Viola Davis takes her philanthropy and advocacy work very seriously, probably because she grew up dirt-poor and often talks about how important it is to empower people from meager and abusive backgrounds. At a benefit event Tuesday for Stuart House, a program that helps child victims of sexual abuse, she opened up about the change…

Anita Baker probably felt as if Apple Music was adding insult to injury when it sent this tweet out Wednesday. https://twitter.com/AppleMusic/status/667094902245732352 Yep, the music-streaming service was promoting Baker’s work that it had put in a special “80s” playlist. Baker hopped on Twitter and told Apple Music that it didn’t have a “digital licensing agreement” for…

Lil Eazy-E has high hopes for Charlie Sheen regarding his HIV diagnosis. He told TMZ that he doesn’t think Sheen will succumb to the virus that took his father, Eazy-E, the mastermind behind N.W.A. Lil Eazy-E is hopeful for a few reasons. For one, his father contracted the virus when there weren’t as many drugs…

Taye Diggs is talking about something that has always boggled my mind: why we call biracial people (namely, Americans who have both black and white parents) black.  I’ve always wondered why we black Americans accepted that one-drop rule created by segregationist white Americans during chattel slavery: the rule that said that people who are born…

Mo’nique has touched on this idea before: that she’s not against her husband and manager, Sidney Hicks, having extramarital sex with other women.  She caught a lot of backlash about that comment and went on a talk show some time after to say that she’d given it some thought and decided that she wouldn’t be…

If you ask the Nashville, Tenn., private-jet company Business Aircraft Leasing, it had a gentleman’s agreement with Steve Harvey that the talk show host would lease one of the company’s private jet planes for $97,000 a month.  According to a lawsuit filed against Harvey, Harvey requested that some custom alterations be made to the plane,…

R. Kelly is on a press tour promoting his upcoming studio album, The Buffet, and any journalist worth his or her salt will ask him to address the No. 1 controversy that has plagued his career: the idea that he was, and perhaps still is, fond of underage women. That’s what writer David Marchese did in a piece…

Nicki Minaj and her ex-boyfriend Safaree Samuels went at it publicly in social media after their breakup, so we’ve heard these allegations before. I’m talking about Samuels’ allegations that he wrote some numbers on a few of Minaj’s albums. It’s a claim that could haunt and taint a lyricist’s career forever (just look at Nas,…

As expected, actor Charlie Sheen told Matt Lauer on Tuesday that he is HIV-positive and paid up to $10 million in hush money to keep the diagnosis a secret.  “I am, in fact, HIV-positive,” Sheen said during the Today-show interview. “It’s a hard three letters to absorb. It’s a turning point in one’s life.” Sheen…

Now, this isn’t exactly straight from the horse’s mouth, seeing as how Ms. Patti LaBelle didn’t release the recipe for her Wal-Mart sweet potato pie herself. But Joe Yonan, the food and dining editor at the Washington Post, spent a good chunk of time and effort scouring the Internet for LaBelle’s sweet potato pie recipe after…