“Skippy’s been around since, what, 1961? Skippy is Boston history.”
MAGNUS OPUS: A BOSTON COUNTER CULTURE ICON FINALLY GETS OVERDUE PROPS FOR HIS OIL ORGIES
“A lot of the early punk scene in Boston was started in art galleries … That was no coincidence—these galleries could see that a lot of cool stuff was going on.”
BUY ME, BOSTON: CLASSIC ADVERTISEMENT PATCHWORK PROVIDES VAST PORTRAIT OF MASS CULTURAL HISTORY
“I honestly thought that the most challenging thing would be to create this narrative of a city that doesn’t exist anymore purely with raw materials that everyone considers trash. Ads are cutting room floor. It’s like when you make a pie and you have extra dough and you make snickerdoodles out of it.”
ARE YOU BUYING? A CONVERSATION ABOUT A PERFORMANCE ABOUT ADVERTISING
“For every ad promoting the positive, transformative power of beauty and fashion, many others reinforce gender stereotypes or objectify women’s bodies.”
GETTING WILDER: A CONVERSATION WITH “WILD STYLE” DIRECTOR CHARLIE AHEARN
The man they call ‘Charlie Video’ screens new original short films and his signature classic tomorrow at the Brattle.
WHEN THE MOB RAN RAP MUSIC IN BOSTON: TDS MOB WAS THE HUB’S FIRST HUGE HIP-HOP HOPE …
I interviewed Kool Gee the day after he rocked Wally’s. At his request, we met at the place where the TDS Mob story begins—the stoop of the old Tower Records on the corner of Newbury Street and Mass Ave. From there, he took me back to 1989, when TDS ran the calendar with a year of rap perfection.
LAWTOWN’S FINEST: THE LYRICAL RISE AND TRAGIC DEATH OF MASS RAP LEGEND SCIENTIFIK
“He was gone before his time … People didn’t really get to experience his full potential like we did … He was right on the cusp of doing some even bigger stuff musically [that] could have been commercially successful.”
THREE RAP HISTORIANS AND A MICROPHONE: TURNING THE TAPE RECORDER ON HIP-HOP AUTHOR BRIAN COLEMAN
With the publication of Check the Technique Volume 2 on October 14, Coleman puts forth an impressive 544 pages and 25 chapters of new material, complete with more than 350 images for 80 interviews with rap legends ranging from Ice Cube and 3rd Bass, to Stetasonic and Mantronix, to MF Doom and Mos Def.
EXCLUSIVE BOSTON EXCERPT FROM BRIAN COLEMAN’S ‘CHECK THE TECHNIQUE 2’: ‘LIFE OF A KID IN THE GHETTO’ BY ED O.G
When I went about compiling my list of hopefuls for this next volume, Ed’s classic from 23 years ago was at the top of my list. And the more I analyzed it, as well as interviewed the people who helped make it happen, the more its classic status was confirmed to me.
THE UNTOLD STORIES OF HUB HIP-HOP
Like so much history about communities of color, the narrative of Boston hip-hop has been largely buried, ignored, forgotten. Thankfully, there remain innumerable artists, writers, fans, and even academics who, in the storytelling tradition rap music is rooted in, have kept dope alive via marvelous multimedia tributes. This whole package is dedicated to them.
