Chicago rapper Lupe Fiasco’s two albums are anomalies on the rap racks: winding, wordy projects with few A-list cameos, recognizable producers, or sure-fire singles. That he’s managed to build himself into a successful international brand is not a little bit attributable to a unique set of circumstances. There’s the trap-hop backlash, a dirge in the straight-up New York sound resulting from Atlanta’s ascent, the Kanye Effect, the Jay-Z Effect, that music blogging thing... ...

HBMG Foundation is still inviting folks to apply for the 2007 ArtSpark Festival, a twelve-week-long creative festival and competition that pits teams of theatre junkies, video game developers, and visual artists against one another to create awesome new works. At orientation, each team is given a "spark," an object which serves as the catalyst and inspiration to jumpstart the team's creative process. If you'd like to apply but can't find a team to join,......

To imagine the love child of Maya Angelou and Kara Walker is to envision -- however hypothetically -- the potent soulfulness expressed by Gee's Bend Quilts, now on show at the Austin Museum of Art. The exhibit, Mary Lee Bendolph, Gee's Bend Quilts and Beyond, celebrates the women artists of Gee's Bend, a small African American community in rural Alabama where, even today, only a single road leads in and out. Accordingly, the region's quilts......