There are several tributes to the late, great James "Jay Dee"/"J Dilla" Yancey floating around, but All the Way to Heaven is one of the best I've heard.
Produced by Theory, one-third of the DC-based hip-hop group The Package, All the Way to Heaven revisits and reconstructs the original songs Dilla sampled for his most famous hits, including The Pharcyde's "Runnin'" and Slum Village's "Get Dis Money."
Still Runnin
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Blue Collar
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The result is a lovingly crafted letter to J Dilla, a person who had a major impact on a generation of hip-hop producers, MCs and aficionados alike.
All the Way to Heaven (download)
(originally appeared on the Liberator.)
Go here to read the full article. Thanks to the whole Recession Arts team for constantly supporting artists who have shown with them!
~ Martin Luther King, Jr.An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.
I love this photo of Martin Luther King, Jr. because it reminds me of his humanity. King was not a saint. He was a man with a radical (yes, radical) vision and was deeply committed to social justice and eradicating injustice not just in the United States, but as it occurred throughout the global community. We do men and women like King a great disservice when we put them on a pedestal. Not only does it take the bite out of what they stood for and gave up their lives for, it also creates distance between them and us.
We think we are too ordinary. We think there is no way we can do the work that King and his contemporaries did. We think we have to perfect our diction first. We think we have to go to church every Sunday (or mosque or temple, etc.) first. Pull up our pants first. Get a job first. Make enough money first. Earn enough bona fides first. And so on and so forth.
But none of that really matters. What matters is being so deeply committed to real, effective, lasting change, that you are not afraid to put in the work to make that happen and, perhaps most importantly, you are not afraid of the consequences of that work.
And one does not need to be perfect to do any of those things.
I’ll leave you with a few more photos that illustrate King’s humanity …
1956 mugshot of a 27-year-old King, taken shortly after the Montgomery bus boycott
King with his father and son, 1963 Photo by Richard Avedon
The Kings leave court in Montgomery, Ala. after Dr. King was found guilty of conspiracy to boycott city buses.
Photo by Gene Herrick/Associated Press
Cross posted from here.
(Flyer designed by the awesome Kameelah Rasheed)
open "bar" w/ food
{bring some to share, too}
+complimentary copies of liberator 9.1
$10 donation
After the hype of New Years Eve has died down you can either keep the party going or get that do-over you need, because we'll be celebrating righteously in Brooklyn with James Brown and The Isley Brothers as our guides that next weekend.
We all know James Brown set foundations stood on by everyone from Public Enemy "Night Train" to Pete Rock "T.R.O.Y.", to Biggie/The Notorious BIG "Dreams", to Mary J. Blige "Everything", to Black Moon "Enta Da Stage", to En Vogue "Hold On" & "My Lovin' You're Never Gonna Get It", to Alicia Keys "Fallin", to Brandy "I Wanna Be Down", to Blackstreet "No Diggity" and, yes, even Nicki Minaj "Save Me".
But The Isley Brothers got plenty of legacy to claim as well, from Ice Cube "Today Was A Good Day", to A Tribe Called Quest "Bonita Applebum", to Bone Thugs-N-Harmony "Buddah Lovers", back to Biggie again "Big Poppa", to Keith Murray "The Most Beautifullest Thing In This World" , to Da Brat "Funkdafied" , to Tupac "Bury Me A G" and, yes, even Ludacris and Trey Songz "Sex Room".
Along with performances by soul singer Nicholas Ryan Gant and delta blues/rock band The Wolfhustlers we'll be exploring all of this historical territory thoroughly, curated by our Earth-native tour guide DJ Jah Medicine. We'll also be gettin down to original hits from Sir. Brown and The Isleys all night long.
Aside from celebrating inspiration and good people right here on good, old planet Earth, the other reason we're gathering is to raise funds for the magazine. This is a house party event hosted in a huge apartment in Crown Heights, Brooklyn by two good brothers so we ask that we all respect the space and treat it like our own home. An open "bar" will be in effect with free drinks and free food from Spicy Wild Mango, but we encourage you to bring something to share as well, pot-luck family style. Complimentary copies of Liberator 9.1 will also be available.
We do ask that you kindly RSVP, since this is a limited capacity space.
related event: Jan 6-8
Conference for The State of African American and African Diaspora Studies
at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture
My Liberator Magazine people are throwing a fundraiser/house party/funk session on Saturday! RSVP here.
