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How Andre Harrell and Uptown Records Ushered in the Era of Music Created for Us by Us
With its new series, Inside the Label, BET has put its own spin on the music-genre series popularized by VH1’s Behind the Music and TV One’s Unsung by spotlighting the business and creative synergy behind the music that so many of us love. To kick off its first installment, the docuseries looked to Uptown Records,…
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Nate Moore, the Secret Weapon Behind Marvel’s on-Screen Blackness
Nate Moore has achieved a “marvel” feat of his own: going from reading comics as a kid to landing as executive producer alongside Marvel mastermind Stan Lee himself for the iconic brand’s latest global smash, Captain America: Civil War. While I was in there, I was able, with Nicole Perlman [first woman to write a Marvel…
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What Black Man Would Put Himself Behind Bars at San Quentin? W. Kamau Bell
“I grew up in one of those households where every month was Black History Month,” W. Kamau Bell jokes. Bell, one of the few comedians tackling issues of race head-on, credits his heightened awareness to his highly conscious mother who grew up in Indiana in the worst of times. “She had just embedded this inside…
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Zoe Saldana Speaks Out About Nina
Just days before Nina hits theaters in a limited release, Zoe Saldana joined Nina producer Stuart Parr and Al Schackman—musical director for the iconic Nina Simone from 1957 until her death in 2003—for an intimate post-screening conversation Tuesday in Atlanta, where she is filming Guardians of the Galaxy 2. The conversation, led by television news executive…
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Meet Tracy Oliver, Who Will Make You Laugh at Barbershop: The Next Cut
Barbershop: The Next Cut, starring Ice Cube and Cedric the Entertainer as barbers on the South Side of Chicago (the third installment of the franchise), is probably a lot funnier than most people expect, thanks in part to Tracy Oliver. The Stanford-educated, South Carolina native first got our attention as Nina, the work nemesis of…
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Larenz Tate Talks Up His New TV Show and What It Would Take to Do a Love Jones Sequel
Whenever Larenz Tate is mentioned, it’s hard not to think of Menace II Society, Love Jones, Dead Presidents and The Inkwell. Throughout the 1990s he was a constant big-screen presence. In the 2000s he’s been a presence as well, just a slightly less brash one. On cable he most notably held his own in FX’s…
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The Carmichael Show: Smart, Funny and Real
If you watched The Carmichael Show when it premiered this past summer, you know it doesn’t play it safe. Still, many who are now enjoying the show’s second season were surprised to see the comedy loosely based on comedian Jerrod Carmichael’s own life tackling charged issues like allegations of sexual assault against Bill Cosby and…
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As a Playwright, Danai Gurira Gives Voice to African Women
The Walking Dead fans have known her as badass Michonne since she joined the AMC show’s third season in 2012, but Danai Gurira was an important, emerging playwright even prior to her television stardom. Although born in the U.S. to parents from then-Rhodesia, Gurira returned to the new nation of Zimbabwe at a young age.…
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Unsung Hollywood: Before Empire, Fox Had New York Undercover, the Original Hip-Hop Drama
Before Empire, there was New York Undercover. While one teeters into more soap opera terrain and the other was a solid cop drama, they are importantly linked through the culture of hip-hop, and Fox, the network behind both. As Empire resumes its second season next week, TV One’s Unsung Hollywood: New York Undercover couldn’t come…
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Jurnee Smollett-Bell Gets Deep About Underground, a Slave Narrative That Will Make You Proud to Be Black
For some black people, slavery is not a popular subject matter for television and film, and many have openly expressed this view on Twitter and Facebook. The running joke is that black actors get nominated for awards only when they are playing slaves or other subservient characters. So the new WGN America series, Underground, about…
