Summer means different things to different people. And it can mean different things depending upon the region of the country you’re in as well. I grew up in California but now reside in the Northeast. My understanding of summer has changed enormously, and how I measure a good one versus

Twenty years ago, hip-hop music was in its Golden Age. Recently Rolling Stone listed the “15 Albums that Made Rap Explode.” All were works released in ’88, and all laid the seeds for hip-hop’s dominance of popular music years later. From the political and sonic boom of Public Enemy’s It

Forget Black Voices, The YBF or the sadly outmoded Black Planet. For young, upwardly-mobile people of color who are in-the-know, there’s one Web site that trumps all of the above—Stuff Educated Black People Like. Notice the qualifier, “Educated.” It’s so very necessary. You see, we so often have to remind

America likes to consider itself exceptional, a nation blessed with unshakeable good fortune and driven by unyielding ambition. I think that sentiment explains why we so often get caught with our pants down. Our self-absorbed exceptionalism breeds a lazy arrogance that consistently confuses just getting started with finishing the job:

In a span of 24 hours this week, three sure-fire, absolute-lock, no-doubt-about-it future Hall of Famers, Manny Ramirez, Ken Griffey Jr. and Ivan “Pudge” Rodriguez, were traded. That may not be a record, but it gives baseball chatterheads a lot to talk about. However, once everybody settles down, they may

On January 17, 21-year-old Baron Pikes was stopped by the police. Nearly half a million volts of electricity later, he died on the street. Handcuffed, held down and stunned with a Taser-brand electro-weapon seven times before he died (and then twice more after that), Pikes’ heart, the coroner notes, simply