Home › Time Out › Time Out: Geek Out
Musicians try hand at chess, dance
STORY TOOLS
More from Time Out: Geek Out
In the song "Protect Ya Neck," Wu-Tang's RZA raps, "Y'all might just catch me in the park playin' chess, studyin' math." Now you're more likely to catch him on the laptop playin' chess.
RZA, a founding member of Wu-Tang, recently partnered with Chesspark.com to launch http://www.wuchess.com, where the worlds of hip-hop and chess converge. On the site, you can play "hard-core chess" in tournaments with the potential of winning money or "just for the joy of flexin' ya mentals."
It isn't cheap (membership is $48 a year) but the site promises to donate a "large part" of revenue to the Hip Hop Chess Federation's scholarship fund.
The standard medieval pieces of the board have been updated to Wu-Tang symbols and martial arts figures. If you join, you can play games against other people, learn from chess masters and watch exhibition matches.
Peter Gabriel, once lead singer of Genesis whose solo career included hits like "Red Rain" and "Sledgehammer," has debuted a Web site in a field outside his own.
He is a partner in http://www.thefilter.com in the increasingly popular realm of "recommendation engines." Its basic principle is to learn about your tastes and then offer recommendations for you based on your input, consuming patterns and mathematics.
Some $8.5 million of venture capital has been invested in the site by Eden Ventures and Gabriel's Real World Group.
MC Hammer has been known less for entrepreneurial spirit than for — in typical "Behind the Music" fashion — mismanaging the spoils of his enormous hits. Hammer (real name: Stanley Burrell) is co-founder and chief strategy officer of http://www.dancejam.com, a user-generated bastion for dance videos.
— Jake Coyle, AP
(Requires free registration.)
Article discussions on this site are to support community debates of issues related to our stories and editorials.
Discussions should not stray from the subject of the story or editorial.
We do not allow the following:
We reserve the right to delete threads and/or ban users for these or other reasons we deem necessary.
Opinions are the sole responsibility of the person posting them. You agree not to post comments that are off topic, defamatory, obscene, abusive, threatening or an invasion of privacy. Violators may be banned. Click here for our full user agreement.