Greg Tate

Illin’ in the Buttermilk

Greg Tate, the Pulitzer SurPrize, and the aspirational beatification of a flyboy, in one breathless rant.

May 10, 2024

Jean-Michel Basquiat, Flyboy in the Buttermilk

“He was the most financially successful Black visual artist in history and — depending on whether you listened to his admirers or detractors — either a genius, an idiot savant, or an overblown, overpriced fraud.”

Originally published: November 14, 1989

Bad Brains: Hardcore of Darkness

“Never mind the Sex Pistols, here come something for the ass. Namely, the Bad Brains. Baddest hardcore band in the land, living or dead”

Originally published: April 27, 1982

VOICE OF THE AGES

Flying High: Remembering Greg Tate

Funk, jazz, rap, painting, literature, sci-fi, race, film, history—the extraordinary writer could explicate and elevate any subject under the sun.

Originally published: December 7, 2021

Celebrating the Musical Legacy of Writer Greg Tate

Burnt Sugar The Arkestra Chamber honors its founder at Lincoln Center.

by Darren Reidy

July 12, 2022

Burnt Sugar Will Bring the Noise

The musical ensemble is always full of surprises for the audience. And themselves.

March 29, 2022

Harlem When It Sizzled

“For contemporary Afro-American professionals and intellectuals, the Harlem of legend is at best a Utopian cultural myth.”

Originally published: December 7, 1982

The Africentric Cinema of Julie Dash

“Ostensibly about a Gullah family whose younger generation are making plans to leave their ancestral islands for mainland U.S.A. at the crest of the 20th century, 'Daughters of the Dust' is also an interrogation of Black America's cleft soul, split between the quest for modernity and a hunger for the replenishment of roots.”

Originally published: June 25, 1991

Julie Dash Films Gullah Country

“People who don't know any better think Gullah people talk funny. Those in the know realize that Gullah is a bona fide dialect and are confident in the scholarly thesis that 'Gullah' is a contraction of 'Angola.'”

Originally published: April 12, 1988

Chuck D: All Over the Map

“It’s a make-it-or-break-it period for us. We do the right thing, we’ll be able to pull into the 21st century with some kind of program. We do the wrong thing, the 21st century is going to be gone, there’ll be no coming back”

by Robert Christgau and Greg Tate

Originally published: October 22, 1991