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Dipset Forever
A Harlem Native reflects on the legacy of The Diplomats.
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On Lena Waithe and the Danger of Pinning Your Creative Authenticity to Your Activism
When it was announced that rising actor Jason Mitchell—known for his performances in Straight Outta Compton, Mudbound and The Chi—had not only been released from his contract as a series regular on The Chi but was removed from an upcoming Netflix film (and dropped by his agent and manager), the initial response was a consensus:…
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A Neverending Quest for Sovereignty
I often jokingly tell people that I grew up in a household made up of three (occasionally four, depending on what station in life my father was in at the time) distinct American dreams—one for each flag or passport represented: Comoros, Canada and the United States. My mother, my brother and I are a trinity…
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‘Hang the Whites’: Rapper’s Hate Speech Trial Exposes the Hypocrisy of Race Relations in France
The music video for 34-year-old French rapper Nick Conrad’s “Pendez les Blancs” (“Hang the Whites”) opens with a jarring visual akin to the title itself: the lifeless body of a white man on a noose, while Conrad (a black man of Cameroonian descent) stands beside him lighting a cigar. It’s a role reversal intended to…
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Afropunk’s Owners Get Real About the Festival's Growth, Recent Controversies
For Matthew Morgan and Jocelyn Cooper, it has been a long, 15-year journey to get the Afropunk Festival from the small, local hangout for passionate message-board friends in the alt-punk space congregating in Fort Greene Park in Brooklyn, NY, to the internationally renowned entertainment juggernaut it is today. Borne out of a titular documentary exploring…
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Couple Thrown Out of Afropunk for Protest T-Shirt Questioning Festival's Inclusivity, Eroding Punk Nature [Updated]
It has been an oft-repeated refrain that the Afropunk Festival has changed from the punk-centered origins of its inception in the early 2000s—evolving well beyond the brainchild of James Spooner’s titular documentary to a festival powerhouse, with presence in three continents and five cites. As those transitions have accumulated over time, their weight can be…
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Black Ramadan and the Importance of Finding Community in Isolation
When I was a child, my mom would tell me stories about Ramadan in our homeland of Comoros. Some parts weren’t the most idyllic—the idea of fasting under mosquito nets without air conditioning that close to the equator is not my concept of pleasant by any stretch of the imagination. The one part that I…
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The Counter to Trump’s Xenophobic Racism Is Not Exceptionalist Immigrant Narratives
Sometime Thursday, Donald J. Trump waddled into the Oval Office at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. in Washington, D.C., and not only blustered that immigrants from the countries of Haiti, El Salvador and the entire continent of Africa are “people from shithole countries” but also encouraged more immigration from countries such as Norway and the continent of…
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Did Afropunk Lose Its Punk Roots?
This weekend, a sea of unapologetic blackness will descend upon Fort Greene’s Commodore Barry Park for Brooklyn, N.Y.’s 12th Annual Afropunk Fest. Instagram feeds and Twitter hashtags everywhere will be peppered with twist-outs and bold prints; your favorite vibe curator will inevitably make a thread of the best of the best of the audience’s fabulous…
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Body Image and Me: My Struggle With Body Dysmorphia
A few months ago, I reconnected with a dear friend whom I hadn’t seen in quite some time. We met up for brunch, laughed about prior fights, squashed beefs and updated each other on our personal lives in between bites of truffle fries. In between convos about the escapades that happened during our distance, I…
