WORD Presents Kimberly Mack

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About the Book

The iconic Black rock band Living Colour's Time's Up, released in 1990, was recorded in the aftermath of the spectacular critical and commercial success of their debut record Vivid. Time's Up is a musical and lyrical triumph, incorporating distinct forms and styles of music and featuring inspired collaborations with artists as varied as Little Richard, Queen Latifah, Maceo Parker, and Mick Jagger. The clash of sounds and styles don't immediately fit. The confrontational hardcore-thrash metal - complete with Glover's apocalyptic wail - in the title track is not a natural companion with Doug E. Fresh's human beat box on “Tag Team Partners,” but it's precisely this bold and brilliant collision that creates the barely-controlled chaos. And isn't rock & roll about chaos?

Living Colour's sophomore effort holds great relevance in light of its forward-thinking politics and lyrical engagement with racism, classism, police brutality, and other social and political issues of great importance. Through interviews with members of Living Colour, and others involved in the making of Time's Up, Kimberly Mack explores the creation and reception of this artistically challenging album, while examining the legacy of this culturally important and groundbreaking American rock band.

About the author:

Kimberly Mack is Associate Professor of African American literature and culture at the University of Toledo. Her book, Living Colour’s Time’s Up, part of Bloomsbury’s 33 1/3 book series, is forthcoming in May 2023. She is also the author of Fictional Blues: Narrative Self-Invention from Bessie Smith to Jack White (University of Massachusetts Press, 2020), which won the 2021 College English Association of Ohio’s Nancy Dasher Award. Kimberly is writing another book, tentatively titled The Untold History of American Rock Criticism, about the BIPoC and White women writers who helped develop American rock criticism and journalism during the 1960s and 1970s. Kimberly holds a Ph.D. in English from UCLA and an M.F.A. from Antioch University Los Angeles, and she has received fellowships and scholarships to attend writing residencies at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Vermont Studio Center, and the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. Kimberly is a memoirist and music writer, and her scholarly and public-facing articles and essays have appeared in African American Review, Popular Music and Society, Journal of Popular Music Studies, AMP: American Music Perspectives, Longreads, No Depression, and elsewhere.

In conversation with
Laina Dawes, Ph.D., is an ethnomusicologist and a heavy metal and popular music commentator and critic. She is also the author of What Are You Doing Here? A Black Woman’s Life and Liberation in Heavy Metal (Bazillion Points Books, 2012; 2020). A lifelong heavy metal fan, her research explores how music listening and performance activities in transgressive sub-cultures complicate socially manufactured notions concerning race, gender and class. Her music journalism work can be found in various American, Canadian, and U.K print and online publications, such as The Wire, NPR, OkayPlayer, Metal Hammer, and many more. 

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