Musician and hip hop critic pioneer Greg Tate is dead. The music world mourns the disappearance of musician and pioneer of hip hop journalism Greg Tate, one of the most responsible for the spread of black culture over the past four decades.
He was born in Dayton, Ohio, but has called New York “home” since the early 1980s, where he has closely followed its contemporary cultural manifestations. There, he founded the band Black Rock Coalition and, later, Burnt Sugar, the Arkestra Chamber, the latter more focused on jazz and improvised music and which produced the greatest number of albums over more than 20 years.
But it was through the lyrics that “Ironman’s” vision elicited the most influence, he who was a veteran of The Village Voice’s writing, where he stood out as one of the first critics to pay serious attention to hip hop phenomenon. In 1992, he published Flyboy in the Buttermilk: Essays on Contemporary America, an “eye-opener” served with doses of analytical thoughts that focused not only on music or literature but also on politics and racial issues. In 2016, the brilliant book that introduced us to a new disciple of Amiri Baraka was entitled to a succession, through Flyboy 2: The Greg Tate Reader. He was currently working on James Brown’s Body and the Revolution of the Mind.
For Hua Hsu, a critic of The New Yorker, there is a whole new generation of music thinkers whose foundations lie in the pillars Tate built: “His career has served as a reminder that diversity is not just about a splash of color in a photo of the group; it’s about the different ways people see, feel and move in the world.”
Everything But the Burden: What White People Are Taking From Black Culture and Midnight Lightning: Jimi Hendrix and the Black Experience was two other literary works signed by the man who also shared some of his vast knowledge by the students of Brown universities and Columbia to over the past few years.
The cause of death was not revealed.
rip greg tate… impossible to mimic, though we all tried… a giant, a good and big-hearted person, the realest one… wrote this in 2016 and could have easily written 100,000 more words about his influence on us https://t.co/watdGCpY8m
— hua hsu (@huahsu) December 7, 2021
Absolutely gutted to learn (from a trusted source) that Greg Tate has left this dimension. What a hero he’s been — a fiercely original critical voice, a deep musician, an encouraging big brother to so many of us. Total shock. pic.twitter.com/JMzCnj3Asb
— Nate Chinen (@natechinen) December 7, 2021
Greg Tate was an absolute genius. I owe him a debt too big to repay. Rest in power.
— dr. jennifer c lena (@WITWhat) December 7, 2021
Rest in power to a real one, Greg Tate. I was first introduced to his work when my professor, Dr. Michelle Wright at @EmoryUniversity, had us read and me lecture on Black To The Future—a conversation on Afrofuturism with Mark Dery. Greg was a gift.https://t.co/Gx1QLoM1nq pic.twitter.com/k6cGGtFu5N
— Danté Stewart (Stew) (@stewartdantec) December 7, 2021
Greg Tate was a different type of cool. A style brought to you by gaining respect with words with a vibe no university could ever teach. So they hired him to school folks on what it really means to be apart of the culture and some of us are still realizing what he did for us
— moor mother (@moormother) December 7, 2021
RIP the mighty Greg Tate! An inspiration from a young age, taught me every single time we talked. Had the privilege of editing/booking him, the great pleasure of working with him & bringing his work to students. The "father" to so many of us. All I can say atm is" Thank You!" pic.twitter.com/KDKph50wsv
— Piotr Dada (@raspberryjones) December 7, 2021
Greg Tate, from "Love And The Enemy," 1991. pic.twitter.com/D7wvAZ4ZkN
— Hanif Abdurraqib (@NifMuhammad) December 7, 2021