NEW YORK TIMES: Sylvia Robinson, the singer, songwriter and record producer who formed the Sugar Hill Gang and made the first commercially successful rap recording, died early Thursday morning at a hospital in New Jersey. She was 75. Ms. Robinson had a notable career as a rhythm and blues singer long before she and her husband, Joe Robinson, formed Sugar Hill Records in 1979 and served as the midwives for a musical genre that came to dominate pop music. She sang with Mickey Baker as part of the duo Mickey & Sylvia in the 1950s and had several hits, including […]
COGNITIVE DISSONANCE: Cops Seize 223 Pounds Of (Relatively) Harmless Marijuana From Trucker, Meanwhile Tons & Tons Of Deadly Tobacco Free To Go
INQUIRER: Officials in Montgomery County have announced the arrest of a Lansdale truck driver on drug charges, and the seizure of 223 pounds of marijuana from a rig they said he owns. Andre Lue, 40, was remanded to the Montgomery County prison when he could not post $500,000 cash bail, said District Attorney Risa Vetri Ferman and Lansdale Borough Police Chief Robert McDyre. Lue is charged with possession and intent to deliver a controlled substance and possession of drug paraphernalia. McDyre gave this account of the drug bust: On Wednesday at about 1 a.m., Lansdale Borough Officer David Gori was […]
POLICE BRUTALITY: The Ballad Of Tony Baloney
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS: The NYPD has launched an investigation into why a police official pepper-sprayed penned-in female Wall Street protesters as video of a second spraying incident also emerged. A now-infamous online video that went viral around the world shows Deputy Inspector Anthony Bologna walking up to two women standing inside a corral of orange netting, shooting pepper spray at their faces and striding quickly away, leaving them on their knees, howling in pain. A patrolman standing next to the women can be seen in another video of the same moment wiping his eyes and yelling, “He just [expletive] […]
CONTEST: Win Tix To See Ray LaMontagne’s Beard
[Illustration by ALEX FINE] Soulful, scruffy, silver-tongued singer-songwriter par excellence Brother Ray LaMontagne — think Nick Drake meets Joe Cocker — plays the Mann Music Center on Friday, thus bringing to a close another lovely summer concert season under the stars in Fairmount Park. And gone with it goes Alex Fine’s cool-as-shit line of commemorative baseball cards. Sigh. But fret not, dear reader, we have a pair of tickets to give away to the first person to email us at FEED@PHAWKER.COM with the correct answer to the following question: What is the title of the Ray LaMontagne tune nominated for […]
POLL: Tea Party Less Popular Than Jesus, Much Less
WASHINGTON POST: Negative views of tea party hit new high: A 53 percent majority of Americans now hold a negative view of the tea party in a CNN poll released Tuesday. The results are similar to 51 percent in August but up 13 points from one year ago, when 40 percent saw the movement in a negative light. Democrats are overwhelmingly negative (76 percent unfavorable, 8 percent favorable) while Republicans give positive ratings by 51 to 30 percent. Independents split much like the public overall, with 50 percent unfavorable and 29 percent favorable.MORE RELATED: CNN’s polls aren’t the only ones […]
DEENEY: Crack Is In The House
THE FIX: On this particular Monday morning the voice on the other end of the phone identified herself as a high-ranking official at the Philadelphia Housing Authority. Why was she calling me, I asked? I’m just a rank-and-file, trench-level social worker. She had a last-minute addition to my caseload: a four-year-old child belonging to a mentally ill, addicted mother, living in a public housing unit that had been converted to a crackhouse. It was my job to go find him. Now, 911, high risk, no time to waste. I’ve certainly heard crazier war stories from longtime vets in the profession; […]
WORTH REPEATING: How Stephanie Became Stephan
PHILADELPHIA WEEKLY: A few nights after the Tritone show, Hayes is hanging out where he’s been every Monday night all year: hosting open-mike night at the Grape Room in Manayunk. He’s off tonight, but decided to pop in to say goodbye to the staff and the regulars. If the show at Tritone was an introduction to the new Stephan, tonight is a goodbye, in a way, to the old Steph. In a few days, he’ll undergo a mastectomy and recovery will take a full month. “It’s a bilateral mastectomy, double incision,” he explains, fingers sweeping across the front of his […]
REVIEW: Phonte’s Charity Starts At Home
BY MATTHEW HENGEVELD My boy Phonte, aka Tigallo of Little Brother fame, has finally gone solo and it couldn’t have come soon enough. Charity Starts at Home is the perfect reminder of why your favorite rapper (see Kanye) is simply a clone of my favorite rapper. Yes, Phonte Coleman is my favorite rapper, and I’m not afraid to say that he might be the best of all time. And it’s definitely safe to say that after a hiatus from the rap game, Tay stays winnin’. A little background info for those sitting in the dark: Little Brother was a hip-hop […]
SHOCK DOCTRINE: Hoax Or Horrible Truth?
DAILY MAIL: He astonished BBC viewers [Monday] by describing his hopes of profiting from a recession, adding: ‘The governments don’t rule the world – Goldman Sachs rules the world.’ MORE DAILY SABOTAGE: Invited onto the BBC to discuss the Greek debt crisis Rastani (identified only as an ‘independent trader’) sat in a satellite studio with an image of Canary Wharf behind him and pretended that he was our friend. He told us that the financial crisis was going to get worse, that we should protect our assets and (worst of all) that if we knew how to play the markets […]
THE COLONEL REMEMBERS: Nirvana At JC Dobbs
Twenty years ago, Colonel Tom Sheehy was the house publicist for JC Dobbs. He was there on the first day of October 1991, when a scruffy, little-known band from Seattle walked through the door on their way to the center of everything. He remembers it all and even has the guest list to prove it. Look for it tomorrow on a Phawker near you!
RADIOHEAD: The National Anthem
The Colbert Report Mon – Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c Exclusive – Radiohead – “The National Anthem” www.colbertnation.com Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog Video Archive From last night’s Colbert Report.
LOOPY FIASCO: Or Why This Popped! Music Festival Review Is So F*cking Late & My Boss Wants To Kill Me
BY PELLE GUNTHER Firstly I’d like to apologize for being a total fuck up. My tales of this past weekend’s misadventures should have made their way to the Phawker days ago, but you see me and my incompetent self found ourselves stranded in Philly for a few days after the festival in a mess of drunk college pricks, without wheels, cash or even a cell phone to contact the world, let alone a computer to record my thoughts on Popped, or even a moment of silence to collect them. The self-defeating decision-making really started about two years ago when I […]