WE ARE YOUR FEK

So excited about this. We filmed it two months ago and I’ve been waiting every day, for two months, until we could release it. And so, without further ado: Here’s one of 2014’s best new artists, Shamir, performing a cover of "Stripes," by Brandy Clark (who, true story, wrote a bunch of Kacey Musgraves’s fantastic album). 

http://cordjefferson.tumblr.com/post/88300096568/i-think-about-race-and-racism-every-day-of-my →

I think about race and racism every day of my life. How can any American not? (James Baldwin once proffered the idea that “the Negro-in-America is increasingly the central problem in American life.”) I anticipate that I’ll always write about race and racism in some professional capacity. Still, wouldn’t it be wonderful if writers and creatives on the periphery were welcomed in from anonymity, not thanks to their accounts of woe, but simply because they have things to share—tales of love, joy, happiness, and basic humanity—that have nothing to do with their race and also everything to do with their race. I’m ready for people in positions of power at magazines and newspapers and movie studios to recalibrate their understanding of what it means to talk about race in the first place. If America would like to express that it truly values and appreciates the voices of its minorities, it will listen to all their stories, not just the ones reacting to its shortcomings and brutality.

I wrote a piece for the newly relaunched Matter. Sometimes I miss the internet, man.

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joepompeo:

On a brilliant May morning when it was first starting to feel like summer, Bjoern Kils took his Willard Marine Sea Force 7-meter Standard out on the Hudson. “Turning out of here is strategic,” he said, slowly maneuvering the former military boat from the marina where he docks in Jersey City. “We can be in the East River in 10 minutes. We can be on the Atlantic in about 20.”

Kils juiced the throttle to 25 knots—enough to take the hat off your head—carefully cutting the wake of a passing ferry. A few minutes later we were on the other side. “This is sort of my base in Manhattan,” he said, idling in the harbor of Pier 25, just north of the World Financial Center. “I usually pick up CNN here. Lots of photographers.”

Kils is the captain of New York Media Boat, which is exactly what it sounds like:

A boat that schleps reporters, photojournalists and cameramen up and down the local waterways.

"In the spirit of sisterly sharing, I have given pot brownies to everyone who’s asked for them. Around midnight, I am informed that half of those girls are curled up in the fetal position, crying. I report to the triage room, where I stroke a woman’s hair while trying to hide how excited I am to eat my brownie, now that I know it is strong enough to make grown women cry. This is also a good way to evaluate men, if you’re into sexy bad boys."

— I can’t tell you if this is the very best thing Maureen has ever written, but I can almost virtually guarantee you it’s among the funniest things you will read all summer.

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Cover of this week’s Bloomberg Businessweek is really something else. And awesome.

cordjefferson:

pbump:

"[Y]our dead kids don’t trump my Constitutional rights.” - Joe the Plumber

I’ve always thought it was a conflict of interest for a piece of shit to be a plumber.

The New York Times Commits a Journalistic Sin, Comes Out Smelling Like Roses →

misterhippity:

The Times is earning lots of of kudos today for breaking the story that Cliven Bundy (the rancher who refuses to pay federal grazing fees for his cattle, and has been championed as a hero by many right-wing pundits)made highly racist comments yesterday, including the claim that black people were better off as slaves.

The irony here is the Times story that broke this news presents one of the worst cases of “burying the lead” that I’ve ever seen. The writer makes no mention of these racist comments until the 10th and 11th paragraphs of the story:

“I want to tell you one more thing I know about the Negro,” he said. Mr. Bundy recalled driving past a public-housing project in North Las Vegas, “and in front of that government house the door was usually open and the older people and the kids — and there is always at least a half a dozen people sitting on the porch — they didn’t have nothing to do. They didn’t have nothing for their kids to do. They didn’t have nothing for their young girls to do.

And because they were basically on government subsidy, so now what do they do?” he asked. “They abort their young children, they put their young men in jail, because they never learned how to pick cotton. And I’ve often wondered, are they better off as slaves, picking cotton and having a family life and doing things, or are they better off under government subsidy? They didn’t get no more freedom. They got less freedom.”

The title of the Times piece (“A Defiant Rancher Savors the Audience that Rallied to His Side”) — and first 450 words of the story — make no mention of these comments. Other news outlets and blogs had to step in and write pieces that properly highlighted these racist quotes (in headlines and lead paragraphs) as big news in their own right. 

99, who is right:

I disagree. One thing the Times does is that it lets people hang themselves by not sensationalizing the facts. I remember being angry after the Broad Channel incident (not the link, but the original stories) because they were so value neutral (no screamy headlines like LOOK AT THIS RACIST PARADE). But it’s not up to the Times to hold our hand and point out that there are clear and regular parallels between certain types of frontier/small government/conservative ideology and patent racism that hasn’t evolved since 1865. That’s on us. And it worked, just like it’s supposed to.

Jobs at ‘Plex!

So! Complex is hiring. We’re looking for:

- NYC - A Tech Writer/Editor: We need someone who has an eye for the big tech stories of the day, and an original way of telling them, who can run a daily news blog. But that’s not all! We also need this someone to have an eye for good writing and ambitious feature-length pieces. At least a year or two of full-time experience at some kind of media outlet is generally required, but if you think you’ve got what it takes and don’t have that experience, I’m also down to hear about it.

- NYC - News Writers: We need generalists. You’re ideally younger, scrappier, and have some experience reporting and blogging but want to get your feet wet doing it more regularly, and for money. You know what people are talking about, and can write quickly, coherently, without too many typos, and turn in copy that doesn’t make me want to tear at my face like I’m on PCP. [Should add: This gig would report directly to me.]

- LA - Pop Culture Correspondent for Complex TV: Can you write? Can you talk pretty? Can you write and talk pretty on camera? And can you do all of this at the same time, and occasionally explain the finer points of, say, why Drake using a lint roller in public is funny? If so, this might be a gig for you. [Should add: This gig would report indirectly to me.]

If you’re interested in any of these, send an email to fosterk@complex.com with the subject line “Complex Gig” in it. Ideally, attach a resume and give good cover letter. And that’s it! 

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Consider the Audience: Poptimism vs. Rockism vs. Chilling the Fuck Out →

broken-language:

Ten years ago this summer David Foster Wallace wrote a now-legendary essay for Gourmet Magazinetitled “Consider the Lobster” questioning the morality of seafood culinary techniques. As I recall he used a gang of circumstantial evidence to try and give the lie to the prevailing assumption that crustaceans don’t feel anything when they’re being boiled alive for our dining pleasure. I’ve been reminded of the story throughout this month’s music journalist in-fighting, as storied jazz critic Ted Gioia took toThe Daily Beastto lament the collapse of music criticism into lifestyle reporting and writer Saul Austerlitz piggybacked him in aNY Times editorialaccusing the pop-positive proponents of poptimism in music crit of pushing the sphere of coverage to close to the mainstream. Gioia thinks people come to music writing for theory-based laymen’s breakdowns of sound architecture. Austerlitz thinks it’s a forum for illuminating achievements in recording that shouldn’t be openly accommodating to “the taste of 13 year olds.”

Naturally, Critic Twitter had a fit, and the young spring has arrived speckled with sideline metacritical debates on what’s good and nurturing for a reading audience— that scarcely involve said audience. Our readers are Wallace’s lobsters: we look at their movements for proof of how they feel about the job we’re doing, never sussing out a reliable method of soliciting feedback for it. Many of us use social media as a thermometer for reactions to our work, but we tend to cherry pick our experiences there along lines of common interest and to filter out the rudest, most uncomely interactions. The people in our offline lives often don’t care about whatever flavor-of-the-month issues we’re on about every day, so we retreat into the company of our fellows in the critical chorus for advice/dialogue/feedback regarding matters of the trade. It’s a hall of mirrors, a contained unit of people too close to a thing grasping at a deeper perspective on it.

So pardon me if I’m not too deeply concerned with whatever shirts-and-skins divisions we’re breaking off into (again) this year. The closest we get to appreciating the vast array of music swamping the market is to listen to as many voices as possible. There should be Gioias out towing the technical line over jazz records and Austerlitzes treasuring new guitar rock. There should be Beyonce enthusiasts singing the praises of her self-titled album. There should be cheesing over Miley Cyrus’ stage set up. These wings of music crit can coexist without corroding the integrity of the form, without harboring secret designs on overtaking the whole of the industry. They can all be art. Their merits deserve praise and consideration, and the appreciation of the one doesn’t have to come at the expense of the other. The binary, two-party thinking that has dominated these conversations is a gross disservice to the diversity of the subject matter we cover.

While we’re on the subject of diversity, it pains me that we’re unable to carry out these infernal poptimism/rockism debates without opponents of deep pop criticism steadily citing women and people of color as being undeserving of thorough consideration in prose. It’s always the Beyonces, Drakes and Katy Perrys that come under fire when poptimism debates come up, and trust and believe that whether the people that posit these ideas intend to come off wrongly or not, they almost always carry an air of sexism and of vaguely racial middle American “Take our country back” sloganeering. Part of why we’re seeing more coverage of blacks and women in music is that there’s more blacks and women doing the writing. We’ve seen what happens when the prevailing voice of music criticism is white and male (I know, I know: it still is. But change is afoot!), the appraisals of women in rock that prize looks over talent, the frustrating paucity of writing about decades of great R&B, the early reticence of rock publications to give hip-hop a fair shake, the vacuous evasion of reporting on music that challenges our language barrier. We’re not going back to that.

If you can’t appreciate the influx of new voices servicing an ever splintering web of genres and subgenres, these next few years are going to annoy you, and for that I’m sorry. It can be hard to watch the world pivot underneath your feet, to find that you’ve lost your bearings, the world you had in your hands slipping ever out of your grip. This goes out to you.

Clap for him.