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.

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.

From Michael Jackson’s Jheri curl from the Thriller era to Colin Kaepernick’s iconic ’fro, one thing’s for sure: Black folks know hair, and our hair often makes a statement.

AfroPunk 2018 came and went, and The Root was in the house to make sure that black trivia was popping. In the midst of the wave of beautifully melanated millennials (well, mostly), we had to figure out who was really about that “afro” life.

Every year like clockwork, the ultimate young black reunion takes place on the lawns of Commodore Barry Park in Brooklyn, as all the stylish friends you wish you had come out stunting in their bright, bold, and very unapologetically black street style, ready to mosh and sway the hot evenings away.

She may seem to hide behind sunglasses, but 21-year-old Gabi Wilson—better known as H.E.R.—has made it her mission to be at ease in the spotlight, as she told Vogue while prepping for last weekend’s AfroPunk festival in her home base of Brooklyn, NY.

South by Southwest—Austin, Texas’ annual interactive, film and music conference—is scheduled to officially kick off Friday, March 9, and serves as the unofficial commencement of festival season. Just a month later, Coachella, considered the model for all subsequent music festivals, will happen in California.

#HolidayEnvy is real, y’all: While the mercury is barely cracking zero degrees in many American cities, it is summer in South Africa, and we can’t think of a better way to ring in 2018 than with the beautiful people at Afropunk Joberg!

Solange Knowles has spent much of the past year on the road, taking her acclaimed album A Seat at the Table and creating a space for black female art everywhere from the Hollywood Bowl to the Guggenheim Museum.

Melanin. Color. Texture. Funk. Freedom. Afropunk, the annual music and arts festival going since 2005, is not free anymore, but with all this gorgeousness and headliners like Raphael Saadiq and Solange, SZA and Soul II Soul, Anderson Paak and ThunderCat, any money paid is worth way more than two assholes in a ring.

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…