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20 Things You Probably Do if You Were Raised Right
Some of you all are savages. I ain’t talking about your parents (or your mama, since that’s the stinger), but some of you weren’t raised right. I discover this fact almost daily. This morning, I watched somebody who clearly wasn’t raised right put the lives of myself and at least 10 other people at risk…
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Alexandria, Va., Ranks as Top Place to Travel in 2018; Next-Door Neighbor Washington, DC, Says, ‘Huh?’
Washington, D.C., suburb Alexandria, Va., is the top place to visit in 2018. According to the Washington Post, in an article titled, “Alexandria, Va., Outranks Home of Disneyland as Top Place to Go in 2018, Survey Says”: [Money] magazine said in a description of its rankings called “The 20 Best Places to Go in 2018”…
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Now That I’ve Gotten My DNA Results, I Don’t Know Who to Root for in the World Cup, but Cameroon Makes the Best Jollof Rice
2017 and 2018 have been years of exploration and discovery for me so far. I’ve taken time to examine a lot about my identity as a black biracial dude and started to look into family dynamics and how they relate to that identity politic. To up that ante, I’ve also begun digging into my ancestry…
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VSB and The Glow Up Are Getting Urban by Nature in Los Angeles on March 29! Come Through!
Hey, young world (who lives in the greater Los Angeles area or has lots of money and time to fly out to L.A.)! Do you enjoy the great outdoors? Do you hike, bike or like to go outside? Do you like free events? If the answer to any of those questions is yes and you’re…
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I Got My AncestryDNA Results Back, and I’m About 40 Percent African. I’m Going to Wakanda!
I got my results back from AncestryDNA. About damn time, too. I was like a crackhead, checking my email every single day HOPING I’d get an email letting me know that my results were ready and available, and every day there’d be nothing. At some point, I almost called them like they were holding up…
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Common Has Secured the Bag and Now He Just Makes Dad Rap
Common is killing the game; or, in today’s parlance, Common has secured the bag. I’m almost 40 years old, which means that I grew up in the ’80s and ’90s listening to Common (née Lonnie Rashid Lynn Jr.) when he was rapping about watermelons and communism and asking to borrow a dollar. I still own…
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5 Things It’s Nearly Impossible to Do While Working From Home With Little Kids Around
The Washington, D.C., area is under a high-wind warning. There are winds gusting at up to 60 miles per hour. In the alley behind my house, trash cans are littered about, making it entirely impassable. A neighbor’s trash can hit my SECOND-floor window while bouncing into my neighbor’s yard. Let that marinate for a minute.…
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I Just Found Out That Cats Would Kill Us if They Were Bigger. I Replied, ‘No Shit’
I love cats. You could even call me a cat person. Have you looked at pictures of cats online? It’s riveting shit. I know some cat ladies. I’ve even been called “cat daddy” before. At the beginning of the Teedra Moses song “You’ll Never Find,” off of her Complex Simplicity album, the opening line is,…
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Raphael Saadiq Talks to VSB About Being Nominated for an Oscar, His Musical Legacy and Exercising to Wu-Tang Clan
A lot of eyes in the black community will be on this Sunday’s 90th Academy Awards. Thanks to films Get Out and Mudbound, several black folks are in the running for a coveted Oscar on the movie industry’s biggest night. One such nominee is the song “Mighty River” from the Mudbound soundtrack, which is up…
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Am I Actually a Southerner? An Examination
I was recently profiled for AL.com, the digital outlet for three of Alabama’s largest newspapers: the Birmingham News, the Huntsville Times and Mobile’s Press-Register. During the course of the interview, Roy Johnson, the story’s author, noted that it was interesting that I identified as a Southerner, considering my transient background: It’s intriguing that Jackson so…
