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Celebrate Black Cinema in San Diego
As one of the largest black film festivals in the country, the San Diego Black Film Festival celebrates black movies and production in an effort to preserve African-American film legacy. Held each year in late January, the festival draws thousands of film lovers to San Diego, and celebrities don’t miss out on the action, either.…
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Hip-Hop History in Words and Photos
Hip-Hop: A Cultural Odyssey is a luxury volume that chronicles the genre’s history from its humble beginnings to its current role as a dominant force in global pop culture. At 420-pages long and weighing in at 16-pounds A Cultural Odyssey combines never-seen before photos with personal essays, first-person accounts from fans and colorful interviews hip-hop…
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The Rich Stick It to the Richer
Don Cheadle gets grimy in Showtime’s new series House of Lies, in which he plays a conniving management consultant intent on scaring billion-dollar corporations into spending their money on him. The show, based on Martin Kihn’s book House of Lies: How Management Consultants Steal Your Watch and Then Tell You the Time, portrays consultants as…
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Luke James: The Next Prince of R&B?
If you think you’ve seen New Orleans-bred Luke James before, you probably have. He’s the fresh face featured prominently in Beyoncé’s “Run the World” video. If you don’t think you’ve seen him, it’s likely you’ve heard him, since he’s formerly of the duo Luke & Q, who scored a hit with their 2006 single “My…
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Book Shows Black History in Stunning Breadth
The Root’s editor-in-chief, Henry Louis Gates Jr., curates the complex story of African-American history in his new book, Life Upon These Shores: Looking at African American History 1513-2008. Touching on everything from 16th-century conquistadors to 21st-century politicians and musicians, Gates chronicles the massive impact that African Americans have had on U.S. history and culture. More than 700…
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African-American History in Photos
If you want to see what’s hot on black Twitter, check out The Chatterati.Akoto Ofori-Atta is the editor of The Grapevine. Like her Facebook page and follow her on Twitter. How do you tell the entire story of the black experience in America? Life Upon These Shores: Looking at African American History, 1513-2008, by The…
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4 Questions With TJ Holmes
The job pickings are slim for cable-news anchors of color, making it hard to imagine a black anchor with his own weekend show at a top network quitting his gig. But weekend anchor T.J. Holmes did just that, trading in his cushy spot at CNN for one at BET. Holmes spoke with The Root about…
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A Star-Studded Send-Off for Heavy D
If you want to see what’s hot on black Twitter, check out The Chatterati.Akoto Ofori-Atta is the editor of The Grapevine. Like her Facebook page and follow her on Twitter. Hamilton, who sang “A Change Is Gonna Come” as a tribute to Heavy D at his funeral, arrives at the Grace Baptist Church in Mount…
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All Hail the Queen of Hip-Hop Soul
As the last performer at BET’s 2011 Black Girls Rock! awards show last month, Mary J. Blige took the stage, donning her classic look: a black wool fedora, tucked low and cocked to the side, revealing one eye heavy with a premature wisdom that comes only with singing through a lifetime’s worth of pain. She…
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10 Celebrity Death Hoaxes on Twitter
If you want to see what’s hot on black Twitter, check out The Chatterati.Akoto Ofori-Atta is the editor of The Grapevine. Like her Facebook page and follow her on Twitter. In what is arguably Twitter’s biggest death gaffe of the year, a tweeter managed to confuse a tall, rotund, 44-year-old hip-hop pioneer with a 5-foot-2-inch,…
Black News and Black Views with a Whole Lotta Attitude
