Mark Anthony Neal
Mark Anthony Neal is Professor of Black Popular Culture in the Department of African and African-American Studies at Duke University, where he won the 2010 Robert B. Cox Award for Teaching. Neal has written and lectured extensively on black popular culture, black masculinity, sexism and homophobia in Black communities, and the history of popular music. Neal is the founder and managing editor of the blog NewBlackMan. Neal hosts the weekly webcast, Left of Black in collaboration with the John Hope Franklin Center at Duke University. A frequent commentator for National Public Radio, Neal contributes to several on-line media outlets, including Huff Post Black Voices and SeeingBlack.com. You can follow him on Twitter @NewBlackMan.
16 articles
List of articles in the library
Review by Mark Anthony Neal, PopMatters, 25 June 2001
IN THE AFTERMATH of Jill Scott's surprising breakthrough last year and in what is year four of the Badu evolution, there have been several remarkable ...
Review by Mark Anthony Neal, PopMatters, 19 June 2002
WHEN TAKE 6 dropped their self-titled debut in 1988, contemporary R&B and gospel were both at crossroads and the idea of an a cappella gospel ...
Erykah Badu: Worldwide Underground
Review by Mark Anthony Neal, PopMatters, 15 October 2003
SHE WAS QUEEN of the head-wrap set. A generation of young black folks trying to navigate the pitfalls of cultural negation in an era when ...
Michael Jackson: Can You Remember?
Comment by Mark Anthony Neal, PopMatters, 11 December 2003
Can You Remember when we were babies? — Michael Jackson (Age 11) ...
The Notorious B.I.G., Puff Daddy: Sean Combs: Diddy-cized
Overview by Mark Anthony Neal, PopMatters, 18 May 2004
Hip-hop has always been — and always be — about fabulousness and myth. — Scott Poulson-Bryant, "This is Not a Puff Piece" The hip-hop ...
Donny Hathaway, Laura Nyro: Donny Hathaway and Laura Nyro: Live From Planet Soul
Retrospective by Mark Anthony Neal, PopMatters, 24 August 2004
Donny Hathaway and Laura Nyro were both products of an era when Soul music had a transformative power and These Songs for You, Live! and ...
Rahsaan Patterson: R&B Conversations: Rahsaan Patterson's Slow Burn
Profile and Interview by Mark Anthony Neal, PopMatters, 24 August 2005
The soul singer's career momentum has built slowly since he lost the major labels' love, but out of the spotlight he's been able to remain ...
Wilson Pickett, Lou Rawls: Gritty Soul Men: Remembering Lou Rawls and Wilson Pickett
Obituary by Mark Anthony Neal, PopMatters, 26 January 2006
Grit was not just about the "sound" of soul, but also the grittier social and political realities that soul music offered transcendence from. The recent ...
Comment by Mark Anthony Neal, PopMatters, 1 February 2006
By making public his struggles with living a devout life, Kanye West makes such a lifestyle so much more accessible and valuable to the very ...
Lewis Taylor: Soul Enigma: Lewis Taylor Comes to America
Report and Interview by Mark Anthony Neal, PopMatters, 8 February 2006
FOR MUCH OF THE LAST DECADE, arguably the most brilliant R&B artist of this generation has toiled in relative obscurity in Britain. ...
James Brown: The Last Soul Brother: James Brown (1933-2006)
Retrospective by Mark Anthony Neal, PopMatters, 2 January 2007
JAMES BROWN was of a generation of black men—mythological in many ways—who helped define the contours of freedom and possibility for black folk in the ...
Book Review by Mark Anthony Neal, PopMatters, 21 April 2008
I'VE SPENT better part of that last 20-years – what seems like a lifetime – trying to write about Donny Hathaway. It's not as though ...
The Demise of Vibe and the Future of Criticism
Comment by Mark Anthony Neal, PopMatters, 23 July 2009
THERE'S NO SMALL irony to the fact that the announcement of the folding of Vibe magazine occurred the day after the death of Michael Jackson. ...
Teddy Pendergrass: Life Was a Song Worth Singing
Obituary by Mark Anthony Neal, PopMatters, 21 January 2010
Pendergrass' popularity lay in his performance of a masculinity that was virile and tailor-made for a cultural discourse in the '70s that had moved beyond ...
Teddy Pendergrass: Life Was a Song Worth Singing
Retrospective by Mark Anthony Neal, PopMatters, 22 January 2010
HEARING THE SOOTHING voice of the late Teddy Pendergrass singing lead on the Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes classic, 'If You Don't Know Me ...
Keyshia Cole, Linda Jones: Bodies in Pain: The Redemptive Soul of Linda Jones and Keyshia Cole
Essay by Mark Anthony Neal, New Black Magazine, 8 March 2012
"The young lady who is the absolute personification of soul itself" – MC, January 1970 ...
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