Archive for February, 2010

Ken Block on BBC’s Top Gear

I am by no stretch of the imagination an expert on or a great driver of cars. I can do what I need to do to survive, mostly. But, I, like many others, love the BBC’s Top Gear with Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May. They have found the formula for creating television around [...]

Win a Sade Hamper

In honour of the release of Sade’s first album – Soldier of Love – since the year 2000, I am giving away one Sade hamper. I posted my Layman Thoughts on the new album a couple of weeks ago and have been able to get my hands on some of the groups past CDs and [...]

Mpho Skeef Update

A couple of months back, I did a mini-profile on Mpho Skeef, a UK artist with roots in South Africa, who has been plugging away in the music industry for many years now, as a singer and songwriter. At the time, it seemed like she was finally receiving the recognition and backing she deserves, after [...]

Nickelodeon Turns 30

With a toddler in my house, what is shown on television is extremely important. Over the last two and a half years, I’ve been figuring out how it all works, what the best channels are, programmes, etc. I have always been fascinated by the psychology that goes into creating children’s programming. In his book, the [...]

The Assassination of Malcolm X

Today, February 21st, is the 45th anniversary of the assassination of Malcolm X. He had an impact on my life in a way that is inexplicable but very real. When I was in university and Spike Lee created the film with Denzel Washington as Malcolm X, I had a wall of my res room covered [...]

Ty – Special Kind Of Fool

For too long, hip hop that originates from outside the US has existed in the shadows, despite the opinion (mine) that a lot of the music that is true to the spirit of hip hop is from everywhere else.  A couple of years ago, my brother-in-law started schooling me on UK hip hop and it [...]

The Red Bulletin

a man on a bike hops over a fountain
machine in full rev in mid-air
he lands at the feet of those watching, to their delight
doing the seemingly impossible in a courtyard outside a nightclub in the day time

a b-boy defies the pull of the planet’s natural forces and hovers
for a brief second
as if suspended by the thinnest [...]

Sade – Soldier Of Love

It is a day that blurs into the rest – nameless, timeless, and vaguely familiar – except for one thing. I must have been about 13/14 years old. Young enough to still be naive about and frightened by the hormonal murmurings that seemed to manifest themselves more and more frequently each day but, at the [...]

Tumi – Whole Worlds Live

Boitumelo Molekane — aliases Tumi, Tumi from the Volume – is an artist who has comfortably found that groove, that spot where everything just happens the way it should. Having recently released his second solo album, Whole Worlds, and signed with a major, Sony Music, for the first time in his musical career, he is [...]