MF GALAXY

Eddie Murphy: “This is how scared white people have black people. I was sitting in my office with Mike Tyson and Don King— my office, at Eddie Murphy Productions. The only two people that work there that are white are my managers that work for me. And we go on the subject of white people, and the government, and shit like that, and what happened is, we started whispering, ‘The white man….’ They got you so scared you whisper in your own house…. “Now that’s a helluva thing. Me, Mike Tyson, and Don King, sitting in my own office whispering about the white man. I said, ‘Yo, man, they have done such a thing on us that we whispering and he aint even here.’ And that’s just something that’s in you naturally—what the fuck is up? And you don’t know when they’re listening or when they gonna get you.”  

Tell us the story of how and why you are connected with one of your oldest and dearest friends. One of my oldest and dearest friends is Henry Carlo Service, but to me he’ll always be Carlo. We met when we were both summer student workers at the Department of External Affairs in Ottawa. He wore a suit every day, but it was usually club suit (this being 1988, he wore 1988 styles... think Bobby Brown). I wore t-shirts and shorts a lot, I think. Hard to believe that was 21 years ago. But when I see photos of me with a flat-top and him with a jheri curl, I accept it really has been more than two decades. (The photo is much later, from my wedding day in 2005.) We really didn’t hang out at the time; we didn’t connect much at the time and two years later we admitted to each other that we’d feared the other was a sell-out. Even typing those words now makes me laugh at both the absurdity, given what I know of Carlo, and the stupidity of (in my case) an 18-year-old’s socio-political prejudice. Bu...

Democracy Now ! reports today: "In other media news, protests are continuing outside the New York Post over the publication of a cartoon that critics say depicts President Obama as a chimpanzee. "On Friday, filmmaker Spike Lee called for a boycott of the newspaper and urged athletes and entertainers to shun the paper’s writers. NAACP president Benjamin Todd Jealous has called for the ouster of cartoonist Sean Delonas and editor-in-chief Col Allan. "Lloyd Riddick: 'I was in the Air Force six-and-a-half years. I’m seventy-four years old. I’ve been through hell for this country, including when they stationed me in Biloxi, Mississippi. And that was in 1954. "And you could go into a store and look at a pair of pants and hold them up against you, but you couldn’t try them on, because a white man had to try that pair of pants. I know racism. You could hold a hat up over your head, but if it touched your head, you had to buy it. I know racism.'” Good for Spike Le...

"The late "Godfather of Soul" James Brown will rise again -- on screen. "Spike Lee has signed on to direct a feature film about the singer produced by Brian Grazer and Imagine Entertainment, Paramount Pictures announced Wednesday. "'It's an authorized biography done with the cooperation of Mr. Brown before his passing," Paramount spokeswoman Nancy Kirkpatrick said. "Lee will rewrite a draft by Jezz and John Henry Butterworth, the trade paper Daily Variety reported Wednesday. The script has been through several drafts since Steve Baigelman wrote the original. The movie could be in production by late 2007, Variety said.... "Brown's music career will come full circle when his body is brought to rest on the stage of the legendary Apollo Theater in Harlem, where he made his explosive debut, and the world changed to his beat. "The public will be permitted to visit the Apollo today to have one more look at a man who helped steer mode...