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The 10 Best Brown-Liquor Christmas Songs, Ranked
The best Christmas songs are ones that can be played while sipping brown liquor. I know, I know: the birth of Christ. I love Jesus, too; still, the holiday season overlaps with cuffing season, and with all that cold weather and love in the air, you are likely to spend your time either drinking eggnog…
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10 Best Christmas Hip-Hop Songs, Ranked
From the Temptations’ “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” and Donny Hathaway’s “This Christmas” to John Coltrane’s “My Favorite Things” to Oscar Peterson’s “White Christmas,” black folks have contributed to the sonic landscape of the Christmas holiday in unforgettable fashion. Since Christmas parties are a universal part of the season and because hip-hop is the music of…
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Spike Lee’s 25 Best Movies, Ranked
The man from New York City’s Brooklyn borough is having a good year. Spike Lee, black America’s most prolific and celebrated filmmaker, turned 60 years old back in March. Then, this past Saturday, he celebrated the 25th anniversary of the release of Malcolm X. What’s more, his TV show, She’s Gotta Have It, inspired by…
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My Cousin Was Lynched. Here’s How It Changed My Life
I first learned of my cousin’s lynching when I was 10 years old. During the summer, I often spent time at my uncle Johnny’s house, but that summer, my great-grandmother, a wizened old black woman whose face spoke of years of enduring the weight of patriarchy and white supremacy, was often there, too. Well into…
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Jodeci’s Forever My Lady Was Revolutionary for Me, a Church Boy From Okla.
This week at VSB, we’re running a series called Albums That Changed My Life in which different writers let you in on the music that helped shape and mold them into the people they are today. We’re kicking things off with Lawrence Ware, for whom Jodeci’s Forever My Lady album changed the game. Let my…
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A Letter of Thanks to My Son Who Wants to Be Luke Cage This Halloween
Dear L.J., I bought this house a few years ago because I wanted you to have what I did not: childhood memories of a place to call home, a backyard and the feeling of security that an apartment never could provide. I, however, was not ready for the responsibility of homeownership. When the toilet runs…
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Candyman, the Scariest ‘Leave Them Damn White Girls Alone’ Movie Ever, Is 25 Years Old This Week
I can’t believe it’s been 25 years. Candyman was released on Oct. 16, 1992, but I remember it like it was yesterday because I couldn’t look in a reflective surface for a week after first seeing this film. To be honest, it took me over a year before I was able to enter the bathroom…
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Tina Campbell Is the Worst Type of Black Christian
Tina Campbell pissed me off. Here I am trying my damnedest not to curse because the niggas from church don’t like it, and the singer from Mary Mary takes her ass on The Real and informs the world that she thought it logically consistent to vote for a nigga who said he’s grabbing folks by…
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Why ‘Ultralight Beam’ Is the Official Song of Christians Who Love Jesus but Curse a Little
I’m not good at being a Christian … at least not the kind of Christian I was raised to be. At my home church, they take Romans 12:12 seriously, wherein Paul says, “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds … ” For them, that meant there…
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Strong Island Is on Netflix. You Should Watch It Now
Officiating funerals is one of the hardest things I have to do in ministry. I struggle with the right words to say, the right Scriptures to read. This is difficult for me because I am agonizingly aware that the family before whom I stand lost someone they love. And no matter what I say, their…
