Cristina Verán on Native Hip-Hop

Interviewed by Jeff Chang:

Far more common, however, are situations where Native hip-hop artists remain as marginalized within the larger hip-hop scene as they do from the mainstream, national culture overall. In the U.S., Indian Country's parallel "Reservation Hip-Hop" scene remains virtually excluded from an African-American dominated mainstream which doesn't really even acknowledge its existence.

Jeff Chang: Hip-Hop: Pro-Logo or Pro-Liberation?

From the author of Can't Stop Won't Stop: a History of the Hip-Hop Generation. The answer is (sorry to give it away): yes to both.

Chase credit card: "All You Need Is Love"

Tirdad Derakhshani, writing in the Philadelphia Inquirer, on Chase's new TV add that uses the Beatles' 1967 single, "All You Need Is Love."

"It's a big, ugly piece of situational irony: companies using anticonsumerist, antiestablishment art to sell consumer products." Correct, but no surprise. Thomas Frank's The Conquest of Cool, demonstrates that this strategy has been at the heart of advertising for several decades, a trend that started in the late 50's.