REUBEN'S GOT A BLOG!

From Reuben's Emcee of the Month:

Hello Everyone!

So here it is, my blog. I’m not quite sure where it’s headed, but I’m fairly certain of how I’d like it to begin. My hope is to inspire discovery and discussion of emcees and hip hop artists that happen to catch the attention of myself and/or the greater hip hop community. Each month I’ll post a new artist, and each week I’ll highlight a song, album, or performance from the artist that I feel may have musical or performative significance. Also, whatever gets posted will probably be DOPE! Hopefully, there will be a healthy, robust, and productive conversation that may lead to some level of enrichment or enlightening for all those concerned. I don’t think there can ever be too much of that, do you?

Now, I don’t plan on sticking to the topic all the time. Throughout the course of a month, we all have an innumerable amount of engaging and stimulating experiences that may or may not be related to who we think we are. So there will probably be many occasions in which I will post something that will have little to nothing to do with hip hop, and I think that’s okay. I hope you will be compelled to participate in those discussions as well!

And PLEASE feel free to bring anything to my attention that you feel may be relevant. I’ll also be incredibly grateful if you correct me when I’m wrong. I can’t catch it all!

With that, allow me to present my very first Emcee of the Month: Asher Roth.

More here.

Reuben was far and away my favorite classmate in the graduate acting program at LSU. I mean, don't get me wrong; I love all six of the people who shared the art and theater grind with me for three years in Baton Rouge during the middle of the last decade. But Reuben was and continues to be very much a kindred spirit to me. He understands the connection between art, culture, and politics. He loves jazz. He's very left wing. He's always got sophisticated insight on pretty much anything he puts his mind to.

I'll never forget my first conversation with him. We were waiting for our audition slots to get into the program at LSU, and we started talking about the film Scarface, the remake with Pacino, not the original. My take was that the film is obviously a comedy, and that Tony Montana is one of the funniest characters in film history--this is no joke, either; the original version continues to be somewhat controversial among critics, some of whom asserting strongly that the movie has to be considered comedic. Reuben countered with the fact that lots of confused young men worship Tony Montana as a sort of fucked up role model, whether the film is a comedy or not, which was a damned good point.

Reuben also hosted a Sunday morning radio show at the university's student-run station while we were at LSU, where he played cool music, and had some of his actor pals come in occasionally to talk about art and theater. It's looking like his blog will be something of an extension of his radio work. Really, I'm pretty excited. I'm getting the sense that he's going to be using his love for and encyclopedic knowledge of hip hop as a staging ground for discussing, well, everything.

And his first Emcee of the Month, Asher Roth, is pretty dope, indeed, to borrow from Reub's groovy lexicon. Go check it out. It's already good reading.

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