No, your eyes are not playing tricks on you. Stereohyped has gotten a makeover, one that you will hopefully find to be as aesthetically pleasing as it is user friendly. The biggest change you’ll probably notice is the “feature block” at the top of the page. It’s our way to highlight Stereohyped original features, breaking news, and most talked about items.

Thanks to the malleability of the net, the site’s look is always a work in progress, so let us know what you think (especially any bugs you come across). We appreciate feedback!

Inspired by my colleague Andrew Belonsky’s sharing spirit today, I’m asking all of you visual artists, musicians, photographers, fashion designers, (short) fiction writers, poets, and filmmakers who would like a little more exposure (and knowing Stereohyped’s readers, feedback) for your work to send me the goods! I’ll pick out some of the best (and blog-friendly) submissions and post them. Email your creative masterpieces, along with a brief description of you and your art, to lauren AT stereohyped.com with the subject “Supporting the Arts.”

Unlike some blogs, like our sister site, Mollygood, we don’t do much to recognize our special commenting community at Stereohyped. My bad. But that’s why it’s especially nice to see one of your comments featured on AOL BlackVoices’ weekly Blog for Blog feature, which highlights some stand-out comments from the best blogs in the black blogosphere. Keep up the good work, guys.

Stereohyped launched exactly one year ago, and what I remember most about that day is that I was completely terrified. I was terrified that I would suck, that I would mess up, and that you wouldn’t like me. Well, over the course of the year, I have sometimes sucked, I have messed up on occasion, and some of you have not liked me at all. Nevertheless, the good has far outweighed the bad, and the site has grown and evolved so much — with no small thanks to the readers, especially the ones who actively comment — since this cheesy, dated (Rihanna and Omarion? As if!) introduction was posted. Among other things, we’ve won awards and expanded our staff, and we hope for even more good things to come in our second year.

In honor of the Stereohyped’s birthday, I went through the archives and picked out some notable moments in the site’s short existence. If you’ve been reading for as long as I’ve been writing, you’ll probably remember many of these, too.

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Even though it’s now mainly a song older black folks sing badly at birthday parties, Stevie Wonder originally wrote “Happy Birthday” in support of a federal holiday celebrating Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday. And now I’m using it to commemorate a momentous occasion: STEREOHYPED’S FIRST BIRTHDAY! *Bells, whistles, fireworks!* A little later, I’ll be reminiscing about some of my favorite moments throughout the past year, but for now, Happy Birthday to ya, Stereohyped!

About four years ago, Keli Goff had an inkling of what many political experts are just not starting to realize — that when it comes to politics, young black Americans are no longer in lockstep with their parents, the old-guard black leaders, or the Democratic party. Driven by this concept, Goff, a political analyst who got her start in the field as an intern on Hillary Clinton’s first senatorial campaign, talked to young black voters, conducted surveys, and put her ideas on the page.

She came up with a book, Party Crashing: How the Hip-Hop Generation Declared Political Independence, about how the Democratic establishment has lost the unshakable loyalty of many young black voters who don’t have any first-hand experience of the Civil Rights era, which was when the bond between blacks and the Democratic party was forged. Many feel only weak ties to a Democratic party that doesn’t necessarily relate to them, and, as a result, are registering as independents at unexpected rates. The data in the book, which Goff conceived of years ago and finished researching and writing last year, is at least one answer to the question of how a solid, traditional Democratic candidate like Hillary Clinton is less popular with young voters than the more youthful upstart preaching an end to bitter partisanship.

I spoke to recently Goff about her book, in which your own Lauren Williams makes an appearance, spouting off about how Al Sharpton isn’t my leader and gushing unbecomingly about B.O. After the jump, get the low down on her book, recent campaign issues, Barack Obama, working for Clinton, and a horrifying on-air run in with Pat “Say Thank You” Buchanan.

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• Call Bill O’Reilly! In Michelle Obama’s 1985 senior thesis, she said the Princeton community at large didn’t make her feel like she belonged. More proof she’s unpatriotic! [CBS]

• Michael Jackson stands to lose Neverland Ranch if he doesn’t fork over $24 million. Someone just take the property away from him, already. Does he even want it? [People]

• A federal judge says that Britney Spears’ civil rights have not been violated. Guess one former pop star was not a part of Dr. King’s dream. [Reuters]

• Maybe Gary can smear a little bit of that I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter he’s shilling on his hands? [RL]

• Tyra Banks and Ashton Kutcher have teamed together to produce a brand new reality show that is sure to be like nothing you’ve ever seen before. “Variety reports that the show is understood to revolve around beautiful people living in a house together.” [EW]

P.S. Welcome Cord to the Stereohyped fam!

Hello, all. My name is Cord Jefferson, and as of this very moment I’ll be joining the venerable Lauren Williams here at Stereohyped.

Perhaps you’ve previously enjoyed my work on Mollygood, Stereohyped’s rumormongering sister site. Perhaps, as some have, you’ve disliked it. Perhaps you had never even heard of Mollygood until I just name-checked it (twice). Any opinion you might hold is welcome, and, probably at one point or another, deserved.

But let’s try to start anew here and make believers out of everyone. I’ll try to convince you, dear readers, that I am worthy of a position next to – although slightly beneath – Ms Williams, while simultaneously trying to convince myself that the Internet offers a forum in which a writer can discuss something other than Paris Lohan and still manage to maintain peoples’ attention.

I come to you from Brooklyn by way of Arizona, Saudi Arabia and Greece. After spending a sixth of my life at a small college in Virginia, I fled to Los Angeles for three inelegant years. I love hip-hop but can’t stand bling, and most of the time I’d like to see MTV fall into the sea. The picture above was taken two weeks ago when I was at the Guinness factory in Dublin.

I can’t guarantee you I’ll be the same as Lauren, but rest assured I’ll do my best to maintain the quality you’ve come to expect from the best black-interest blog on the Internet.

• Damn, the Canadian judge couldn’t cut Danny Glover a break? [SP]

• Don’t expect the horse race to be finished on February 6th. [MW]

• Off topic, maybe, but this reminded me of my mom. [BWE]

• Stereohyped’s getting a new contributer! Be nice. [MG]

• Flavor Flav is back. Ummm…hooray. [C&D]

I thought it would be fitting to include a picture of me and my sisters taken during my first holiday season on earth to illustrate a post about Stereohyped’s First Christmas. In many ways, that Christmas 20-something years ago and this one are similar — the holiday capped off what would be a sort of landmark year in my life then, as it does now, and I think that the way Santa Claus is looking at the camera in this photo is probably the way that some white people look at the screen when they visit Stereohyped. So many parallels!

Anyway, it’s been a fabulous year, and no offense to you guys, but I’m looking forward to a day of family, and food, and presents (the giving of them, mostly! Promise!), and reflection, and no blogging, because it’s kind of hard to celebrate the spirit of Christmas from behind a laptop screen. I’m a very family-oriented person, and my family and I are at our closest and hokiest at this time of year, when we huddle together on Christmas Eve opening presents and watching movies, and then pack into the car on Christmas day and head to my aunt’s house, where my massive extended family gathers for a decadent feast, during which my lone Republican family member engages the table in a rousing political discussion (sometimes too rousing) and my aunts and uncles pass out presents to nieces and nephews who are way too old to still be getting presents. Myself included.

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Now and then, marketers – those big companies responsible for giving you Hitch and, yes, even The Great Debaters – need a little extra convincing as to why they should advertise on Stereohyped. We’d like to ask you to help us out by answering a very quick, 4-question survey so we can keep paying the bills, which include your editor’s salary. Rest assured, this is entirely anonymous, and we aren’t collecting identifiable data.

Please click here to take our survey.

Friday night, Stereohyped hit up the red carpet at Ciara’s 22nd birthday party (one of 7 parties on a 5-city birthday tour) at Runway in NYC. It was raining*, which caused attendees like Lenny Kravitz, Missy Elliot, and Fabolous to skip the red carpet and duck into the club. Ciara, of course, was on hand to talk to Stereohyped. And I’d like to think that it wasn’t because she had to, it being her party and all, but because she wanted to. She discusses T.I., her love for blogs, and crazy rumors on the premiere episode of Stereohyped TV.**

–Not on the video, but important to note. She stands by the “good friend” story, but her face pretty much lights up when 50 Cent’s name is mentioned. True story.

*Note to self: after getting rained on, touch up makeup before stepping in front of the camera.

**Courtesy of Zach Golden, videographer extraordinaire.

Admit it. You have just been dying to put an actual voice to these words you read everyday. Good news: I was a guest on NPR today. Bad news: it’s not such a great voice, and I’m going to need to retire “you know” from my repertoire.

I was joined on News & Notes‘ weekly blogger’s roundtable by Shay Riley of Booker Rising and Brandon Whitney of Homeland Colors. Today’s topics were the Jena Six’s BET Hip Hop Awards cameo, Bill Cosby’s Meet the Press appearance, and the acquittal of the defendants in the boot camp death case, all of which are things you pretty much know my opinions (which I’m much better at expressing in written form, unfortunately) on if you read the blog. Still, it’s fun to listen. Click here to check it out.

Carolivia Herron wrote the children’s book Nappy Hair expecting a little bit of controversy. You see, the lead character, a child named Brenda, had “the nappiest, fuzziest, the most screwed up, squeezed up, knotted hair.” Brenda was special. Unique. Herron figured parents might not like that she was putting this young character on a pedestal.

“I was claiming uniqueness for my character,” Herron told Stereohyped, “rather than claiming that this child represented African American people as a whole.”

But the controversy Herron got was of an entirely different sort. In 1998, a white elementary school teacher in the predominately black and Hispanic Bushwick neighborhood of Brooklyn, NY, infuriated parents after she read the book to her class and sent students home with copies. They considered Nappy Hair to be a racial slur. The administration eventually backed the book and the teacher’s decision to read it in class, but it was too late. The teacher had to request a transfer because she feared for her safety.

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