The Hip Hop Anthropologist

Thirty year long rival stations 98.7 KISS FM and WBLS (107.5) would soon be "one family, one station." According to the Daily News—who compare the merger with a Yankees/Mets merger—the stations began simulcasting this morning, starting with a tribute to the 30-year legacy of KISS. Then on Monday, they will officially become one station, with all hosts (as of now) being integrated under the WBLS call letters, meaning KISS 98.7 FM is dead.    Former basketball great Erving “Magic” Johnson will hold a minor stake in newly created YMF Media. YMF Media was created by two Yucaipa funds and two Fortress funds, which owned the senior debt of now defunct Black owned Inner City Broadcasting Corporation. The Inner City Broadcasting Corporation ("ICBC") was an American media company based in New York City. Creditors of Inner City Media Corp., the holding company for the owner of New York City’s WLIB and WBLS radio stations, filed an involuntary Chapter 11 bankruptcy...

   The dusty skies forebode a dark drizzly ending to the day. It was 5:00 PM -- quitting time in the city. The weather was unbearably muggy. The faces of weary passengers bespoke a resignation remarkable for usually long-suffering New Yorkers -- those inveterate stalwarts of mass transit. Unwittingly inserting yourself between a tired New Yorker and an open subway car at quitting time place you at serious risk of being run over.     The Chambers Street station was blistering hot despite huge industrial sized fans working overtime to pump warm, fetid air deep into the dank, dark bowels of the badly aging subway system.      With a sigh the tall, lean athletic young brother rearranged his leather shoulder bag, and hopped effortlessly on to the last car of the Brooklyn bound A train. The air conditioning on the brand new subway train was whining mercilessly, but the car was still unbearably hot. He was heading back to do or die Bed-Stuy, w...

This is a great piece: provocative, polemic and, as such, will probably not garner any note from the white liberal establishment (who Leonard is appealing to), or black progressives who he is commiserating with. http://www.ebony.com/news-views/dear-white-folks-stop-denying-racism

Michael Eric Dyson ate George Will's lunch on "This Week" With "Jake" Tapper. Trust me that type of leveling of the playing field will never occur again. The darling of American conservative orthodoxy was clearly frustrated by Dyson's articulate defense of President Obama, his policies, and resistance thereto, which Dyson said was predicated firmly on racisim "there is no other explanation." It was the best episode yet, and I watch virtually every week.

The Martin tragedy brings back memories of another infamous case: The Ojay Simpson matter. Whites lined up on one side of the debate [read that racial divide] bending over backward to give Zimmerman the presumption of innocence while studiously ignoring a simple truth. Had the proverbial shoe been on the other foot, this debate would not be raging in the court of public opinion because Travon or any other black boy shooting an unarmed white man would not have passed go, would not have collected $200, but would have gone straight to the pokey. That is why most black folk have come down solidly on the side of Martin’s family saying that at the very least, Zimmerman ought to have been arrested at the scene. Now that Zimmerman has been finally taken into custody, let the chips fall where they may.