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MC Lyte on Why Dope Female Emcees Are Now MIA
Thirty years ago, “Take It Lyte” and the more popular “I Cram to Understand U” were how most hip-hop lovers were introduced to MC Lyte. By the time her album Lyte as a Rock dropped the next year, in 1988, there was no debating whether MC Lyte was a bona fide emcee. She was actually…
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W. Kamau Bell on How to Solve Chicago’s Violence and Why Black Celebrities Host Shows About Race
Comedian W. Kamau Bell gives a lot of credit to Chris Rock for taking a big chance on him in 2012 by executive-producing his first show, Totally Biased With W. Kamau Bell, on FX. “He basically gave me my career,” Bell said to The Root. “He might say differently: ‘You would have made it some…
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Starz’s American Gods Boasts a Hot Leading Man and a Goddess Who Swallows Men With Her Vagina
It’s hard to explain American Gods, Starz’s bold new series, to most. Steeped in fantasy, mythology and Americana, American Gods explores immigrants and the gods and spirits they brought with them in a unique fashion. Apparently the modern world, with its new technology and other distractions, has diminished the significance of the old gods, and…
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What About Rodney King? Spike Lee and Roger Guenveur Smith Speak on Their Netflix Film
Footage of four Los Angeles Police Department officers beating Rodney King kicked off Spike Lee’s great 1992 film, Malcolm X, months after the Los Angeles riots had died down. Now, 25 years later, he has directed Roger Guenveur Smith’s one-man show, Rodney King. Interestingly, Rodney King premieres on Netflix the day before the one on…
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For the Henrietta Lacks Family, It’s a Matter of Who Gets to Tell Their Story
Who can tell your family’s story? That’s one of the key issues the book and now HBO film, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, raises. It’s one that Henrietta Lacks’ son Lawrence and his son, Ron, have been asking for some time now. Henrietta Lacks is the woman whose cells, named HeLa, were able to…
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Burn Motherf*cker, Burn!: Sacha Jenkins Digs Deep to Find the Root Causes of the L.A. Riots
In 1992, Los Angeles erupted in violent opposition to the not guilty verdict for four police officers captured on video brutally beating Rodney King within an inch of his life. Twenty-five years later, there is no shortage of documentaries examining the Los Angeles riots. A&E aired South Central native John Singleton’s L.A. Burning Tuesday. ABC…
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9 Reasons to Check Out John Singleton’s BET Series, Rebel
OK, those Rebel commercials on BET haven’t exactly moved you, even if this show is intended to fill the void left by the midseason finale of Being Mary Jane. Because it’s 2017 and black TV isn’t as sparse as it once was, you still have those Netflix Dave Chappelle comedy specials to get to, not…
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Muhammad Ali Jr. on His Detainment: ‘I Felt Like Somebody That Wasn’t a Citizen of the United States’
When Muhammad Ali Jr. was first detained by immigration officials at the Fort Lauderdale, Fla., airport as he traveled back from Jamaica with his mother, Khalilah Camacho-Ali, toward the end of February, initially, the son of the legendary boxer wasn’t so quick to blame President Donald Trump’s misguided Muslim travel ban. “I was coming from…
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Black Cop Kills Unarmed White Kid? Everything Isn’t as It Seems in Fox’s New Series Shots Fired
Oscar Grant. Michael Brown. Eric Garner. Freddie Gray. Anthony Hill. Philando Castile. Alton Sterling. These are just a few names from a much longer list of black men who have died at the hands of law enforcement in less than a decade. So when the new Fox show Shots Fired ran early trailers zoning in…
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Exclusive: ‘You Can’t Buy a Boss’: Nick Cannon on His Split From America’s Got Talent
Nick Cannon looked relaxed as he hosted a listening party for his music artist ItsaMovie, a 20-year-old Atlanta-area native, Tuesday night at M Bar, located on historic Auburn Avenue in Atlanta. Despite reports of his health challenges, Cannon, who just became a dad again to a third child, a son named Golden, looked well. “I…
