Here are my shots from Saturday's OutKast show. Part of a three-day, open-air festival in Atlanta's Centennial Park, #ATLast celebrated 20 years of Andre Benjamin and Antwan Patton's hip-hop service to the south, right in the heart of downtown. Shout out to the junior publicist who thought I was going to stay in the media cage and not get into the crowd. Ha! FOH.

ONE Musicfest 2014 went down Saturday, Sept. 13 at Aaron's Amphitheater in Atlanta. Here's a big cache of photos taken by yours truly from all sides of the stage.

The Jordans finally made it to Pemberton Place near downtown ATL to see the recently opened National Center for Civil and Human Rights, where we have a commemorative plaque, and where you can experience things like the sit-in counter (surreal), actual handwritten works from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and much more interactive and eye-opening history of Atlanta's part in the struggle for freedom and equality in America. Check the photos after the jump.

Thanks to Upscale magazine for allowing me to contribute to this month's issue! You can also find it at my portfolio.

The beautiful and talented writer/editor Jacinta Howard and I got married on July 3 in Roswell, GA. That's kinda what's kept me from posting as often--wedding planning, man! We also just got back from honeymooning in Negril, Jamaica. Look for photos of our time on the beautiful island soon. For now, thanks for all the love and support!

P.S.: Feel free to purchase Jacinta's new romance novel, Better Than Okay, from Barnes & Noble, Smashwords or Amazon. It's only $2.99, and it makes a wonderful wedding gift! ;-)

Because you missed it, here are a whole lot of photos from the April 27th OutKast reunion concert. As far as festivals go, Counterpoint was a little nutty and unorganized (we sat in traffic at the site for an hour and a half trying to park), but complications aside, you can't beat OutKast live in Georgia after more than seven years of not performing together. Hootie-Hoo, my friends. Check the shots.

There's not really much to say about this new (free!) mix from DJ Wax On, other than it goes ridiculously hard, especially considering it's actually a funked-out, brassy, pimp-walky super-cool collection of songs that come together to make just under 60 minutes of the flyest noise a player such as yourself could play, any day of the week.

Seriously, unless you're really trying to amp yourself up to kill someone (and I don't know what you'd listen to for that kind of motivation these days--Odd Future?), you need a smooth, gangster-leaning soundtrack that can put that bad-ass sweetback vibe back in your home, car, or office. You need G in your life. Hit that downward-pointing arrow in the top right corner of the Soundcloud mix above to download a one-track mp3 of the whole thing to take with you.

Get more similarly amazing (free!) mixes at DJWaxOn.com.

Last night I finally got a chance to attend the 38th-annual Atlanta Film Festival, a week-long event where  buzzy independent films, shorts and movie projects are screened at Atlanta's oldest operating cinema, the Plaza Theatre. I missed quite a few showings I really wanted to see (potty training a toddler makes your social life crappy in more ways than one), but catching the photo-documentary Through A Lens Darkly: Black Photographers and the Emergence of a People made up for everything I didn't get to see. Here's why you too should see this really cool project when it comes to your town.

Indie films--especially documentaries--don't always deliver. Good intentions have paved the way to many a hell-spawned production. I say that meaning no disrespect to those who show the will and perseverance it takes to create such works, which I haven't yet mustered up, making my opinion a humbled one. Still, some of that shit sucks. I don't have to be a professional dancer to appreciate Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, and I don't have to be a hair stylist to know that Pam Oliver's weave is consistently atrocious. It is what it is. On the other hand, sometimes you are pleasantly surprised by a bright new idea in any format, especially when its being brought to you in visual form.

In the case of Through A Lens Darkly, the audience receives a wonderful gift in the form of a photographic tour of African-American life, its ongoing history and documentation. The film, produced in part by Deb Willis (writer of Reflections in Black: A History of Black Photographers 1840 to the Present), centers around black photographers such as James VanDerZee, Carrie Mae Weems and Gordon Parks. It exposes the relationships between these photographers and the families and individuals who were their clients and customers, and it studies and challenges others to join an archiving of images that capture black Americans in honest moments recognizable to all as familiar and human. The film's creator, Thomas Allen Harris, is a Harvard grad who uses his own family photography as the story's roux, creating an extended visual portrait of the national black family. The result is a loving and appreciative take on photos' ability to tell unbreakable truths--even when abrasive and sometimes difficult cultural imagery must be captured and shared.

During the doc's 90 minute showtime, we see the proud and determined focus shown in poses taken by Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Dubois, each of whom deeply understood the power of the photo to present a face of dignity in a time when such a word had little to no meaning to many African-Americans. We also see heartbreaking funeral photography of Emmett Till, and shots of the era in which blackface, lynchings, cartoonish drawings of menacing and imbecilic blacks lusting for watermelons/chickens/white women, and other fear-mongering tactics were employed by various factions of society. Perhaps most potent is the film's statements on the reflective nature of great photography, and how connections based on identity and love can be generated simply by viewing honest images of a people on the course to establishing themselves as equal citizens in a country that still sometimes denies full recognition to those who not only were giving this right at birth, but who've sometimes been forced to work incredibly hard to earn it.

Image Credit: Ernest Withers

This film comes at a crossroads in terms of citizen and professional journalism. In 2013, Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer John H. White was laid off by his employer, Chicago Sun-Times. Journalists at the paper who survived the cuts were apparently asked to use smartphones fixed with high-resolution cameras, to collect images while reporting. In other words, photographers who had spent their lives perfecting a craft as simple and important as capturing rare images for stories were no longer necessary to the finished product, since they were ultimately cutting into the bottom line of profitability. Pretty stupid, especially when you think about the fact that most people don't read actual text anyway--they look at the pictures. Even online.

T.A.L.D. ultimately hits a positive nerve for the black community, and provides a takeaway that could result in a wonderful national project if people see the film and get involved. Watching it, you're reminded that we're all inherently similar, and the struggles of black Americans are inherently American, whether the subjects are slaves, freed men and women, icons, gangsters, political and spiritual leaders, or just kids being kids. Black kids. American kids.

All this to say, check it out. It'll open in NY this summer, and'll be back in Atlanta for the Bronze Lens Film Festival in November.


*Main image credit: Pan African Film Festival

Whoever the guys are behind goldybeats.com, they're obviously brilliant. Two producers (if their profile at TED is "legit") are using the popular website and brand--known for its frequently updated catalog of disruptive speeches on technology, entertainment and design--to promote their own website, at which "hip hop and trap instrumentals" are "for sell." Between the incorrect grammar and the sheer bravado of introducing their hustle to these so-called innovators at TED, I've gotta go on and call it genius.

You might assume TED has some sort of MENSA-esque criteria for joining the club. Like, you've gotta have a Warby Parker pocket protector or know how to make a dot matrix printer play "Eye of the Tiger." And then it's not even guaranteed--you might just get one of those cloth shopping bags you get for being a sustaining member of your local NPR station, for trying, but not quite giving them what they were looking for, you know?

Just out of curiosity, I tried setting up a fake account to see if they'd let me get close. Unfortunately, I didn't think it through enough to give one of my burner email accounts, so I'll never know if I actually received an acceptance email confirmation link and could have setup shop under the assumed identity of a rich, bald, love-making super-villain. But I have to assume whoever's email that really is, they now have the ability to do whatever they please on TED's site.

Anyway, you should really check goldybeats out, son. They've got that hot fiya for the streets, yo. Assuming we all know what the term "trap" means by now, I find it particularly interesting that these guys, or whoever this one guy is fronting like he has a friend/business partner, would pick TED to spam.

I mean, the irony here is that it's actually quite innovative. Most people would have gone to WorldStar or any of the other high-traffic hip-hop sites and tried their luck among the native crowd.

These guys recognized those spots were overcrowded/saturated/so 2000-and-late. They disrupted things, and put their product in a place where competition is low, quality (or lack thereof) is not completely understood, and the urge to understand inner-city art is probably sky-high. That's trapping, and they're probably getting at least some type of bump in traffic to their site just from this small coup.

I mean, look at how they disrupted their own website with the mad-crazy-ill language arts:

Yo, son; this shit is EXLUSICE!! Keep it real--you might use that word next time you're in the trap, or in a place where trap-like people happen to be present, just for street-cred purposes and to keep everybody comfortable.

Another interesting fact about the goldybeats hustle (which I assume is actually based in France, since SACEM is kinda like the French equivalent of ASCAP, apparently) is if you buy one of these beats, you don't actually own it. So it's kinda like you give "them" your money, download a trap instrumental, spit that hot-HOT fiya, and then just act like it didn't happen or play it in your car, when you're in the trap.

It gets better: as long as you invest in your rap career and actually lose money, you can use the track in your live rap performances! I'm sure that if they're really IRS-style about verification, all you'd need to do is keep an accurate record of your event's failure, kinda like the reverse of how promoters get liquor companies to give them free booze, then have one of their homies take pictures of lots of happy and sexy people drinking it, just to keep getting free booze to give people at your party.

See, you'd do just the opposite of that--you go extra-hard on stage, over a Gucci Mane/Young Jeezy/Future-level trap beat that's decent but not quite that good-sounding, in a venue where absolutely nobody shows up, and you get photos taken of the empty dance floor, vacant area near the front of the stage, girls leaving right after they walk in and see the wackness--all that. You winnin'!!

Of course this type of thing happens all over the internet. I just happen to find this situation quite hilarious, because there's something about it that actually makes the very point TED is trying to push. At least, that's what TED said in its "About" section:

Whatever happens, one thing I can say for sure is that TED could use more hip-hop-oriented talks. Who knows, maybe this will be the beginning of many vibrant collaborations between urban street culture and the titans of technology, entertainment and design. Or maybe it's just spam. LOL.

Anyway, for now, it's TED for "Trappin' E'ry Day." Lemme find out.

Tickets for tonight are sold out (I know--janky hearing about it now, huh?), but you should still be aware that there's a barbecue sauce-making class happening every month at D.B.A. Barbecue, taught by chef/owner Matt Coggin, who is a ridiculously awesome guy and guru of smoked/grilled meats. Here's what you're missing tonight (my bad!).

I believe it happens every third Wednesday of the month. You probably missed it tonight, but there's always April. Hey, at least you know now! That's my way of saying "Yeah, I'm mad late telling you about this. My bad."

Visit DBA's site here, and be sure to try the pudding pops.