Jay-Z’s American Gangster Is the Real Thing

The rapper Jay-Z recently told a reporter that Ridley Scott’s American Gangster, the film that opened on Nov. 2 depicting the dazzling rise and precipitous fall of the 70’s Harlem drug kingpin Frank Lucas, compelled him to write “a back story to the story.”Jay Z’s back story is released today in record stores as a Read More

The Beating Heart of Soul Spreads a ‘Gospel Vision’

Higher Ground: Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin, Curtis Mayfield, and the Rise and Fall of American Soul, by Craig Werner. Crown, 352 pages, $24.

In the 1960′s, the term “soul music” defined the deepest in black American pop. Now it seems caught in history’s aspic, like Yippies, love-ins and transcendental meditation. Soul’s latest replacement, “neo-soul” Read More