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Touré
Touré in 2006
Born	Touré Neblett (1971-03-20) March 20, 1971 (age 53) Boston, Massachusetts
Occupation	TV host, novelist, journalist, cultural critic
Language	English
Nationality	American

Touré (born Touré Neblett; March 20, 1971) is an American novelist, essayist, music journalist, cultural critic, and television personality based in New York City. He is the host of Fuse's Hiphop Shop and On the Record and is now a co-host of The Cycle on MSNBC. He was also a contributor to MSNBC's The Dylan Ratigan Show and serves on the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Nominating Committee.

Early life

Touré was born Touré Neblett in Boston on March 20, 1971. His father died before he was born. He attended Milton Academy. After his junior year at Emory University, he moved to New York to be a writer at Rolling Stone.

Career

Writing career

While a student at Emory University, Touré founded the black student newspaper, The Fire This Time. He dropped out of college in 1992 and became an intern at Rolling Stone magazine but was fired after a few months. Weeks later he was asked to write record reviews and then feature stories, including cover stories on Lauryn Hill, DMX, Beyoncé, 50 Cent, Alicia Keys, Eminem and Adele. He would subsequently write for The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, Playboy, The Village Voice, Vibe, and Tennis magazine.

In 1996, after having a story rejected at The New Yorker, Touré joined Columbia University's graduate creative writing program for a year and, after attending a class taught by Stephen Koch, began writing fiction. His first piece was the story of Sugar Lips Shinehot, a 1940 Harlem saxophonist who loses his ability to see white people.

His Rolling Stone article about Dale Earnhardt Jr., "Kurt is My Co-Pilot", a ended up in The Best American Sports Writing 2001.

Touré has written five books: The Portable Promised Land (2003), a collection of short stories, Soul City (2004), a magical realist novel about life in an African-American Utopia, and Never Drank the Kool-Aid (2006), a collection of his published writing between 1994 and 2005. In September 2011 Free Press published Who's Afraid of Post-Blackness?, a look at modern Black identity that includes a foreword by Michael Eric Dyson and excerpts from more than 100 interviews with notable people like Jesse Jackson. In March 2013 his book I Would Die 4 U: Why Prince Became an Icon, a biography of recording artist Prince, was published.

Television

His television career began in the late 1990s with occasional appearances on talk shows like The Today Show. In 2003, he became the host of Spoke N' Heard on MTV2, a weekly half-hour interview show. In 2004, he became CNN's first pop culture correspondent, covering the Oscars and the Grammys and talking about pop culture on a recurring segment on American Morning called "90 Second Pop," hosted by Soledad O'Brien and Bill Hemmer. In 2005, Touré left CNN and became a correspondent for Black Entertainment Television (BET), where he hosted a show called The Black Carpet. In 2008, he left BET and became a contributor to MSNBC. In September 2009, he became the host of the Hiphop Shop, a hiphop music video and interview show on Fuse. Touré has filled in as occasional substitute host of the arts and culture interview program The Leonard Lopate Show on WNYC, New York City's largest public radio station. His show I'll Try Anything Once aired on Treasure HD. The 13-episode, half-hour series featured Touré attempting challenges each week. He has hosted several shows on Tennis Channel including Top Ten Hottest Shots and Community Surface. Touré was one of the journalists interviewed for biographical insight into the life of rapper Eminem on the A&E Biography episode devoted to that musician.

On March 29, 2012, Touré criticized Piers Morgan's interview of Robert Zimmerman regarding his brother George's shooting of Trayvon Martin on Morgan's CNN talk show, Piers Morgan Tonight. Having earlier seen a police surveillance video of Zimmerman in which blood from his injuries was not visible, Touré concluded that Zimmerman never suffered any injuries; he criticized Morgan for allowing Zimmerman's brother to "spout unchallenged lies". After Morgan and Touré initially traded personal insults, they agreed to an interview on the March 30, 2012 episode of Piers Morgan Tonight. The two continued their hostilities during the March 30 interview, with Morgan calling into question Touré's journalistic professionalism and Touré arguing that because Morgan was not originally from the United States and had only been working in the U.S. for a decade or so, he was incapable of "understanding America". The two continued to feud on Twitter after the show's taping. Toure later apologized for his conduct during the interview, saying that he got sidetracked into personal exchanges with Morgan, instead of focusing on justice for Martin.

Toure currently hosts The Cycle on MSNBC with political strategist Krystal Ball, conservative columnist S.E. Cupp, and MSNBC's political writer Steve Kornacki. On August 16, 2012, on The Cycle, Touré caused a controversy by stating that by calling President Barack Obama "angry," Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney was engaging in the "niggerization" of the president. He apologized for using the word the next day.

Personal life

On March 19, 2005, Touré married Rita Nakouzi on a beach in Miami, with Rev. Run from Run-DMC as the officiant and Nelson George as the best man. Touré and his wife live in the Fort Greene neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York. They have a son named Hendrix and a daughter named Fairuz.

Racism controversy

While at Emory, Touré's publication, The Fire This Time, was responsible for publishing many articles with an anti-white and anti-Semitic perspective.

The Daily Caller claims:

Touré's flagship publication, The Fire This Time, lavished praise on famous anti-Semites, black supremacists, and conspiracy theorists whom Touré helped bring to campus. Before he became an intense-but-sardonic TV personality, Touré also decried 'the suffocating white community' and defended a nationally famous fake hate crime.

Bibliography

• The Portable Promised Land: Stories. New York: Back Bay Books. 2003. ISBN 978-0-316-73836-1.
• Soul City: A Novel. New York: Macmillan. 2005. ISBN 978-0-312-42516-6.
• Never Drank the Kool-Aid: Essays. New York: Macmillan. 2006. ISBN 978-0-312-42578-4.
• Who's Afraid of Post-Blackness? What It Means to Be Black Now. New York: Simon and Schuster. 2011. ISBN 978-1-4391-7756-3.
• I Would Die 4 U: Why Prince Became an Icon. New York: Atria Books. 2013. ISBN 978-1476705491.

References

1. ^ Contemporary Authors Online, Thomson Gale, 2006, s.v. "Toure." "Personal Information: Born March 20, 1971, in Boston, MA; married Rita Nakouzi, March 19, 2005."
2. Menz, Wonders, Petey E., Jeannie Sui. "Critic Touré Reveals Prince's Religious Roots". The Harvard Crimson. www.thecrimson.com. Retrieved May 7, 2012.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
3. "Target Entertainment launches over 100 hours of new programming at MIPTV". Target Entertainment Group. March 21, 2011. Quote: "...renowned music journalist Touré Neblett talks with some of the most provocative players in music today...."
4. Lewis, Miles Marshall (August 25, 2011). "It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Black". Huffington Post. Quote: "Touré Neblett is the cultural critic folks love to hate."
5. Beblett, Toure (2011). Who's Afraid of Post-Blackness?: What It Means to Be Black Now. New York: Simon & Shuster. p. XIX. ISBN 9781439177563.
6. ^ "Touré BIOGRAPHY: Writer, Journalist, Critic and Television Host". Big City Pictures. February 1, 2008.
7. Mary J. Loftus (Autumn 2009). "News makers". Emory Magazine. Retrieved 25 April 2012.
8. Touré (2006). "The Book of Jay". Rolling Stone online. Archived from the original on 2006. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |archivedate= (help); Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
9. "Adele Opens Up About Her Inspirations, Looks and Stage Fright in New Rolling Stone Cover Story". Rolling Stone. April 13, 2011. Retrieved July 05, 2012. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)
10. Mattei, Al. "Book Review: Visionary Choice Mark 2001 Edition". www.topofthecircle.com. Retrieved May 7, 2012.
11. "Best American Sports Writing Index 1991-2012". indiepro.com. Retrieved May 7, 2012.
12. "Community Surface". Tennis Channel. accessed May 24, 2011.
13. Biography: Eminem. A&E
14. Christopher, Tommy (March 30, 2012). "Update: Piers Morgan Books MSNBC’s Touré In Real Time To Settle Twitter Feud". Mediaite.
15. Christopher, Tommy (March 30, 2012). "Piers Morgan And Touré Finish Their Twitter Feud On CNN’s Air". Mediaite.
16. Stableford, Dylan (Apr 1, 2012). "Toure apologizes for Piers Morgan meltdown". Yahoo! News.
17. Lauerman, Kerry (June 21, 2012). "Kornacki an MSNBC host, too". Salon Magazine. Salon Media Group. Retrieved June 22, 2012.
18. ^ Wemple, Erik (17 Aug 2012). "MSNBC's Touré apologizes for 'niggerization' remark". The Washington Post. Retrieved 2012-09-21.
19. Navas, Judy Cantor. "Rita Nakouzi and Touré". The New York Times. March 27, 2005
20. Copage, Eric V. (May 22, 2009). "Rita Nakouzi and Touré". The New York Times.
21. The Daily Caller http://dailycaller.com/2013/04/09/msnbcs-toure-founded-militant-anti-white-student-paper/. {{cite web}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)
22. http://news.yahoo.com/report-msnbc-host-toure-founded-militant-anti-white-151217935.html

External links

• Touré on Twitter
• Touré on Facebook
• Touré on Typepad blog
• The Career Cookbook Touré profile

Template:Persondata

• Milton Academy alumni
• 1971 births
• African-American writers
• American essayists
• American journalists
• American music critics
• African-American novelists
• American novelists
• American short story writers
• Living people
• Writers from New York City
• MSNBC