INFORMATION OVERLOAD

Relax, it’s not one of those lame “today I freeloaded...” mention-in-exchange-for-a-freebie blog entries. I overreached myself attempting to blog from the BlackBerry. Hence the lo-fi image above – the Bold in its current incarnations seems to afford its indoor camera subjects with a cateract soft-focus tint. Mission aborted. As one of those rare good magazine weeks, this is the pile of print I’ve opted to absorb this weekend. Too much information. Except Wallpaper* – still too smarmy to warrant anything beyond a browse. I only bought it for the cover.

Back in 1996, when my internet use was confined to looking for nude female celebrity images that loaded…very…slowly, Sandbox Distribution, old TV theme tunes that wouldn’t play on RealAudio Player and haplessly trying to navigate Nike-based newsgroups, my computer habit was minimal. It wasn’t until an impassioned fanboy speech on Ras Kass’s Patchwerk career and Coolio affiliations that winter over bong hits caused my friend James to explain his fear that I could suffer some form of meltdown from “information overload” – he even cited some vague example of a university professor who’d been looking into the effects of, for want of a better term, memorising too much crap.

B+ – VISUALLY DIGGING

Whether you were there at the very start, were overseas feverishly browsing Subway Art or just stacking dog-eared XXLs, someone has helped define how hip-hop looks to you. George DuBose, Glen E. Friedman, Martha Cooper, Ricky Powell, Jamel Shabaz and Brian Cross among many, many others, have made memorable contributions by amber encasing key cultural moments. Despite his B+ moniker, Limerick-born Brian Cross is far from an underachiever, putting out A-grade output for nearly two decades, from coast to coast, but calling LA home. He gives the City Of Angels a unique contribution aesthetically – appreciating the elements that only a onetime outsider could bring to the surface.