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28 Days of Album Cover Blackness With VSB, Day 24: Leon Thomas' Full Circle (1973)
The cover for Leon Thomas’ 1973 album, Full Circle, does not look like what it sounds like, to me at least. The album cover looks like some “diamond in the back, sunroof top…” vibe jams. But Leon Thomas is both a jazz and blue vocalist and this album is rich with both. Thomas was also…
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28 Days of Album Cover Blackness With VSB, Day 23: Ohio Players' Honey (1975)
There is no discussion about Black album covers, iconic or otherwise, that doesn’t include the string of album covers the Ohio Players put together in the 1970s. I could have included any album cover from 1972’s Pain to 1981’s Everybody Up and it would be a worthy inclusion to the conversation. But 1975’s Honey is…
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28 Days of Album Cover Blackness With VSB, Day 22: Max Roach's We Insist! Max Roach's Freedom Now Suite (1960)
Max Roach was a famed jazz drummer and composer who has countless albums with various configurations of artists. His career spanned decades and if you are up on jazz at all, you know Max Roach even if you don’t know that you know Max Roach. One thing that stands out to me about him is…
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28 Days of Album Cover Blackness With VSB, Day 21: Kendrick Lamar's To Pimp a Butterfly (2015)
Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly (all parts of it) has been think-pieced to death, so that’s not what’s going to happen here. Plus, I probably already did that and am too lazy to look it up. And this series is about Black ass album covers anyway. To Pimp a Butterfly is one Black ass…
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28 Days of Album Cover Blackness With VSB, Day 20: Dee Dee Bridgewater's Afro Blue (1974)
I love the album cover for multi-hyphenate Dee Dee Bridgewater’s debut album, 1974’s Afro Blue. Dee Dee is a Grammy-award winning singer, actor, philanthropist, etc. She’s bad bad. Just like this album cover. It is art. I’d hang this album up in if I owned a physical copy of it. The photo, credited to Abe…
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28 Days of Album Cover Blackness With VSB, Day 19: Mary J. Blige's My Life (1994)
Mary J. Blige’s My Life is a personal choice for me. For my money, her 1994 album is one of the best albums ever made, seemingly for all of the wrong reasons. Mary was clearly going through it. Every single song on this album speaks to that in both sound and tone. Even one of…
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28 Days of Album Cover Blackness With VSB, Day 18: Shut Up and Dance's Dance Before The Police Come! (1990)
It’s possible that you’ve never heard of the London-group Shut Up and Dance. They were (are) a British production/rap duo who got started at the very tail end of the 80s and made music through the 2000s. If you listen to their early music, it sounds a lot like the hip hop coming out of…
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VIDEO: Celebrating Moments of Peak Blackness from Some of Our Distinguished Nominees for 2021 Skippies
Even though we’ve already let you know who won our 2021 Skippies, that does not mean that the party has stopped. The Skippies are a lifestyle; it’s just different. With that in mind, and because we are a celebrationist outfit, we like to make sure that we provide as much backing information and as many…
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28 Days of Album Cover Blackness With VSB, Day 17: Mystique's Mystique featuring Ralph Johnson (1977)
Friends, Romans, Countryfolks…this is one BlackAF album cover. The group, Mystique, signed to Curtis Mayfield’s Curtom Records, really came through with a cover that honestly sounds like the album. Mystique was an outfit that made funky-laden, lush records that were on the precipice of disco, you know, the kind of sounds cats who are floating…
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And the Skippy Goes To! Here Are The Root's 2nd Annual The Blackest Awards Winners
2020 was a year. And I don’t mean that in a good way. Because this whole endeavor is about positivity, I won’t even speak on any of the negativity. What I will say is that 2020 did provide many moments of positivity in the form of movies and television, and the internet straight showed out.…
