Kanye West divides and provokes and resides like few entertainers suspended in the stratosphere of fame. His skill as a musician is indubitable, but so is his misbehavior. To some, he is a prophet of the heavens, speaking Truth to the ignorant masses without regard for dumbass industry mores (and ...

Eminem, for all his lyrical violence—threatened and skillful (i.e. killin’ y’all fools on this lyrical shit)—is not a bully. He is the bullied, the victim. He is the wee scrawny white kid from a predominantly black part of Detroit, rescued from peer and parental abuse by ...

Said a pseudo-American prophet, “p--- is sooooo crucial!” I am really American, so I believe in this very hard. And, as really important things must happen in cool places (the defenestration of Prague was in the castle, births and deaths happen in hospitals, Super Mash Bros mashed it up at ...

"When you’re famous and say you’re writing a book, people assume that it’s an autobiography—I was born here, raised there, suffered this, loved that, lost it all, got it back, the end. But that’s not what this is. I’ve never been a linear thinker, which is something you can see in my rhymes. They follow the jumpy logic of poetry and emotion, not the straight line of careful prose. My book is like that, too.”

"I never change; I’m too stuck in my ways.”
There is a hope that we forget that “corrupt but necessary” college admissions process once in college. This, of course, is hypocritical and hopeless, for who hasn’t heard that kid boast of turning down Yale, or boast of some ...

Egypt is the place to be right now. Personally, I don’t want to be there, but it is certainly the best place to be. I am jealous of those who are there right now. Before I explain why, a little background:

The Program in Dance’s Spring Dance Festival: expertly choreographed works performed by accomplished student dancers at the Berlind Theater. There, I sat and stared at the stage. There, danced young men and women, their figures silhouetted against the backdrop, their motion passionate and firm. I sat next to my dear friend, who is herself an accomplished dancer.

Sometimes, you forget: there are people out there who do absolutely brilliant, incredible things. Even at achievement-filled Princeton—especially at achievement-filled Princeton—greatness, which is a level below the place I write about, can become benign and unimpressive. Talent becomes the norm and is hardly exceeded; it becomes rote.

If you have never heard Van Morrison’s yearning, keening voice—its blues and jazzy swag , the way it stretches words into birds that fly you to heaven, its worn beauty—well, then, you’ve never heard it. But I bet you have; Van the Man, as he is often ...

Last Sunday, I spoke with one of my dear friends about God. We were walking down some path strewn with magnolia petals, as the sun finally shone through the trees, talking about the trees, the breeze, the news.

My stomach is parched from having just peed into the muddled ground.

Rarely is one so revised by experience, which like a river washes away the calcified sand of the soul to describe itself there anew. Rare, too, is the ability to recognize this revision.

My friend James is soft-spoken; he talks instead of screaming and whispers instead of talking.

Perfecting the college essay.

An album that encapsulates an era.