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      in Music

      Ice Spice at the Grammys: Y2K Brand Baby Phat Makes a Comeback

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      A major moment at the Grammys showed how far the streetwear brand Baby Phat has come — and how it helped change what constitutes high fashion.Ice Spice was born on Jan. 1, 2000, so it seems fitting that her personal style has often involved Y2K fashion. The rapper leaned heavily into the era at the Grammy Awards on Sunday, wearing custom Baby Phat. She arrived in a fur-lined denim jacket and a matching maxi skirt that trailed behind her as she walked the red carpet.Baby Phat was started by Kimora Lee Simmons in 1999. The label, rooted in hip-hop culture, largely influenced women’s streetwear in the decade that followed. Baby Phat was worn by celebrities like Missy Elliott, Lil’ Kim and Jennifer Lopez and was beloved by women and girls of color for its celebration of Black identity and style. Its items were relatively affordable yet still had an aura of glamour.But in its heyday Baby Phat never had a big presence on red carpets. The brand’s aesthetic — a mishmash of fitted denim, fur, oversize logos, chains and jewels that Ms. Simmons described as “ghetto fabulous” — was not exactly reflective of high fashion in the early 2000s.Since then, though, streetwear and hip-hop have only become more influential at even the most rarefied houses. That was on display at this year’s Grammys, where Lil Durk, Peso Pluma and Beyoncé were among the stars who wore items designed by Pharrell Williams for Louis Vuitton.Ms. Simmons developed Baby Phat as an expansion of Phat Farm, a brand owned by her ex-husband Russell Simmons, who sold both labels in 2004. Ms. Simmons, who left Baby Phat in 2010 only to buy it back almost 10 years later and install herself as chief executive, said that Ice Spice’s wearing the brand on a major red carpet was “a full circle moment” that would help Baby Phat finally get the recognition it deserves.“We don’t always get our shine,” said Ms. Simmons, 48, who is Black and Asian. “But I do it for the culture — make no mistake.” She added that Baby Phat’s Grammys appearance 25 years after the brand’s founding was a testament to its enduring appeal.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 138 Shares199 Views

      in Movies

      Clyde Taylor, Literary Scholar Who Elevated Black Cinema, Dies at 92

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      A leading figure in the field of Black studies in the 1970s, he identified work by Black filmmakers as worthy of serious intellectual attention.Clyde Taylor, a scholar who in the 1970s and ’80s played a leading role in identifying, defining and elevating Black cinema as an art form, died on Jan. 24 at his home in Los Angeles. He was 92.His daughter, Rahdi Taylor, a filmmaker, said the cause was chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.As a young professor in the Los Angeles area in the late 1960s — first at California State University, Long Beach, and then at the University of California, Los Angeles — Dr. Taylor was at the epicenter of a push to bring the study of Black culture into academia.Black culture was not merely an appendage to white culture, he argued, but had its own logic, history and dynamics that grew out of the Black Power and Pan-African movements. And filmmaking, he said, was just as important to Black culture as literature and art.Dr. Taylor in 1958 when he was a student at Howard University, where he earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in English.via Taylor familyHe was especially taken by the work of a circle of young Black filmmakers in the 1970s that he would later call the “L.A. Rebellion.” Among them were the directors Charles Burnett, Julie Dash, Haile Gerima and Billy Woodberry, all of whom went on to have immense impact on Black directors like Spike Lee and Ava DuVernay.As Dr. Taylor documented, these directors created their own, stripped-down approach to narrative and form. They borrowed from French New Wave, Italian neorealism and Brazil’s Cinema Novo to offer an unblinkered look at everyday Black life, often filming in Watts and other Black neighborhoods in and around Los Angeles.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 163 Shares189 Views

      in Music

      The Grammys Aim for a Big Tent, but Not Everyone Feels at Home

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      The most awarded artists were diverse on Sunday night. How those winners received their honors, however, differed mightily.Sunday night at the 66th annual Grammy Awards, Jay-Z accepted the Dr. Dre global impact award, a sort of éminence grise prize. He’s previously won 24 Grammys, but he did not treat the moment like a homecoming.Instead, he used his speech to alternately nudge and excoriate the Recording Academy, the body that awards the Grammys, for its mistreatment and short-shrifting of Black artists: “We want y’all to get it right. At least get it close to right.” He mentioned his wife, Beyoncé, winner of the most Grammys ever, yet never a winner for album of the year. “Think about that,” he said, as he scrunched up his face with distaste.By this point, the room seemed to understand what was happening — Jay-Z was rinsing the Grammys on its own stage. Beyoncé, in the audience, appeared to be somewhere near tears. “When I get nervous,” Jay-Z said, “I tell the truth.” He reached out and grabbed the hand of his daughter Blue Ivy for support before urging those who have been overlooked and slighted to persevere “until they give you all those accolades you feel you deserve.”Jay-Z’s speech took a moment of acclaim and turned it into a moment for reflection, and maybe a lecture. Over the past few years, several Black artists have effectively been boycotting the Grammys by declining to submit their music for consideration, frustrated with how hip-hop and R&B are treated, particularly in the biggest all-genre categories.This year was no different — album, record and song of the year were won by white artists, though broadly speaking, the most awarded artists were diverse: three each for SZA, Killer Mike and Victoria Monét; four for Phoebe Bridgers (three of which came as part of boygenius) and two each for Taylor Swift, Billie Eilish and Miley Cyrus.How those artists received those honors, however, differed mightily.In their speeches, Monét and SZA emphasized how long and roundabout their paths to this moment had been. During her acceptance for best new artist, Monét called the prize the endpoint of “a 15-year pursuit.” She’s primarily been known for her songwriting, particularly her work with Ariana Grande. And while she’d released music independently through the 2010s, her 2023 album, “Jaguar II,” was her first major-label LP. “My roots have been growing underneath ground, unseen for so long,” she said. “And I feel like today, I’m sprouting.” More

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      in Movies

      ‘American Fiction,’ ‘Origin’ and the Pressures Black Writers Face

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      The movies explore what happens when authors who focus exclusively on racism in their work push back against political and commercial stresses.“We younger Negro artists who create now intend to express our individual dark-skinned selves without fear or shame,” a young Langston Hughes proclaimed in an essay nearly 100 years ago. “If white people are pleased we are glad. If they are not, it doesn’t matter.”Seeking to establish his autonomy as a Black writer, he concluded, “If colored people are pleased we are glad. If they are not, their displeasure doesn’t matter either. We build our temples for tomorrow, strong as we know how, and we stand on top of the mountain, free within ourselves.”I thought a lot about Hughes’s landmark 1926 essay, “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain,” after watching how Ava DuVernay’s “Origin” and Cord Jefferson’s “American Fiction” explore the fates of Black writers who push back against political and publishing pressures to focus exclusively on racism in their works.Like Hughes, the protagonists of these movies — the journalist Isabel Wilkerson and the novelist Thelonious Ellison, known as Monk — strive to write as they please. But, by depicting their characters’ struggles, the films offer refreshing commentaries on the social construction of race and its devastating consequences for those at the bottom of the hierarchy.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

    • 150 Shares199 Views

      in Television

      Niecy Nash-Betts Honors Sandra Bland and Breonna Taylor in Her Emmy Speech

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      Niecy Nash-Betts, who played a neighbor in Netflix’s “Dahmer,” won her first Emmy on Monday night for best supporting actress in a limited series.In her acceptance speech, Nash-Betts called attention to Black people who have been overlooked and who have been victims of police violence.“I accept this award on behalf of every Black and brown woman who has gone unheard, yet overpoliced, like Glenda Cleveland, like Sandra Bland, like Breonna Taylor,” she said. “As an artist, my job is to speak truth to power. And, baby, I’ma do it till the day I die. Mama, I won!”Going into Monday night, Nash-Betts had received five Emmy nominations, including nominations for best actress in a comedy for her role as Denise “Didi” Ortley in HBO’s “Getting On.”In “Dahmer — Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story,” a show about the serial killer who murdered 17 boys and men between 1978 and 1991, Nash-Betts plays Glenda Cleveland, Dahmer’s neighbor. In the show, Cleveland, who is based on a real person, alerts the police about Dahmer’s violent behavior but is systematically ignored.In winning the Emmy, Nash-Betts beat fellow nominees Annaleigh Ashford of “Welcome to Chippendales,” Maria Bello of “Beef,” Claire Danes of “Fleishman Is in Trouble,” Juliette Lewis of “Welcome to Chippendales,” Camila Morrone of “Daisy Jones & the Six” and Merritt Wever of “Tiny Beautiful Things.” More

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      in Theater

      Beverly Johnson, ‘the Model With the Big Mouth’

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      In her new one-woman show, she details her 50-year modeling career, her tumultuous relationships — and an unsettling encounter with Bill Cosby.She was 18, new to New York, a tenderfoot in an industry said to eat its young. But Beverly Johnson was not short on brass.She had been quick in the early 1970s to sign with the formidable model agent Eileen Ford — and just as swift, at 19, to inform her, “I want to be on the cover of American Vogue.” When Ms. Ford asked her curtly, “Who do you think you are, Cleopatra?” Ms. Johnson was as curt with a comeback, murmuring, audibly enough, “That’s exactly who I think I am.”Ms. Johnson revisits that moment in “In Vogue,” her one-woman show set to open in Manhattan on Sunday. The play, largely derived from her 2015 memoir, “Beverly Johnson: The Face That Changed It All,” and written with the playwright Josh Ravetch, is by turns an upbeat and cautionary account of Ms. Johnson’s adventures — and hairy misadventures — in the mannequin trade.Onstage she tells of defying expectations and defecting to a competing modeling agency, despite the warnings of peers that such a move would amount to professional ruin.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

    • 125 Shares199 Views

      in Movies

      Taraji P. Henson on Almost Walking Away from ‘Color Purple’

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      Before things started to click for Taraji P. Henson, she sought career counseling from the man upstairs.“I had a talk with God a long time ago when things didn’t pop,” she said. Invoking the women she had watched as a child, like Carol Burnett, Lucille Ball, Bette Davis, and Diahann Carroll, she told him, “I want longevity and work that matters.”This, Henson has had: At 53, she is an Oscar-nominated actress with a long career that includes films like “Hidden Figures,” “Hustle & Flow” and “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.” She also spent six seasons playing the music-industry matriarch Cookie on the Fox series “Empire,” a juicy role that netted her a Golden Globe and Critics Choice Award.But she is candid about the frustrations she still faces in an industry that undervalues Black actresses. “The fact that I made it through is a blessing because a lot has happened,” she said, noting that she had to step away from work last year when things got to be too much. A monthlong trip to Bali helped to recenter her, as did attending to her successful beauty brand, TPH.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

    • 138 Shares119 Views

      in Theater

      Vinie Burrows, Acclaimed Actress Who Became an Activist, Dies at 99

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      She got her start on Broadway at 15. But after finding a dearth of roles for Black women, she ultimately turned to one-woman shows that addressed racism and sexism.Vinie Burrows, a Harlem-born stage actress who made her mark on Broadway in the 1950s, but who grew frustrated by how few choice roles were available for Black women and turned her focus to one-woman shows exploring the legacies of racism and sexism, died on Dec. 25 in Queens. She was 99.Her death, at a hospice facility, was confirmed by her son, Gregory Harrison.Ms. Burrows made the first Broadway appearance of her seven-decade career in 1950 alongside Helen Hayes and Ossie Davis in “The Wisteria Trees,” a reimagining of Chekhov’s “The Cherry Orchard” by the writer and director Joshua Logan that shifted the drama from an aristocratic Russian estate to a 19th-century Louisiana plantation.Ms. Burrows in a scene from “The Wisteria Trees” (1950), in which she made her Broadway debut, with Ossie Davis, who is sitting beside her, and Maurice Edwards.Martin Beck Theater, via Performing Arts Legacy ProjectHer Broadway career continued to blossom into the mid-1950s. Among the high-profile productions in which she appeared was a 1951 revival of “The Green Pastures,” Marc Connelly’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 1930 retelling of Old Testament stories from an African American perspective. In the early 1960s, she appeared with Moses Gunn and Louis Gossett Jr. in a New York production of “The Blacks,” a searing and surrealistic examination of racial stereotypes and Black identity by the subversive white French author and playwright Jean Genet.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More