Includes bibliographical references (pages 343-345) and index.

"Lust. Of all things. Black." -- The black male show -- Amiri Baraka -- Wayne Shorter -- Jimi Hendrix -- John Coltrane -- Gone fishing: remembering Lester Bowie -- The black artists' group -- Butch Morris -- Charles Edward Anderson Berry and the history of our future -- Lonnie Holley -- Marion Brown (1931-2010) and Djinji Brown -- Dark angels of dust: David Hammons and the art of streetwise transcendentalism -- Bill T. Jones: combative moves -- Gary Simmons: conceptual bomber -- The persistence of vision: storyboard P -- Manchild at large: one-on-one with Ice Cube, hip-hop's most wanted -- Wynton Marsalis: jazz crusader -- Thornton Dial: free, black, and brightening up the darkness of the world -- Kehinde Wiley -- Rammellzee: the ikonoklast samurai -- Richard Pryor: Pryor lives -- Richard Pryor Obit -- Gil Scott-Heron -- The man in our mirror: Michael Jackson -- Miles Davis -- She laughing mean and impressive too -- Born to Dyke: I love my sister laughing and then again when she's looking mean, queer and impressive -- Joni Mitchell: black and blond -- Azealia Banks -- Sade: black magic woman -- All the things you could be by now if James Brown was a feminist -- Itabari Njeri -- Kara Walker -- Women at the edge of space, time, and art: ruminations on Candida Romero's little girls -- Ellen Gallagher -- To bid a poet black and abstract -- "The Gikuyu mythos versus the Cullud grrrl from outta space": a Wangechi Mutu feature -- Come join the hieroglyphic zombie parade: Deborah Grant -- Björk's second act -- The golden age: Thelma Golden -- Hello Darknuss my old meme -- Top ten reasons why so few black women were down to occupy wall street plus four more -- What is hip-hop? -- Intelligence data: Bob Dylan -- Hip-hop turns thirty -- Love and crunk: outkast -- White freedom: Eminem -- Wu-Dunit: Wu-Tang Clan -- Unlocking the truth vs. John Cage -- Screenings -- Spike Lee's bamboozled -- It's a Mack thing -- Sex and negrocity: John Singleton's baby boy -- Lincoln in whiteface: Jeffrey Wright and Don Cheadle in Suzan-Lori Parks's topdog/underdog -- The black power mixtape -- Race, sex, politricks, and belles lettres -- Major's league -- The Atlantic sound: Caryl Phillips's the atlantic sound -- Apocalypse now: Patricia Hill Collins's Black sexual politics; Thomas Shevory's Notorious H.I.V.; Jacob Levenson's The secret epidemic -- Blood and bridges -- Nigger 'Tude -- Triple threat: Jerry Gafio Watts's Amiri Baraka; Hazel Rowley's Richard Wright; David Macey's Frantz Fanon -- Bottom feeders: Natsuo Kirino's out -- Scaling the heights: Maryse Conde's Windward heights -- Fear of a Mongrel planet: Zadie Smith's White teeth -- Adventures in the skin trade: Lisa Teasley's glow in the dark -- Generations hexed: Jeffery Renard Allen's Rails under my back -- Going underground: Gayl Jones's Mosquito -- Judgment day: Toni Morrison's Love and Edward P. Jones's The known world -- Black modernity and laughter, or how it came to be that n*g*as got jokes -- Kalahari Hopscotch, or notes toward a twenty-volume Afrocentric futurist manifesto.