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(03/02/18 2:00pm)
Destiny Frasqueri, better known as Princess Nokia, is not your average new–school New York rapper. Nokia is unique not only for her ascendancy in a music genre dominated by men but for her powerful projections of feminism. Princess Nokia came from a difficult background, but has used her past experiences to empower the young women in her fanbase and encourage independence and strength—while also making some great music, of course. Frasqueri lost her mother at age three to AIDS and was placed in a foster home for seven years after that, where she was frequently abused by her foster mother. At age 16, she ran away from the foster home, with, as she puts it, “three dollars in my pocket and 75% on my cell phone battery.” Over time, Nokia honed her hip—hop talent while also developing an attitude of strength through independence, an attitude that has become one of her signature traits as an artist. Princess Nokia also identifies as bisexual, and the early part of her hip—hop career gained traction through performances at queer nightclubs. Needless to say, Princess Nokia has overcome a lot of hurdles to get to the point where she is now, and her autonomous nature and constant determination indicate that she’s not complacent with her place in the rap game today.
(02/25/18 2:00pm)
(02/26/18 2:00pm)
When the 2018 Oscar nominations were announced at the end of January, Greta Gerwig made history by becoming the fifth woman to ever be nominated for Best Director. She received the nomination for her 2017 coming–of–age film Ladybird, which is nominated for four other Oscars, including Best Screenplay (also written by Gerwig).
(02/23/18 2:00pm)
New York City is known for many things—great pizza, glittering skyscrapers, sidewalks crowded with fast–talking business people—but the warmth and friendliness of its residents rarely make the cut. To outsiders, it seems that everyone is always in a rush in New York. They are notoriously pushy, adhering to a code of necessary rudeness to get from point A to point B as quickly as possible. Out–of–towners tend to remark that New York may be a wonderful place to visit, but a difficult place to call home. Movies and television shows that are filmed in New York often do a good job contrasting the pace of the city with the lives of those who inhabit it. New York serves as a backdrop in HBO’s series High Maintenance, which tells the stories of its ordinary people and the way they interact with each other, as well as with the city that they share.
(02/25/18 2:00pm)
The 2018 Winter Olympics are almost over, and it's been a hell of a ride.
(03/01/18 2:00pm)
When Hattie McDaniel became the first black performer to win an Oscar in 1939, it was a historic and groundbreaking moment. In the ceremony, when McDaniel won the Supporting Actress award for her role in Gone With the Wind, presenter Fay Bainter commented that the award was “opening the doors of [the Academy] and moving back the walls."
(03/01/18 2:00pm)
For a vast majority of moviegoers, Hollywood blockbusters and arthouse films encompass most—if not all—of the movies they have had access to. Hollywood, the bastion of First Cinema, produces escapist, individualistic narrative films that buttress bourgeois values. On the contrary, Second Cinema subverts Hollywood conventions but concerns itself with the expression of its director. Many politically radical film theorists and critics consistently critique such movies for their failure to challenge a spectator in a meaningful way. In their 1969 film manifesto Toward a Third Cinema, filmmakers Fernando Solanas and Octavio Getino put forth a radical vision of the future of anti–imperialist, anti–capitalist cinema. Understanding how mainstream Hollywood Cinema came to dictate theory, practice, and markets for film, the duo delineates a cinema that actively works against a system that reduces movies to mere commodities.
(03/16/18 1:00pm)
The term "black comedy" gets thrown around quite a bit. It’s one of those easy–to–grab labels that anyone can stick on a film or television show that made them laugh more than they believe it should have. At the core of any black comedy is the exploration of traditionally taboo subjects through the lens of humor or satire, often of the dead–pan, misanthropic variety. Dark humor is a tool people have used for hundreds—if not thousands—of years in theatrical arts; making light of life’s inevitable darkness is, after all, a natural coping mechanism.
(02/26/18 2:00pm)
The relationship between the literary and the visual is not like a couple holding hands, where the palm is the singular point of intersection; it’s more like an embrace, where complicated bodies meet infinitely, and the hand that appears to be of one person, belongs, instead, to another. In Professor Charles Bernstein’s course, “Experimental Writing,” students explored this relationship through hands–on, experiment–based work.
(03/01/18 2:00pm)
(03/22/18 1:00pm)
My friend Ethan first introduced me to Triathalon by sitting me down last year with next to no context and insisting that I had to listen to a song he had discovered. That song was "South Side" off Triathalon’s 2016 EP, Cold Shower. As I listened to the track, poorly concealing just how much I was enjoying it, Ethan’s grin grew wider and wider. Triathalon’s raw, vulnerable vocals on top of an 808 beat with an incredibly catchy guitar part immediately hooked me in, and I obsessively listened to the song and the rest of the EP over the next week. The band’s component parts may not have been mind–blowing, but the sound their blend created, along with the clever, sparse production, allowed every instrument to breathe and flourish, making them stand out in a sea of vibey, guitar–based lo–fi producers such as Cuco and Kid Bloom.
(02/27/18 2:00pm)
It's easy to get lost in the milieu that is the Twitter news cycle. With all of their fans at the touch of a button, artists are able to drop the craziest and most exciting of news 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. And no matter how skilled you are at not going down the Facebook news rabbit hole—I myself have fallen prey to the hell that is the Buzzfeed quiz vacuum—it can be hard to pick out the juiciest, most exciting tidbits of entertainment new that actually matter. But fear not, my friends, Street's got your back.
(02/28/18 2:00pm)
(02/27/18 2:00pm)
18–year–old London–based R&B singer Cole Basta, aka Col3trane, has made significant waves following the release of his debut project Tsarina in late 2017. I was highly intrigued by what was hailed by Pigeons and Planes and Complex as an artist to watch in 2018 and by some articles comparing his unique approach to pop music to (our lord and savior) Frank Ocean.
(02/20/18 10:38pm)
What is darkly interesting about diverse casts onscreen is that they very rarely get to have diverse stories. It’s true that Hollywood has made incremental steps to address racial type–casting, white–washing and underrepresentation in film, all while growing ever–cognizant of the box office strength of diversely casted movies. But industry efforts at rectifying its glaring imbalance seem paltry in the face of the record–smashing arrival of Marvel’s latest stand–alone superhero blockbuster, Black Panther.
(02/20/18 6:22am)
Black Panther was everything I ever needed. Aside from simply being a beautiful movie with dynamic characters, a perfect soundtrack, and an accompanying Kendrick album, it’s a cultural watershed for the black community. Even now, as I embark on writing this piece, I’m struggling to calm the flood of emotion rising up in my chest. Thinking about it and how it was such a monumental achievement for black people, especially black people in America, is a wave of awareness I’m unfamiliar with. I worry I may never be able to fully express the experience of being black while watching Black Panther. This movie felt like it was for me. The people on the screen looked like me, and they each represented the strength and beauty of blackness in ways I’ve never seen portrayed on the big screen.
(02/20/18 10:39pm)
I don’t really care for country music. That’s not to say every country artist is terrible, though—far from it. There are definitely some standouts for me in the genre: Carrie Underwood, old Taylor, and, if you’re driving on a hot day with the windows down, perhaps even Florida Georgia Line.
(02/21/18 2:00pm)
Brian Imanual, known as Rich Brian, is hoping his new debut album, Amen, will help him transition from Vine star to respected rapper.
(02/21/18 2:00pm)
The ease of online communication in our increasingly digital world is generally presented as a curse just as often as it is as a blessing. There is a sense that diving too deep into an online presence detaches us from reality and dulls our ability to communicate face to face. This is certainly a product of the convenience of expression that the internet offers, where the screen serves as a buffer between an individual and the world. On the other hand, social media has proven to be a platform for a kind of emotional honesty, serving to communicate condensed, snappy versions of everyday struggles for the world to like and retweet. Empathizing with these bite–sized pieces of the human condition is comforting—it’s nice to know that you are understood. However, the effect of these glimmers of connection are short lived, and their content is often shallow. There are far more meaningful ways of connecting to universal emotional experiences—and one of those is film.
(04/23/18 1:00pm)
While many use it as a place to get where they’re going, some use Locust Walk as their runway. And Penn’s fashion photographers try to capture it.
