Introducing Critical Noir
It has always seemed to me that the art was only as good as the critics writing about it. And this is not some failed-artist argument aimed at some creative retribution for not being able to hang, but a legitimate claim that great art deserves criticism that is not only up to the task of framing great art, but can stand as great art on its own. More importantly, it is also the role of the critic to make sure the world knows what art matters, and this is even more that case now in the era of the Nancy-Gracing of corporate media. For example, Miles Davis and other hard-bop jazz artists became important to me because Amiri Baraka (Leroi Jones) and Ralph Ellison wrote that they were important, and in the process taught me a thing or two about writing. While hip hop might have been the burgeoning soundtrack of my youth, for damn sure it was Village Voice critics like Nelson George and especially Greg Tate who equipped me with the language to think about hip hop beyond the worlds that the larger society wanted to limit it to. These men and others are the very reason why I wanted to be a critic in the first place and, as such, Critical Noir speaks back to the tradition of what some would call a critical intelligentsia. Critical Noir mixes my love of black vernacular and boogie-down Bronx swag with all the heady post-structuralist theory that I do for the cats in the academy—all from an unapologetically black (though not black enough for some) perspective.
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