Hi! Happy weekend.
Downtown Raleigh’s Out! Raleigh Pride is tomorrow—will you be there? The INDY will be, so make sure to swing by our table at Fayetteville Street between Davie and Martin and chat with staff. We’ll be there from 11-7.
We have a (packed!) special summer reading issue out on stands next week. Grab a copy to learn the latest on local authors and books! Thanks for reading.
L to R: photographer Tommy Coyote, designer Ruben Rodriguez, and writer/Super Empty founder Ryan Cocca at a show at King’s during Double Dutch Fest. Photo credit: Tommy Coyote.
elsewhere in the culture section
Earlier this year, local writer Ryan Cocca re-launched Super Empty. What began years ago as a scrappy personal music blog has evolved into a polished, ambitious space for writing on the North Carolina hip-hop community.
Cocca is a longtime INDY contributor and the project very much aligns with the INDY‘s mission of working to help sustain the local music community—be sure to check out Kyesha Jenning’s longstanding “Her Take: On Carolina Hip-Hop” column—so we have been co-publishing a weekly (with some variation) Super Empty “Song of the Week” column. You can read those archives here and get to know Ryan and the Super Empty in an interview up on the INDY website today.
Some highlights from the conversation on sustaining both local media and the local hip-hop scene:
A not-insignificant part of the idea behind SE was basically: “How cool would it be if there was an outlet that felt like Pitchfork or Rolling Stone but was solely focused on NC?” With the major caveat that I’m a hopelessly naive person, I believe that when you treat underappreciated or less-popular things (like local/regional hip-hop) with the reverence and consideration of things that are, you can somewhat will attention, interest, and shared community into existence.
Longer form, written journalism isn’t the most economically viable of propositions, so you can understand why we don’t see more of it. But for the music scene here that I care about, as well as journalism at large, I want to be part of efforts (like INDY partner The Assembly) to push back against those realities and see how it could still be possible to do prestige-quality journalism in 2024 at an outlet not owned by Conde Nast or Laurene Powell Jobs.
There’s a lot of gems in here—give it a read if you care about music, media, or just, well North Carolina.
(On the subject: Southern Cultures, the quarterly out of UNC’s Center for the American South, has a submission call for writers for a special upcoming Southern Hip-Hop issue.)
ICYMI: Chappell Roan on the church bells, a spacious new Locals Fish market and processing facility, a last weekend run of an iridescent Pure Life Theatre production of North Carolina playwright Samm-Art Williams’s Home. (Read the Times obituary for Williams, who died last month, here), and grants from South Arts breathe new life into Triangle arts organizations.
out and about in the triangle
Raleigh’s Prospects Craft Kitchen has shuttered after a short run. Fare & Fellow, meanwhile, has two new locations in the works: One in Durham and another in Raleigh Iron Works. A new bar and wine shop seems to be opening on Roxboro Street and Arcana was namechecked on a CNN list of lesbian bars in the South. Nightlight is looking for a new home. The Pauli Murray Center was awarded a $330, 800 federal grant.
— Sarah Edwards —
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