Miles Marshall Lewis
Miles Marshall Lewis is a recognized pop culture critic, essayist, literary editor, fiction writer, and music journalist, with a B.A. degree in sociology from Morehouse College. He is the author of the essay collection Scars of the Soul Are Why Kids Wear Bandages When They Don’t Have Bruises (Akashic Books, 2004), concerning coming of age in the Bronx under the aegis of hip-hop culture at its genesis. He is also the series editor and founder of Bronx Biannual (Akashic), an urbane urban literary journal of fiction and essays, and author of There’s a Riot Goin’ On (Continuum Books, 2006), a book on the making of the seminal 1971 Sly and the Family Stone album of the same name.
During the past twelve years, he has written for The Nation, Rolling Stone, The Village Voice, The Believer, Spin, L.A. Weekly, Essence, and many other publications. He served as the music editor of Vibe, deputy editor of XXL, literary editor of Russell Simmons’s Oneworld, deputy editor of BET.com, and a contributing writer for The Source during the 1990s. His interview with the late Pulitzer-winning playwright August Wilson is anthologized in The Believer Book of Writers Talking to Writers (Believer Books, 2005), and his fiction has been published in Wanderlust (Plume, 2006), Brown Sugar 3: When Opposites Attract (Washington Square Press, 2004), Oneworld, Rap Pages, and Uptown.
List of articles in the library by artist
Aaliyah: The Highest, Most Exalted One: Aaliyah, 1979-2001
Obituary by Miles Marshall Lewis, Village Voice, August 2001
THREE WEEKS BACK, I lay in a sea-salted bathtub with candles, bubbles, and headphones, listening to Aaliyah. Lamenting the state of my love life during ...
A Tribe Called Quest: After The Love Is Gone: A Tribe Called Quest
Interview by Miles Marshall Lewis, Source, The, October 1998
DRESSED IN A black T-shirt with THE LOVE MOVEMENT emblazoned in silver on the back, baggy jeans, and a blue denim fisherman's cap pulled down ...
A Tribe Called Quest, Q-Tip: Q-Tip: Amplified (Arista)/A Tribe Called Quest: The Anthology (Jive)
Review by Miles Marshall Lewis, Village Voice, December 1999
THE GREATEST AESTHETIC lesson to learn from past masters like David Bowie and Madonna is the value of reinvention. ...
Erykah Badu: Brave Heart: Erykah Badu
Profile and Interview by Miles Marshall Lewis, Oneworld, January 2001
THE BEIGE, NONDESCRIPT couches at New York's LaGuardia Airport are surprisingly comfortable. Seven Sirius Benjamin-the adorably precocious three-year-old son of Erykah Badu and André Benjamin ...
Erykah Badu: Baduizm (Kedar Entertainment/Universal)
Review by Miles Marshall Lewis, Rolling Stone, February 1997
PERHAPS THE first thing you notice about Erykah Badu is her uncanny vocal similarity to Billie Holiday – from the very beginning of Baduizm, Badu's ...
Common: Against The Grain: Common
Interview by Miles Marshall Lewis, Source, The, March 2003
EIGHT DAYS BEFORE Jimi Hendrix's sixtieth birthday, Common sits comfortably in the guitar god's apartment sipping Poland Spring. ...
Review by Miles Marshall Lewis, Village Voice, January 2000
I WAS FOREWARNED, and chose not to take heed. You know, how prophecy can get mofos all wound up like Chicken Little with the sky ...
DMX: Flesh of My Flesh, Blood of My Blood (Def Jam )
Review by Miles Marshall Lewis, Village Voice, January 1999
It's like, we all got two sides to us, and it depends on what side of the bed you wake up on. That will depend ...
Comment by Miles Marshall Lewis, L.A. Weekly, March 2003
Jaded Hiphop-Purist Insight #1: You cannot spit in the wind without being hit by 2Pac and the Notorious B.I.G. ...
Lauryn Hill: MTV Unplugged 2.0
Review by Miles Marshall Lewis, Village Voice, July 2002
I can faithfully, honestly say that hiphop is dead. – Q-Tip Hiphop being counterculture, underground culture, that's sorta dead. It's all mainstream. It's just ...
Janet Jackson: Brave Heart: Janet Jackson's Velvet Rope
Review by Miles Marshall Lewis, L.A. Weekly, November 1997
ACCORDING TO Ralph Ellison in Shadow and Act, no jazz musician struggled harder to escape the role of grinning minstrel than Charlie Parker, with the ...
Wyclef Jean: The Ecleftic: 2 Sides II a Book (Columbia)
Review by Miles Marshall Lewis, Village Voice, September 2000
EVER HAVE A bright idea, a 1000-watt bulb so blazin that it inevitably slides into the collective consciousness of pop culture? Even if the brainstorm ...
Lenny Kravitz: Flower Of Power: Lenny Kravitz's 5
Review by Miles Marshall Lewis, L.A. Weekly, June 1998
'ROUND MIDNIGHT on December 20, 1989, at The World in downtown Manhattan's Alphabet City, Terence Trent D'Arby trooped back onstage to perform an obligatory encore ...
Marilyn Manson: Sympathy For The Devil: Marilyn Manson
Interview by Miles Marshall Lewis, Oneworld, April 2003
BRIAN WARNER took the long, hard road out of hell (Canton, Ohio, to be exact) to emerge in 1994 on Portrait of an American Family ...
Maxwell: Now's the Time? Maxwell's Now
Review by Miles Marshall Lewis, L.A. Weekly, September 2001
MAXWELL. Not D'Angelo-Maxwell. Not Bilal-Maxwell. Not Musiq Soulchild, even. Maxwell. ...
Mos Def, Macy Gray: Macy Gray/Mos Def: Roseland Ballroom, New York City
Live Review by Miles Marshall Lewis, Spin, May 2000
IF THERE WAS ever any doubt, the huge plaque onstage honoring the gold status of Mos Def's Black on Both Sides made it clear: The ...
Sinead O'Connor: Sinéad O'Connor
Interview by Miles Marshall Lewis, Oneworld, January 2003
ONE OF THE MOST captivating mouth-that-roared rock stars of the late 1980s/early '90s, 35-year-old singer/songwriter Sinéad O'Connor leaves as many contradictions trailing in her wake ...
Outkast: OutKast In The Promised Land
Interview by Miles Marshall Lewis, Source, The, August 1996
FINAL EXAMS AT Morehouse College were a bitch. Nearly four in the morning on a starry autumn night years ago, I found myself making a ...
Review by Miles Marshall Lewis, L.A. Weekly, August 2003
EDDIE VEDDER CARES. If the casual music enthusiast remembers nothing else about Pearl Jam beyond their Beatles/Rolling Stones polarization with Nirvana in the early '90s, ...
Interview by Miles Marshall Lewis, Source, The, April 2002
THINGS ARE ABOUT to change. Trust. The rap industry may soon find itself caught out there as many hiphop fans seek sounds more suited for ...
Review by Miles Marshall Lewis, Village Voice, January 2000
THIS ISN'T A generation-gap piece, really. I ain't even 30. But a lot of folks ain't authentically feeling Rakim Allah; they just takin' the "experts' ...
Roots, The: Apocalypse Now: The Roots
Report and Interview by Miles Marshall Lewis, Spin, March 1999
THE ROOTS' new album, Things Fall Apart, bears all the signs of the Big Statement. There are five separate covers, each featuring a disturbing historical ...
Roots, The: The Roots: Things Fall Apart
Review by Miles Marshall Lewis, Village Voice, March 1999
USED TO BE, a hiphop love song was something like Rakim's 'Mahogany' or Shallah Raekwon's 'Ice Cream'- tunes celebrating shorties from around the way; hardrocks ...
Smashing Pumpkins: Machina/The Machines of God
Review by Miles Marshall Lewis, L.A. Weekly, March 2000
CURRENT ROCK carries the air of an apprehensive lover who's lately been having a bit of trouble maintaining an erection, fretfully wondering, "Will I be ...
Wu-Tang Clan: Can't Go to Sleep
Interview by Miles Marshall Lewis, L.A. Weekly, January 2001
WHAT THE HELL is going on with hiphop right about now? Rap's most popular, most talented MC â€" at one point in the running to ...
List of genre pieces
Interview by Miles Marshall Lewis, Nation, The, January 2003
RUSSELL SIMMONS, known for decades as Rush to his friends, is of average height and build for a man his age (45), with a clean-shaven ...
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