Flyboy 2: The Greg Tate Reader
- Author: Tate, Greg
A Rolling Stone contributor, Greg Tate's ferocious, slang-tinged salvos and deep-rooted historical analysis have inspired readers and intimidated colleagues for decades. This sequel to the 1992...
Flyboy 2: The Greg Tate Reader
- Author: Tate, Greg
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A Rolling Stone contributor, Greg Tate's ferocious, slang-tinged salvos and deep-rooted historical analysis have inspired readers and intimidated colleagues for decades. This sequel to the 1992...
About
Since launching his career at the Village Voice in the early 1980s Greg Tate has been one of the premiere critical voices on contemporary Black music, art, literature, film, and politics. Flyboy 2 provides a panoramic view of the past thirty years of Tate's influential work. Whether interviewing Miles Davis or Ice Cube, reviewing an Azealia Banks mixtape or Suzan-Lori Parks's Topdog/Underdog, discussing visual artist Kara Walker or writer Clarence Major, or analyzing the ties between Afro-futurism, Black feminism, and social movements, Tate's resounding critical insights illustrate how race, gender, and class become manifest in American popular culture. Above all, Tate demonstrates through his signature mix of vernacular poetics and cultural theory and criticism why visionary Black artists, intellectuals, aesthetics, philosophies, and politics matter to twenty-first-century America.
Contents
- Introduction: Lust, of All Things (Black) 1
- 1. The Black Male Show
- Amiri Baraka 9
- Wayne Shorter 16
- Jimi Hendrix 24
- John Coltrane 41
- Gone Fishing: Remembering Lester Bowie 44
- The Black Artists' Group 50
- Butch Morris 55
- Charles Edward Anderson Berry and the History of Our Future 57
- Lonnie Holley 68
- Marion Brown (1931-2010) and Djinji Brown 71
- Dark Angels of Dust: David Hammons and the Art of Streetwise Trancendentalism 73
- Bill T. Jones: Combative Moves 78
- Garry Simmons: Conceptual Bomber 81
- The Persistence of Vision: Storyboard P 83
- Ice Cube 91
- Wynton Marsalis: Jazz Crusader 102
- Thonton Dail: Free, Black, and Brightening Up the Darkness of the World 110
- Kehinde Wiley 124
- Rammellzee: The Ikonoklast Samurai 127
- Richard Pryor: Pryor Lives 136
- Richard Pryor 146
- Gil Scott-Heron 149
- The Man in Our Mirror: Michael Jackson 152
- Miles Davis 158
- 2. She Laughing Mean and Impressive Too
- Born to Dyke: I Love My Sister Laughing and Then Again When She's Looking Mean, Queer, and Impressive 167
- Joni Mitchell: Black and Blond 175
- Azealia Banks 177
- Sade: Black Magic Woman 180
- All the Things You Could Be by Now If Iames Brown Was a Feminist 186
- Itabari Njeri 193
- Kara Walker 196
- Women at the Edge of Space, Time, and Art: Ruminations on Candida Romero's Little Girls 202
- Ellen Gallagher 208
- To Bid a Poet Black and Abstract 210
- "The Gikuyu Mythos versus the Cullud Grrrl from Outta Space": A Wangechi Mutu Feature 213
- Come Join the Hieroglyphic Zombie Parade: Deborah Grant 219
- Bjoerk's Second Act 223
- Thelma Golden 228
- 3. Hello Darknuss My Old Meme
- Top Ten Reasons Why So Few Black Women Were Down to Occupy Wall Street Plus Four More 235
- What Is Hip-Hop? 239
- Intelligence Data: Bob Dylan 242
- Hip-Hop Turns Thirty 246
- Love and Crunk: Outkast 252
- White Freedom: Eminem 254
- Wu-Dunit: Wu-Tang Clan 256
- Unlocking the Truth vs. John Cage 260
- 4. Screenings
- Spike Lee's Bamboozled 265
- It's A Mack Thing 270
- Sex and Negrocity: John Singleton's Baby Boy 272
- Lincoln in Whiteface: Jeffrey Wright and Don Cheadle in Susan-Lori Parks's Topdog/Underdog 275
- The Black Power Mixtape 278
- 5. Race, Sex, Politricks and Belle Lettres
- Clarence Major 285
- The Atlantic Sound: Caryl Phillips's The Atlantic Sound 288
- Acocalypse Now: Patricia Hill Collins's Black Sexual Politics; Thomas Shevory's Notorious H.I.V.; Jacob Levenson's The Secret Epidemic 290
- Blood and Bridges 292
- Nigger-'Tude 296
- Triple Threat: Jerry Gafio Watts's Amiri Baraka; Hazel Rowley's Richard Wright; David Macey's Frantz Fanon 299
- Bottom Feeders: Natsuo Kirino's Out 306
- Scaling the Heights: Maryse Conde's Windward Heights 307
- Fear of a Mongrel Planet: Zadie Smith's White Teeth 310
- Adventures in the Skin Trade: Lisa Teasley's Glow in the Dark 313
- Generous Hexed: Jeffery Renard Allen's Rails under My Back 315
- Going Underground: Gayl Jones's Mosquito 317
- Judgment Day: Toni Morrison's Love and Edward P. Jones's The Known World 320
- Black Modernity and Laughter, or How It Came to Be That N*g*as Got Jokes 322
- Kalahari Hopscotch, or Notes toward a Twenty-Volume Afrocentric Futurist Manifesto 330
- Sources 343
- Index 347
Awards and reviews
A Rolling Stone contributor, Greg Tate's ferocious, slang-tinged salvos and deep-rooted historical analysis have inspired readers and intimidated colleagues for decades. This sequel to the 1992 collection Flyboy in the Buttermilk felt particularly acute in the context of 2016's nonstop stream of racial horror, whether Tate is delineating visual artist Kara Walker's unflinching slavery-era silhouettes or eulogizing Richard Pryor and Michael Jackson. . . ." -- Michaelangelo Matos
Flyboy 2 collects more pieces that prove Tate, a Rolling Stone contributor, hasn't lost a step, with riffs on young artists like Azealia Banks ('a freaky-geeky, speed-rapping succubus') and forebears such as Jimi Hendrix ('one of our most agile and adept freedom fighters'). It's a dive into what Tate calls 'Black Cognition,' a cornerstone of the American mind." -- Will Hermes
Whether you are new to his work or a longtime reader, the universe of Black magic lovingly curated in Flyboy 2 will do your soul good." -- Steven W. Thrasher
What Flyboy 1 and 2 show is that Tate has come a long way in the study of this, the feared black planet and, in so doing, came out a more skilful, more humble man. What his style won't let me forget is this: we are simultaneously in command of this world, and others." -- Kwanele Sosibo
What made Tate's criticism special was his ability to theorize outward from his encounters with genius and his brushes with banality-to telescope between moments of artistic inspiration and the giant structures within which those moments were produced. . . . Tate has a keen sense for the way that both artists and communities discern where they fit in the world, and what is expected of them, and then either go along for the ride or carefully plot their escapes." -- Hua Hsu
