Welcome To Culture Fries by Touré
The best culture Substack on Substack is here
This is the publication I’ve always wanted to create. A place where I can dive deep into fun ideas around culture. I love writing and I love culture and I’m thrilled to be creating this independent home for great writing about culture.
I want to build Culture Fries into one of your favorite Substacks.
This will be weekly deep dives into culture as both essays and video essays.
Politics is important but culture is everything. Culture is where we live and breathe and work out who we really are. It’s where we have fun and make sense of the world. So welcome to Culture Fries, my new one-writer publication about culture. There’s so many stories I want to tell and so many ideas I want to explore and so many arguments I want to have. I can’t wait to talk with and think with and argue with you.
I’ve been a writer my entire life. When I was in college (Emory) I started a newspaper called The Fire This Time. After college (actually after my junior year, I never finished undergrad) I moved to New York and supported myself by writing for Rolling Stone and the Village Voice and the Source. In the 90s I went to graduate school for creative writing at Columbia—they took me even though I didn’t have a degree and it changed my writing life. Over the last 30 years I’ve been writing about culture at every place that would have me from the New York Times to Vogue to Playboy to Elle to Vibe. In that time I was also on air at MSNBC, CNN, BET, MTV, Fuse, Tennis Channel, the Weather Channel (not as a meteorologist), TheGrio, and more. I love being part of the conversation about the things we love and the things we hate.
In a world where media is crumbling but the desire to read great writing is still here what do we do? An independent publication like this is the perfect idea. Magazines are dying but it’s still fun to read great writing. Reading a magazine or a newspaper gives you a slew of perspectives but that means buying writers you like along with lots of writers you don’t care about and supporting an entire institution that you may disagree with in significant ways (ahem, NYT). In this publication, it’s just me. If you’ve loved my work in the past, you’ll love it here. If I’m not for you then you don’t have to have the triggering experience of opening a magazine and seeing my byline and feeling a rush of anger race up your spine and throwing the magazine across the room with abandon while screaming “I can’t stand that Touré!!!” (I don’t think this has actually ever happened but I’m a writer with enough self-doubt creeping in that I think maybe it's happened at some point.
A magazine or a newspaper is like a compilation album featuring lots of musicians. Most of us buy (ok, stream) albums by one artist because we like that artist and we like depth of the conversation we can have when it’s one artist presenting one batch of songs. (I’m gonna do a whole thing on the lost art of making albums.) This model, the one-writer publication, is like an album of music by one artist. Or, like, when you buy cable, you pay for channels you would never watch like Fox News or the Cowboy Channel which is like buying a magazine with essays by writers you would never read. Consumers are always like why can’t I just get the channels I like? Substack gives you that opportunity. Subscribe only to the writers you love. I hope that I’m one of them.
If you’ve liked what I’ve been writing and saying over the years then this is the place for you. If you’ve hated something I did then this is also the place for you. Whether I struck a chord or a nerve, you’ll have fun here because this is going to be a fun ongoing conversation about music, movies, TV, and everything else that makes up culture. It’s going to be the publication that I’ve always dreamt of creating, one that covers everything that’s cool and dives into every idea that I can possibly tackle.
Over time I’ll share the long, fascinating story of my friend from prep school who became a professional counterfeiter. I’ll talk about the metamessage in Jay-Z’s lyrics—like what has he been trying to tell us all these years? I’ll talk about the development of the small but mighty American craft chocolate market and explain why the best chocolatier in America still lives with his parents. I’ll talk about spanking and why I hate Drake and how disco was born (incredible story) and how Jamaica is a father of hiphop. I’ll explore the real reason why Prince died (it goes back to his childhood) and the real reason why Kanye is such an entitled brat (that also goes back to his childhood). I want to talk about the biggest icons of the prehistory of hiphop and the fact that I’m part Jewish and what that means.
If you can become a paid subscriber I would deeply appreciate it. I want to really dedicate myself to this and give you great essays and great video essays and be a valued part of your reading diet.
I’m relying on you to help me accomplish that. The essays I’ll write and the video essays I’ll create are funded by your subscription. It helps me keep going and take care of my kids and provide my best work, sent directly to your inbox without the need for a conglomerate to get in between us.
I understand that not everyone can afford it. Maybe you’re a gig worker or a student or underemployed. If you really want to read this but you just can’t afford it, just email me. You don’t have to explain. Just ask. That said, if you have the means to gift someone else with a subscription then please do.
Thank you so much for taking this journey with me. I will work to make Culture Fries something that you look forward to reading.