Christopher A. Daniel, M.A. is an Atlanta-based, award-winning journalist, cultural critic, ethnomusicologist and multimedia journalism professor at Clark Atlanta University. Follow Christopher on Twitter and Instagram @Journalistorian.
While Atlanta continues its reign as one of the hip-hop capitals of the world, its creative and music communities want the globe to understand that its music scene is more than just sections in the club with bottle service, beats and rhymes. So for the Recording Academy's Atlanta Chapter Nominee Celebration at The Loft in midtown Atlanta on Jan. 25,…
Juneteenth originated on June 19, 1865 in Galveston, Texas to commemorate the official end of enslavement in the United States. The oldest and only day of its kind is a chance for African Americans and people from various ethnicities to gather for picnics, family gatherings, church services and fellowship time to pay homage to Black people who gave their blood,…
In the early morning of Aug. 14, 2021, a devastating earthquake with a magnitude of 7.2 struck southern Haiti, impacting more than 500,000 people. The disaster occurred over a decade after the last 7.0 earthquake hit the capital, Port-au-Prince, causing similar damage to the land and displacing its people. A month before the recent earthquake, Haiti's President Jovenel Moïse was…
In the summer of 2020, Kool & the Gang's founding member and principal songwriter Ronald "Khalis" Bell wanted to combine the band's dance rhythms with lyrical themes around world peace and harmony for the band's first full-length studio album in over a decade, Perfect Union. Unfortunately, he would never live to see his musical vision come to life. Bell's life…
Carl E. "Chucky" Thompson originally wanted to manage artists, but his passion for rugged beats, soul samples, and maintaining loyalty to his collaborators led to his ear changing the face of '90s R&B and hip-hop. A self-taught musician, the Washington, D.C. native cut his teeth playing percussion for go-go music legend Chuck Brown's band, The Soul Searchers, before joining Sean…
The massive success of Mary J. Blige's triple platinum 1992 debut What's the 411? brought along matching egos. When the GRAMMY-winning "Queen of Hip-Hop Soul" started to plan her follow-up album, 1994's My Life, she kept turning down producers who raised their fee; Chucky Thompson got one placement and was willing to do it for free. Thompson's initiative would go…
Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis were actively writing and producing for their musical alter ego, The Secret, in 1986 when a demo they'd just completed caught the attention of an A&M Records executive. That minimal dance-pop track went on to become Janet Jackson's first Top Five hit, "What Have You Done For Me Lately," and put Jam and Lewis' personal…
What started out as eavesdropping on a 15-minute chit-chat between the members of Destiny’s Child at a television show soundcheck in the early 2000s quickly morphed into Renée Elise Goldsberry becoming a sponge of the music business. The then-background singer for the show’s house band closed her eyes and daydreamed about what it would be like to have success traveling…
Yeti Beats was searching for some inspiration when he sat in his then-studio in the Echo Park neighborhood of Los Angeles with his intern in 2013. The genre-blurring producer and songwriter caught a vibe once he heard the electro-soulful "So High" on SoundCloud by a local rapper/singer/dancer calling herself Doja Cat, and knew collaborating could work wonders for the both…
When Jason "J." Carter started managing and hosting live events around Atlanta in 2001, he quickly noticed that the music industry executives and performers that showed up were usually accompanied by local politicians. That loyal support morphed into a stable network that the promoter, venue owner and brand marketer would call on to further execute his vision. That database came in handy…
When Diamond Platnumz exploded onto the African music scene in 2010 with his debut LP, Kamwambie, his sole mission was to be able to buy food for his mother. He didn’t realize that his sound and vision would go on to transform both East African popular music and the heights its regional superstar talent could reach. The massively successful Tanzanian…
