Touré (journalist)

Touré (born Touré Neblett; March 20, 1971) is an American writer, music journalist, cultural critic, podcaster, and television personality. He was a co-host of the TV show The Cycle on MSNBC. He was also a contributor to MSNBC's The Dylan Ratigan Show, and the host of Fuse's Hiphop Shop and On the Record. He serves on the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Nominating Committee. He taught a course on the history of hip-hop at the Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music, part of the Tisch School of the Arts in New York.

Touré is the author of several books, including The Portable Promised Land (2003), Soul City (2005), Who's Afraid of Post-Blackness? What It Means To Be Black Now (2011) and I Would Die 4 U: Why Prince Became an Icon (2013). He is also a frequent contributor at The Daily Beast and The Grio.

Touré was born Touré Neblett in Boston on March 20, 1971. His father, Roy E. Neblett, was an accountant and a member of the personal staff of Boston mayor Kevin White. Touré's parents met while Roy was studying at Suffolk University Law School, and his mother Patricia also worked at the Neblett accounting firm. Touré's paternal grandparents were immigrants to Harlem from Barbados and the British Virgin Islands.

He attended Milton Academy, and then Emory University but dropped out after his junior year. In 1996, he attended Columbia University's MFA writing program for one year.

While a student at Emory University, Touré founded a Black student newspaper, The Fire This Time. Touré began his writing career as an intern at Rolling Stone in 1992. He has contributed essays and articles to Rolling Stone, Essence, The New Yorker, The New York Times, Playboy, Time, The Village Voice, Vibe, The Washington Post and Ebony. His Rolling Stone article "Kurt is My Co-Pilot," about Dale Earnhardt Jr. was included in The Best American Sports Writing 2001. His writing has also been featured in the collections Best American Essays of 1999, the Da Capo Best Music Writing of 2004 and Best American Erotica of 2004.

Touré has written five books. In 2002, his short story collection Portable Promised Land was published. He also wrote a novel, Soul City (2005), set in an African-American utopia, according to The Washington Post. His 2006 essay collection, Never Drank the Kool-Aid, included the personal essay "What's Inside You, Brother?" which was considered for inclusion in Houghton Mifflin Harcourt's Best American Essays of 1996. In 2012, Touré published Who's Afraid of Post-Blackness?: What it Means to be Black Now, a book on race in modern America based on a collection of interviews Touré conducted with over 100 prominent African-American icons. Who’s Afraid of Post-Blackness? was named one of the most influential books of 2011 by both The New York Times and The Washington Post, and the book earned Touré a nomination for an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work in Non-Fiction. In 2013, Touré published I Would Die 4 U: Why Prince Became an Icon, a biography of Prince that discusses the pop artist's works and legacy in a religious context. The book is based on a series of lectures Touré delivered at Harvard University in 2012.

In 2002, Touré appeared opposite Paula Zahn on CNN's American Morning and was later featured three times a week on a panel called "90-Second Pop." He was subsequently hired as CNN's first pop culture correspondent. In 2005, BET hired Touré to cover BET News and Public Affairs programming.

He also hosted the series Community Surface on Tennis Channel and MTV's Spoke N' Heard, and was interviewed on the life of Eminem for the rapper's A&E Biography episode. In 2008, he hosted the reality show I'll Try Anything Once, in which he tried a variety of jobs and activities, including rodeo clowning and lumberjacking.