How I Came To Be Called “Butt Manager.” For Real.

Come have a laugh at my expense tonight: I’ll be telling my personal stories from the “Baby Got Back” era tonight at The Soundtrack Series (alongside luminaries like Maura Johnston and Sasha Frere-Jones) at New York City’s Le Poisson Rouge (The Red Fish, for you Freedom Fries folks), 158 Bleecker Street in money makin’ Manhattan. […]

Def Jam: The First 25 Years Of The Last Great Record Label

The new book that I co-authored with Bill Adler and Cey Adams — Def Jam: The First 25 Years Of The Last Great Record Label (Rizzoli) — is out this week. (Click HERE to buy the book.) So much more than a “coffee table” book, it’s a comprehensive oral history of the label. The book […]

Sylvia Robinson (1936-2011)

Sylvia Vanderpool Robinson — the woman who produced the first commercially successful hip-hop record and perhaps the first female record producer in history — died this morning of heart failure. She was 75. (I know that some accounts have her birthday in 1938, not 1936, but from family accounts I believe the earlier date is […]

Dan Charnas In Vibe Magazine’s “Juice” Issue

Me upon hearing the news: “You guys have an issue about Jews? Nice!” Many thanks to the good folks at Vibe for this inexplicable honor. One of those kinds of features that you read, but never imagine you’d be in. Great to share a page with dream hampton for the first time since our days […]

Honorable Mention From The Dean

Music criticism may be going the way of the CD in the Internet age, as critics no longer have much of a lead on fans in procuring new music, and fans have more platforms than ever to share their opinions directly with each other. We have, alas, become the squeezed-out middlemen. But folks my age […]