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Showing posts from September, 2011

The Poet, the Author, His Book & the Rapper

Seen today's headlines? Chinua Achebe forces 50 Cent to rename movie: Things fall apart for rapper as Nigerian writer makes him change forthcoming film title to avoid conflict with 1958 novel The word on the streets of Baltimore is blame it all on the legal team. I can't quite understand why a line from a 1919 poem that becomes a title for a novel almost forty years later (both works portraying "great social troubles") shouldn't be used by a rapper more than fifty years on. I'm not sure either why an artist who drops 60 pounds to portray a man whose "world is [literally] spinning out of control" (an American football player stricken with cancer) doesn't get a nod from an 8-million-product book empire? How many millions of humans die from cancer each year? What's the impact on humanity worldwide?