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Am I the Only Person Under 60 Who Still Carries Around a Crown Royal Bag for My Valuables?
In the black American community, there are a few cultural items revered historically and across regions of blackness without question: the Afro pick with the black fist on it, plastic coverings on furniture, pictures in Grandma’s house of white Jesus, and the Crown Royal bag. Yes, the Crown Royal bag. When you buy a fifth…
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10 Thoughts on The Loving Generation Documentary About Biracial Kids Born After Loving v. Virginia
Today, the final installment of the documentary The Loving Generation was released (please go check out “Episode 1: Checking Boxes,” “Episode 2: We Are Family,” “Episode 3: Coming of Age” and “Episode 4: The Obama Era”). Full disclosure: I’m in the documentary. It explores the stories of biracial black-and-white children born after the 1967 Loving…
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What’s the Better ’90s Party Jam: Luke’s ‘Scarred’ or ‘I Wanna Rock (Doo Doo Brown)’?
Anybody who came of age in the ’90s is familiar with 2 Live Crew and Uncle Luke. They brought us classics like “Me So Horny” and “Pop That Coochie.” Luke was the king of party jams, and he brought us many perennial classics. I was at a ’90s party in Atlanta a few weekends back…
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6 Jobs That People Don’t Think Require Real ‘Work’
I’m a creative. I like to think that I’m good at it. At the very least, I’m good enough at it to get paid to do it like I’m doing it for television. Do you know what this means? I’ll tell you what it means: It means that while it brings home the bacon, it…
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Arming Teachers Is Probably One of the Worst Policy Suggestions of All Time
When I was in ninth grade, I had a classmate named Chris. Chris was your typical badass: a little older than the rest of us, a little less interested in shit than the rest of us, basically coming to school because what the fuck else did he have to do while the rest of us…
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Don’t ‘Fix’ My Problem. Acknowledge That It Exists
I’m in a real, grown-up relationship. We’re engaged, but it already involves kids, a mortgage, car payments, bills, blended families, vacations and real-life decisions. It also involves fun, but it’s less of the boozy-brunch variety and more of the adult-with-kid fun that occurs when you hang with the other homies with kids at each other’s…
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I Finally Saw Drake’s ‘God’s Plan’ Video, and Drake Is All Right With Me
Yesterday I saw Drake’s video for “God’s Plan,” the song he dropped a few weeks back that is currently sitting atop Billboard’s Hot 100 chart for the fourth straight week. When I checked it out yesterday, it was sitting at roughly 25 million views on YouTube, and as of today, it’s nearing 30 million. I…
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10 Thoughts on Tell Them We Are Rising, the Documentary About the Story of HBCUs
As an alumnus of Morehouse College and a staunch advocate for HBCUs, I was very excited to finally see the Stanley Nelson film Tell Them We Are Rising, a documentary about HBCUs. Overall, I thought it was cool, with some very interesting stories and facts, but I believe it suffered from a time crunch. Ultimately,…
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Why I Hate Referring to Anybody in My Family as ‘Step’ Anything
For roughly the past six months, I’ve had the opportunity to talk and write about my family in a way that is more substantive than I have in all my years of writing; most discussions were spurred from the article about how politics had created a rift between my (white) mother and me. In nearly…
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Perfect Music Moments in Black History: The Roots and Common ‘Act Too (The Love of My Life)’
The Roots’ fourth album, 1999’s Things Fall Apart, is largely regarded as the album that put them over the top. While Organix, Do You Want More?!!!??! (personal fave) and Illadelph Halflife were all dope albums with superb hits—“Silent Treatment,” “Clones,” “Proceed” and “What They Do” immediately come to mind—Things Fall Apart is the one where…
