albums
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28 Days of Album Cover Blackness With VSB, Day 19: Mary J. Blige's My Life (1994)
Mary J. Blige’s My Life is a personal choice for me. For my money, her 1994 album is one of the best albums ever made, seemingly for all of the wrong reasons. Mary was clearly going through it. Every single song on this album speaks to that in both sound and tone. Even one of…
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'I Can’t Win With the Internet': Tessica Brown Tells The Root How Going Viral Affected Her and Her Children
My Dearest Reader, Over the last few weeks, this author has done her absolute best to keep you all informed on the developments concerning the curious case of Lady Tessica Brown and her Gorilla Glued hairdo. As most of you are probably aware, the case finally concluded in a positive way thanks to the gifted…
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How Is Black Twitter Reacting to Meek Mill's Song Referencing Kobe Bryant? Spoiler Alert: It's 'Going Bad'
Meek Mill has famously rapped about his “Dreams & Nightmares.” Well, this new song of his may just be a plain nightmare for him. On Wednesday, a snippet of his untitled song with Lil Baby began to surface on social media and there was one particular lyric that stood out like the sorest of thumbs.…
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28 Days of Album Cover Blackness With VSB, Day 18: Shut Up and Dance's Dance Before The Police Come! (1990)
It’s possible that you’ve never heard of the London-group Shut Up and Dance. They were (are) a British production/rap duo who got started at the very tail end of the 80s and made music through the 2000s. If you listen to their early music, it sounds a lot like the hip hop coming out of…
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I Got a Story to Tell: Netflix to Air New Documentary on the Life of Legendary Rapper Biggie Smalls
To all the ladies in the place with style and grace—and everyone else without it: Netflix has announced a new upcoming documentary covering the life of legendary rapper and influential hip-hop icon Biggie Smalls, titled I Got a Story to Tell. According to a press release sent to The Root, the documentary is set to…
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Black and Jubilant: Unpacking Black Joy From the Revolutionary to the Ordinary
“I would argue that a lot of oppressed populations turn to expressions of joy and make them more potent because they understand that life is not promised to you. The next day is not a promised.” — André L. Brock, Ph.D. text Black. Joy. We absolutely love to see it—in all of its forms. From…
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And the Skippy Goes To! Here Are The Root's 2nd Annual The Blackest Awards Winners
2020 was a year. And I don’t mean that in a good way. Because this whole endeavor is about positivity, I won’t even speak on any of the negativity. What I will say is that 2020 did provide many moments of positivity in the form of movies and television, and the internet straight showed out.…
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Mic Drop: These 10 New Songs Are All Over the Map of Love
Now that we have officially entered the second half of Black History Month and made it past Valentine’s Day, it looks like some of our favorite Black musicians decided it was time to let the world know what type of love they’re feeling—and on these new tracks, they seem to be in their bag! Now…
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28 Days of Album Cover Blackness With VSB, Day 15: Minnie Riperton's Perfect Angel (1974)
I love this album cover for Perfect Angel. For starters, it has an innocent feel to it, but that melted ice cream tells another tale. Plus, she outchea with the overalls with no shirt on. So it’s both innocent and sexy, with an afro for the ages. Once you consider that Minnie Riperton has a…
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Love for the Long Haul: AphroChic's Founders Talk Partnership, Marriage and Surviving COVID-19
“For better, for worse; for richer, for poorer; in sickness and in health; to love and to cherish; till death do us part.” The vows are familiar, but for many, after a year of the in-tandem epidemics of COVID-19 and a resulting economic crisis, they have been put to the test. It’s Valentine’s Day tradition…