Straight Outta Compton was a box-office hit over the weekend, but there may be a few gems involving Eazy-E about which many people may not be familiar. Eazy-E—the mastermind behind N.W.A—was instrumental in putting together the rap group Bone Thugs-n-Harmony. Here’s another gem: The financial deal Eazy-E orchestrated that pissed off his N.W.A group members…

Rihanna was befuddled (purely befuddled, it seems) to find that NBA player Matt Barnes thinks the two of them have something romantic going on, or are headed in that direction.  It all started when Barnes was interviewed by a TMZ cameraman and said that he thinks his and Rihanna’s relationship has “passed the crush stage.” …

Today is the deadline for the signing of a peace deal between South Sudan’s current president, Salva Kiir, and an opposition leader, Riek Machar, or else the country faces the possibiilty of economic sanctions, the BBC explains.  Miami Heat player Luol Deng—a South Sudanese native who came to the U.S. to attend high school—posted three…

Hollywood number crunchers who make film projections are licking their wounds this Monday morning.  Straight Outta Compton—the biopic chronicling the rise of the hip-hop group N.W.A—opened this weekend and is on track to pull in $57 million, an exceptionally good number for a release weekend, Variety explains. That’s more than three times what another major film…

Janelle Monáe released the song “Hell You Talmbout” Thursday as an ode to the Black Lives Matter movement.  She posted a message on Instagram explaining how the song is a “vessel” to express the grief experienced by those communities that are subjected to excessive police force and vigilante violence. “This song is a vessel. It…

Will Smith and his production company, OverBrook Entertainment, are reportedly up to things. Good things.  Word on the street, courtesy of TVLine, is that he and his cohorts are in the early stages of developing a sitcom that will be a reboot of the 1990s sitcom The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. The show catapulted Smith’s acting…

This video, if nothing else, shows how difficult it is for chocolate-complexioned women to walk into a cosmetics store and trust any ol’ body to beat their face. However well-intentioned and highly trained makeup artists may be, some of them don’t know what they’re doing when it comes to dark-brown complexions. Fashion model Nykhor Paul…

TMZ caught up with Lamar Odom to get the scoop on what happened between him and his soon-to-be ex-wife during a recent confrontation. But it’s what Odom had to say about how the gossip site covers black men and rappers that’s more telling.  “I know what your company is about. I know what they’re doing…

Taraji P. Henson put a lot of thought into playing Cookie Lyon on Empire because she didn’t want the character to be stereotyped as just another African-American working-class woman whom people could disregard or prejudge.  During an interview with People magazine, Henson explained how there’s a lot more to Cookie’s larger-than-life personality, and she took the…

People itching to see a black James Bond in this lifetime may see their dream come true sooner rather than later. British-Nigerian actor David Oyelowo (he played Martin Luther King Jr. in Selma) will use his voice to play Bond in a new audiobook called Trigger Mortis, The Guardian reports. At first glance it doesn’t…