The BreakBeat Poets | New American Poetry in the Age of Hip-Hop | New Books

Pre-order The ‪#‎BreakBeatPoets‬ TODAY at 40% off the cover price at http://t.co/awzRJpNGkF . its the 1st anthology of & by the hip-hop generation!



edited by Kevin Coval, Quraysh Ali Lansana, Nate Marshall

Price: $18.00
ISBN: 9781608463954
Published: April, 2015
Type: Paperback
Publisher: Haymarket Books | New School Poetics

ABOUT THE BOOK:

The BreakBeat Poets: New American Poetry in the Age of Hip-Hop is the first poetry anthology of-its-kind. It's hip-hop poetica is written for and by the people. The BreakBeat Poets, who are multi-generational & multi-racial, are real-life documentarians of the late 20th and 21st century, employing traditional and wildstyle poetics to narrate a new country and city landscape. This is poetry for and by the people.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS:

Kevin Coval is the author of ALA “Book of the Year” finalist Slingshots: A Hip-Hop Poetica and Everyday People. Founder of Louder Than a Bomb: The Chicago Teen Poetry Festival, Coval serves as Artistic Director and teaches at the Art Institute. He is regular contributor to WBEZ Chicago Public Radio and teaches art and art history department at University of Illinois at Chicago.

Nate Marshall is from the South Side of Chicago. He is an MFA candidate in Creative Writing at The University of Michigan and received his BA at Vanderbilt University. His work has appeared in POETRY Magazine, Indiana Review, The New Republic, [PANK] Online, and in many other publications. He was the star of the award winning full-length documentary “Louder Than A Bomb” and has been featured on HBO’s “Brave New Voices.” He is an Assistant Poetry Editor for Muzzle. He is also a rapper.

Quraysh Ali Lansana is author of eight poetry books, three textbooks, a children’s book, editor of eight anthologies, and coauthor of a book of pedagogy. He is a faculty member of the Creative Writing Program of the School of the Art Institute and the Red Earth MFA Creative Writing Program at Oklahoma City University. He is also a former faculty member of the Drama Division of The Juilliard School. Lansana served as Director of the Gwendolyn Brooks Center for Black Literature and Creative Writing at Chicago State University from 2002-2011, where he was also Associate Professor of English/Creative Writing. Our Difficult Sunlight: A Guide to Poetry, Literacy & Social Justice in Classroom & Community (with Georgia A. Popoff) was published in March 2011 by Teachers & Writers Collaborative and was a 2012 NAACP Image Award nominee. His most recent books include The Walmart Republic w/ Christopher Stewart (Mongrel Empire Press, September 2014) and reluctant minivan (Living Arts Press, May 2014).

Writer At War: Kendrick Lamar’s XXL Cover Story

Writer At War
Kendrick Lamar in his own words.
Images Tom Medvedich

Editor’s Note: This story originally appeared in the Winter 2014 issue of XXL Magazine, on stands now.

A lot of times in interviews, people ask me things like, “How does it feel now? What have you bought your mom and your pops and family?” Nobody ever really asks about what it’s like trying to adapt to fame and money and how much of a depression it can make for you. How much of a depression it could put you in knowing that so many kids hang on to your words. I can’t make a song like “i” without being in that dark place. “i” comes from going overseas, going to New York, being in L.A. and hearing kids saying, “Kendrick, I was gonna kill myself last week. Section.80, good kid, m.A.A.d city saved my life.” Or “I was gonna kill myself tonight until I came to your show.”

I believe that they are telling the truth. At first I wasn’t so sure, maybe it was just they were excited to meet me. But then they showed me their wrists and had all these different scars from when they tried to take their lives but failed. Or I look into their eyes and their pupils are dilated and they on all these types of meds and drugs, it’s a whole different story to me. That’s when I learned that while I’m making music for myself, drawing from my own experiences and conflictions and battles within myself, this teenager listens to every word I say. And that’s spooky.

I think one of my biggest battles within myself is embracing leadership. You always grow up and you hate the term “role model.” You would say, “I don’t wanna be a role model. I don’t want none of that.” But in actuality, you are the biggest role model. It’s impossible to fight the title of role model. Especially when the type of music I make is so personal. People feel like they can relate to me or that they are me. They feel like they know my whole life story even though we from different worlds. So when I go out and meet them in public, I don’t get a response like, “Kendrick, will you sign this real quick?” Or, “I wanna just take this picture with you.” No, they want to have full conversations. I find out that they live their lives by my music and that right there is something.



When I try to soak it all in, that’s the only thing that kind’ve scare me, feel me? Life is sad in general and I’m meeting these different people every day. It kind’ve snaps me back into reality outside of what I do. Outside of the girls, outside of the cars, the money, it really ain’t that important when you meeting somebody that’s still in the struggle. These the people that live their lives in dark spaces, every day , you know, and they use my music as some sort of tool to keep going, almost like a Bible, you know? These kids feel like they got nothing to believe in but they see me and say, “Kendrick, I believe in you. I believe in your music.” And what happens it puts me in some type of space where it’s almost like some type of worship or responsibility, but I know it. I can see it.

“Anything I say or do, I don’t take back, I don’t regret.”

I think one of my biggest assets is not knowing how famous I am. Or even excluding the word, I hate the word “famous.” I’m aware of it. I know people treat me different because of it. And the more I am aware of that and play into it, the more I become detached from the real world. So it’s really about balance. The more somebody opens the door for me and I walk through without acknowledging that they opened the door for me, the more I become separate from others.

I had a talk with Lauryn Hill and she said, “Try to completely throw away your ego.” How many times can you throw away an ego, you know? It’s tough. It’s something we all battle with. I battle with it all the time and the idea of being in all these places—the big spots, all the events, the lights—it’s all for your ego. It’s all for your own confirmation to be like, okay, I’m somebody. But truthfully, you’ve always been somebody. You don’t need the lights.



I try to think about that. Also, I like to look at old pictures and think of things from back in the day that kind of draws me back to where I came from. I think a lot of times when artists are in so much of the now, they only think of what’s ahead of them, which is cool. But I look at pictures of the small little apartment that I come from in Compton and things like that. And it always trips me out when I get too far out there where I’m missing phone calls or not responding to text messages on time or my peoples is hitting me, my moms is and I can’t get back to her. Sometimes you on the go and you forget about those little things.

It’s definitely a gift and a curse when you make music as personal as I make it. Of course you get the kids out there that say that they relate to you and this song saved their lives, and you helped them with their assignment for this and that. And then at the same time, your privacy is not respected. And all entertainers go through it, but moreso the ones that make very personal music, because it’s not just me you’re focusing on now when I’m out in public, but also on individual characters that I’m talking about in my music. So that’s a whole other ballgame and it’s just something that I’ve gotta accept.

“When I’m completely drained of inspiration, that’s when I’m finished with the project.”

I think the way it is, the positive aspect of me gaining more listeners and giving them some type of motivation and relatable effect, it’s more than running from somebody snapping a picture of my mom’s van that was on my album cover, that she actually still has. I’d never think that would happen, but it’s happened plenty of times to where she has to hide the van now. She can’t drive that thing no more. And she’s old school, she wanna drive it. But I never want them to be in this type of world, because not everybody can handle it. I think the average person wouldn’t be able to handle the day-to-day. It’s a lot of things you gotta deal with. So me doing that, it’s just a piece of me. I gotta find balance and try not to really get too frustrated over it.

I’d be lying to you to say I knew good kid, m.A.A.d city would be as successful as it has been. In the beginning I was very doubtful. Once I was done, the jitters hit me so fast. I was so confident in making it, because I was like, “This is it, man. Nobody heard this story and if you heard it, you heard it in bits and pieces but I’m finna put it to you in a whole album—from Compton, from the hood, from the streets—it’s a whole other perspective and light, I’ma go back and do the skits just like how Biggie and Dre and Snoop and ’Pac did it. And I’ma tell my story.” Then I wrapped up with it and said, “Man, what’s on the radio right now? I don’t think they doin’ skits and things like that.” I don’t know if the people are gonna understand what I’m talkin’ about on this album because it’s almost like a puzzle pieced together, and albums ain’t been created like this in a long time. Albums that actually still reach the masses, at least.



My whole outlook on being signed was to have an actual massive commercial successful album. This is what you think as a kid. You don’t know nothing about creative process and things like that. So I didn’t know how blessed I was to actually go and make an album that I can create and control 100 percent. When I was done with it, I was like, “Man, these people believe in me like this? They let me just do this whole thing by myself like this? I don’t know. Y’all sure I’m right?”

I was nervous because I didn’t think the people would understand it. And I get a call from Pharrell. He said he had a copy of the album and it’s amazing. And I was like, that call was right on time because that was when I was feeling super insecure about it. Pharrell said, “Never feel that way again. When that little negative man come behind your head, always follow your first heart, and that was your first heart, to put the album out like this.” This is his words verbatim, he said, “Watch what’s gonna happen.”

“I believe in this theory that when you get success and you get fame and money, it makes you be you times ten.”

When I come up to certain artists, artists that I’ve always looked up to, and they can recite my records that wasn’t the single, that puts me in a space where, okay, this is a person I always respect and to get their respect back was almost like confirmation for me. I always thought confirmation would be having a lot of money, and things I could do for my family. Because that was what we was taught when you come from these urban neighborhoods, you was taught that having money was success and that’s all you see, all you know. So once I got the money and everything else that comes with it, I felt like I wasn’t satisfied. I’m looking around like, this is great security, but I don’t even spend it on myself, I spend it on my loved ones. That makes me feel good knowing I can support somebody that’s in need. But at the same time, I’m feeling like, okay, what’s after this? So what I realized was, my greatest fulfillment of accomplishment was having somebody that I looked up to for so many years and knowing that I put in that same dedication and work and them saying, “Thank you.” And them being able to recite them lyrics.



I think the first time I played “Bitch, Don’t Kill My Vibe” for Andre 3000 was before it came out. I never share my album while I’m creating. I think that the situation with Andre was one of those things where he was in the studio with Dre and Dre was like, “Play some stuff .” I can’t say no to Dr. Dre. But me creating music, I never really play music for anybody, even people inside the camp because it can almost sway your creative process 100 percent. So along with that, I cut off everything on the radio; I really just duck off from music. Because I’m gonna be influenced and I don’t want to be. That has always been my process. I just feel like, it’s really the only prized possession that I actually can control, you know? It’s selfishness for sure, but it’s my selfishness and I own it.

I know a lot of people that go around and play music to get approval because some are not so confident in the things they do. But with me, personally, I can only speak for myself, this is me. Anything I say or do, I don’t take back, I don’t regret. That’s how I was feeling at the time and that’s how y’all gonna get it, and I own it. Love me or hate me, I own it. It is what it is. And that’s how I look at it.



From 13 years old to the time I was 21, I was in a mode of mastering how to be a rapper. Like a rapper’s rapper, using my tongue as a sword, a fuckin’ barbarian. That’s all it was about, slaying words. So when I turned 21, 22, somewhere around there, I got into a mode where it became more of a writer aspect for me rather than just being a rapper ’cause this is around the same time where cats weren’t putting out mixtapes anymore. They was putting out full bodies of work and wasn’t even signed to a major label. So by that time, that’s when I started developing and actually constructing my music from a writer’s point of view. good kid, m.A.A.d city was probably one of them albums that you could unfold out into a book and read it. And that’s how I treat everything. Everything is critical like that from here on out. It’s the art of writing.

“So you ask yourself in the midnight hour, ‘Who am I? Is this really what I’m supposed to be doing? How did I get here? Why am I doing this? What’s my responsibility?’”

This is more than just music for me. This is actually a piece of me. I’m obsessed with it. And that’s how I take it. When I make my music, it comes from a genuine space where I’m already spreading myself wide to the world. So during my process in creating it, that time is for me, personally. That’s for my heart, those are my memories that helped me up with these lyrics and get inspiration. That was my memories. Taking those inspirations and going into that booth, that’s something that I hold dear.

When I’m completely drained of inspiration, that’s when I’m finished with the project. When I start maybe trying to tamper with things that I shouldn’t tamper with, I’ve already had done, that’s when I’m done and I know I’ve exhausted inspiration. That comes with not wanting to actually rush the process. I always want to put it down to the last idea, and once I’m drawn away from it, that’s when I say, okay, let’s take all these pieces—they might not even be songs—let’s take these pieces and construct it. So what I want to say, and how I want to execute it becomes clear.



It’s the best part because the things that I say on my records—this is another reason why I don’t just play records for people—you won’t necessarily get it until it’s constructed. I know what type of artist I am. I’m not an artist that’s gonna give you a single and say, “This is what my album’s gonna sound like, go sell it.” That’s not me. I’m just not that artist to give you one or two songs here and there and run with it. Everybody has their own niche. With mine, I just own it, and I know that’s exactly what that is. And I wanna keep that lane. I don’t want to jump in somebody else’s lane and try to do their moves because it may not work for me like it worked for them. So I stay where I feel like I’m inspired.

What’s crazy to me is that I feel the same energy now that I felt before my first album. I know there’s lot of pressure for me on this new album but it don’t necessarily scare me. It’s almost confirmation, like, go in there and challenge yourself just the same way you challenged yourself the fi rst time. Because I remember going to radio stations and them telling me this: “Dr. Dre had Snoop Dogg, 50 Cent, Eminem, you seen what Eminem did, right? Yeah, uh huh. Kendrick Lamar, he from the West Coast, and Compton, too. Dre from Compton, you see the legacy he left. Yeah, so I hope that album is good. Matter fact, you got the weight on your shoulders right now.”

Thank you for that. Let me get in the studio now since you just put the battery in my back.



I thought I was going to win Best Rap Album at the Grammys. I put a lot of work in on my album and the biggest thing for me is knowing that it was basically an underground album. It didn’t have big No. 1 records on it and there wasn’t really any commercial hits. It was great songs and I think the message behind it reached as many listeners and believers as a super mainstream album. So for me, when you’re saying, “rap,” that would be my definition of something that deserved an accolade. Yep.

I found out a lot about myself in these past two years. It’s scary. I know more about myself now than any other point of my life. I believe in this theory that when you get success and you get fame and money, it makes you be you times ten. I was a pretty shy and to myself type of person as a kid. And now 15 years later I’m in front of people every day, tens of thousands of people. So that makes me more of a recluse. That makes me not come outside of my world on the outskirts of L.A. and bounce around different places and things like that.

“What I do is for a greater purpose and we all need money and things like that to survive, but the energy around some of these spaces, it can draw you into a crazy place.”

So you ask yourself in the midnight hour, “Who am I? Is this really what I’m supposed to be doing? How did I get here? Why am I doing this? What’s my responsibility?” It’s a real trippy thing, you feel me? And I think it’s something that nobody can understand; only an artist can. Things change for you with success when you get money. I noticed when people started treating me a little bit different, the people that I cared about the most, my close friends and family. The artist don’t necessarily change, it’s usually the people around them. Their expectations of you can sometimes be out of control. You can do one thing that can trigger something mentally in them that makes them think that you don’t care about them or you don’t fuck with them no more when that’s not the case. You’re just more focused on what you have to do because it’s bigger.



The moment I start seeing change in people around me, that’s when I know something is a little bit different. Then there’s tension in the air that I probably can’t necessarily deal with at the moment. ’Cause when the industry don’t understand me, and the business don’t understand me, these are the people I can run to. What happens when I can’t run to them?

Artists just get paranoid in any situation and circumstance. I’m always paranoid. I’m already a person who thinks a lot; sometimes I may overthink things or think too much. So when you’re put into a space where you feel like you can’t necessarily trust your close ones, that can do some whole other crazy thing to you psychologically. Seriously. All you got is you and God at the end of the day.

The hard time for me was probably when I was on the road. It’s almost like you go on the road and you’re gone for two years. And this place you’ve known your whole life, these people you’ve known your whole life, everything is different when you come back. And you feel like, damn, your sanctuary is now on that tour bus. That dirty, stinky, smelly tour bus. And that’s one thing, among numerous other things, that have been hard sometimes. To the point where people are pulling for you left and right, where you feel like you don’t have control over your own life. Over your own well-being.

What I do is for a greater purpose and we all need money and things like that to survive, but the energy around some of these spaces, it can draw you into a crazy place. And I’ve seen and heard some of the greats go out because of it. And I’m saying this right now to let everyone know, it’s real and you have to be mentally steady 100 percent in order to keep doing it at a high level and still maintain your sanity.

Check the Technique Volume 2 | More Liner Notes For Hip-Hop Junkies

Exclusive: The third book focusing on acclaimed Rap albums from author Brian Coleman includes chapters on Ice Cube's "AmeriKKKa's Most Wanted" and Raekwon's "Only Built 4 Cuban Linx..."

Author Brian Coleman’s third book, Check the Technique Volume 2: More Liner Notes For Hip-Hop Junkies, is slated to be released in October.

The 544-page book covers 25 acclaimed rap albums and will be released on Wax Facts Press. The book is available for a limited time pre-sale via Get On Down, which has released collector’s edition versions of such albums as Nas’ Illmatic and Souls Of Mischief’s 93 ’til Infinity.

People who pre-order the book prior to July 24 will receive an autographed copy of Check the Technique Volume 2: More Liner Notes For Hip-Hop Junkies prior to its release, as well as an exclusive 7-inch of Smif-N-Wessun’s 1995 song “Home Sweet Home,” a cut from its Dah Shinin’ album, one of the albums covered in the book.

The Boston-based Coleman released Rakim Told Me: Hip-Hop Wax Facts, Straight From the Original Artists. The ‘80s in 2005 and Check the Technique: Liner Notes for Hip-Hop Junkies in 2007. Chuck D and The Roots’ Questlove are among the artists who have endorsed Coleman’s books.

"Even though I had covered dozens of albums in the past two books, there were still so many more that I felt I needed to do,” Coleman says of Check the Technique Volume 2: More Liner Notes For Hip-Hop Junkies during an exclusive interview with HipHopDX. "As always, I go at these books and chapters as a fan. I figure that if I want to know certain things about my favorite albums, so do lots of other people. And I’m very happy with how it turned out. Doing these is a lot of work, but it’s also very satisfying because people seem to get into them. The highest compliment I can ever get is when people say, 'The first thing I would do after reading a chapter is to find that album and listen to it again.'”

Check The Technique Volume 2 Discusses Ice Cube, Raekwon, Smif-N-Wessun Albums
Check the Technique Volume 2 features chapters on Ice Cube’s AmeriKKKa’s Most Wanted, Raekwon’s Only Built 4 Cuban Linx… and Mos Def & Talib Kweli’s Are Black Star albums, among others.

Coleman says that his forthcoming book features more artistic depth than its precursors.

“The visual aspect of it has been hugely expanded since the last volume,” he says. "This one has over 350 images, gathered from many different places: licensed from photographers who shot these artists back when the albums in the book were out; magazine ads from when the albums were out; some very deep archival items — for example, parts of marketing brochures that the record company put out, talking about how to market these artists, original handwritten lyrics for songs — mostly provided by the legendary [Hip-Hop historian] Bill Adler, from his newly-donated Hip-Hop Archives at Cornell University; and also photos that some of the artists were kind enough to give me.

"I think that having the additional visuals helps the reading experience for consumers, because it’s not just huge chunks of text,” Coleman continues. "It makes it more interactive, in a way. Just like liner notes you might find in a reissue of your favorite album, in any genre.”

Two sample chapters from the book – 3rd Bass’ The Cactus Album, which is celebrating its twenty-fifth anniversary in 2014, and Smif-N-Wessun’s Dah Shinin’ (from 1995) — can be found here for a limited time:

Check the Technique Volume 2: More Liner Notes For Hip-Hop Junkies artwork is as follows:

Seven Burning Questions for 'Game of Thrones' Season Five

by:The Day Caller

Another year, another season and a lot of deaths. The “Game of Thrones” finale Sunday night didn’t disappoint, and even ended on an upbeat note (as much as the series can be upbeat).

But just because the season ended lightly, despite two confirmed major deaths and one probable major death, doesn’t mean “Game of Thrones” fans don’t still have a ton of questions. So while next season might still be a year (!) away, here are seven questions to think about until then.



1. How is Tyrion going to survive in the Free Cities?

Tyrion has made his way through Westeros because of his father’s wealth. He’s been able to pay his way out of any predicament by simply telling whichever threat he encounters, “A Lannister always pays his debts.”

That was when Tyrion had money to rely on. Now he’s on the run with Lord Varys to the free cities, and while I’m sure Varys took into account the funds, Tyrion doesn’t have the Casterly Rock vault to rely on anymore.

Plus, he’s obviously much more jaded and angry at the world at this point. It was one thing for his father to sentence him to death. In fact, it was almost expected, given how much Tywin hated his youngest son. Even Shae testifying against him was shocking and hurtful, but it didn’t faze Tyrion.

But seeing the two share a bed was too much for him. He got his sweet revenge on both of them in perhaps the most satisfying deaths of the series, save for Joffrey. Varys once said Tyrion is one of the only people in Westeros capable of ruling the country appropriately, but will this latest abuse cloud his usually pragmatic judgment or leave him seeing clearer than ever?

2. Who is the next Hand of the King?

With Tywin gone, there is a serious power vacuum in King’s Landing. As the Hand, the patriarch of the Lannister family controlled nearly every aspect of the government. Now that he’s dead, who becomes the puppet master?

There are a few candidates, each with some baggage. Most notably is Jaime Lannister. He’s been around three kings and Tywin now and knows the ropes. He’s smart and cunning as well. Plus with his hand gone, he’s of practically no use to the King’s Guard.

However, he’s still in the King’s Guard and takes his oath very seriously. Would he be willing to forgo that oath the become Hand next to his son?

There’s also Petyr Baelish, more commonly known as Little Finger. He was Master of Coin before marrying Lysa Arryn of The Veil. We’ve seen just how manipulative the man can be, so it makes sense he’d try to become the number two in the country. But he’s got baggage as well, namely Sansa Stark. The last we saw of Little Finger he was showing Robin Arryn how to be a man instead of a sickly boy and courting Sansa. We know he’s hungry for power, but would he risk Sansa — the daughter of his true love Catelyn Stark — for that power?

3. What’s going on with the dragons?

Daenerys Stormborn, the breaker of chains, showed that even she will break her rules. First, she allowed a man to sell himself back into slavery for a year, which even Barristan Selmy knew would lead to the exploitation of the older slaves.

Immediately following this meeting, a man came to Khaleesi weeping for his dead daughter. Drogon, Khaleesi’s black dragon, burned her alive. Khaleesi immediately chained up the other two dragons in the catacombs to stop them from injuring anybody else.

Will this lead to the dragons turning on her? She only has her power because the dragons burned the slavers of Astapor after she took over the Unsullied. Now that they’re trapped in a cave, will they still be the loyal beasts they have been or will they continue their independent streak and take it out on the young queen.

4. How are Stannis and the Night’s Watch going to handle the situation?

We saw the Jon Snow and the Night’s Watch defend The Wall against Mance Rayder and the wildlings. It looked a like they were about to broker a peace agreement before Stannis Baratheon showed up and took out much of Mance’s remaining army before capturing the King Beyond The Wall.

What’s going to happen to these wildlings? We know they’re on the run from some scary stuff, namely the White Walkers. But will the people of Westeros accept the wildlings into the fray against the monsters, or will they be shortsighted and simply enslave them?

Plus, what was up with Melisandre’s look toward Jon Snow? Her blue eyes were reminiscent of the White Walkers, which is a little eerie, and her gaze at Snow toward the end suggests she has a plan for him, probably something nefarious.

5. What’s Jorah going to do?

Jorah can’t catch a break. First, his unrequited love for Khaleesi is seriously depressing. Then he had to watch Daario Naharis leave her room after a night of intimacy. The final nail in the coffin came after someone presumably in the Lannister camp sent his pardon from to Mereen while they were in the thick of freeing the city.

Jorah is a man filled with transgressions. He was a slaver, something he’s at least shown a little remorse for. He also spied on Khaleesi almost to the point of her assassination before having a change of heart.

Now he’s on his own in Essos it seems. He’s a man without a country who is still loyal to Khaleesi, but it appears he will never be in her good graces again. So where is he going to roam, and how is he going to survive?

6. Is Arya about to go off in Bravos?

After nearly reuniting with her family multiple times, Arya is somewhat of an enigma. She didn’t return to Sansa for whatever reason and is obviously hell-bent on revenge at this point. She shared her list with The Hound before taking his money and fleeing to Bravos, leaving him for dead.

Why’s she going to Bravos? Well she does have a connection there: the mysterious Jaqen H’ghar. H’ghar is actually the identity of one of the Faceless Men of Bravos, a group of assassins. He killed three people at Arya’s request before giving her a steel token to find them if she ever were to get to Bravos.

Now that Arya has tasted her first murder, will she join the assassins, or simply learn from them to exact her revenge?

7. Where the hell are Benjen Stark, Gendry, Nymeria and Rickon?

It has been forever since we’ve seen Benjen Stark, and his whereabouts are one of the biggest of the series. He left early in season one to search out Mance Rayder, but never returned. The scouts he left with returned (and turned into wights), but Benjen was nowhere to be found. Surely George R. R. Martin wouldn’t be so cruel as to leave his location unanswered.

Speaking of missing, Gendry wasn’t seen this year at all. After being set adrift in a rowboat by Davos Seaworth for fear he would be sacrificed by Melisandre, the guy has simply been absent. It’s especially infuriating because, as Robert’s true son, he has the most legitimate claim to his throne

Rickon, along with Osha, split up with Bran after last season. I get that he doesn’t have many lines, but he is still a Stark and could potentially be Lord, or King, of the North.

Finally the saddest missing person isn’t even a person. Nymeria was last seen in season one after Arya sent her away for fear the Lannisters would murder her after defending Arya from Joffrey. All the deaths in the series don’t quite compare to the sadness in the eyes of the dog after Arya threw a rock to get her to leave.

So where the hell are all these characters?

George RR Martin might add eighth book to Song of Ice and Fire series

Game of Thrones: George RR Martin might add eighth book to Song of Ice and Fire series


The US author's editor has hinted that another novel could still be added

George RR Martin fantasy novel series, A Song of Ice and Fire, may be extended to eight books rather than the confirmed seven, reports suggest.

The author’s editor Anne Groell hinted at the possibility during a Q & A session with fans, many of whom follow Game of Thrones, the hit HBO TV series based on the books.

Groell recalled how Martin’s epic saga began as a trilogy, before evolving into a longer series after she pushed for “seven books for seven kingdoms”.

Since then Groell has learned that, technically, there are eight kingdoms, “all having to do with who has annexed what when Aegon the Conqueror landed in Westeros”.

Groell discovered more about Martin’s imaginary setting while editing The World of Ice and Fire, a forthcoming companion book to help fans navigate the expansive areas described in the novels.r> Martin’s most recent instalment, A Dance with Dragons, was published in 2011, but Martin is famous for long gaps between releases.

He has spoken previously of finding it hard to keep up with fans’ demands, while Groell has tried “multiple times” to encourage him to work on the road. “He is one stubborn man and very set in his ways,” she revealed.

At present, Martin is working on the sixth book in the series, The Winds of Winter, which has yet to be completed. “When I have a (publication) date, you will have a date,” Groell promised.

In March, Martin dropped fans the surprise of a new chapter, “Mercy”, which is still available to read on his website.

Despite speculation over an eighth, Martin is under contract for just seven books, with UK publisher Jane Johnson unable to confirm whether or not there would be more.

“In all honesty only George knows how many books there will be in the series and he’s not saying,” she told the Guardian. “Indeed, at this stage of his writing, with the many branching pathways of the characters’ stories still to intersect, he may not know.”

Johnson then admitted that the chance of Martin tying up all the loose ends in only two more books seems unlikely. “But if George continues to kill off characters in his usual ruthless fashion it could easily be over in the planned seven books!” she said.

Questlove | Does Black Culture Need to Care About What Happens to Hip-Hop?

This is the sixth in a weekly series of six essays looking at hip-hop's recent past, thinking about its distant past, and wondering about the possibility of a future. Read the first one Click Here, the second one Click Here, the third one Click Here, the fourth one here Click Here, and the fifth one Click Here.

It's time for the showdown. Get ready for the lowdown. We've come to the end of the road.

When I started this series of columns six weeks ago, I wanted to think through a series of issues: why the bulk of contemporary African-American culture has defaulted into hip-hop, why materialistic narratives seem to dominate the genre, what has happened to the concept of black cool, what increasingly anemic sales mean for both big stars and independent artists, and where all of this leaves us.

It leaves us here, in the sixth and final column, thinking about all these things. Sometimes when you think, you come up empty. But when I go back through this series in my mind, I come up so full that I’m not sure what to do next. Three decades plus into this exciting and vibrant genre, there are some serious structural problems that seem almost insoluble. There are times that I feel that the whole thing is perched on the edge of a cliff and time is about to push it off.

When I think that, I always find my thoughts returning to music. Not to music as an aesthetic category, but to music in the social sense. Music can be created by an individual or a group, but it is meant to be heard by others. It operated that way as ritual (in weddings and funerals, in wars and parades) long before it was ever preserved as a physical product, or sold as a commercial one. Music is something that happens between people. This is true for classical music or instrumental jazz, but it's true with one added dimension for a music like hip-hop, because it's narrative by nature. As a result, it's music between people that is also explicitly about people.

These are the basics. Let's color outside the lines a little bit. Sun Ra said that space is the place, but there's race in the space also. Hip-hop is inseparable from black America and black Americans, who are either creators or consumers or subject matter, or sometimes all three. Like it or not, it exerts a pull on the black community. It can pull us up or it can pull us down or it can pull us apart.

Does black culture need to care about what happens to hip-hop? Does it need a cultural force like hip-hop at all? I can't predict the future. If I could, I'd have put a bundle on California Chrome. But I can say that black culture has needed that historically. The famous black academic Charles S. Johnson, who was instrumental in the Harlem Renaissance, published a magazine for black Americans called Opportunity; its title sent a different message than W.E.B. DuBois's Crisis, but they were two sides of the same coin. Johnson thought (knew?) that the arts were important because black Americans were denied equal treatment in many other respects. The arts, he figured, could be a site of resistance.

Resistance here doesn't mean revolution. It doesn't mean storming the barricades. Resistance means using art for the things that it does best, which is to create human portraits and communicate ideas and forge a climate where people of different races or classes are known to you because they make themselves known. In the simplest terms, art humanizes. It opens the circuit of empathy. And once that process happens, it's that much harder to think of people as part of a policy or a statistic. Art reverses the alienation that can creep into society. After Johnson, after DuBois, the Harlem Renaissance itself stalled, largely as a result of the Great Depression, and many of the economic gains made by African-Americans were lost, but cultural influence persisted. You could make an argument that it was as important as anything for speeding along the very real political and social gains of the '50s and '60s.

That's what music has been good for, historically, in the black community. Jazz did that. It forced the mainstream to see black musicians as virtuosos with complex ideas and powerful (and recognizable) emotions. How are you going to treat someone as less than human, in any way, once they've been so deeply human in full view? Soul music did that, because it addressed universal romantic problems. Who has trouble identifying with a Smokey Robinson lyric? No one human, that's for sure. Hip-hop started from that premise. It was rooted there. It didn't shy away from the fact that America, built the way it was, made certain economic and social advances difficult for African-Americans, but it also made an entire community visible, impossible to ignore, impossible to dehumanize. Hip-hop, because of the way that it was made, because of what it was at its heart, blazed new trails and also recontextualized the past. Where other musics, like disco, were plastic to the point where they started to feel like factory product, early hip-hop was the perfect music for an era of flexible accumulation: fast on its feet, fleet with its thoughts. It could range and roam and shine a light into any corner of the culture.

Six weeks ago, at the beginning of this series, I opened with quotes from John Bradford, Albert Einstein, and Ice Cube. Between them, they sketched out their own version of this idea. Bradford talked about luck and providence (“There but for the grace of God go I”); Einstein talked about community (“spooky action at a distance”); and Ice Cube talked about appetite (“Life ain’t nothing but bitches and money”). Those three ideas outline a triangle, and inside that triangle are people reflecting on their own good fortune, recognizing that they’re connected to others, grappling with their own aspirations. Hip-hop has a responsibility to these ideas, and because of that, a responsibility not to fall victim to other ideas that actively obstruct them. This responsibility doesn’t fall to individual artists in a narrow way. There will always be artists who want to be shallowly materialistic or who permit themselves to be reduced to caricature. But the broader genre needs to balance them off with other kinds of artists, other perspectives, and there’s been a steady move away from that kind of balance for the last decade at least. Culture needs to struggle against meaninglessness and flattening. That's why it's vital that one of those sites of meaningless shouldn't be the culture itself.

These may seem like uncontroversial ideas — that art should, at some level, be about humanity, and that culture should, in some way, be a tool for fighting adversity. But any support for those ideas have to have better practices attached to them than the ones that have taken over hip-hop. People pick up on the ideas that pop culture puts down, so if one of those ideas is that only so-called winners get a platform, which they then use to talk more about their winning, that will seep into the groundwater. Contemporary hip-hop worries too much about the bottom line, which is lower than it's ever been. If you dive for it, you may find yourself stuck down there. And being stuck down there means mean fewer options for future artists, more investment in stereotypical portraits of hip-hop acts (some encouraged by the acts themselves), and less empathy all around. It’s important not to let this whole thing eat itself. It's more than important. It is, in a sense, everything.

I’ll end with two examples from the early '70s, around the time I was born, when soul music seemed as if it was largely fulfilling these responsibilities. In fact, if there’s one era in the history of popular music where community awareness and social contract seem secure, it’s the soul music of the early '70s. And yet, and yet. In 1972, after the success of What’s Going On, Marvin Gaye started an album of explicitly political songs in the vein of “Inner City Blues (Makes Me Wanna Holler).” The first track from that set, and the projected title track, “You’re the Man,” went after political candidates. If you have a plan, Gaye sang, then I’ll give you my vote, but you have to handle real problems: busing in schools, urban economics. The most piercing part of the song is a repeated spoken-word couplet:

Don't you understand
There's misery in the land

Gaye had different politics than Berry Gordy, and Gordy didn’t throw much support behind the “You’re the Man” single, which stalled mid-chart, after which the album was shelved. Two decades later, after Gaye’s death, tracks started to appear on compilations. Some of these were open-ended laments for society’s short-sightedness (“Where Are We Going?”); others were more specific arguments about the dangers of controlling others (“Piece of Clay”) or the hypocrisy of objecting to sex in the face of so many other kinds of social pornography, from poverty to violence to pollution (“The World Is Rated X”). The details may have shifted, but the core of Gaye’s argument remains intact. When we resist cultural acts that directly address the complexity of the human condition, both intellectually and emotionally, we reduce ourselves. The second example is an extended quote from Bobby Womack. Is there any other kind? This particular quote is the monologue that preceded his 1971 cover of the Carpenters’ “Close to You.” In his rap, Womack doesn't talk about the complications of black cool, or the history of social responsibility in the arts. He focuses only on one aspect, which is the pressure of the market, and how it can both insidiously and obviously strip all meaning out of artwork, draining and demoralizing its artists by insisting they need to satisfy some impersonal notion of product. The fact of the matter, of course, is that Womack had no problem covering pop songs — he did it all the time, from “Sweet Caroline” to “Fire and Rain” — but he frequently added material up top or improvised to make the material more personal, more empathetic. As he goes through his monologue, Womack does exactly what he worries he isn't being allowed to do — he paints a full picture of himself as a thinking, feeling, suffering, achieving human, capable of irony and insight, impossible to reduce to a caricature.

Sittin' here sippin' on a glass of wine and I'm trying my best not to lose my mind. You know, thinkin' about the word. Heh, "commercial": That's a funny, funny, funny word! Ya know what's funnier than that? When show people use it. You know what I'm talking about, record companies, presidents, vice-presidents, producers — and a little ol' engineer. But, you know what? I feel, down in my heart, I don't care what it is. If I can get into it, it's commercial enough for me. But anyway, I remember a little while back, I walked into a recording studio with just me and my guitar. Heh. And I remember starting out on a song … sort of went something like this … well, it had the same melody, anyway. The head man called in, the president, vice-president, and just one of his producers, and an engineer. You know they all sit around with their heads dropped down while I was trying to get over. You could hear a pin fall. I know y'all know what I'm talking about. And I'm steady trying to get over. But anyway, after I got through doing my thing — or should I say, doing the best that I could — I’ll never forget what they told me. One of the cats got up and say, “I like you, and I ain't saying that you can't sing.” But as they all began to leave the conference table, they kept saying “But you're not commercial. No, you’re not commercial!" So, I went on out or, should I say, I sold out. But like I've said before, music is music, that's how it is — and that's the way it is. Well, I didn’t change my style because I still had the same heart but just like the man said, he said, “Bobby, it’s got to be funky.” I came back and said, “I want to sing something. I want to sing.”

And then he does.

J DILLA’S DONUTS BOOK BY JORDAN FERGUSON

If there was ever an album we've released which could inspire a 130-page book, it's J Dilla's Donuts – one of our proudest releases, by an artist we were blessed to work with, and a work that took on special significance when J Dilla passed away just after it's release. 33 1/3 books (a series devoted to classic albums) is publishing the title J Dilla's Donuts on April 24th.

Author Jordan Ferguson interviewed pretty much everyone associated with the album's creation - Stones Throw's PB Wolf, Jeff Jank, Eothen Alapatt - and many of Dilla's associates in his L.A. and Detroit years. The book is not merely a behind the scenes look at the creation of Donuts, but a look at Dilla's career as a whole, his influences, his music styles, and the art of the music itself. The jacket reads, "Drawing from philosophy, critical theory and musicology, as well as Dilla's own musical catalog, Jordan Ferguson shows that the contradictory, irascible and confrontational music found on Donuts is as much a result of an artist's declining health as it is an example of what scholars call 'late style,' placing the album in a musical tradition that stretches back centuries."

About the author: Jordan Ferguson is based in Toronto and writes on his own blog Poetry for Grave Diggers.

About the publisher: 33 1/3 Books is a series of short volumes each devoted to a classic album. Published by Bloomsbury, the series was launched in 2003 and has published nearly 100 titles.

Pre-order for April 24th release.

Sneakers: The Complete Limited Editions Guide by U-Dox

Books don't get the respect they deserve these days, but if you're one that loves the feel of an actual hardcover, and are a sneakerhead, this is a book for you!

Creative agency U-Dox recently completed its latest project, a book entitled Sneakers: The Complete Limited Editions Guide. Published by Thames & Hudson, the 256-page tome features over 300 of the best and most coveted limited edition sneaker releases from the last decade from 15 different brands, from Nike to BAPE to Saucoy to Adidas and it represent 100 of the finest in sneaker collaboration history.

Sneakers is currently available for pre-order at Amazon.com and is set to drop on April 1st from London’s U-Dox creative agency.