Music
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28 Days of Album Cover Blackness With VSB, Day 10: The Brothers Johnson's Winners 1981
To be Black (especially in America) is to know the Brothers Johnson. They had several No. 1 singles on the R&B charts in the ’70s and ’80s. Even though they didn’t write “Strawberry Letter 23“—that distinction goes to Shuggie Otis—their rendition is probably the one most of us are familiar with. They also gave us…
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28 Days of Album Cover Blackness With VSB, Day 9: Amii Stewart's Knock On Wood (1979)
You may know Amii Stewart because she had a monster disco song in 1979, “Knock On Wood.” The song made it all the way to the top of the pop charts and is a disco staple. And it still bay-yangs. You know what else bay-yangs? This album cover. For one, Amii is giving all a…
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Mic Drop: Music to Shake Your Ass To
There is no better way of validating or expressing joy than turning on some music and shaking your ass. And since we can’t go out and dance at clubs, bars or even other people’s houses, we’ve had to make do with indoor dance parties. There must be some private group chat between artists where they…
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28 Days of Album Cover Blackness With VSB, Day 8: Guy Warren of Ghana's Afro-Jazz (1969)
I’ll bet if that if I didn’t tell you that this album cover was for an album by a Ghanaian artist in 1969, I’d bet good money that you might assume this was a reference cover for a Kool Moe Dee album in 1989. Or for some gangsta rap artist out of Compton in the…
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28 Days of Album Cover Blackness with VSB, Day 7: Miles Davis' On the Corner (1972)
I mean, I don’t even have to say it, but do you see this cover?? Look at all that animated Blackness permeating that bright yellow background. I like to think that yellow represents the sun, and everybody on the cover is the Black gold of the sun? This cover is for Miles Davis’ 1972 album…
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28 Days of Album Cover Blackness With VSB, Day 6: Queen Latifah's Nature of A Sista' (1991)
The album cover for Queen Latifah’s sophomore album, Nature Of A Sista’, is a much better take on the album cover for her debut, All Hail the Queen. Where All Hail the Queen had her standing in a stately, militaristic-ish fashion with the album’s title surrounding a silhouette of the African continent—it was a little…
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28 Days of Album Cover Blackness With VSB, Day 5: Betty Davis' Nasty Gal (1975)
I love Betty Davis. Her string of albums in the early to mid ’70s—any of which could have easily been included in this series—are a clinic in funk, and in my estimation, were decades ahead of their time. In fact, that’s why I included this particular album, Davis’ 1975 album, Nasty Gal, in this series.…
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28 Days of Album Cover Blackness With VSB, Day 4: Black Ivory's Don't Turn Around (1972)
Black Ivory—the trio of vocalists from Harlem, N.Y.—is a group that had me at hello. Made up of multihyphenate, do-it-all group members Russell Patterson, Stuart Bascombe and Leroy Burgess, I still remember the first time I heard their single “Don’t Turn Around” because I was digital crate digging and saw this album cover and said,…
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28 Days of Album Cover Blackness with VSB, Day 3: Big Bear Doin Thangs (1998)
Easily doubling as both one of my favorite album covers of all time and one of the worst album covers of all time, Big Bear made sure he’d never be forgotten with the Pen & Pixel gem for his 1998 album, Doin Thangs. He also managed to land a fairly remarkable feat: I have literally…
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28 Days of Album Cover Blackness with VSB, Day 2: A Taste of Honey A Taste of Honey (1978)
If you listen to Black music and disco (or either/or, really) you know A Taste of Honey. They had a monster hit with “Boogie Oogie Oogie,” a song whose hook you can probably sing in your sleep (which I don’t recommend; people freak out over stuff like that). But this album cover for their platinum-selling…