A new James Brown Biography by RJ Smith, senior editor at Los Angeles Magazine and author of The Great Black Way: L.A. in the 1940s and the Lost African-American Renaissance, will be released on March 15, 2012.

Here is what the New York Times had to say about it:

For starters Mr. Brown’s theatrics will explain why “The One” is this book’s title. It describes but doesn’t come from Mr. Brown’s stature. Instead it denotes his signature emphasis on the first beat in a four-beat measure. “The upbeat is rich, the downbeat is poor,” Mr. Brown said, explaining that tactic in typically cryptic but catchy fashion. He also liked to say that he wore his hair in a big bouffant “so people don’t say where he is, but there he is.”

That way with words, and of course the music and persona, made Mr. Brown a culture critics’ darling. Other books — including “The James Brown Reader,” an anthology that spans 50 of his 73 years — talk about him abundantly, but Mr. Smith is a writer who talks back. For instance he describes Mr. Brown’s recording of “It’s a Man’s Man’s Man’s World” as “a most peculiar ad for virility: a promise that it will make you alone, depraved and howling like a jackal.” And about Mr. Brown’s treatment of those around him, Mr. Smith (who spoke to many sources) writes: “Cruel powers. Everybody has a story or 10.” “The One” describes a childhood so tough and raw that it may help explain what made the adult Mr. Brown such a terror. Mr. Smith writes about Mr. Brown’s early years on the Georgia-South Carolina border, the tumultuous region in which he spent most of his life. By his teenage years he had been left by both parents, picked cotton, shined shoes, been a boxer, lived in a brothel and been sent to juvenile institutions where the emphasis on orderliness and rules made a big impression. As a traveling musician he fired band members for real and imagined trespasses. This book says he imposed a $100 fine for using Vaseline to fake a shine on shoes.

“The One” follows Mr. Brown’s rise as a live performer whose stage tricks sometimes had pragmatic origins. When audiences threw coins, “Brown quickly deduced the advantage of busting out a flamboyant stage-front split at such moments,” Mr. Smith writes. Some of these stories come from Mr. Brown’s 1987 book, “The Godfather of Soul,” but Mr. Smith culls, shapes and amplifies them very well.

“The One” also describes Mr. Brown’s difficulties in making records: His tough mug was not initially used on album covers, and his music was not well suited to short, radio-friendly songs. Then there was the crossover problem. When he was booked on “American Bandstand” in 1961, Mr. Smith writes, what Mr. Brown could look out and see was “a white audience still beyond his reach.” Though he reached large white audiences mostly when he was past his prime with black listeners, Mr. Brown turned his vocal specialty into something universally recognizable. “It is an amazing thing to hear a scream vibrate like that, and it shows the control Brown has over a technique most often used to signify a loss of control,” Mr. Smith writes. This is an insight that describes much more than Mr. Brown’s music.

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Questlove wrote the following on Don Cornelius in his article on Okayplayer:

“Don Cornelius was my first non musical non celeb non blood related hero….Most won’t get it til now (especially now that he’s gone) but i pray that Don knew of the appreciation he had in all of us born after 1968.”

Read Full Article Here

Harvard’s Nieman Foundation for Journalism is joining forces with the Berkman Center for Internet & Society, to launch the Nieman-Burkman Fellowship in Journalism Innovation.

Candidates will be asked to propose a specific course of study or project relating to journalism innovation. That proposal could deal with any issue relating to journalism’s digital transformation. The Nieman-Berkman Fellow will be able to draw upon the wealth of resources available at Harvard and in the surrounding area for his or her work.

The project guidelines are very broad and open to a wide array of things including social media to mobile consumption to business models of online journalism and candidate criteria are also very lenient. Someone who works on the publishing or technology sides of a news organization could be a strong candidate, even if they aren’t reporters or editors.

Deadline to Apply is Feb. 15.

Joan Myers Brown and the Audacious Hope of the Black Ballerina from Micky McKeon on Vimeo.

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Check out @VintageExpresso on Twitter and at her new Online Boutique http://www.vintageexpresso.com/.

Happy Holidays!!!

Check out these stunningly beautiful intense photos by Richard Mosse taken in 2010 in the Eastern Congo.

Richard Mosse – Infra (Link)

Wayne Sutton, one of the men profiled in the CNN Black In America Silicon Valley special, posted this on his site SocialWayne.com

Now that I’ve seen it I’ll say that the documentary is not stage at all and it’s 99% accurate BUT it’s also only about 10% of everything that happen this summer.

To be fair Jason Samuels wanted two hours or at least 90 minutes for Black In America 4 but CNN only gave him one hour for the show. That’s tough to try to fit everything in one hour especially when CNN recorded over 300 hours worth of footage this summer. Regardless I’m very grateful for the one hour.

Notes below of things you won’t see while the cameras were rolling this summer.

1. Coffee shops in Mountain View, CA – The NewME startup house was in Mountain View, CA & many of the founders worked out of Red Rock Cafe, StarBucks and the Mountain View Library
2. Three other startups in NewME Accelerator 2011 were One School, Central.ly and AisleFinder
3. The NewME Accelerator had over 25+ different great mentor and speakers. You can see them here http://www.newmeaccelerator.com/speakers-mentors/
4. Coworking – We did a lot of coworking from Citizen Space, Tagged and at the NewMe startup house
5. Black Founders welcome event. Our first Sunday in CA, Black Founders held a meetup/welcome event. Thanks again.
6. About the midway point we had a “practice” pitch session at Blue Run Ventures, with Jay Jamison. This was a big deal, Blue Run Ventures is known as where paypal was funded.
7. There were some amazing speaker dinners at the house. Two notable ones were with Tristan Walker right after his birthday and with Shellye Archambeau.
8. Mentor sessions at Tagged. It was great to see how both mentors and the founders interacted
9. Dinner with Soledad O’Brien at the NewME startup house. That was an interesting, fun day.
10. The cookouts! Hank Williams was the man on the grill. You’ll see some of that in the documentary.
11. The July 4 cookout was epic! Come on, 8 black people in one house, you know we were having a cookout on July 4th.
12. Driving… I mean a lot of driving. The house was in Mountain View and a lot of our meetings/mentor sessions were in San Francisco. Not to mention giving people rides.
13. There was a lot of trash in the house, I mean, it was.. ok you can use your imagination.
14. Dirty Dishes … we told everyone to clean up after themselves but somehow I did a lot of dish washing. #justsayin
15. Hajj Flemings after dark.. that was the saying after midnight but it wasn’t just Hajj we had some epic/funny conversations late at night.
16. Google sent various team members from Youtube, App Engine, Android and Oath to talk with us. Thanks Google.
17. Tagged, I can’t say enough about Tagged. The cofounders gave us an awesome talk, they hosted us for coworking and the closing party.
18. Pizza… that is all.
19. Keep in mind that we started planning NewME Accelerator around February/March 2011
20. Demo day was great! A big thanks to Mitch Kapor and team at Kapor Capital for hosting us. I wish you could see all of the demo day pitches.
21. Stephen DeBerry and Stephen Adams. I don’t care what color you are, if you ever get a chance to talk with either one of these guys. Value it, listen and learn.
22. The Fights! …wait. we didn’t have any fights. Sorry to disappoint you but there were a few heated conversations at times. All in the family.
23. Jason Samuels, as the Black In America 4 producer he’s behind the camera. He’s a great guy and I appreciate him reaching out about filming us for Black In America 4.
24. To be fair…I was wearing a baseball cap. Watch the documentary & you’ll understand.
25. We met MC Hammer and Chamillionaire. Both were interviewed about NewMe and Silicon Valley but it didn’t make the cut.
26. Here’s the roommate format:
Tiffani Bell with Angela Benton
Crisson Jno-Charles with Hajj Flemings
Anthony Fraiser with Wayne Sutton
Pius Uzamere (dinning room air mattress)
Hank Williams (dinning room air mattress)

Please don’t read this as a dis or as if Black In America 4 is not going to be good, it’s still must watch tech tv!. A big thank you to Jason Samuels, CNN, Soledad O’Brien, all of the NewME Accelerator, speakers, mentors, sponsors and the Silicon Valley community.

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Watch BET Interview With DMC discussing “My Adidas” Below

NYC Rising, sponsored by SESAC, Brooklyn Industries, Reverbnation and The Muse Box, tonight at Pianos (158 Ludlow St. New York, NY) featuring MaG, Little Devil, Julien Funk, and Tayisha Bushay. Show starts at 8PM