Sharpton, Al

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    The Apollo Theater Celebrates Its 90th Anniversary With Usher, Babyface and More

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    Usher, an eight-time Grammy winner, has won many awards in his 30-year career. But the one he received on Tuesday night at the Apollo Theater in Harlem was special, he said.“It’s the prestige,” said the R&B singer, who arrived in a black S.U.V. surrounded by phone-wielding fans to the red carpet outside the theater, which was celebrating its 90th birthday at its annual spring benefit.Along with Babyface, Usher was at the Apollo, which opened in 1934 and has played host to numerous venerated musicians including Billie Holiday, James Brown and Aretha Franklin, for a celebratory concert and an awards ceremony. He and Babyface, the singer-songwriter and producer who has won 12 Grammy Awards, received Icon and Legacy awards from the organization, respectively, for their contributions to music.Gov. Kathy Hochul; the Rev. Al Sharpton; Jordin Sparks, the singer and “American Idol” winner; Ava DuVernay; the filmmaker and screenwriter; and Big Daddy Kane, the rapper, were among the more than 800 musicians, philanthropists and elected officials who filled the 1,500-seat theater.The singer-songwriter and producer Babyface was honored on Tuesday at the Apollo Theater.Krista Schlueter for The New York TimesUsher and his wife, Jennifer Goicoechea.Krista Schlueter for The New York TimesCora Brown and Grandmaster Caz.Krista Schlueter for The New York TimesWe 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

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      ‘Loudmouth’ Review: Portrait of Al Sharpton as a Young Man

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      A stirring new biographical documentary about the Rev. Al Sharpton revisits a racially divided New York City and offers a critique of the news media then and now.In the sympathetic documentary “Loudmouth,” the Rev. Al Sharpton recounts the time Coretta Scott King admonished him for his rhetorical excesses. The film’s writer-director, Josh Alexander, cuts between the Sharpton of now — svelte, measured — and, using archival footage, the young man he was in the 1980s: rotund, passionate and plying his skills as a preacher to harness the anger and grief of those African Americans gathered at churches, rallies and marches in a time of heightened racial violence.“Loudmouth” is equal parts time capsule, media critique and authorized biography. Each of those examinations has its own flaws but also offers insights into the man, the moment (the current one but more pointedly New York City of the 1980s and ’90s) and the news media.Thirty years ago, Sharpton’s dramatic tactics earned him (along with the lawyers Alton Maddox and C. Vernon Mason, who was later disbarred) incendiary headlines and a warm seat on the daytime talk circuit. For Sharpton, who sees himself in the tradition of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Scott King’s chiding invited a reconsideration of that lightning rod approach. Another epiphany came after he was stabbed in 1991 in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, while preparing to protest the sentences in the case of Yusuf Hawkins, the Black 16-year-old who was and shot and killed by a white mob in the neighborhood two years earlier.One of the documentary’s most salient cautions might be that members of the news media were (and often remain) unwilling to cop to their biases. Sharpton has spent a lifetime calling the storytellers out for their slant — and schooling us to do the same. As straightforward as it appears, “Loudmouth” also invites an engaged but necessarily judicious scrutiny.LoudmouthNot rated. Running time: 2 hours 3 minutes. In theaters. More