 Before COVID-19, the frontman of Cure for Paranoia was stuck in a creative rut. Losing live shows sent him back to the drawing board.When pandemic restrictions went into effect almost two years ago, it made official what had become obvious to anyone in music: Live performances were on hold indefinitely.
Cameron McCloud’s first thought was: “‘I’m not gonna playanymore. I’m not gonna be doing DJ gigs anymore. We’re not gonna make money anymore.” McCloud, 28 and raised in Irving, is the rapper behind the group Cure for Paranoia, a fixture of live music in Deep Ellum since 2016 that typically included some variation of Stanley Francisko singing vocals and Jay Analog and Tomahawk Jonez producing the instrumentals. They established themselves in Dallas with talent, an original sound and McCloud’s ambition, which borders on audaciousness. The first time he ever went to Deep Ellum, years before meeting his bandmates, he saw Kendrick Lamar at Trees. By the end of the night, he knew what he wanted to do with his life. He waited after the concert for just a few minutes of face time with Lamar and freestyled for the West Coast rapper, who validated his skills. A few years later he would be fired from his job at Olive Garden for missing his shift to perform at Trees himself. At one point, McCloud sneaked backstage at the Bomb Factory to freestyle for Erykah Badu, earning Cure for Paranoia an invite to perform at her annual birthday concert. In 2019, if Cure for Paranoia, whose members lived together at the Kontour at Kessler Park apartments, wanted to perform for money in Deep Ellum, they could, any day of the week. Until March 2020, when the neighborhood went quiet.
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 Launched online last year, the in-person festival celebrates the Black origins of early American music.After debuting online last year, a Fort Worth celebration of the Black origins of early American music is returning, this time in person. At Southside Preservation Hall on Saturday, about a dozen Black musicians will perform songs from traditional genres such as old-time, string band, jug band, ragtime and early blues and jazz as part of the Fort Worth African American Roots Music Festival.
 Nobody asked for a dark, dramatic reimagining of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, which makes the new series fitting that description, Bel-Air, better than it has any right to be. Premiering Super Bowl Sunday on NBC’s streaming service Peacock, the opening episodes establish a catchy beat, with the main question being how long they can sustain it.
Inspired by a 2019 fan-made trailer that went viral (and whose creator, Morgan Cooper, is a director, producer and co-writer here), the series could easily have become a classic case of taking a three-minute gag too far. Yet the creative team under showrunners T.J. Brady and Rasheed Newson blows up the opening credits of the original sitcom – which explained how the character came to live with his wealthy relatives – in a very clever way.  The prestigious St. Marks School of Texas in Dallas has announced the establishment of a award in my name, The Lee S. Smith ’65 Courage and Honor Distinguished Alumni Award. The real tribute for this great legacy and honor belongs to my parents and teachers, the people without whom none of the amazing things I have done would have ever happened.
My parents, neighbors and teachers were the generation on the front line of desegregating the near South Dallas neighborhoods during the ’40s Black migration out of Freedman Town (North Dallas). It wasn’t easy. My generation was their hope for a better future. Everywhere you heard words you can’t get out of your head, such as the words “Get your education, they can’t take that away from you.” I grew up in historic South Dallas, born and raised on Tanner Street – four doors off Oakland Avenue (now Malcom X Boulevard) – in a neighborhood they call Wheatley Place. It was bound by Oakland Avenue, Pennsylvania Avenue, the Trunk Tracks and Wheatley Elementary School – just a stone’s throw from Fair Park. We also had Phyllis Wheatley Elementary, named for a freed slave kidnapped from Senegal who became a famous poet, and James Madison High School, renamed from Forest Avenue High after the White flight was complete, so that Black graduates would not have the same high school name on their diplomas and job applications as the earlier White graduates. |
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January 2023
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