Under The Stars is a quasi-weekly column that presents new music releases, upcoming shows, opinions, and a number of other adjacent items. We keep moving with the changes, thinking outside the margins.
Support your local DJ.
Let’s run it down……
DO THE RIGHT THING AT FOUR STAR THEATER, JULY 27 5PM and 7:30PM
This film remains the central nervous system of my cinema heart. We really don’t appreciate Spike Lee the way we should—but that’s a different article. I’m pulling this from something I wrote a couple of years ago because it remains a thousand percent true:
Lemme tell ya America, Black people are amazing. That’s not an opinion, it’s factual.
We have to be amazing just to exist. Live. Breathe. That crinkle-crease of genius is a skillset.
There is a slept-on scene in the masterful Do The Right Thing which was shot entirely on Stuyvesant Avenue between Quincy Street and Lexington Avenue in Bed-Stuy. With numerous ideas and philosophies kicking around in the film, some can miss it, but this moment has always held power and my attention.
The omnidirectional Samuel L. Jackson (credited in the film as Sam Jackson) plays Mister Señor Love Daddy, a DJ for the fictitious radio station We Love who soundtracks the film’s monumental day. Jackson’s character gives the audience subtle interior and exterior commentary. There is a scene in which he does a roll call, name-checking artists that make his playlist. Enunciated in Jackson’s finest documentary timbre are Ella Fitzgerald, Chuck D, Janet Jackson, Dianne Reeves, Aretha Franklin, Prince, and Teddy Pendergrast—titans of Black culture whose names fly oh-so-regal from Mister Señor Love Daddy’s mouth, like autumn leaves getting sorted by the wind.
Wasting not one second of the script, Spike pulls off a major flex that gently infers the vast width and depths of Black artistry. Not this or that; we are all, at all times. Those multiple composites speak volumes to our past, present, and future selves. In our moment of crisis, they remind us of our resilient bold nature, the ability to overcome by recognizing the long, hard journey of the past. In a film loaded frame to frame, second to second with paramount social commentary exploding with big noise moments that are even more relevant in 2020, this one is quiet. It gets loud years after you’ve finished the film, as those names become signposts of where the culture was at in 1989.
Four years ago, on the 30th anniversary of the film, Lee was asked to contribute to the Anatomy of a Scene segment of The New York Times, where he could pick a scene from the film and discuss it.
He chose the one leading to the killing of Radio Raheem (Bill Nunn) by police officers.
Spike Lee: “I know the column is called Anatomy of a Scene. I’m renaming this. I’m calling it Anatomy of a Murder. Some of you might not know that the chokehold of Radio Raheem, played by the late, great Bill Nunn, my Morehouse brother, was based upon the death of Michael Stewart. In September 1983, Michael Stewart, a graffiti artist, was tagging the First Avenue subway station. Eleven New York City Transit police officers jumped on him and strangled our brother to death. That’s where I got the idea for the chokehold murder of Radio Raheem.”
Five years ago, after the chokehold had been outlawed by the NYPD, Eric Garner died the same way that Radio Raheem did in a movie that was based on the real-life chokehold of Michael Stewart.
Go see this landmark cultural film at The Four Star with a new set of eyes.
Pick up tickets here.
SHAFIQ HUSAYN, “MAYBE BABY WINTER” (FEAT JIMETTA ROSE) FROM SO GOLD (NATURE SOUNDS)
There is a loopy whimsy, free-flowing air to the dart “Maybe Baby Winter” by Shafiq Husayn, with Jimetta Rose taking lead vocals, parlaying these good thought ideas and emotions through enunciation (it’s what she does every time people).
“Maybe Baby Winter” is textbook Husayn-Rose collab where the bass dips and zags, and Rose fills up the space with polychromatic expressed patterns, either heard in a Black Church on a Sunday or in a club on a Friday night where nobody is thinking bout scripture.
Rose’s setup and delivery, as always, feel so damn easy. But it’s a method she’s been perfecting for a minute with Teebs, Husayn, and anybody else from LA doing the different stuff, flawlessly.
So Gold, so good, is Husayn’s most recent project, featuring his newly formed Dove Society, continuing the producer’s track record of reinventing fussy r&b for the open-minded funkster.
Pick it up here.
NICK ANDRE WITH JAZZ MAFIA AND BICASO OF LIVING LEGENDS, “TUESDAYS”
Bay Area producer and Slept On Records co-owner Nick Andre hit us up earlier this month about a track that was originally produced as an instrumental for Thrasher Magazines’ “Plazacation” series (Berlin episode), which he has re-invented with vocals from Bicaso of West Coast rap group Living Legends.
“Tuesdays,” which features that dead-ahead, nonchalant vocal flow, sees our emcee sharing tales from a different era. Biasco rolls them out, one by one, with raspy articulation and vivid scenarios between trombone lines.
Andre is always on time with unforced balance in his tracks.
But it’s not my words that matter. Trust that roster of emcees he has at his beckon call who respect him so much, they’ll hop on a track on a second’s notice and run that voodoo down.
Cold. You can pick up “Tuesdays” here.
BIG JOANIE, “TODAY” (FEATURING KIM DEAL)
The self-described “Black Feminist Sistah Punk Band” from the UK has a new version of “Today,” one of their demos from years ago, and it features Kim Deal. Listen, when the former bassist and co-vocalist of The Pixies and frontwoman of the Breeders co-signs your work, it’s a big, and very good, situation.
“Whether through Pixies, Breeders, or her solo work, Kim has been a vital influence on us as a band and we’re so happy that she’s become part of the Big Joanie world.”
Purchase it here.
