Greg Tate – (14/10/57 – 07/12/2021)

Writers who chronicle the birth of a genre of music are invaluable because they can capture the shock of the new, live and direct, sur le vif. Greg Tate, who has died at the age of 64, did just that when hip-hop arrived in the 1980s, providing priceless insights into what the thing was and where it stood in the evolution of black culture, but beyond great portraits of Public Enemy, Eric B & Rakim and De La Soul, he infused his very language with a rhythm, groove, colour and imagery that at times mirrored the musicians in question. It was as if Tate had nimbly used his pen rather than a mike to implement one of the key credos of many a trailblazing emcee – catch the beat.

Born in Dayton, Ohio, raised in Washington D.C and very much made in Harlem, New York, Tate was a staffer at the Village Voice newspaper whose columns broached a wide range of subjects, from the aforementioned to jazz giants such as Miles Davis and Ornette Coleman to visual pioneers such as Jean-Michel Basquiat.

The 1992 collection of essays this work produced, Flyboy In The Buttermilk, is one of the truly seminal overviews of African-American expression of the decade that is revolutionary for the way it levels the ground between improvisers, rappers, painters and writers, making it clear that a putative dividing line between high and lowbrow simply does not have credence in a lived black reality which is swiftly transformative, inquisitive and playfully inclusive. As Funkadelic said, mind and ass have to be free.   

In addition to his journalism, Tate, inspired by such as Lawrence D. Butch Morris, Sun Ra, George Clinton, Miles and James Brown, also founded the shape-shifting ensemble Burnt Sugar, a group that scaled up and down at will and undertook all manner of projects, most memorably a collaboration with maverick filmmaker Melvin Van Peebles. Beyond the brilliance of his creative output, Tate was revered because he told stone cold truths, even if that meant putting the freeze on some of his heroes.

More than keeping it real, his ethos was simply to let the real hold sway over the hype, regardless of how much it begged to be believed. His legacy is a celebration of cliché-free blackness, unfiltered honesty and the quintessential humanity that should bind us all, regardless of whether or not we are darker than blue. His word was sound. Tate was superbad, the man who somehow put JB’s good foot into real good hands.