Sweat Equity
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Description
When Wesley was 11, he wanted to be just like Sandra from the sitcom “227,” played by Jackée Harry. Sandra was sassy, boisterous and always got what she wanted. But it took reading Margo Jefferson’s latest book, “Constructing a Nervous System: A Memoir,” for Wesley understand the complexity of this memory. On today’s episode, Wesley and Margo Jefferson sift through their most deep-rooted, and sometimes difficult-to-explain cultural influences. Why did Margo adore the scatting of Ella Fitzgerald, but squirm at the sight of her sweating onstage? Why was Margo drawn to Ike Turner as a teen, but not Tina Turner? Together, Wesley and Margo unpack their cultural memories — and what they reveal about who they are now.
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Today: The undoing of Kanye West. “We’re in deeply vile territory, and I can’t make intellectual sense of that,” Wesley Morris says about West, who now goes by Ye. In 2004, when Ye released “College Dropout," he seemed to be challenging Black orthodoxy in ways that felt exciting and risky. But...
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