Touré (born Touré Neblett, March 20, 1971) is an American novelist, essayist, music journalist, cultural critic, and television personality based in New York City. He is the host of Fuse's Hiphop Shop and On the Record. He is also a contributor to MSNBC's The Dylan Ratigan Show and serves on the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Nominating Committee.

While a student at Emory University, Touré founded the black student newspaper, The Fire This Time. He dropped out of college in 1992 and became an intern at Rolling Stone magazine but was fired after a few months. Weeks later he was asked to write record reviews and then feature stories. His first feature was about Run-DMC. Since 1997, he has been a contributing editor at Rolling Stone, writing primarily about hip hop. In April 2011 he wrote the Rolling Stone cover story about Adele.^{[volume & issue needed]}

Touré has written four books: The Portable Promised Land (2003), a collection of short stories, Soul City (2004), a magical realist novel about life in an African-American Utopia, and Never Drank the Kool-Aid (2006), a collection of his published writing between 1994 and 2005. In September 2011 Free Press published Who's Afraid of Post-Blackness?, a look at modern Black identity that includes a forward by Michael Eric Dyson and excerpts from over 100 interviews with notable people like Jesse Jackson.

Amadou Toumani Touré (born 4 November 1948) is a Malian politician who was President of Mali from 2002 to 2012. He overthrew President Moussa Traoré in a March 1991 military coup and presided over a year-long transition to multiparty elections; he handed power to civilian authorities in June 1992. Ten years later, after retiring from the army, he entered politics as a civilian and won the 2002 presidential election with a broad coalition of support. He was easily re-elected in 2007 to a second and final term. On 22 March 2012, one month prior to his scheduled departure from office, disgruntled members of the Malian military initiated a coup d'état that forced him into hiding. As part of the agreement to restore constitutional order to Mali, Touré resigned from the presidency on 8 April.

Amadou Toumani Touré was born on 4 November 1948, in Mopti, where he attended primary school. Between 1966 and 1969, he attended Badalabougou Standard Secondary School in Bamako in order to become a teacher. Eventually, he joined the army and attended the Kati Inter-Military College. As a member of the Parachute Corps, he rose quickly through the ranks and after numerous training courses in the Soviet Union and France, he became the commander of the parachute commandos in 1984.

Macky Sall (born 11 December 1961) is a Senegalese politician who has been President of Senegal since April 2012. Under President Abdoulaye Wade, Sall was Prime Minister of Senegal from April 2004 to June 2007 and President of the National Assembly of Senegal from June 2007 to November 2008. He was the Mayor of Fatick from 2002 to 2008 and has held that post again since April 2009.

Sall was a long-time member of the Senegalese Democratic Party (PDS). After coming into conflict with Wade, he was removed from his post as President of the National Assembly in November 2008; he consequently founded his own party and joined the opposition. Placing second in the first round of the 2012 presidential election, he won the backing of other opposition candidates and prevailed over Wade in the second round of voting, held on 25 March 2012.

Sall, a geological engineer by profession, was born in Fatick. He became Secretary-General of the PDS Regional Convention in Fatick in 1998 and served as the PDS National Secretary in charge of Mines and Industry. He was Special Advisor for Energy and Mines to President Abdoulaye Wade from 6 April 2000 to 12 May 2003, as well as Director-General of the Petroleum Company of Senegal (Société des Pétroles du Sénégal, PETROSEN) from 13 December 2000 to 5 July 2001. He became Minister of Mines, Energy and Hydraulics on 12 May 2001, and he was promoted to the rank of Minister of State, while retaining his portfolio, on 6 November 2002. He additionally became the Mayor of Fatick on 1 June 2002.