-
Mudbound and Other Films That Get Black Folks Pissed Off at White People
Over the holiday break, I finally got around to watching Netflix’s Mudbound, last year’s period drama by director Dee Rees (who also wrote and directed 2011’s magnificent Pariah). The film was adapted from the 2008 Hillary Jordan novel about two families—one black and one white—attempting to stay afloat by sharecropping the same patch of hard…
-
The Otis Effect: 7 Things That Were Never the Same After the Star Left
When Joe Budden didn’t report for his duties as co-host of Complex’s Everyday Struggle webcast this week, folks assumed that he was fulfilling his paternal duties, since he had a son with fellow Love & Hip Hop alum Cyn Santana this past weekend. It turns out, however, that Budden has left the show for good…
-
All of Kanye West’s GOOD Fridays Tracks, Ranked
Seven years ago this month, we were all giddy with the hype and secrecy behind Kanye West’s upcoming fifth studio album, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. Many consider that album to be Kanye’s magnum opus (not me … that honor belongs to Graduation) and the last vestige of the “Old Kanye” before he completely succumbed…
-
Tame Impala’s Currents Is the Soundtrack to My Post-Divorce Life
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 now. Today we hear from Dustin Seibert as he tells us how Tame Impala helped him move on from a…
-
I Tried It: Notes From a Silent Party
Confession: I was absolutely thinking about pulling out of my first silent party an hour before I was to leave for it. I was running on minimal sleep and nursing a dehydration headache all day; and it was one of those cold, rainy fall days for which God invented cuffing season, malbec and Showtime Anytime.…
-
When Should Rappers Hang Up the Microphone?
When I was perusing the list of new-release albums from this past Oct. 13, it dawned on me after some time that three of the artists—Wu-Tang, Camp Lo and Krayzie Bone (with his group Bone Thugs-n-Harmony)—all released albums that I absolutely loved exactly 20 years ago. In 1997 I turned 16, obtained my driver’s license…
-
Is Infidelity Inevitable?
In 2009 a family friend I hadn’t seen since I was a kid came into Chicago for a work conference and took me out for drinks. I wasn’t sure what to expect from the conversation of a woman who was a little under twice my age at the time, but certainly not what I received:…
-
Online Dating Apps, Rated for Your Black Ass
When I broke up with my college sweetheart in 2005, I was living and working as a newspaper reporter in God’s crustiest dingleberry, Rockford, Ill. Rockford is one of those cities where people get married and start families at an age when they still need a co-signer to rent an Enterprise vehicle—not exactly fertile dating…
-
8 Hip-Hop 1-Hit Wonders You Flat-Out Forgot About
I’m calling it right now: “Bodak Yellow” will make Cardi B a one-hit wonder (Editor’s Note: I disagree with this wholeheartedly—P.J.). I’ve tried to bump “Bodak Yellow” more than once, and I’ve determined that dragging a metal rake across a chalkboard in a classroom full of preschoolers who are all simultaneously screaming about a “boo-boo”…
-
The ‘Best Rapper Alive’ Title Is Some Overused Bullshit
As a writer and English teacher, I’m forced to come to grips with the ever-(d)evolving way we approach our language. We’ve managed to squeeze zeitgeist-y words like “LOL” and “YOLO” into the dictionary and our vernacular. Words and phrases like “I could care less” and “irregardless” are no longer as subject to deserving scrutiny as…
