Pharoahe Monch is ‘Still Standing’

http://youtu.be/tBfMuf_JjI0

One of the best rappers alive, featuring the lady who sang the original hook on “You Got Me.” Off Monch’s ‘W.A.R. (We Are Renegades)’ — the album has been out for more than 6 months already, but the music video is new. The subtext is Monch’s battle with asthma. Director Terence Nance has done work for Blitz The Ambassador before. Is that Jean Grae hanging around in the studio? This is your music break.

Further Reading

Slow death by food

Illegal gold mining is poisoning Ghana’s soil and rivers, seeping into its crops and seafood, and turning the national food system into a long-term public health crisis.

A sick health system

The suspension of three doctors following the death of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s son has renewed scrutiny of a health-care system plagued by impunity, underfunding, and a mass exodus of medical professionals.

Afrobeats after Fela

Wizkid’s dispute with Seun Kuti and the release of his latest EP with Asake highlight the widening gap between Afrobeats’ commercial triumph and Fela Kuti’s political inheritance

Progress is exhausting

Pedro Pinho’s latest film follows a Portuguese engineer in Guinea-Bissau, exposing how empire survives through bureaucracy, intimacy, and the language of “development.”

The rubble of empire

Built by Italian Fascists in 1928, Mogadishu Cathedral was meant to symbolize “peaceful conquest.” Today its ruins force Somalis to confront the uneasy afterlife of colonial power and religious authority.