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The New Style Icon: Solange Knowles Solange Knowles has never cared what people thought of her or her style which is one of the reasons why many respect her. She covered Honey Magazine with some pretty fierce photos and has this to say re- garding the people reaction from her decision to chop off all her hair. “It’s interesting how the first day I had it, I had nothing but nega- tive, evil, cruel things in my inbox and then yesterday [after Oprah aired] I had 300,000 people saying ‘Oh my God, you looked amazing, so beauti- ful, and you made us proud.’ People were able to hear my reasoning, which is good and bad because we should be able to just express our- selves. I knew what the reaction would be before it happened. I’ve always been in-tune with what physi- cally and emotionally makes me happy. I was that little girl that wanted to wear the tutu and tap shoes as my nanny is sitting next to me shaking her head ‘Yes, yes.’ All through high school I got made fun of because of what I wore and what music I listened to, so this is just junior high for me all over again. I don’t care, and I don’t think I ever will because at the end of the day, these are not the people who are going to be there to change a flat tire or who help you in ways that you really need it. This is a really fickle and materialistic and narcissistic industry. I try not to put too much into that because it will eat you alive. The people that I love and that I really care about — their opinions matter. Those are the people that have nothing but positive things to say.” Not everyone can pull off the all nautarl look and some people may feel like its a fad that everyone is just jumping on. However Solange, has put her own twist into the “All natural look” and has the fashion world buzing about. Her look is more about incorperat- ing Afrocentricity into glamour meets retro hippie chic. Her new look helps her break away from all the black R&B sterotypes while still seeming appealing fashionably and musically. I interviewed 2 college students that have expressed a great interest and experience in the “go natural” move- ment. Alexa Bailey, a former student of Hampton University, had this to say about cutting hair off. I cannot even lie, when first cut my hair off I was crying while she shaved it. I didn’t have to begin with the fact that it was shaved down lie a boy really shook me up. Later on I reminded written by: Kayla Y. Brown

Urban Renewal Magazine

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Page 1: Urban Renewal Magazine

The New Style Icon:

Solange Knowles

Solange Knowles has never cared what people thought of her or her style which is one of the reasons why many respect her. She covered Honey Magazine with some pretty fierce photos and has this to say re-garding the people reaction from her decision to chop off all her hair. “It’s interesting how the first day I had it, I had nothing but nega-tive, evil, cruel things in my inbox and then yesterday [after Oprah aired] I had 300,000 people saying ‘Oh my God, you looked amazing, so beauti-ful, and you made us proud.’ People were able to hear my reasoning, which is good and bad because we should be able to just express our-selves. I knew what the reaction would be before it happened. I’ve always been in-tune with what physi-

cally and emotionally makes me happy. I was that little girl that wanted to wear the tutu and tap shoes as my nanny is sitting next to me shaking her head ‘Yes, yes.’ All through high school I got made fun of because of what I wore and what music I listened to, so this is just junior high for me all over again. I don’t care, and I don’t think I ever will because at the end of the day, these are not the people who are going to be there to change a flat tire or who help you in ways that you really need it. This is a really fickle and materialistic and narcissistic industry. I try not to put too much into that because it will eat you alive. The people that I love and that I really care about — their opinions matter.

Those are the people that have nothing but positive things to say.”

Not everyone can pull off the all nautarl look and some people may feel like its a fad that everyone is just jumping on. However Solange, has put her own twist into the “All natural look” and has the fashion world buzing about. Her look is more about incorperat-ing Afrocentricity into glamour meets retro hippie chic. Her new look helps her break away from all the black R&B sterotypes while still seeming appealing fashionably and musically. I interviewed 2 college students that have expressed a great interest and experience in the “go natural” move-ment. Alexa Bailey, a former student of Hampton University, had this to say about cutting hair off. “I cannot even lie, when first cut my hair off I was crying while she shaved it. I didn’t have to begin with the fact that it was shaved down lie a boy really shook me up. Later on I reminded

written by:Kayla Y. Brown

Page 2: Urban Renewal Magazine

Love Advice from Today's Hottest Musicians

Big Boi (Outkast)

What's the best way for a woman to approach a guy? If she does it with class, it can be a good thing if a woman's aggressive: It means she knows what she wants and will go for it. Know you're a respect-able woman and that just because you're showing interest doesn't mean you're an easy catch. Oppor-tunities can pass you by because you were afraid of what MAY happen. Don't let those moments slip away.What relationship tip do you think most women could benefit from? A lot of times, men feel women get caught up in comparing their relationships to others and what you read in (gulp!) magazines. What works for one couple may not work for the other, so just focus on the two of you and you'll be fine.

John Legend

What's a relationship crime you think women are guilty of? I think men are a lot more straightforward and matter-of-fact than women, and some-times we get into conflict because a guy will say something without any sort of hidden meaning that a woman will twist into all sorts of interesting things that he never in-tended. Don't think so deeply about it. Most of the time, we really are being straightfor-ward. You can interpret our signals pretty easily.What's something that keeps you and your girlfriend feeling con-nected? We have very similar tastes in humor. In general, I usually bond with people over stuff that's not so connected to what I do every day, like favorite TV shows or mov-ies. My girlfriend and I are always TiVoing things like Family Guy, the Daily Show, Colbert Report, and The Office.

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myself why I had to cut it. I re-ally wasn’t taking good care of my hair so it got so damaged from the perms, weaves, and constant dying it. However, 5 months later from the actual cut I am so happy with the results. My hair is so curly, I have a little fro now and I am so proud of it. I’m ecstatic that my hair is back to being healthy again.” So like Alexa many people decided to go natural because their hair was so damaged nothing else could be done with it. Aisha Folkes (a sophomore at Temple University) had a similar story except she was more about proving the point that to be a beautiful black women we do not need to stray away from what makes us unique. Which is our thick hair. “I used to wear weaves all the time then the summer after my freshman year in college I went on a spiritual retreat with my church and it made me realize a lot of things. The importance of embrac-ing my culture was one of them. When I came back I wanted to start

all over so I had my haircut. Cur-rently I am in love with it and even though the process is so long, it is so worth it.” It’s so important for us as women of color to embrace our afro-centricity rather than to shun it. And even though going allnatural with the hair may not be for every-one, it sure is a perfect start.

How to Make the Transition to Natural HairThere are a few basic ways to make the transition to natural hair. The simplest is to just cut off the permed hair and live with a short hair style for several months. This is the boldest way. But, takes the least amount of work and there’s no worry about breakage.

-Cut off the relaxed hair- depending on how much new growth and your preferences you have a few styl-ing options. You can wear a TWA (tweeny weeny afro) or twists (two strand or comb twists) pretty easily with almost any length hair.

-For other styling ideas visit Natural and Transition Hair Styles for Black Women -Braids and/or extensions- you can have your hair braided until it grows to a length where you feel comfortable cutting off the new growth and going with other styling options SisterlocksTM- SisterLocks can be started with one and one half inches of new growth at the scalp. They are similar to dread locks but with a look more like micro braids or very small twists. They leave you with many styling options. For more information (including pictures) go to http://www.sisterlocks.com

If you are going to try to main-tain your length while transitioning, keep these things in mind. Your hair is very fragile during this time. Handle it as little as possible and make sure you keep it well moisturized. Sleep with a silk cap or scarf at night to prevent friction on your pillow and to maintain moisture in your hair.

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J. Cole Talks about G.O.O.D

Friday Verse, Jay Electronica

& “Friday Night Lights“

(via Complex magazine) Roc Nation is having the best week ever. Not only has their founder and biggest star, Jay-Z, been on a media blitz promoting his new book Decoded, but they also announced signing one of the hottest (and most elusive) rappers hip-hop has seen in years, Jay Electronica. Their trifecta was completed by J. Cole. The young North Carolina-based spitter dropped his mixtape Friday Night Lights last week to much fanfare and praise. Of course, he dropped the mixtape only a week after the killer guest spot he did on Kanye West’s recent G.O.O.D. Friday leak “Looking For Trouble.” With so much going on in his career, we had to chop it up with the “Who Dat?” star , so we spoke to Cole about the response he’s gotten to Friday Night Lights, how his Kanye feature came about, and what his rela-tionship with Jay Electronica is like… On the response he“s received to Friday Night

Lights“

“When The Warm Up dropped, I watched that grow legs and work for me for a year straight. I saw it reach-ing people every day. With this, what’s really over-whelming—in a good way—is the amount of people. It’s all positive feedback, but the amount of people who hit On Jay Electronica Signing To Roc Nation…“I’m such a Jay Electronica fan; he’s out of this world good. And I wanted to work with him before he was on Roc Nation. So I’m sure [we’ll collaborate] in the future when our schedules permit. I’m sure he’s with it. I have as much [of a personal relationship] as you can have with Jay Electronica. We’re cool, but he just changes his number so much that whenever I try to hit him, it’s tough. He’s a free spirit, man, he just goes where the wind takes him. If he thinks about you, he’ll hit you up. And I’m the same way. And this is before the Roc Nation thing. I literally have four or five Jay

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Urban Renewal

Hot new spa’s in NYC

The First Issue Featuring

Solange

Knowles

Do it Yourself JewleryTips from Lisa Salzer

J. Cole Talks About G.O.O.D Friday VerseJay Electronica & Friday Night Lights

Make-up Tips For the fall

Love Advice from Today’s Hottest Mu-sicians Big Boi and John Legend

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On Jay Electronica Signing To

Roc Nation“..

“I’m such a Jay Electronica fan; he’s out of this world good. And I wanted to work with him before he was on Roc Na-tion. So I’m sure [we'll collaborate] in the future when our schedules permit. I’m sure he’s with it. I have as much [of a personal relationship] as you can have with Jay Electronica. We’re cool, but he just changes his number so much that whenever I try to hit him, it’s tough. He’s a free spirit, man, he just goes where the wind takes him. If he thinks about you, he’ll hit you up. And I’m the same way. And this is before the Roc Nation thing. I literally have four or five Jay Electronica phone numbers in my phone. He’s super-myste-rious. But that’s his aura. That’s the ill thing about him as an artist. His voice on the track, he sounds like Thor. It’s excit-ing to be able to say I’m on the same label as Jay-Z and Jay Electronica. It’s fun as a rapper.”

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Electronica phone numbers in my phone. He’s super-mysterious. But that’s his aura. That’s the ill thing about him as an artist. His voice on the track, he sounds like Thor. It’s exciting to be able to say I’m on the same label as Jay-Z and Jay Electron-ica. It’s fun as a rapper.”me on Twitter or sent a text or quote lines on Twitter has been overwhelm-ing. I seen people who I knew from college make comments like, ‘Wow, everybody on my timeline is quot-ing J. Cole.’ It’s a really cool feel-ing knowing that I reached a group of people I wasn’t reaching before. Hopefully, more people will see the type of music I’m trying to bring to the people.“This mixtape was a part of my plan. I told everybody I didn’t want to release an album that was really good

On the making of his

“Looking For Trouble“

verse“

“[That verse] was last minute. I got the beat the night before from my manager. But no-body told me they wanted to do it for G.O.O.D. Friday, and definitely not that G.O.O.D. Friday. I was like, ‘Oh man, that beat is dope. I’ll write to it soon.’ The next day I woke up in Kalamazoo, Michigan—I was on tour—and I was getting ready to go to Detroit because I had a radio promo event to do. So I got a call from Kanye and he was like, ‘What’s up? It’s Kanye. Can

you get that verse today? I’m tryna put the song out to-night.’ I honestly didn’t think I could do it in time so I told him that. He said, ‘I’ll wait. We got engineers up all night so you got a while to do it. But if you can, have it done by today.’ I said, ‘I’ll make it happen somehow.’“I wrote my verse on the hour-and-a-half ride to De-troit, did the radio promos, left that, went directly to the studio, laid the verse, and sent it to him by 5 o’clock. Mind you, I didn’t hear anybody else’s verses or the song itself, I just heard the beat and did my verse.

I drove back to Kalamazoo and did the show. When I got off-stage, he had just put the song out, and I sat back and watched all the comments as people went crazy. It was a beautiful night.“I don’t know what it is [when it comes to features]. What it comes from is fear, that’s why I go so hard [on guest spots]. I’m a real competitor. It’s just a fear of somebody besting me and dominating me with a better verse. Not every song is like that, but on a song like ‘Looking For Trouble’ it is. It’s that spirit of hip-hop: Let’s see who can come the best. I don’t know if I’m go-ing to have the best verse, but I know ain’t nobody just gonna kill me.”

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Tis the Season: Spa Catchi We know you’ve been buzzing around the city, hustling and bus-tling. We know city life can take a toll on you and breaks are not only necessary but also well deserved. When you find yourself in a “woe is me” spell, retreat to the urban oasis, Spa Catchi. It is the first and only day spa located inside the brand new, state-of-the-art House of Beau-ty, featuring an adjoining cosmetic/aesthetic surgery center and a hair styling and restoration salon.Located in Murray Hill, the black-owned sparadise is a one-stop beau-ty shop that offers services to treat the body and spirit from the inside out. Their services include cus-tomizable facials, skin treatments, massages, hair removal, eye brow styling and professional makeup application. They have also been reported to give some of the best manicures/pedicures in New York City.Spa Catchi will provide 20% off to all Honey readers until the end of 2010 if you say we sent you! A holi-day gift from us to you!*Note: The discount does not apply to other specials – no double dis-counts.For more information visit Spa Catchi and/or follow them on Twit-ter.

Guest post by Julia Allison, Media Personality and “ma-chine of happiness”

Sufficiently relaxed *thanks to Spa Merge’s massage,* I hopped on my pink & white bike, Cupcake (yes, I named my bicycle) for the 15 block ride downtown to Spa Catchi. Located at 115 East 39th Street, on a quiet, leafy block in the no man’s land of Midtown East, Spa Catchi was designed as a companion to their plastic surgery center, just next door. In theory, you could get breast implants followed

by a mani-pedi – or a fa-cial chased with lipo. I’m not quite sure who actu-ally wants to combine such procedures, but my sense is that Spa Catchi, which just opened a few months back, is attempting to establish this as a one-stop-shop for all your beauty mainte-nance needs.The Spa itself is quite small – more like a nail salon than anything else – but the people are super-friendly, and exceptionally good at their jobs. I was scheduled for a 60 minute Catchi Sig-nature Facial followed by

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a 135 minute combination Catchi Singature Mani-Pedi. I’m not re-ally a facial kind of girl (although I’ve always felt that I could be, were I to discover the right sort of facialist, and, uh … a surfeit of discretionary income), but I certainly know when something feels good. And ohhhh, did this facial feel good. Good enough, in fact, that I lapsed into a trance-like pleasure coma for a solid 40 of the 60 minutes. Plus, when I emerged, my skin looked tighter, firmer and almost … pore-less. Now, I have absolutely no idea how or why this worked, but I’m not about to argue with results. Especially when the facialist, Yelena, herself had the most gor-geous skin I’ve seen outside of a fake, totally airbrushed magazine. I actually pointed at her and said “That! I want that!!” When she

laughed (apparently it’s not the first time she’s heard such a re-quest), she followed up by saying that she “works incredibly hard” on her skin, and it requires facials AT LEAST once a month. I was sold. Why even bother to adver-tise?

Now, I may not know a lot about facials, but I practically have a PhD in mani-pedi. I get them at least once every two weeks, and have for the past five years (hey, some people have a wine habit or a shoe habit or a drug habit. I have a mani-pedi habit.) Although the salon itself isn’t particularly fancy – and until I asked them to turn it off, they had a headache-inducing five-minute informercial for their plastic surgery center running on an end-less loop – it was clean and, most

importantly, the manicurist was top-notch. They had a small selection of colors (unfortunately none of the trendy “alt” hues like yel-low/blue/green/brown), but the shade I selected, a pretty purple which just so happened to match my iPhone cover, has elicited many compliments in the intervening week. They didn’t have a gel techni-cian to administer the type of calgel mani I’ve been doing for the past six months, so we went natural – just paint, no acrylics or silk wraps or gels or tips. Nada. And yet, after Mi-chelle was finished, there wasn’t a single smudge, and the nails – both on my toes and my hands, which get quite a bit of abuse with all the typing I do – are still practically perfect a week later.Hands down (har), one of the top manicures/pedi-cures in New York City.

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lulu frost statement necklace do-it-yourself

'tis the season! lulu frost's lisa salzer crafts the ultimate statement neck-

lace with vintage jewels and chains galore.

What began as a cherished childhood pastime—fre-quenting her grandmother's jewelry store in Pennsylvania and scouring flea markets for vintage heirlooms—quickly flourished into a triumphant business for Long Island, New York, native Lisa Salzer. The Dartmouth art-history grad crafted her first Lulu Frost col-lection from her college digs senior year. She now counts Oscar winner Meryl Streep and her daughters Mamie and Grace Gummer as repeat customers. But for Salzer, it's all about the backstory. Lulu Frost takes its name from her beloved late grandmother Elizabeth Frost combined with Salzer's own winsome nickname, Lulu. "I try to not be overly influenced by trends," she says. "I just go back to what speaks to me." We're all ears. —ANA DRAG-OVIC (VIA TEEN VOGUE)

what you’ll need....

pliersten jump ringschain with lobster clasp and exten-sion linksthree or four extra chains1950s-style crystal necklacesjeweled dress clips or pendants

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chain gang

With pliers, use the jump rings to connect several chains of varying lengths to one main chain. Hook them together in the back with the lobster clasp.

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linked in

Create colorful layers by adding vintage necklaces to the extension links on the main chain.

more is more

Use the jump rings to attach the jeweled dress clips to the necklace. Then pin the pendants through the chains.

the results...