Bonnie Greer

If you’ve been reading this blog since its inception then you’ll probably have picked up on my love for The Guardian Weekend and its Sunday counterpart, The Observer. Having an appreciation for these publications is hardly unique/comment-worthy, so I don’t want to rant on about it except to say that both papers and their respective supplements always publish articles that make me think. A lot.

Case in point: Yesterday’s Observer Music Monthly (the last ever issue of the magazine, which is folding alongside Observer Woman – sob – and Observer Sport – much smaller sob.) I can’t say that I was an obsessive, front-cover-to-back-cover reader of OMM but I did always like the ‘Record Doctor’ feature in which a music-lover would be ‘prescribed’ new bands and songs, based on a quick rundown of their musical tastes, past and present. Yesterday’s patient was playwright Bonnie Greer, who had some interesting things to say about the birth of Hip Hop in the Bronx c.1978 and its similarities and differences to Grime music in the UK:

“It’s a real urban sound that reminds me of the South Bronx in the 80s…It’s fascinating to me, though, that grime hasn’t developed its own culture. You don’t see any grime painters or grime theatre. Partly, it’s because it’s been taken over by older people. In hip-hop the moguls tended to be people who were part of the environment, but they have grown older and they’re still running the show.

What she most admires about grime, she says, is its refusal to recognise the past. “I like people who want to do something new. There’s a jazz musician I like called Henry Threadgill whose motto is: ‘When I hear new music I prepare to do something else.’”"

Food for thought.

The Observer Magazine’s advice column, written by the endlessly wise Mariella Frostrup, also struck a chord yesterday. Usually this column features letters from women write in with concerns about their ticking biological clocks or their increasingly distant marriages, which I read out of some misguided sense of polite interest but never really engage with. Yesterday’s Q&A, though, came from a 28 year old living a very ’successful’ existence, who was finding herself paralysed by anxiety about ticking accomplishments off her life-long to-do list. I, myself, alongside many of my friends, are often stricken with a sometimes exhausting obsession with constantly achieving and being busy, so I found Frostrup’s response particularly insightful:

What I’ve learned in 47 years is that only the days well spent leave any enduring satisfaction. Looking back through the photographic evidence of so many amazing journeys and colourful crowds of acquaintances made me wonder how much I’d missed while I was busy keeping busy…It’s shocking to realise how indulging in endless opportunities to scramble to the top of your field or satiate a rollercoaster addiction to lifestyle extremes adds up to not very much. Meanwhile the days misspent in idling, enjoying the company of those you most care for and generally achieving very little are the ones you want to stash in your box of treasures.

The importance of ‘days well spent’ is definitely something I’ll be carrying in my mind in the upcoming week. Have a good Monday.

The Record Doctor Meets…Bonnie Greer

Dear Mariella

One of those painfully stylish films that makes you want to throw away every last pair of jeans, kicks and leggings in your wardrobe and slink around in only berets and pencil skirts (and when I say ‘you’, obviously I mean ‘me’). Faye Dunaway is ridiculously beautiful in this 1962 crime classic. Seek it out if you haven’t seen it already.

In related trivia – Warren Beatty supposedly slept with almost 13,000 women before he married his current wife, Annette Bening. Aside from all other considerations – where the hell did he find the time?!

I’m not usually one for posting shouty, shaky home-video clips of gigs, but Jay Electronica’s ‘Exhibit C’ is undoubtedly one of my favourite Hip Hop tracks of the last six months, so this performance – which went down at NYC’s Highline Ballroom last night – got me quite excited. Throw Kweli, Mos Def and Diddy’s dumb-ass dancing into the mix and I felt this was a video that might be worth sharing.

At the risk of sounding like a complete cheeseball (and I can appreciate that I am a cheeseball simply for the fact that I use that word with little irony), I love Jay Electronica because he gives me hope that Hip Hop music can still be majestic, moving, innovative and lyrically astounding. Long may he continue to produce tracks of this calibre.

(For some reason, you can also hear the track that ‘Exhibit C’ samples more clearly than usual in this video – if you’re interested it’s Billy Stewart’s ‘Cross My Heart’. Nice.)

Via Miss Info

…I have a piece in this week’s Time Out London clubbing section. Haven’t updated the Press & Publications section of this site for a while, so click the image above to read the article in the meantime.

I know it’s a complete cliché to be a young, urban, university-educated female with a penchant for Hip Hop and a love for Zadie Smith, but fuck it. I’m a young, urban, university-educated female with a penchant for Hip Hop and I love Zadie Smith. Ever since I first got my hands on her much-praised debut novel ‘White Teeth’ (written, in part, when she was 22 – the same age I am now. Sigh.), I’ve made it my business to seek and soak up pretty much everything this woman has written.

I stuck with the Kabbalah-related confusion of ‘The Autograph Man’. I spent a while wishing I was part of the dysfunctional Belsey family depicted in ‘On Beauty’.  I’ve devoured numerous short stories she’s published in The Guardian and elsewhere. And, of course, I’ve re-read ‘White Teeth’ about six(teen hundred) times.

Right now, I’m working my way through ‘Changing My Mind’ which, as you’ve probably worked out from the image above, is a collection of Smith’s essays. What I like about it is that, like all Smith’s writing, the essays in the book manage to blend intellectual theory with instantly-relatable pop culture references in a way that is easily digested, but still makes you feel a little bit clever for understanding it. Topics range from Kafka to Katharine Hepburn and touch on the personal and impersonal, but regardless of subject matter, Smith handles it all with her characteristic stylistic ease and good humour. A recommended purchase for sure – but then I would say that, wouldn’t I?

It’s a New Year, and Shan Phearon is back with another 3-part ‘misstape’ selection. I think I provided enough reasons as to why you should download his shit back here, so this time I’m just coming with the links:

Bish.

Bash.

Bosh.

Enjoy!

(And in case you’re still not convinced, check the full tracklisting over here.)