Kanye West understands quite well that people think he’s nuts. “What people call a rant, I call a visionary stream of consciousnness,” Kanye West said in an interview with New York Power 105.1’s The Breakfast Club on Tuesday. Author and writer Janet Mock agrees with his assessment, and started #BecauseofKanye, a hashtag that pays homage…

Welcome to this year’s 30th installment of “Hey black girl. Your hair makes me uncomfortable, so it’s wrong. Please do something else with it.” Vanessa VanDyke, a 12-year-old student at Faith Christian Academy in Orlando, Fla. was told by school officials that she had one week to choose between her glorious hair or expulsion.  “It says…

God, I love pop music history. For you babies who have the misfortune of only knowing Ms. Paula Abdul from her dust-ups in the spotlight as an American Idol judge, I present to you the Paula of yesteryear. Outside of cranking out some of the most of the indelible pop hits of the ’80s and…

Iyanla Vanzant has many titles: author, television personality, Yoruba spiritual leader. Now we can add sanctimonious slut-shamer to this list. In the latest episode of her show, Fix My Life, Vanzant counsels two sisters from San Antonio whose relationship is suffering because of some traumatizing childhood episodes. Here’s the brief explanation from OWN: Iyanla has…

Meet 12-year-old Cam Anthony. He likes to sing. And he’s really good at it. Here he is covering Lorde’s “Royals,” an interpretation that almost 8,000 folks on Facebook have shared. The control. The timing. Why is he so good at this? And why is he so cute? Wait. There’s more to love. He dedicated his…

Here, folks, is a pitch-perfect expression of silly, illogical, unnecessarily dramatic, star-crossed faux love. Stylist June Ambrose brilliantly interprets Olivia Pope’s foolishness while shamelessly plugging her own product. Akoto Ofori-Atta is the editor of The Grapevine. Like her Facebook page and follow her on Twitter. If you want to see what’s hot on black Twitter, check…

Performance artist Nate Hill’s latest project, “Trophy Scarves,” is making the rounds on Instagram and Twitter. In the photo series, Hill travels to the homes of white women and asks them to strip and lifelessly drape themselves around his neck.  What was the impetus for this project? “Well, there are people who see certain races…

Kanye West is talking about how he’s been slighted by the nation’s most popular retailers, again. In a podcast released yesterday with screenwriter and novelist Bret Easton Ellis, West made it clear that he was not happy with the advice Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh once tried to give him. “I got into this giant argument…

Revolt TV confirmed rumors on Wednesday that hip-hop duo Outkast will go on tour in 2014. (My Slate homies Forrest Wickman and Aisha Harris remind us why we should trust Diddy’s network when it comes to concert announcements.) There’s another shaky rumor that Outkast will headline Coachella next year. Let’s pretend that all of this…

Terrible. Denver resident Merrick McKoy shot his 19-month-old daughter, Mia, in her mother’s apartment Monday morning, just before turning the gun on himself, and minutes after posing in a photo with the girl on Facebook. The two were taken to a Denver-area hospital, where the girl was pronounced dead. McKoy, 22, survived his gunshot wound, but…