Ernest Hardy

article placeholder

Body and Soul

Ernest Hardy
Photo by Steven lamJILL SCOTT Who Is Jill Scott? (Hidden Beach/Epic) There is a question that hip-hop, for all its touted liberating qualities, has not yet answered. In fact, the question has been made thornier, more problematic. How does a grown woman, a black woman, be sexual? Not just sexy,......

Straight Camp

Ernest Hardy
Framed by a mass of thick and unruly red hair, Natasha Lyonne‘s face fires off contradictions. The eyes are sharp and challenging, the lips full and sexy, the round cheeks smooth youthful cuteness over a countenance that flutters between disdain, indifference and exasperation. She’s the girl in high school who......

Laurie Collyer’s Nuyorican Dream

Ernest Hardy
“This film is a manifestation of our love affair,” laughs director Laurie Collyer, speaking about her creative partner, Robert Torres, whose family is the subject of the documentary Nuyorican Dream, which screens at Outfest. “If he had been straight, we would have had an affair and it would have eventually......
article placeholder

Saving It

Ernest Hardy
Photo by David Lachapelle There were two jaw-dropping, stunning-for-all-the-wrong-reasons R&B moments during the recently televised Arista tribute special. The first was when Aretha Franklin — black cornrows swept up into a scarifying blond weave, a fleck of what looked like gristle sitting high on her cheek — inexplicably peppered her......

Girls, Interrupted

Ernest Hardy
Photo by Sidney Baldwin Jeffrey Eugenides’ 1993 novel, The Virgin Suicides, is social satire stitched inside a coming-of-age tale. It’s filled with dark, often bitter comedy whose purpose isn’t so much to generate laughter as it is to dismantle, or at least insistently pry at, the involuted mysteries that lie......
article placeholder

Naked

Ernest Hardy
Photo by Thierry Legoues A few weeks before the release of his hit album, Voodoo (Virgin), D’Angelo appeared on the cover of New York’s Paper magazine, sprawled on the floor, looking up at the camera from under sleepy lids and wearing what looked like a pair of glittery panties. His......
article placeholder

Like It That Way

Ernest Hardy
”I come from a family of civil rights activists,“ says singer-songwriter Toshi Reagon, speaking by phone from her home in Brooklyn, just a few days before her recent gig at LunaPark. ”My grandfather was a preacher, and my grandmother worked all the time. They raised eight kids on very little......
article placeholder

Renaissance Man 2000

Ernest Hardy
The Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s has taken on the aura of a Boho Negro Garden of Eden, a vanquished utopia for politically forward, artistically and socially progressive black folk. It was a time and place where artists, politicians and intellectuals not only mingled under the same roofs, but where......

Schizopolis

Ernest Hardy
Forget about Slamdance, No Dance, Jamdance and Park City’s numerous other spinoffs; there were already two de facto film festivals within this year‘s Sundance showcase itself. Depending on which one you fell into, you either saw a steady stream of slickly accomplished, multiplex-ready product (fueling the ever-constant grumbling that Sundance......
article placeholder

Do U Know Us?

Ernest Hardy
The cover art for Armand Van Helden’s single “U Don‘t Know Me” makes for a powerful marriage of image and music. It’s a reminder that albumCDsingle packaging can carry a statement beyond “worship this pop star,” that it can actually accent the message in the music. The artwork is a......