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Is 'Return of the Mack' the Greatest Song Ever? A Debate With The Root's Shanelle Genai, Who Disagrees (She's Wrong), on Pass the Peas With Panama Jackson
On March 18, 2021, Mark Morrison’s “Return of The Mack” reached its 25th birthday. To commemorate this accoladational (Editor’s note: this is not a word) achievement for this song that really is the best song ever, I shared an article I wrote in 2017 stating as much, titled “Return of The Mack” Is The Best…
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I Think My Kids Tried to End Me (Again) Yesterday: Another Requiem
I have four children—a daughter and three boys. My daughter is 12 and the youngest boy is almost 6 months old. The two in the middle are 6 and 4; the 4-year-old will turn 5 in May. They are a duo of precocious little scamps. They play all day long, turning various rooms in our…
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Introducing Pass The Peas With Panama Jackson, a New Podcast Brought to You by Very Smart Brothas and The Root
Hey, Young World! I’d like to introduce you to a new(ish) podcast brought to you by Very Smart Brothas and The Root, Pass The Peas, hosted by VSB co-founder, Panama Jackson. That’s me. Enough of the third person. Check back in here every Friday for a brand new episode about something or other but always…
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I Miss My Imagination
One of the funnest things to do as a parent is to simply watch your kids. Over the course of every single day (and when I’m not trying to make sure they’re not about to break something or each other) I find myself watching how two of my sons play. One of my sons, in…
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2 Giraffes—1 Adorably Named Waffles—Died in a Zoo Fire and Man, That's Some Sad Ass News
Last summer, in a never-ending attempt to find things for our kids to do that were as safe as possible and also as avoidant of other people as possible, my wife happened upon a petting zoo in Reston, Va., called Roer’s Zoofari. It is about 45 minutes to an hour from my house depending on…
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Dear New Sneaker People, Just Because You Usually Wear a Certain Size Doesn't Mean You Always Wear That Size
It’s been documented here before, but the onset of the coronavirus over a year ago seems to have turned everybody and their mothers into sneakerheads (and ultimately rendering most of us winless at the SNKRS app sweepstakes). And while the sneaker culture (and folks attempting to become resellers; good morning to everybody except the Hebert…
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Dear Spades Players, It's Time We Offer an Olive Branch to Our Non-Spades Playing Friends and Unite in the Name of Black Excellence
A few years ago, my family took a trip to Atlanta to celebrate my nephew’s graduation from college. We all stayed with my older sister and, of course, various members of the family came through over the weekend. On one of the nights, as the brown liquor was flowing, the decks of cards showed up…
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28 Days of Black Joy: The Art of Chuck Styles
It all started over the past year when like many of us, I made a very hard turn into damn near exclusively buying clothing pieces by and for Black people. While I’ve always been very much into F.U.B.U. as a philosophy (while oddly never buying an actual FUBU apparel) my Buy Black meter hit an…
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And the Skippy Goes To! Here Are The Root's 2nd Annual The Blackest Awards Winners
2020 was a year. And I don’t mean that in a good way. Because this whole endeavor is about positivity, I won’t even speak on any of the negativity. What I will say is that 2020 did provide many moments of positivity in the form of movies and television, and the internet straight showed out.…
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The 2021 Skippies: An Interview With the Bay Area About Whether or Not They Were Snubbed In the 'Best Verzuz' Category
Last week, The Root dropped our nominations for the second annual The Blackest Awards, or more simply, the 2021 Skippies. The categories, both fun and serious, are fairly non-controversial. The nominations though, can sometimes tread into “Yo, how are you going to include X but not Y?” One such situation this year centered on a…
