AllHipHop.com, “the world’s most dangerous site,” ran a review of Bronx Biannual Issue 2 just yesterday written by associate editor Sidik Fofana. I remember Fofana from a capsule review The Source published last year on There’s a Riot Goin’ On. Good looking you guys. The review follows in full, or just click the link above to give the dangerous site some traffic.

“The black literati has acquainted the hiphop genre with a new type of MC; this master of ceremony is strapped with ball pens and think pads, articulating street and music tales all in one poetic jazzy web called the short story. Renegade music scribe Miles Marshall Lewis spearheads the brilliant Bronx Biannual, No. 2 (Akashic), a sexy literary journal, packed with poems, stories, and essays centered around urban culture. This collection, with a vintage The Source magazine meets The New Yorker vibe, features a mélange of the new and established. Veteran writers like Kenji Jasper and Michael A. Gonzales share the leaf with fresh voices like Bahiyyih Davis and t’ai freedom ford.

“Lewis’s literary journal flourishes with so many fantastic pieces. Lewis himself pulls off ‘The Wu-Tang Candidate,’ a poignant satire about a minstrel rapper named Ace Boon Coon. Stories about kinky hair, new age jazz musicians, and aunties who live in hell coalesce to form urban mosaics full of color and lasting panoramics. Kenji Jasper contributes ‘Friday,’ a powerful excerpt from his forthcoming novel deftly narrated in the third person.

“Bronx Biannual, No. 2 swoons with engaging prose. Subjects that are normally addressed in song or poems are explored in rich, eloquent prose. T’ai freedom ford’s story about a philandering middle-school boy ‘Born Again’ beams with realistic dialogue and a gritty yet enamoring narrative voice. She writes, ‘…which made me think how brothers is kind of like butterflies ’cause some of us be on the streets with a two-week life span too. Never know when you might end up dust on somebody’s fingers, your wings broken for being too fly for niggas to handle.’

“Miles Marshall Lewis always is popping up with new ideas and Bronx Biannual, No. 2 may be his brightest to date. Akashic Books has allegedly offered a contract for ten volumes of the literary journal. Lewis’s avant-garde literary approach translates directly to this invigorating new anthology. Be on the newstand lookout because Bronx Biannual could very well represent that much anticipated next phase of the hiphop timeline.”

Gotta admit, married with children as I am, I’ve got a nerd crush on lit phenom Zadie Smith. You know her, you love her too; background biography unnecessary. As a recovering B-boy, I’ve just got this inbred love of hybrid, mishmash, “you’ve got your chocolate in my peanut butter” stuff. And Zadie, the way she brings pen to pad with equal love of Nabokov, David Foster Wallace, Lauryn Hill and the Beastie Boys just really works for me. Plus she’s young(ish), easy on the eyes in an emo kinda way, and hi-brow gatekeepers like The New Yorker and Granta ride her dick. Zadie’s an expatriate now by the way; she lives in Rome these days with her husband, the Irish poet Nick Laird.

Her third novel, last year’s On Beauty, was just released in France as De La Beauté and so she sat for an interview with journalist Nelly Kaprièlian in Les Inrockuptibles magazine this month. I was going to translate the whole Q&A into English and post it (illegal probably), but instead I’ll tell the story of how Zadie almost wrote for Bronx Biannual Issue 2.

Turns out that as a student at Cambridge (where she wrote most of the superacclaimed White Teeth) Zadie turned out a few short stories for The Mays, a student lit anthology edited at the time by… poet Nick Laird. And so none of these stories have been published again since: “Mirrored Box,” “The Newspaper Man,” “Mrs. Begum’s Son and the Private Tutor,” and “Picnic, Lightning.” I’ve got them all, bought them last year directly from The Mays, with a promise that I could reprint any story I wanted as long as I gave The Mays attribution. I had “The Newspaper Man” all laid out and ready to roll last issue when it came to light that, actually, the rights to those stories had reverted back to Zadie, who more than likely wouldn’t want them read now that she’s large. Too bad, because I really liked “The Newspaper Man,” and if she wrote White Teeth while still in college, then these short stories (having read them all, admittedly mainly “The Newspaper Man”) are arguably just as top-flight.

She’s got a new book coming out for my birthday: December 18, The Book of Other People drops, full of around 25 writers of her choice (including Dave Eggers and Jonathan Safran Foer) creating fictional characters. And actually, in Europe the book comes out next week.

President Nicolas Sarkozy issued a statement about his divorce today. This is one of those wormholes where I retreat from gettin all “cultural critic.” Sarkozy, he’s a real person. His relationship with his woman is, like, personal (even though it can’t possibly be). Sure it’s ironic he campaigned on some French Kennedys shit less than a year ago, but whatev as far as I’m concerned. I’ll expand more one day about his proposal to mandate DNA testing for French-African immigrants, but as far as him separating from his wife… SFW?

Huge transit strike today throughout Paris. Stayed my ass home for the most part; my baby boy’s nursery shut down for the day. Found out an old editor from Radar magazine, Alexandra Marshall, lives here now. We’ll hook up sooner than later. Gotta get my ass in gear editing Bronx Biannual Issue 3. I posted about starting with an edit of Greg Tate’s short story, but I haven’t looked at it since I took all the submissions to the Alps this summer. Here’s a tentative table of contents:

Darius James, The Zombie Monologues
Michael A. Gonzales, Requiem for a DJ
Niven Govinden, L’Histoire de Bexhill Baudelaire
Ernest Hardy, Benny: A Children’s Story
Nadia Khelfaoui, No Noirs Allowed
Demetria Lucas, Night of the Second Base Head
Courttia Newland, Spider-Man
Marcus Reeves, Stanley the Steamer
A. Tacuma Roeback, Torch
Keli Stewart, TBD
Greg Tate, Android Hugs Humanoid
Marcia Jones, I Am S/He

First on the editorial chopping block: “Android Hugs Humanoid” by Greg Tate, a surreal tale of one woman’s effort to save hoochie-mama hiphop from itself (or something like that). It’s 1 a.m., and I’ve got to turn around that Marion Cotillard Q&A tomorrow also… But, Wednesday the latest.