1 Mike Love’s Nigerian Gangster Remix of Jay Z’s ‘Roc Boys‘ (Jay Z kills the Afrobeat! Like the mix, but why did DJ Mike Love have to call it ‘Nigerian Gangster’?)
2. The PEN American Center has announced its ‘Tribute to Chinua Achebe‘ for February 26, 2007, starting at 8pm at 123 West 43rd Street, NYC. The event celebrates the 50th anniversary of the publishing of Things Fall Apart. Achebe will be joined by, among others, Chris Abani, Edwidge Danticat, Suheir Hammad, Ha Jin and Colum McCann. More info here.
3. Naijablog posts personal footage of watching Egypt 80 practice (Fela’s old band and now the backing band for his son, Seun) at the Kalakuta Republic in Lagos.
4. The politricks of Kenneth Cole’s new “We all walk in different shoes” campaign is discussed (via Sepia Mutiny). That’s where the image above comes from.
5. The Atlantic magazine’s website, Atlantic.com, has dropped its subscriber registration requirement and making its site free for all visitors, including all articles back to September 1995 and hundreds of articles from its archive dating back to 1857, the year the magazine was first published. Worth checking out. Go here. The latest issue also includes a hack attack job on the genius of David Simon, the creator of the HBO TV series, The Wire. [via: Chapati Mystery]
6. I am not in New York City this week, but would highly recommend Gelf Magazine’s sports reading series, Gelf Varsity Letters, tomorrow night on the Lower East Side.
7. Roberto Bolaño‘s ‘The Fabolous Schiaffino Boys’ excerpted in Bookforum. [via: Amitava Kumar]
8. Democracy Now! in New York City dissects the Kenyan post-election crisis with Maina Kiai, (Chair of Kenya’s National Human Rights Commission) and Kenyan writer Mukoma Wa Ngugi for 47 minutes (that is unusual for US broadcasters). You can watch or listen to the program here.
Finally, good luck if you can make sense of the US presidential elections system, since those reporting it won’t, don’t or can’t (via CJR Blog).
