The Hip Hop Anthropologist

What defines NeoSoul? The question has not been clearly answered. But Neosoul is what the name implies: Neo meaning "new" plus soul music. If we start from that simple proposition instead of what some fans and aficionados and even industry insiders post, we have to define soul music, before we can even get to NeoSoul.  According to Wikipedia, "Soul music is a popular music genre that originated in the African-American community throughout the United States in the late 1950s and early 1960s. It has its roots in African-American gospel music and rhythm and blues." Now that we have that out of the way, we can begin to talk about the evolution of NeoSoul, or "new" soul music that started being produced and recorded in the mid-to-late sixties. Who were the top five major Black musical talents or influences in the mid-sixties: Ray Charles, Gladys Knight, Michael Jackson, Diana Ross, and  Marvin Gaye. All of these artists had careers that spanned decades and, mor

The Somerset County Attorney enjoys a cozy relationship with state court staff that may be an actionable conflict of interest. In my civil case, subordinate clerical staff unethically, unlawfully tampered with pleadings, made untruthful statements to a sitting state court judge in spontaneous statements during a recorded civil court proceeding; materially caused procedural defaults on three (3) timely, properly filed appeals from an inept, stumbling, bumbling, and mumbling (literally) state Circuit Court judge's unconstitutional, unlawful orders, who must've been rolled out of mothballs in a wheelchair from some assisted living facility in the swamps or backwaters of the Eastern Shore just to hear the case, cackling like a hen and laughing it up with Simpleton at my expense as case-in-point. They could have spared everyone the charade: the time and expense by propping up an animated corpse, fitted with the requisite electric leads and connected a car battery, to preside over th

The immunity deal bestowed upon convicted felon Donald J. Trump by the US Supreme Court on Monday, July 1, 2024, like a beribboned get-out-of-jail-free card, is a complete re-imagining (unimaginable really) of presidential authorities under Article 2 of the US Constitution. The immunity deal grants a treasonous, corrupt, former US president monarch-like powers never envisioned by the framers of the Constitution. The immunity deal would enable Stinky without the Brain to nationalize the state guards unleashing heavily-armed, poorly-trained civilian-solidiers on "Democrat-controlled" cities like a plague with "shoot to kill" orders. It would be reminiscent of the infamous Kent State University (Ohio) massacre all over again - and again and again and again. The shameless man child who has cynically turned "Palestinian" into an ethnic slur would cut all humanitarian aid to the Palestinians. He would  ship Israel the most lethal weapons imaginable; allowing the