Street Fatigues

This is real music...

I like this... reminds me of that good 1980's hip hop

http://myspace.com/rahrahgirl

Kindred The Family Soul and Street Fatigues have teamed up for a Limited edition “We Are Family” t-shirt. Kindred the Family Soul, are the soulful R&B couple that channels words into songs that are vivid portraits of everyday life. “I love what Kindred brings to the music of today and I am happy that they included Street Fatigues as part of their amazing journey” says Umar Riggs, owner and CEO of Street Fatigues. “Now every fan will be connected to their extended family and recognize other ‘Family Soul’ members by wearing the Kindred We Are Family T-shirt”. Street fatigues, has been worn by Fatin and Aja over the years and has also outfitted, King Britt, The Roots, Mos Def, Meshell Ndege Ocello, and Common just to name a few of our many partners.

Kindred The Family Soul makes timeless music. Their latest CD “The Arrival” and the first single “House of Love” is a soulful and inspirational record that is open to interpretation. The songs can be taken figuratively and literally applied to everyone’s life. Kindred’s vision for this record, was for each song to speak to their personal journey throughout the music industry and how they have dealt with raising a family while simultaneously pursuing their dream. While this is how the songs speak to them, each listener may take it more literally and apply it to building a home with that special someone.

Please join us as we celebrate Love, Life and Family with Kindred The Family Soulʼs “We Are Family” limited edition T-shirt.

So what are you waiting for? Join the family. http://StreetFatigues.com

For more information contact:

Temple: The Black Canon

With 1,150 students enrolled this semester, black studies is one of the more popular departments at Temple, a sprawling public university in Philadelphia of 30,000 students, 25 percent of whom are African-American.

Attend an undergraduate class like ''Hip-Hop and Black Culture'' and it is easy to see why. Taught by Nathaniel Thompson, a dynamic young visiting professor, the course promises to ''engage hip-hop not as a mode of entertainment, but as a medium of communications which impacts, represents and misrepresents the life experience of African people in the United States,'' according to the syllabus.

His hair set in neat cornrows, Mr. Thompson wears a black, hooded sweatshirt and baggy black jeans. ''I'm not of the school that believes hip-hop is a culture,'' he announces. He then proceeds to analyze the genre using Molefi Kete Asante's Afrocentric categories, as described in his book ''Kemet, Afrocentricity and Knowledge'': Does it have a cosmology, axiology (value system), epistemology or aesthetic? When the discussion gets too abstract, he brings it down to earth with a seemingly simple question: ''Am I dressed hip-hop today?'' This leads to a heated debate about the relation between the designer Ralph Lauren and black culture, and ends with the class dissecting the oft-used phrase ''Keeping it real.'' One woman asks, ''What is the 'it' that is always being kept real, anyway?''

Temple's African-American studies department, which was founded in 1969, was the first to offer a black studies Ph.D., in 1988. Its fame emanates from Dr. Asante, the graduate program's founder and the chief theorist of Afrocentricity. As defined in his 1980 book of the same title, Afrocentricity is ''interpretation and analysis from the perspective of African people as subjects rather than as objects on the fringes of the European experience.''

Nathaniel Norment Jr., the department's current chairman, underscores the relationship between the theory and mainstream scholarship: ''Ninety-five percent of the research done on African-Americans has been done by whites, and 95 percent of it has been negative,'' he says. ''From 'The Moynihan Report' to 'The Bell Curve,' African-American people have been portrayed as subhuman and inferior. Through Afrocentricity and African-centeredness, African-American studies can act as a corrective to this bias.''

By Robert S. Boynton

Published: Sunday, April 14, 2002