Hopefully not, but Ron Charles, deputy editor of WaPo’s Book World, says the paper’s top brass have threatened to kill the section’s podcast if it can’t rally more iTunes subscribers.

Read More “Is WaPo’s Book World Podcast Headed for Extinction?” »

Morning, y’all! At the top of the news pile: WaPo’s Dave Malitz almost missed his date with Bob Dylan, but then didn’t! Also, my niece, who is 4 years old, does not “get” VHS.

Tony Millionaire’s potty mouth, the legacies of Leo Strauss and Lemmy, the scarcity of female comedy writers, Trace Adkins: Comic Book Hero, free vinyl, music for writing about the Simpsons, and more, after the jump.

Read More “Arts Morning Roundup: Jabez vs. Lemmy and the Merits of ‘Honky Tonk Badonkadonk’” »

Yesterday the Washington Post ran a large feature on DC hip hop.* Chris Richards’ piece offers a cursory “why hasn’t DC rap blown up?” history and intro as well as short profiles of Wale, XO, Kingpen Slim, Tabi Bonney, Phil Ade and producers Best Kept Secret. It’s a well meaning and pretty efficient overview, but it’s also predictably been causing some debate within the DC hip hop community as well as some concern about the orientation of Wale’s hat amongst WaPo readers.

And perhaps some concern is warranted (err… within the hip hop community, not about Wale’s hat). The easiest way to critique an article like this is to point out artist omissions. I understand the need for space in a newspaper column so I’ll mostly try to avoid such trivial complaints here.** But there are some larger holes in the story that deserve to be addressed. Read More “DMV Rap Attack: Washington Post Weigh In” »

“Chuck Brown’s Long Dance,” last Sunday’s Washington Post Magazine cover story about the godfather of D.C. go-go music, was an illustration of the importance of editing. Brown’s audience? “30- to 40-something African Americans.” Later we learn that his audience “is made up of mostly 30- and 40-something African Americans.” Brown’s prison stint? “Back then, Lorton was like a school,” he tells author Robin Rose Parker. Later he tells her “Lorton was a schoolhouse,” adding for good measure, “It was like a college.” And what of Parker’s assertion that Brown’s 1979 hit “Bustin’ Loose” was released “decades before his high school audience was born”? Considering today’s seniors were mostly born in 1992, those must have been some short decades! But the problems with this piece don’t end with line-editing—you have to wonder why a feature on Brown got assigned in the first place, when there is nothing new left to say about the legendary musician, who rates over 11,000 results in a Google search for “Washington Post” plus his name. However! There are still some scenarios under which a Chuck Brown feature might be worthwhile reading, as long as the Godfather is still winding up the living. For instance:

Read More “Assign Me Up, Chuck
The only conceivable reasons to run a Chuck Brown feature in 2009” »