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Touré

TOURÉ has written three 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 writing from Rolling Stone, the New Yorker, the New York Times, the Village Voice, the Believer, Playboy, Tennis Magazine, and others, published between 1994 and 2005.

In 1992 he dropped out of college and became an intern at Rolling Stone. He was fired after a few months for being a terrible intern but weeks later was asked to write record reviews and then feature stories. His first feature was about Run-DMC. Since 1997 he has been a Contributing Editor at Rolling Stone, writing mostly about hiphop. He has written cover stories about Alicia Keys, 50 Cent, Eminem, Beyonce, DMX, Lauryn Hill, and Jay-Z. He has often evoked the participatory journalism of Tom Wolfe and George Plimpton, for example, playing high-stakes poker with Jay-Z, two-on-two basketball with Prince, one-on-one basketball with Wynton Marsalis, tennis with Jennifer Capriati, or writing illegal graffiti with known graffiti artists.

In 1996, upset that a feature story he'd written for the New Yorker was rejected, he enrolled in the graduate school for creative writing at Columbia University to learn more about non-fiction. He took a fiction writing class and wrote a story about a black saxophonist in Harlem named Sugar Lips Shinehot who loses the ability to see white people called "The Sad Sweet Story of Sugar Lips Shinehot and the Portable Promised Land." The second story he wrote, about a dangerously sexual preacher, called "A Hot Time at the Church of Kentucky Fried Souls and the Spectacular Final Sunday Sermon of the Right Revren Daddy Love" won an award from Zoetrope: All Story and he embarked on a fiction career.

After a year at Columbia, TOURÉ left to write the autobiography of rapper KRS-One. He travelled with KRS to London, Frankfurt, Amsterdam, and New Jersey, interviewing him for over a year until KRS abruptly shelved the project.

In 2003 he became the host of Spoke N' Heard on MTV2, a weekly half-hour interview show. Guests included Zadie Smith, Kanye West, Nas, Puff Daddy, Professor Cornel West, Lenny Kravitz, Method Man, Ghostface Killah, Questlove, Talib Kweli, Alicia Keys, the Reverend Al Sharpton, and Jay-Z. In 2004 he became CNN's first Pop Culture Correspondent, covering the Oscars and the Grammys and doing a recurring segment on American Morning called "90 Second Pop.” In 2005 he left CNN and became a correspondent for Black Entertainment Television (BET).

TELL ME ABOUT YOURSELF - The Survey
Name:	Toure
Birthday:
Birthplace:
Current Location:	Brooklyn, New York
Eye Color:	brown
Hair Color:	dark brown
Height:	5'11"
Right Handed or Left Handed:	righty
Your Heritage:	Black
The Shoes You Wore Today:	Nikes as usual
Your Weakness:
Your Fears:
Your Perfect Pizza:
Goal You Would Like To Achieve This Year:	Start my third novel
Your Most Overused Phrase On an instant messenger:
Thoughts First Waking Up:	It's going to be a good day
Your Best Physical Feature:	My big afro
Your Bedtime:	1am or later
Your Most Missed Memory:
Pepsi or Coke:	I don't like either
MacDonalds or Burger King:	McDonalds fries, BK burgers, but KFC beats them both
Single or Group Dates:
Lipton Ice Tea or Nestea:
Chocolate or Vanilla:	Chocolate chocolate chip
Cappuccino or Coffee:	Neither
Do you Smoke:	No
Do you Swear:	Often
Do you Sing:	Yes, when I'm alone and to my wife
Do you Shower Daily:	No
Do you want to go to College:
Do you want to get Married:	I want to stay married for a long, long time
Do you belive in yourself:	Completely. If you don't believe in yourself you have no chance.
Do you get Motion Sickness:	No. I love reading in cars and on the subway
Do you think you are Attractive:
Are you a Health Freak:
Do you like Thunderstorms:	I don't mind as long as I'm inside
Do you play an Instrument:	Wish I was a DJ, I'd love to rock the turntables, but alas I know no instruments
In the past month have you Drank Alcohol:	Sure. I like red wine with dinner but I never get drunk
In the past month have you Smoked:
In the past month have you been on Drugs:
In the past month have you gone on a Date:	Yes, several with my wife
In the past month have you gone to a Mall:	I hate the mall, the whole concept of it, and yet, sometimes, somehow, the mall can be fun
In the past month have you eaten a box of Oreos:	Yes! I love crispy Oreos, when they're fresh.
In the past month have you eaten Sushi:	Nah, I'm not an adventurous eater
In the past month have you been on Stage:	Sure, if you consider being on TV a stage
In the past month have you been Dumped:	Thank God I haven't been dumped by anyone since Jennifer dumped me over ten years ago. (We're still friends.)
In the past month have you gone Skinny Dipping:
In the past month have you Stolen Anything:	Only a couple of good ideas from a smart person here or there...
Ever been Drunk:	Sure, but not in a while
Ever been called a Tease:	Yeah, sometimes
Ever been Beaten up:	No way!
Ever Shoplifted:	Once, when I was a little kid I stole something small from a big store, an action figure I think, and got in big trouble. Never again.
How do you want to Die:	During sex, no, wait, right after I finish
What do you want to be when you Grow Up:	I am what I always wanted to be. A writer.
What country would you most like to Visit:	Brazil and Italy again, India, and all of Africa
In a Boy/Girl..
Favourite Eye Color:
Favourite Hair Color:
Short or Long Hair:
Height:
Weight:
Best Clothing Style:
Number of Drugs I have taken:
Number of CDs I own:	Thousands
Number of Piercings:	Zero
Number of Tattoos:	None
Number of things in my Past I Regret:	I don't believe in regret. If you made mistakes maybe you needed to make them in order to get where you have to go.
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