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Why Boyz II Men’s Christmas Interpretations Is the Best Christmas Album of the Last 50 Years
Boyz II Men’s second album, Christmas Interpretations, is the best, most complete, Christmas album of the modern era—and it’s not even close. Sure, there have been great songs—Mariah Carey’s “All I Want For Christmas Is You” comes to mind (more on that later)— but as for a flawless and seamless album, you don’t need to…
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Hell Houses Have No Place in Christianity
When I was 10, I was forced to give my life to Christ. As a kid, my mother was a devoutly religious woman (she would not even let me dress up for Halloween), so I was shocked when she told me I was going to go to what she called a “Hell House.” I was…
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Netflix’s Top Boy Is A Series You Absolutely Should Binge (If You Haven't Already)
Top Boy is one of the best shows I’ve seen this year, but no one seems to be talking about it. In 2011, we were introduced to Dushane (Ashley Walters) and Sully (Kane Robinson), two drug dealers in East London’s Hackney neighborhood, as they tried to navigate the treacherous waters of the London underworld. They…
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Kanye Only Wants to Make Gospel Now. But He’s at His Best When He’s Blending the Secular and the Sacred
Kanye West will come out with an album…at some point. At first, he said that his new album would drop on Sept. 27; yet, as is par for the course for Ye, the album, Jesus is King, has been delayed. The reason why is unclear; when it will be released is uncertain. But Ye has…
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Do The Right Thing Turns 30 This Week. Not Much Has Changed Since 1989
Spike Lee’s third film, Do The Right Thing, turns 30 years old on Sunday, July 21, but its message is so fresh that it could have been made today. I was first introduced to this film during my senior year of high school, in March 1999. I borrowed it from a library in Oklahoma City,…
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A Look at Rosewood, John Singleton's Most Ambitious Film
Legendary filmmaker John Singleton was laid to rest this week after he passed away at the age of 51. Naturally, it has many reflecting on his filmography. For me, I’m specifically thinking about his most important film. We know Singleton’s most famous works: Boyz n the Hood, Poetic Justice and the under-appreciated Higher Learning, a…
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The Whole Black Church and Me
One of the first sermons I ever preached was titled “Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve.” In it, a very young and naive preacher, emboldened by an atmosphere that allowed impenitent homophobia to go unchecked, uses the language of revulsion to articulate why he believed same-sex relationships were wrong and not in line with…
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White Evangelical Support of Trump Proves They’re More ‘White’ Than ‘Evangelical’
Although I attended a black church my entire life, I was ordained into the Southern Baptist Convention, an organization complicit in the rise of the alt-right and whose troubling racial history and contemporaneous actions revealed a deep commitment to ignoring the influence of white supremacy. Last year, I wrote a piece for the New York…
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Betty Shelby Is Teaching a Class on Surviving Killing an Unarmed Black Man. Here Are 10 Things She'd Be Better At
This week, Betty Shelby, the Tulsa Police Officer who shot and killed Terence Crutcher—and claimed he “caused his own death” by “failing to comply” to her orders—will teach a course to other police officers about “Surviving the Aftermath of a Critical Incident.” Shelby is convinced that other officers will be forced to deal with what…
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Texas Shouldn't Execute Chris Young for Murder Even Though He Is Guilty of the Crime [Updated]
Updated: Monday, July 17, 2018; 3:53 EDT: When I wrote this piece, I was not aware that, according to court records, Chris Young sexually assaulted a woman in front of her three children at gun point the morning before the murder. Gunpoint. Three children. I have no words. That act is evil; the man who did…
