeywarmer.com.

Categories
Music Music Features

EarthGang: Staying Fresh On the Road

CREDIT: Anthony Supreme

When I catch up with EarthGang, they’re in Albuquerque, New Mexico, halfway through their first headlining U.S. tour. It began on February 1st in Seattle and winds through Memphis for a gig at Minglewood Hall’s 1884 Lounge on Friday, March 2nd before ending in Vancouver, Canada, nine days later.

The Atlanta-based hip-hop duo, individually known as Doctur Dot (real name: Eian Parker) and Johnny Venus (Olu Fann), takes a moment to reflect on their last major road stint, 52 dates with Ab-Soul that began in 2014.

“Last time we were supposed to play Albuquerque, we couldn’t even afford to get to the New Mexico show,” Dot says.

“It really was a grind,” Venus adds. “Some shows, we pulled up moments before getting onstage. We were changing clothes in the car, or just pulling up and hopping on stage. It was about being out on the road and getting our music out there — getting our feet wet, getting onstage, getting our fan base.”

The two are looking forward to arriving in Memphis. They namecheck Juicy J on their newest single, “Nothing But the Best,” and are fans of local trap artist Blac Youngsta, and count Three 6 Mafia and Al Green among their influences.

“We have fun on the road,” Venus says. “Right now, the most challenging thing is creating downtime, sanctuary, self-care — looking into yourself and looking after yourself. When you’re traveling through all of these different time zones and everything around you is moving, getting five minutes of silence, or just two minutes here and there to take a walk, balances out the constant influx.”

As EarthGang, a cosmically clever, ambitiously intellectual, and highly-textured deviation on the current boom-bap revival, Venus and Dot are garnering national recognition. They formed the band as high school students in southwestern Atlanta in 2008 and continued the project as they both completed degrees at Hampton University. With likeminded Atlanta artists J.I.D., Jordxn Bryant, and Hollywood JB, they formed the indie imprint Spillage Village before signing to J. Cole’s Dreamville label in late 2017 and immediately releasing a pair of EPs, Rags and Robots, that propelled them to the top of many best new artists lists.

Along the way, EarthGang built a devout following of music critics, crate diggers, and fellow musicians. Way back in 2014, 2DopeBoyz, the blog bible for rap fans, posted a headline that read “Meet EarthGang, an Atlanta Duo Who We’ve Been Sleeping on for Far Too Long.” The four years that have elapsed since — an eternity in the music business — might have crushed lesser artists, yet Dot and Venus refuse to be flummoxed.

“People say that overnight sensations take 10 years,” Dot says. “Jimi Hendrix played with the Isley Brothers for years before he became Jimi Hendrix. Prince did so much work at the ages of 13 and 15, yet didn’t make his debut album until he was 18 or 19. It’s par for the course, and it continues to build the legend.”

Citing the three EPs that EarthGang have released on Dreamville — the latest, Royalty, dropped last Friday — Venus says the duo strives to be “passionate about what we’re saying: Be deliberate, but don’t take it too seriously.”

“We just want to amplify life,” Dot says, likening the listener’s experience to “walking through an art gallery. You’ll make your own assumptions based on what you hear. We just put these paintings in front of you. We hope y’all enjoy it.”

Royalty, which features shrewdly intuitive autobiographical lyrics rapped over jazzy riffs, soulful harmonies, and gospel-inflected chords, has already reaped comparisons to Atlanta hip-hop pioneers like OutKast and Goodie Mob.

Those kind of parallels “don’t matter, to be honest,” says Venus. “There’s a whole generation of adults right now who were born in 1999, and they don’t even know OutKast. We make our own stuff. We have our own sound and our own producers who we work with. We’re moving forward.”

“Whether it’s brushing my teeth or taking a shower, I’m going to do it uniquely,” Dot says. “It’s going to fully be an expression of myself, no matter what my influences might be. I love doing what I do, purely for the sake of doing what I do.” Anything less, he asserts, and “you’re basically a fraud.

“With our deal at Dreamville,” Dot continues, “we’re more hands-on than ever. We like to have things the way we like to have them, and nobody else understands [EarthGang] enough to do it the right way. These days, everything is copied and pasted, everything is posted, and everything is recorded. And right now, we need authenticity.”

Categories
Opinion Viewpoint

Three Black Women Could Challenge Trump

Currently, the three strongest Democratic challengers to President Trump’s reelection are all black women: talk show queen Oprah Winfrey, former first lady Michelle Obama, and Senator Kamala Harris of California.

Juan Williams

Former White House chief strategist Stephen Bannon has said Oprah and the #MeToo movement pose an “existential threat” to the Trump presidency. Michelle Obama left the White House with a 68 percent approval rating, and got a new wave of positive attention this month when record crowds showed up to see her newly unveiled official portrait at the National Gallery of Art. As for Harris, conservative columnist and Trump booster Ann Coulter confidently predicted last fall that if she ran, she would be the Democratic nominee.

A black female candidate would attract a lot of attention with a challenge to Trump. Ninety-four percent of black women voted against Trump in 2016, as did 69 percent of Latina women and 43 percent of white women. Women of all races have led the biggest anti-Trump marches.

April Reign, an activist who founded the #OscarsSoWhite campaign, worried during a recent NBC interview that the clamor for a black female presidential candidate could be a trap. “Stop begging strong black women to be president: Michelle, Oprah, whatever,” Reign said. “It’s weird. And Lord knows when black women try to lead, y’all attempt to silence and erase us. So how would that work, exactly?”

Well, black women are already thriving at the top of the political ladder in lots of places. For example, black women are in charge as mayor of at least seven big cities: Atlanta; Baltimore; Charlotte, N.C.; Flint, Michigan; New Orleans; Toledo, Ohio; and Washington, D.C. In addition, a record 21 black women are serving in Congress, including Harris. All but one — Representative Mia Love of Utah — are Democrats.

Winfrey and Obama stand out among these black women because their political strength is only a subset of their power as cultural icons. They have fans among Republicans and Democrats. They attract people of all races. Their broad appeal, including among suburban white women, crosses the nation’s deep political divide.

Trump is already attuned to a potential challenge from Winfrey. After Winfrey conducted a focus group on Trump for CBS’s 60 Minutes, the president quickly lashed out at her via Twitter.

“Just watched a very insecure Oprah Winfrey, who at one point I knew very well, interview a panel of people on 60 Minutes,” he tweeted. “The questions were biased and slanted, the facts incorrect. Hope Oprah runs so she can be exposed and defeated just like all of the others!”

Oprah responded last week by telling Ellen DeGeneres: “I woke up, and I just thought — I don’t like giving negativity power. I just thought, ‘What?'”

Oprah said that she asked CBS to add a response from a pro-Trump member of the focus group to give the piece more balance. “So I was working very hard to do the opposite of what I was hate-tweeted about,” she told DeGeneres.

Longtime Trump political adviser Roger Stone recently told the Oxford Union that Michelle Obama would be the strongest Democratic candidate. The then-first lady’s “When they go low, we go high” speech was one of the most memorable of the 2016 Democratic National Convention. The big question with Obama is whether she is willing to go low and put her family through another brutal presidential campaign.

Harris lacks the name identification of Winfrey or Obama, but California’s junior senator comes from the most influential state in Democratic politics. Harris would have a strong claim to the deep-pocketed donors in Hollywood and Silicon Valley who helped fund her Senate election in 2016. The former state attorney general’s unflinching television interviews and TV grilling of Trump administration witnesses at congressional hearings have given her national visibility.

Former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said in an interview last August, “She’s going to be knocking on doors in Iowa.”

In 1968, New York’s Shirley Chisholm became the first black woman elected to Congress. Four years later, she became the first black candidate to run for a major party’s presidential nomination. “I am not the candidate of black America, although I am black and proud,” Chisholm told supporters at her announcement.

It’s looking more and more likely that 2020 might be the year that a woman finishes the journey — and shatters not one but two glass ceilings.

Juan Williams is an author, and a political analyst for Fox News Channel.

Categories
News The Fly-By

Fly on the Wall 1514

Dammit, Gannett

In Memphis, voters use machines to cast their ballots. But The Commercial Appeal continues to illustrate local stories with obviously non-local photos, like this one of voters filling out paper ballots.

Super Stuff

Memphis loves Black Panther. With a big opening weekend and evident staying power, the Marvel property is on its way to becoming one of the motion picture industry’s top earners.

According to Disney’s breakdown of the numbers, much of that success can be attributed to African-American audiences and cities like Memphis where opening week box office was 81 percent higher than average.

Ver-tweet-im

You can count on Andy Holt to be Andy Holt.

In the wake of the Orlando nightclub massacre in 2016 Tennessee’s gun-happy House member gave away AR-15 rifles at a fundraiser/turkey shoot called HogFest.

Last week, he tweeted his support for arming teachers and authorizing deadly force.

Categories
News The Fly-By

Next Movement

CREDIT: Kevin Barre Photography

City leaders are looking for developers to repurpose the Brooks Museum of Art building, which is slated to be vacated by 2023.

Brooks officials announced in September that the museum could be moving from its Overton Park home of 102 years to a riverfront spot downtown. Now, the city is issuing a request for qualifications (RFQ) to find a developer to “rehabilitate, adaptively reuse, and manage” the 86,000-square-foot building that sits on a 3.14 acre site in Overton Park.

The city is open to all creative proposals that will “maintain the character of the site as a public amenity” while taking a “sensitive approach to the historical nature of the 1916 building,” according to the RFQ.

“With all the talented and creative people in our city, I’m hopeful we will get a viable proposal to allow the Overton Park site to continue to thrive and be used by the public,” Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland said.

The adaptive reuse should be “in context with the other offerings of Overton Park,” while “contributing to Overton Park’s future as a thriving, active center of culture, recreation, family activities, and civic events,” the RFQ states.

Kevin Barre Photography

Brooks Museum of Art in Overton Park

Some examples of ideal reuses listed in the RFQ guidelines include a performance space for music, theater, dance, or film; an entertainment venue for adventure sports, esports, or live music; a conference and event space; or activation through restaurants and retail stores.

In December, Ekundayo Bandele, CEO and founder of Hattiloo Theater, told a city council committee that he wants to turn the building into a national black theater museum.

Bandele said the museum, costing anywhere from $50 to $100 million, could be “of the future,” equipped with touchscreen and virtual reality exhibits featuring black playwright manuscripts and archives from the 1400s to present day.

It could serve as an “anchor in the theater district” and “add cultural density in Midtown,” Bandele said. “This could be our new COGIC [Church of God In Christ].”

City council chairman Berlin Boyd told Bandele that the museum fits the needs of the city, but because the building is a city-owned asset, “to be fair” other citizens have to be given the opportunity to present ideas as well.

So far, other proposals for the building include a museum of African tribal and visionary art that could showcase more than 7,000 cultural items.

An informational session and tour of the building will be held Friday, March 2nd, five weeks ahead of the April 6th deadline for submissions.

Responses will be evaluated based on the developer’s experience, financial capacity, rehabilitation concept, as well as the feasibility and sustainability of the project. Qualified developers will then be selected to submit proposals, and from there a single developer will enter into negotiations with the city for a one-year period of due diligence to further hash out the plans.

Categories
We Recommend We Recommend

Ballet Memphis’ “I Am”

Ballet Memphis choreographer Steven McMahon remembers struggling to strike the right tone with his assignment. He was tasked with developing the title work for I Am, a collection of four short identity-focused dance pieces all loosely inspired by an important piece of civil rights iconography. “Obviously, the ‘I am a man’ statement is particularly important to our city,” he says.

Reggie Wilson’s “I Am a Man: Grace and Dignity” uses a dozen dancers and repetitive abstract gesture to reflect on the Memphis sanitation workers strike, how movements grow, and how messages struggle to be understood. Other works like Gabrielle Lamb’s “I Am a Woman,” used “I Am” as a springboard to essay the male gaze and how women dress for themself vs. how they dress for others. Julia Adams’ “I Am a Child,” was inspired by artist Cornelia Parker’s suspended sculpture Anti-Mass, which is built entirely from the charred remains of a Baptist Church destroyed by arsonists.

“I think Julia tried to put herself in the position of someone who lost a child in the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama, and to take us through the five stages of grief,” McMahon says. “It’s heavy, but it’s special. And now it’s maybe more relevant now than ever.

“It’s difficult to sum up an evening of heavy material,” McMahon says. He finally found his inspiration for his concluding work in Mahalia Jackson’s live recording of “You’ll Never Walk Alone” and the African humanist philosophy, ubuntu.

“It roughly translates, ‘I am because we are,'” McMahon says. “I thought that was a pretty powerful and succinct way to bring together all these other things we’re trying to share.”

Categories
Editorial Opinion

FedEx and the NRA

Proud as we have often been of being home base to FedEx, a company notable for its leadership in business affairs and consumer needs, we now confess to being embarrassed by the company’s refusal, in the wake of the latest gun massacre, to consider ending the favorable discounts it offers members of the National Rifle Association.

Even Donald Trump has addressed the point. The president, speaking to the nation’s governors on Monday, advised them to remember that, for all the “great people” who make up the NRA, it might be neceseary “to fight ’em” on gun-control issues. As a statement indicating intentionality, of course, that one is right up there with his quickly withdrawn pledge to a bipartisan group of Senators back in January that he would support whatever pro-Dreamer immigration bill they might come up with — hopefully an honest-to-God “bill of love.”

On matters relating to promises of action, Trump has a tendency, in Jonathan Swift’s phrase, to “say the thing that is not.” A somewhat surreal version of that came this week when the president, in the course of vilifying a security officer’s apparent inaction at the site of the Parkland High School slaughter, swore that had he been on the scene, he himself, armed or unarmed, would have rushed into the school building to confront the crazed shooter.

Right. Nothing quite so heroic is required, of course. All that Trump needs to do is follow through on his vow to contradict Wayne LaPierre and the NRA gun lobby by actually pushing for some of the serious legislative measures he has championed in his verbal bravado — a raised age limit for firearms purchase, a ban on bump stocks, stiffer and more universal background checks, etc.

The task incumbent on FedEx is even less demanding. All the giant shipping corporation needs to do is follow the example of Hertz, Delta, Symantec, MertLife, United Airlines, and a growing number of other large companies that have ended their discount offers for NRA members in the past week or so. Surely the powers-that-be at FedEx, now threatened with an organized national boycott, realize that the small profit margin forsworn by ending its NRA discounts could easily be absorbed, and that the moral example of taking a stand against gun fetishism would likely translate into a bounty of new-customer approval from the population at large.

Instead, FedEx has vowed to continue with its program for NRA members on the disingenuous grounds that it “does not or will not deny service or discriminate against any legal entity regardless of their policy positions or political views.”

Nobody has asked FedEx to deny service to anyone or to suppress anybody’s views or to practice any form of customer discrimination. It is a matter, rather, of putting the NRA on notice for its decades-long policy of undermining any and all common-sense gun reforms.

And, as far as the politics of the matter, it is clearly the NRA itself, not those who resist it, which maintains a political stranglehold on the nation and its lawmakers. In this hour of decision, FedEx absolutely, positively should take a stand.