culture
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Jay-Z’s 4:44 Is the 1st Grown-Ass Hip-Hop Album
I’m a grown-ass, 40-year-old dad, so there are certain things I cannot do. I will never again eat at Chuck E. Cheese unless I want to end up on an episode of To Catch a Predator, but I’m also not old enough to eat at the Golden Corral. I can’t spend $200 on Jordans or wear…
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Watch: Sneak Peek of Array’s The House on Coco Road
In the 1980s, San Francisco Bay Area native Damani Baker and his family migrated to the Caribbean to join the Grenada Revolution. The move wasn’t his decision; he was a child at the time. Rather, Baker’s mother, Fannie Haughton, made the bold decision that, decades later, would be the basis of his documentary. The House…
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Tracing Your Roots: How Did My Ancestor Escape Slavery?
In revisiting the story of black refugees to Trinidad, we came across the tale of a foiled slave rebellion in Maryland. Dear Professor Gates: I am a Trinidadian who has been searching for information on my ancestor Henry Ransom, a black Colonial Marine who joined with the British in 1814 and was resettled in 5th…
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Black Music Month Playlist No. 5: We Made America Great in the 1st Place
Editor’s note: Every Friday for the month of June, aka African-American Music Appreciation Month, aka Black Music Month, we created a Spotify playlist based on the news of the week. Check out the stories behind playlist No. 1, playlist No. 2, playlist No. 3 and playlist No. 4. How fortuitous that the end of Black…
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Strong Enough for a Man, Made (as) a Woman: John McEnroe, Serena Williams and the Erasure of Black Female Excellence
“If [Serena] played the men’s circuit, she’d be, like, 700 in the world.” —John McEnroe “If I were a man, then it wouldn’t be any sort of question.” —Serena Williams John McEnroe cannot be serious. He couldn’t seriously think that he could question or attempt to qualify the greatness of the goddess known as Serena…
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Watch the Drones: Can Black Folks Benefit From the New World Order?
American business history is littered with stories of businesses that were started by, or profit off of, black folks but ritually lock us out. The black community spends billions on hair-care products, but most of the stores and companies we buy from aren’t for us or by us. African Americans drive the music industry, but…
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Browns Are the New Nudes When It Comes to Beauty and Fashion for Women of Color
Back in college, I attempted the silliest thing ever after shopping for bras. I couldn’t find a caramel-colored bra for the life of me, so I decided to get a white bra and attempt to dye it brown, or the closest color I could get to caramel. You see, if you were a brown-skinned woman, the…
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Black Music Month: The Transition of Mali Is Super Woke and Super Black
Maybe you’ve heard his name or seen his beautifully brown face across your feeds. One thing is certain—the minute you hear Mali’s voice, you know it’s not to be forgotten. Mali is a soul singer who uses his art not only to tell the stories of black people but also to shake us awake. Mali’s…
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I Listened to Chris Brown and Ray J’s Mixtape so You Don’t Have To
When I read that Chris Brown and Ray J had released a new mixtape, Burn My Name, my immediate response was, “Have we not suffered enough already in Trump’s America?” That’s not to say Light Ike isn’t talented, Team Breezy. That has long been established. It’s more like, “You’re Chris Brown and you’re doing a…
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Philando Castile Settlement Shows White America Willingly Pays for White Supremacy
White America has always shown a willingness and a boundless patience when it comes to paying for white supremacy. Not in the moral sense or the spiritual sense or the greater-good-for-mankind sense, but in the actual dollars-and-cents sense. Racial discrimination is actually rather expensive and has been throughout time. Slavery was expensive and borderline inefficient,…