On his twenty-ninth birthday, Baby Williams gave a party for two or three thousand in the New Orleans Superdome. Baby and his older brother Slim ran Cash Money, the hottest rap label in the city, and they liked to live large.
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On his twenty-ninth birthday, Baby Williams gave a party for two or three thousand in the New Orleans Superdome. Baby and his older brother Slim ran Cash Money, the hottest rap label in the city, and they liked to live large.
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‘The anglophone world, we have to infer, has run out of words for its own feelings.’
Daisy Hildyard on the wisdom of scarecrows.
‘What is the read receipt for?’
Lillian Fishman on texting, power and the ethics of leaving a friend on read.
‘Like pretty much everyone who uses the internet, I have seen many terrible things that I did not search for and that I cannot unsee.’
Rosanna McLaughlin on what the internet thinks she wants.
‘I have a pathological addiction to the internet, which I indulge with the excuse of making art. It rarely translates to anything good and mostly leaves me overstimulated and afraid.’
Paul Dalla Rosa on excess and the internet.
‘rumors of bees on speedwell, / no oxidative stress just / effortless pollination’
Two poems by Sylvia Legris.
Nik Cohn (also Nick Cohn) was born in London in 1946. He is the author of numerous books on rock and pop music, including Awopbopaloobop Alopbamboom. His most recent work is Triksta : Life and Death and New Orleans Rap (Knopf 2005). He is originally from Northern Ireland.
More about the author →‘Across the river, in a Catholic enclave in the Waterside district, there was a disused funeral home in which, three nights a week, at 6d a shot, contraband teen movies could be sat through and sometimes seen, according to the state of the projector.’
‘I ask my wife what she means by kidnap exactly, but she says never mind’.
‘In every other respect – colour, country, creed – these people might have nothing in common. Some were convicted criminals, others sought political asylum, still others had overstayed their visas or were accused of Green Card frauds, and a few might even be mistakes, the victims of computer or human error. But this one bond was absolute.’
‘I turn to O’Connor’s music when I get tired of lying to myself. Her songs are allegorical free-falls. Spiritual chiaroscuros, even.’
Momtaza Mehri on Sinéad O’Connor.
‘Is there in fact a jostling for dominance between the art forms, some barely suppressed competitiveness?’
Adam Mars-Jones on music and ceremony.
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