Published: 12/15/1999
Types: Culture, Health & science
When Jay Wheeler had two dragons and "a big crazy tree with a bunch of faces" inked on his arm, it was the cool thing to do. That was seven years ago, when he was 19. Now he looks at his arm and wants to cover it up. "That'...[MORE]
Published: 9/1/1999
Some of us are born beautiful, but most of us should just take RuPaul’s advice: "You better work!" When you see Semaj, a Detroit beautician who goes by his first name only, you know right away that he is definitely "...[MORE]
Published: 10/14/1998
Types: Arts, Performing arts, Comedy
Looking like Aretha Franklin back in her blond days, the comedian peers out at the Dempsey's Place Amateur Night audience and asks all the big girls to show some love. There are a few timid titters, but no one really responds. She steps clo...[MORE]
Published: 3/31/1999
Types: Culture, Spirituality
It was June 1974 when Wilma Johnson heard the voice of the Lord telling her to do his will. "And that’s what I did," she says. "I knew it was a commandment. I had no choice, no questions." For Johnson, the Lord’s will...[MORE]
Published: 6/9/2004
Types: Arts, Performing arts, Theater
Floyd “Schoolboy” Barton is like many a musician or artist: He’s looking, waiting, hoping for his “big break.” The question is, what are you going to do with your chance once it stares you in the face? In Plowshares Theatre Company’s production of Seven Guitars, the sixth play by Pulitzer Prize...[MORE]
Published: 4/14/2004
Types: Arts, Performing arts, Theater
Pearl Cleage’s Blues for an Alabama Sky begins with trouble and disappointment. Angel Allen (Mayowa Lisa Reynolds), a vampy lounge singer, has just lost her job and her man on the same night. But her best friend, Guy (Mark Young), a young costume designer, assures her that she can depend on him to...[MORE]
Published: 4/16/2003
Michael Berrin stepped into the A.M. in NYC as a member of rap group 3rd Bass. Now, Berrin has the “D” steppin’ to him as the morning host of “Serch in the A.M.” on WJLB-FM 97.9, the first white DJ at the station since Casey Kasem worked for the old WJLB-AM in the 1950s. Berrin’s knack for aski...[MORE]
Published: 9/18/2002
Types: Music, Hip-Hop/R&B
DJ K-Nice (aka Ken Fisher) experienced an epiphany upon the first Fresh Fest concert in 1987. While watching Run DMC and Whodini, and DJs Jam Master Jay and Grand Master D, he knew that he was destined to move crowds through music. "My roots are in that era," says the 6-foot-2 DJ, grinni...[MORE]
Published: 4/24/2002
Types: Arts, Performing arts, Comedy
In the days after Sept. 11, there were times it seemed as if the world would never laugh again. The people at Detroit’s Second City Theatre, a satellite of Chicago’s groundbreaking sketch comedy house, felt differently. Although there is nothing funny about the tragedies of last fall, the group of...[MORE]
Published: 1/2/2002
Detroit is rarely seen in Hollywood movies, or as the setting in a major novel. Novelist and screenwriter Gary Hardwick, a native Detroiter, wants to change that. Hardwick wrot last year's The Brothers — a love story told from a black male point of view — that was supposed to be set in the city, bu...[MORE]
Published: 4/25/2001
Types: Arts, Performing arts, Theater
When community groups decide to collectively take a stance against politicians, big business or other community groups, they often reach out by staging peaceful demonstrations, sit-ins and sometimes hunger strikes. Not Matrix Theatre Company. When the troupe decides to take on an economic, environ...[MORE]
Published: 3/28/2001
Types: Food & Drink
What do you get when you combine an olive, vermouth, good music and Detroit’s sexy-cool crowd — shaken, not stirred — together? You get Half Past Three, Detroit’s new martini spot. Open since last July, the martini lounge — not club — is where the beautiful people of Detroit go to chill, as wel...[MORE]
Published: 12/6/2000
Types: Music, Hip-Hop/R&B
Jill Scott is smokin’. When I first heard her album, it melted, moved and mesmerized me. After I bought it and listened to it for the second time, I spent a few minutes the next day e-mailing friends about it. Often I got the response, "Who is Jill Scott?" and I’d say, "That’s the nam...[MORE]
Published: 10/18/2000
The hoop earring, fashion's newest re-emergent accessory, is a throwback to '80s style — big, gauche and flashy. Those hoops we see today are the same back-in-the-day ones that the original Foxy Brown, (Pam Grier), Sade, Jody Watley and Cher all once sported; fashion, after all, always repeat...[MORE]
Published: 5/3/2000
Do clothes really make the man? By the sounds of several rap singles, gear seems to be just as important to an artist’s repertoire as the lyrics. For instance, the late Notorious B.I.G. said he stayed "Coogi down to the socks." Even Doug E. Fresh rhymed that he was "fresh dressed like a million bu...[MORE]
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