For the ladies, since I know you all love a sharp dressed man. Photography by Ben Watts.
Check out the photos below…
If you think pinstriped suits with bold, chalky lines will make you look like a douchey 1980s Wall Street wannabe, you haven’t seen this slimmer, shorter, altogether cooler new generation. Here, New York Giants breakout Victor Cruz proves these suits have a whole new swagger.
Producer Diplo and photographer Shane McCauley are launching the zine series “Blow Your Head”. Each volume is an 8 x 10 inch, 96 page black and white softcover printed in a limited edition of 1,500 copies.
Each volume will explore a different country and musical genre. For [the first] volume, the duo traveled through Trenchtown, visiting Tuff Gong Studios, Gee Jam Studios and Sugarman Beach, documenting the most cutting-edge music and dance with candid photographs of the players and venues.
It’s safe to say that Mr. London has been a very busy man lately. Aside from his music and his new album, he’s set to drop a collaboration with fashion brand Cole Hann, The ‘Cole Haan Theophilus Blue Suede Buck,’ and is featured on the cover of the newest issue of Wax Poetics, along with soul + jazz legend Nina Simone.
Check out the details on the Cole Hann collaboration & Wax Poetics issue below…
Theophilus London has teamed up with classic American brand, Cole Haan, on a blue suede hard-bottom shoe. Check out the photos above.
The “Cole Haan Theophilus Blue Suede Buck” looks awesome and is the dress shoe to have this season. The collab comes complete with a 10″ vinyl of London’s cover of Nat King Cole’s “Calypso Blues.”
The navy uppers are made with nubuck suede from American cowhides, which means the shoe, offset with a bright blue outsole, is a quality hard-bottom — complete with gold embellishments to the eyets and cobble nails, and traditonal cobbling techniques like a “Gentleman’s Corner” to keep pant cuffs from catching the heel. The perforated leather lining and foam latex foot bed ensures that you can go sockless comfortably too. Swag.
Nina Simone had no filter. She spoke with candor about civil rights when many in her position didn’t dare. She sang about uncomfortable subjects and made sure her audiences understood what those songs were really about.
Setting the contemporary archetype for a breakthrough artist, Theophilus Lonon dropped three mixtapes before releasing any product for sale. Utilizing a mix of ’80s downtown art/music aesthetics and postmodern viral freedom, he put art ahead of commerce and gained fame without the help of a major label or marketing push.
After the jump, check out the invite for the Cole Hann shoe release event…
He was a giant of the Jamaican sound system, hiding in plain sight. Hear him tell his story in the video below…
Cyril ‘Count C’ Braithwaite (1926-2011) was an original Jamaican sound system success story. From his yard at 6 Wellington Street in West Kingston, Jamaica Count C helped to shape modern pop culture and personally mentored more than a few international music careers. A contemporary of Tom the Great Sebastian and a rival to Duke Reid, Count C was a trendsetter and tastemaker before dancehall, reggae, rocksteady or ska. Little known outside of West Kingston… inside he was the Wizard of the West.
Read more on Count C in the latest issue of Wax Poetics.
Shaggy sits down with The FADER to speak on his new album and how he got started in the game. Check out the excerpt below…
Your new album is called Summer in Kingston. Do you live in Jamaica full-time? I live in Kingston. When I tell people I live in Kingston, they start fearing for my life. People ask me if I have internet in Jamaica. Like, seriously? So my thing was just to make a really feel-good record with feel-good videos and show the Jamaica that I live in. My favorite time in Kingston is actually Christmas, but summer is great. I like being on Maiden Cay and Lime Cay. Hellshire has a fishing festival. But I’m not a fan of the countryside. I’ll go for three days, then I get bored and that’s it. There’s only so much beaches, sun and laying out I can do. I want to be in the midst of the madness that’s going on. Kingston is pretty small. It’s a ten minute drive to everywhere and everything. In New York, anything you want, you can get it. Jamaica’s kind of the same way—I’m going to go by the bar, then get some tracks and records, some food, watch a game. There’s something happening every night. Jamaica’s a very rich country, as far as music and street dances are concerned.
Was recording culture in Jamaica different when you were getting started? Actually I started recording mainly in New York, which has a huge dancehall community. I was with the Rough Entry crew—me, Red Fox, Screechy Dan. We were running the place. After we blew up with “Boombastic,” we started going back down to Jamaica and opened Big Yard studio with my former manager, Robert Livingston. Big Yard was like a complex that people were invited to. If you got drums to lay, need some bass, Sly and Robbie come around and deal with it. Dean Fraser was the greatest saxophone player out of Jamaica. You could call him up like, Yo! Dean! I need that sax on this! That’s Kingston. Boom boom boom, get it done.
Interesting views on Hip-Hop from Nore. Check out the video below…
“I saw an interview with Fab where he was like ‘Yeah, my pops is Dominican,’ and I kind of thought that was strange because he’s supposed to say ‘I’m Dominican.’…I wish Fab would rep his shit a little bit more…I wish Juelz would rep it a little bit more.” – NORE, when asked about the 50 Most Influential Latino Rappers Of All Time list.
LIFE takes their readers through a photo gallery of a religion seldom seen in it’s true light. Check out the description below…
Few religions are as misunderstood and as steeped in often-cartoonish misapprehension as Haitian Vodou. Countless people around the globe, shown images of a ceremony, might confidently say, “Yes, that is Vodou.” But very few, when pressed, could coherently discuss the core tenets of the belief.
For photographer Anthony Karen, who has traveled extensively in Haiti over the years, Vodou is at once a fascinating subject and — in a very real sense — the gateway to his vocation.
“About 13 years ago,” he told LIFE.com, “I was in a difficult, transitional point in my life. Out of nowhere, I felt Haiti calling to me. I traveled there, and saw two Vodou ceremonies in person. On the same trip, I discovered my passion for photojournalism.” Here, LIFE.com presents previously unpublished pictures of a June 2011 Haitian Vodou ceremony, along with Karen’s insights into so-called “marginalized” groups and his own work as a photographer.
In the Caribbean, Clarks‘ Footwear is as common as the palm trees. The popularity of the brand is due in large part to the vision of Nathan Clark, great-grandson of the company’s founder. This past week, Mr. Clark passed away at 94, leaving behind a legacy of footwear loved the world over.
The folks at GQ recognized. Check their writeup on the pioneer of footwear below…
The iconic desert boot as we know it today, worn by everyone from Steve McQueen to the dude on the subway next to you this morning, wouldn’t have existed without the passion of Nathan Clark, who died on June 23rd at the age of 94. Clark was the great-grandson of the founder of Clarks and he developed an admirable zeal for the lace-up ankle boots worn by desert fighters in Burma during World War II. The suede material and crepe sole of the boot wasn’t an immediate hit with the Brits upon Clark’s return from fighting, but the Americans loved them; most notably the, ahem, lack of maintenance and comfort factor…
Mr. Kartel has been making the rounds lately, in promotion of both his new album and upcoming book, among other things. The people over at The FADER & New York Times have seemed to take notice of his hustle.
He graces the cover of the latest FADER issue, their annual Summer Music Special, and is featured in a recent NYT article covering his various branding efforts. Both are good reads.
Check out The FADER‘s accompanying podcast below…
In Brooklyn, the West Indian Day Parade goes straight down Eastern Parkway. It’s as much a summertime celebration as it is a competition to see who has the biggest truck with the loudest speakers. Most of what gets played is, of course, West Indian music, but the city’s summer bombast shouldn’t be exclusive to soca, calypso and reggae. Sometimes you just want to hear an acoustic guitar played fulled blast out of an 18-wheeler. We’ve rounded up our favorite jams from our Summer Music Issue and prepared a proper soundtrack for your big truck or beachside iPod speakers. Six years into his career, Soulja Boy is still welcome at our barbecue, and so are FADER #74 stars Vybz Kartel, Woods, DJ Harvey, Jhene Aiko, Clams Casino, Pure X, Grimes, Little Dragon, Fat Trel and Shabazz Palaces. It’s hot out out there, and it should be.
For their annual Icon Issue, the folks at The FADER wisely chose to honor a figure who status is undisputed: The Notorious B.I.G.
See a few words from the staff on the new issue below…
Every year, FADER makes an Icon issue. We have featured artists like Aaliyah, Shabba Ranks, Nina Simone and David Byrne, musicians whose impact feels so large it’s almost unknowable. We’ve always tried to parse their influence by speaking with friends, family and fans to create a portrait of their lives both in and outside of music. However, with an artist like Notorious BIG, the subject of this year’s issue, much of that work has already been done because Big was so beloved. We’re not trying to compete with Notorious (shout to Gravy, though), but we set about painting a portrait of Big both as a rapper and as a regular dude. In our issue you’ll read accounts from the intern who witnessed Big and Tupac’s first encounter, you’ll hear what Puff thinks about when he listens to Biggie’s music today. You’ll see new photos of prominent places in Big’s life, from the tunnel he drives through backwards in the “Hypnotize” video, to the block where he performed his infamous teenage freestyle. And you don’t even have to wait for our issue’s release on May 3rd to read Andrew Noz’ essay about Biggie’s musical legacy, that’s on TheFADER.com right here, right now. There’s a whole lot more to come and we can’t wait for you to see it.
