DA505 main
26/7/05
6:56 pm
Page 9
Drum: MAIL
Bling is Dead – Long Live Dapper!
The tone and positioning of this edition is fantastic. You have
pointed out a very important social and cultural shift. In addition
to that, you are also pointing out that not all black people
associate with bling, which comes from a very American ‘in-yourface-approach’ to luxury.
I think here in England, we have more style, more
taste, and a quintessentially English-European approach
to luxury. Therefore, it is about time that from an
English-European perspective to fashion, we (black
culture) now show the Americans and the rest of the
world what luxury lifestyle really is. Once again,
brilliant.
Kevin Harris, author Inside Music 2005, UK
The Devil in a Thong
Birmingham, Summer 2004 and the fears I had safely
stored away for, say, another sixteen years, were brought
forward, crudely and abruptly; six years forward with the
label ‘Age 11-12’ written across them. “What the hell is
that?” I got a look back from the shop assistant which
suggested that if there was something wrong here, it was
me. “Haven’t you seen a thong before?” she asked with a
‘you poor so and so’ look on her face.
Of course I had seen a thong before, many. It just so
happened that this was the smallest and it was adjacent to
the underwear I was picking out for my four-year-old
daughter. I immediately got on the phone to a female
friend and told her the world was about to end: now they’re
making thongs for kids!
I’m most certainly not a prude, that rumour is true, but I’ve been
warning for a number of years now that we are developing into a
deliberately sexually overt and provocative society. And now as a
father I fear for my young daughter.
Cecil Richards, London, UK
9
“ Excitingly current
and a feast for the
eye. Drum comes of
a great tradition and
reverberates with the
rhythms of our times.”
–Baroness Helena Kennedy QC
Outrage!
Where does the poisonous Peter Thatchell
get off trying to cast aspersions on the great
Malcolm X? Why is it that every time you
look round that odious 80s vulture is poised
to pick at the bones of yet another black
man? Doesn’t he realise that we’ll think no
less of our men even after he’s tried to ‘out’
some, ban some or have some locked up.
It’s easy to tell lies behind a dead man’s
back. Malcolm X isn’t here to defend
himself against charges of homosexuality,
and I for one couldn’t give a damn about
whatever may have turned-him-on in or out
of jail. What’s important to most people is
that Malcolm X rocked their worldview, and
for that he’ll always have their love and
respect, no matter what.
Name and address withheld
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