Flyboy in the Buttermilk by Greg Tate

Flyboy in the Buttermilk by Greg Tate

An electrifying collection of essays from legendary cultural critic and Pulitzer Prize-winner Greg Tate

‘Easily one of the greatest wordsmiths … [and] the best American writer and thinker of the past forty years’ Washington Post

From one of the most original, creative, and provocative writers on American culture comes a now-classic collection of essays, delving ‘far and wide into Black music, into film, into the beats and rhyme of culture’ (Questlove).

These pieces orbit social, pop cultural, political, and economic subjects­— from the rise of hip-hop, the art of Jean-Michel Basquiat, the music of Miles Davis, James Brown, Jimi Hendrix, Bad Brains, and many others, to the crisis of the Black intellectual and the irony of the GOP recruiting Black Americans. With unrivalled flair, Tate writes in a voice that is at once angry, joyous, self-critiquing, and dazzlingly witty.

Tate teaches us ‘it is not too late to say too much, to be so dissatisfied with the world as it is that we throw far too many words toward the sky, and see what the heavens throw back’ (Hanif Abdurraqib).

Greg Tate (1957–2021) was a music and popular-culture critic and journalist whose work appeared in many publications, including The Village Voice, Vibe, Spin, The Wire, and Downbeat. He was the author of three books of cultural criticism, winning a posthumous Pulitzer Prize in 2024 in recognition of his pioneering work. Tate, via guitar and baton, also led the conducted improvisation ensemble Burnt Sugar the Arkestra Chamber.

Questlove is a six-time Grammy Award-winning musician, Academy Award-winning filmmaker, drummer, DJ, producer, director, culinary entrepreneur, and New York Times-bestselling author.

Hanif Abdurraqib is a poet, essayist, and cultural critic from Columbus, Ohio. His first full length poetry collection, The Crown Ain't Worth Much, was named a finalist for the Eric Hoffer Book Prize, and was nominated for a Hurston-Wright Legacy Award. His first collection of essays, They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us, was named a book of the year by BuzzFeed, Esquire, NPR, O: The Oprah Magazine, Paste, CBC, The Los Angeles Review, Pitchfork, and Chicago Tribune, among others. His most recent book, A Little Devil In America, was the winner of the 2021 Gordon Burn Prize and the 2022 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction.