Touré (journalist)

Touré (b. March 20, 1971) is an African-American novelist, music journalist, and television personality.

He has written three books. The Portable Promised Land (2003), a collection of short stories, Soul City (2004), a novel about life in an African-American utopia, and Never Drank the Kool-Aid (2006), a collection of his work from magazines and newspapers, written between 1994 and 2005, mostly from Rolling Stone, but also from the New Yorker, the New York Times, the Village Voice, and others. His magazine career began in 1992 when he became a Rolling Stone intern. He was fired after a few months later but weeks afterward he began writing record reviews and then feature stories. In 1996 he became a Contributing Editor and still writes for the magazine. He has written cover stories on Jay-Z, Alicia Keys, 50 Cent, Eminem, Beyonce, DMX, Lauryn Hill.

In 1996, upset that a feature story he'd written for the New Yorker had been rejected, he enrolled in the graduate school for creative writing at Columbia University to learn more about non-fiction. There he took a fiction writing class and wrote a story about a black saxophonist 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 story was well-received by the class and he has continued to write fiction in a style reminiscent of magic realism.

His television career began in the late 90s with occasional appearances on pop culture talk shows. In 2003 and 2004 he was the host of "Spoke N' Heard" on MTV2, a weekly half-hour interview show. Guests included Zadie Smith, Kanye West, The Reverend Al Sharpton, Nas, Jay-Z, Puff Daddy, Lenny Kravitz, Alicia Keys, Method Man, Ghostface Killah, and others.

In 2004 he became the first Pop Culture Correspondent on CNN, covering the Oscars and the Grammys and talking about pop culture on a recurring segment called "90 Second Pop." In 2005 he left CNN and joined Black Entertainment Television as a correspondent.

He was named Touré by his mother after she found the name in an article about then President of Guinea, Sekou Touré. He does not use his last name.

On March 19th, 2005, he was married in Miami with Nelson George as the best man. He and his wife Rita Nakouzi live in Brooklyn.

External links: Official website [1] New York Times Weddings Page [2]