During the 20th-anniversary celebration of Illmatic, Nas has been described as the hip-hop generation’s Angela Davis. Georgetown University professor Michael Eric Dyson declared that Nas’ debut album should be studied alongside Toni Morrison and Ernest Hemingway, and in recognition of his 20-year career, Harvard University established the Nasir Jones Hip Hop Fellowship at the prestigious W.E.B.…

My BFF is engaged and so happy. Her fiance is a thug, cheater and liar. I don’t support ratchet, so I hadn’t planned to attend the wedding. I was just going to claim work responsibilities. Now BFF wants me as bridesmaid and for me to pay for my dress. How can I tell her that I…

If you are raising a black child, think twice before moving to Wisconsin. A recent study has found that no state is worse for black children than the Badger State. According to the study “Race for Results: Building a Path to Opportunity for All Children,” from the Annie E. Casey Foundation, Wisconsin has the country’s worst…

Left of Black host Mark Anthony Neal sits down to talk with Ali Colleen Neff about her work with Senegalese praise poets, Mami Wata and sea punk. Neff is a visiting assistant professor at the College of William & Mary in the departments of anthropology and African-American studies. Watch:

Rapper Andre Johnson cut off his penis and jumped from a North Hollywood apartment building early Wednesday morning, police told CNN. According to the report, Johnson, who goes by the name “Christ Bearer” as a member of the Wu-Tang Clan-affiliated group Northstar, survived the fall with serious injuries. Johnson was being treated at Cedars-Sinai Medical…

In many parts of the South, you would never know that the landmark Supreme Court ruling Brown v. Board of Education declared separate schools for blacks and whites unconstitutional and inherently unequal. The resegregation of public schools is widespread and growing. The investigative news website ProPublica, in partnership with The Atlantic, presents a stunning and comprehensive…

In his 1976 essay The Devil Finds Work, James Baldwin wrote, “No one, I read somewhere, a long time ago, makes his escape personality black.” Baldwin was talking about the movies, but he might as well have been talking about children’s books. When I was a kid, I loved reading works like J.R.R. Tolkien’s The…