Greg Tate is reportedly dead.
According to NPR, the music writer, cultural critic and journalist’s death was confirmed by a spokesperson at Duke University Press, his publisher. They did not provide further commnets about the circumstance surrounding his death.
A bit about him, per NPR: “Starting in 1987, Tate was a longtime staff writer for The Village Voice, where he documented all facets of Black culture for the storied alt-weekly. Tate covered everything from Eric B. & Rakim to the changing nature of Black identity and the death of Michael Jackson.
“The Voice was the recorder, messenger and proclamatory dictator of what culturally mattered in the province,” Tate told NPR, after The Village Voice announced the end of its print version.
“Black writers couldn’t not be aware of the irony; writing as radically black as you wanted for a press organ that was perceived as very white and gay in the hood. But you also knew that your own more ethnically diverse community was reading the rag, too.