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  • The Root Review: Jay-Z's 'Decoded'

    Jay-Z’s Decoded is a game changer, and for all the right reasons. The meta-analysis begins with the book as object. In a time of plummeting book sales and industrywide distrust of experimentation, Decoded gives us something different, fresh. Start with a large trim size, sophisticated and expensive art direction, and the most explosive marketing campaign…

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  • The Root Interview: Dream Hampton

    The Root: How did your collaboration with Jay-Z begin? Dream Hampton: Jay and I met over the phone. I’d reviewed his debut album, Reasonable Doubt, for the Village Voice and situated the record in what I considered our generational zeitgeist: the billion-dollar crack industry. It was my contention that back then in the ’90s in…

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  • The Root's Top 10 Books of 2010

    Leading with the chilling statistic that more African Americans are under correctional control than were enslaved in 1850, legal scholar Michelle Alexander debunks the myth of a post-racial America, arguing that “we have not ended the racial caste system but merely redesigned it.” This is a must-read for every American with a conscience.  The…

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  • Falling Out of Love With Steve Jobs

    I’m all i-Ed out. At the moment I’m packing an iMac, iPad, iPod and iPhone, and David Pogue’s review convinced me that I must have the new MacAir because, well, my iPad plus external keyboard just isn’t cutting it for real work and real deadlines, no matter how many cool apps I’ve dutifully downloaded. I…

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  • How Some Fresh Blood Can Fix Obama's Problems

    Watching the midterm elections last week was like eating dog food. Having to listen to newly elected congressman Rand Paul declare, “There are no rich, there are no middle class, there are no poor,” made me want to throw up all over my health-insurance bills. Florida’s Marco Rubio stole all of President Barack Obama’s youthful…

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  • The Assassination of Erykah Badu

    The frenzy over the latest Erykah Badu video, “Window Seat,” has been fascinating to watch—a cultural phenom in itself. Folks in the blogosphere have been grasping for answers, for the magic decoder to come down from on high. What on earth is Erykah trying to say? Is it a publicity stunt? Is being shot on…

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  • The Root Interview: Rebecca Skloot

    The Root: What drew you to this work, to Henrietta Lacks? Rebecca Skloot: I first learned about Henrietta when I was 16. My biology teacher mentioned “HeLa” cells, saying they were one of the most important tools in medicine, then almost as an aside, she said “They came from a woman named Henrietta Lacks, and…

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  • What Is a 'Feminista,' Exactly?

    Editor’s note, June 15, 2012: The staff of The Root was saddened to learn of the recent death of writer Erica Kennedy. We will update our readers with more news about this tragic development as it comes in. Erica Kennedy and I go way back … to Facebook. We “met” last year while she was…

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  • A Honey-Colored Carrie Bradshaw

    ABOUT REBECCA WALKER I’m a writer, mom, speaker, cultural critic, editor, and all around intellectual mess-talker. I’m a multi-platform catalyst who tweets the VMAs live while reading a book on quantum physics, pondering the new Rick Owens collection, and posting articles about the Chinese penetration of Africa on Facebook. WHEN I’M NOT COVETING COUTURE OR…

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  • 30s Rock

    I’m just going to come right out and say it: Mothering in your 30s is about getting your proverbial sh*t together. School is out, and playtime is over. If you’re like most working mothers in America, by the time you hit your third decade, you’ve woken up to a few things. Unless you’ve been studying…

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