For many R&B artists, a seven-year gap in between albums can be a death sentence. But then there are measured R&B songwriters like Maxwell, whose recent BlackSUMMERS’night LP arrives seven years after the similarly-titled BLACKsummers’night, which gave us the life-affirming ballads “Pretty Wings” and “Fistful of Tears.” The record is the second installment in a […]
Eric Tullis
Bio: Eric Tullis lives in Chapel Hill, where he writes about music and basketball.Twitter: http://twitter.com/erictullis
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Rising Through Teenage Rap Battles and Reality TV, J. Gunn Is Ready To Blow Up
There’s a historical irony to Gunn’s living situation: From the early 1940s to 1986, the downtown building in which Gunn currently lives was home to Baldwin’s department store. At one time, it was the best place in town to find a nice bow tie and one of the last places you’d find a person of […]
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Durham’s Blackspace Hosts Fundraising Parties Tonight and Tomorrow
The downtown Durham “hub for Afrofuturism, digital media, and social entrepreneurship,” dubbed Blackspace, is just a couple of days out and still several thousand dollars short from reaching its $22,000 Kickstarter goal. In an effort to reach that target, Blackspace is teaming up with two other local businesses—Runaway Clothing and The Parlour—to throw a dance […]
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Space Is the Place: Durham Gets a Hub for Afrofuturist Thought with Blackspace
Last Thursday, Durham musician and activist Pierce Freelon and Chapel Hill puppet master Tarish “Jeghetto” Pipkins were armed with five hundred handbills and a few string puppets as they crashed Runaway Clothing’s “DURM Night” afterparty at Durham Bulls Athletic Park. They distributed the handbills to boost backing for Freelon’s $22,000 Kickstarter campaign for Blackspace Durham, […]
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At N.C. State, 9th Wonder Will Set the Record Straight on Early Hip-Hop
9th Wonder’s relationship with N.C. State University began in the late nineties, when he was a full-time Wolfpack student named Patrick Douthit and an upcoming beatmaker. That era soon led to him and more than a dozen other like-minded Triangle artists starting the Justus League hip-hop collective. It would soon become the springboard for 9th’s […]
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Record Review: Oak City Slums’ Welcome Is a Righteous Greeting Card for the Area’s Electronic Music
The area’s emerging electronic scene needs a figurehead. Might it be the charismatic and omnipresent Oak City Slums? As Oak City Slums, Raleigh electro-magnate and beat shark Rodney Finch has become an ubiquitous force within the Triangle’s instrumental hip-hop and electronic music pockets. Through a string of recent performances in Durham in collaboration with the […]
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Beyú Caffé Will Open Its New Spot in Downtown Durham Tonight
The idea that the construction and finishing touches of Beyú Caffé’s new location at 341 West Main St. in Durham would be complete in early May—just in time to act as the only free venue for this year’s Art of Cool Fest—always seemed too good to be true. Beyú owner Dorian Bolden had tried to […]
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Moogfest 2016: Thinking About Free Art in the Present and the Future
Moogfest 2016 Downtown Durham Saturday, May 21, 2016 You may not have have realized it, but there were three distinct music-and-culture festivals—Moogfest, Bimbé Cultural Arts Festival, and the Durham Blues and Brews Festival—happening simultaneously in Durham on Saturday. Somehow, the city made room for all of them. On Saturday afternoon after having attended a South […]
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Art of Cool Fest 2016 Wasn’t the ‘Coachella’ of Jazz, and That Was a Good Thing
One of the only pieces of national coverage for early May’s third-annual Art of Cool Festival arrived in the form of a half-baked blog post on The Huffington Post called “This Festival Is Being Called the ‘Coachella’ of Jazz.” A few hours after the post went live, Art of Cool president Cicely Mitchell expressed her […]
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The Art of Cool Festival Starts Today—Here’s What Eric Tullis Says You Have to See
For our complete preview of Art of Cool 2016, here’s quite a lot to read. Below, critic Eric Tullis weighs in on the five unexpected acts you must see. Tickets are still available here. TAYLOR MCFERRIN—While not quite a destination festival, Art of Cool Fest’s streamlined jazz-and-soul-based agenda does suggest that it aspires to be […]