Remembering Greg Tate — A Cultural Leader

Greg Tate, 2016. Image credit: Nisha Sondhe/Duke University Press

Greg Tate — the seminal writer, cultural critic, musician, and producer known as the “Godfather of hip-hop journalism” — passed away this week, on December 7, at the age of 64.  

A graduate of Howard University where he studied journalism and film, Greg’s journalism career began in 1981 as a freelancer for The Village Voice, where he later became a staff writer and a leading voice on Black culture. Through his writing, Tate is widely credited with helping to elevate the perception of hip-hop as a musical genre and cultural phenomenon.  

Tate's influential contributions to the field of cultural criticism continued with the publication of his first of three books in 1992, Flyboy in the Buttermilk: Essays on Contemporary America.  

Greg co-founded the Black Rock Coalition (BRC) in 1985 to create opportunities and prominence for Black rock musicians. The BRC’s manifesto rejected “the demand for Black artists to tailor their music to fit into the creative straitjackets the industry has designed.”  

In 1999, he founded Burnt Sugar, an experimental improvisational music project melding elements from a range of styles, eras and genres.  

He was awarded a United States Artists fellowship in 2010 — an award given in recognition of the country’s most compelling artists.   

Greg was a visiting professor of Africana Studies at Brown University, and of Jazz Studies at Columbia University. 

WAA was fortunate to have worked with Greg as part of the development of the Black Arts @ WAA program back in 2019, and as a speaker at the 2020 Joint Virtual Conference with Arts Midwest.