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Why Is Hazing Still a Thing in Many Black Greek Organizations?
To her credit, my mother has always allowed me to go my own way in life, for better or worse. Even if she has something to say out the side of her mouth from time to time (like every black mama), she has never actively tried to block any of my movements. And there’s no…
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15 Truly Underrated Hip-Hop Albums
Since I had to conceal the “Parental Advisory” sticker to convince my mama to purchase my very first compact disc—Bone Thugs-n-Harmony’s E. 1999 Eternal—from Blockbuster Music back in 1995, I’ve accumulated somewhere just south of 1,000 CDs. After 21 years of collecting so much music, I’ve forgotten about certain albums that were significant to me…
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The Sad State of Black Cinema
I’ve long been of two minds about Kevin Hart. On the one hand, I appreciate that he’s a seemingly bonhomous young brother who’s built an empire for himself by selling out shows and racking up receipts at the box office. There’s little more gratifying than a black man starting from the bottom (the actual…
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6 Steps Black Folks Need to Take to Drop the Pounds
It’s now late February, which means the folks who “resolutely” started clogging the gym after Jan. 1 have long since bailed, freeing up the machines for us regulars. It’s also a great time to spread the brass tacks all over the damn floor. America is, in the medical parlance of a close gastroenterologist friend of…
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I Can Live Without All This ‘Hashtag Activism’
I’ve enjoyed stand-up comedy since well before I was old enough to be listening to anyone who wasn’t Sinbad. But only recently did a routine actually give me goose bumps for the first time. It was from the coda of Anthony Jeselnik’s Thoughts and Prayers, currently on Netflix: This is who I make fun of…
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The Best Hip-Hop Singles of 2015
It’s tough being a hip-hop fan in your mid-30s. Your formative years took place entirely during the genre’s “renaissance”–roughly 1992 to 2000—when classics dropped weekly and before ringtone rap, singles-driven albums and J-Kwon came in and stunk up the whole joint. You know what quality and effort sound like. Some hip-hop heads—the portly dudes rocking…
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Pie That Doesn’t Melt, Lacrosse and Other White-People Stuff
Don’t let my Neon Carrot-crayon complexion fool you. Both of my parents are Negroes. Mind you, they’re also Neon Carrot Negroes: Pops is Louisiana Creole—a (literal) cotton-picking product of the rural Jim Crow South. Mama was raised around the housing project culture of Detroit in the 1950s and ’60s. I was born in Detroit near…
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Maybe You’re Single Because You’re Wack
Not long ago, my dudes and I were musing over the marital status of certain women with whom we attended college—specifically, those with successful careers who are also fine as hell. We wondered why, as far as we knew, they’d never been married or in a significant long-term relationship. Not that they should or need…
Black News and Black Views with a Whole Lotta Attitude
