culture
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Being Mary Jane Recap: Sex in the City
Being Mary Jane is back for a fourth season, and Mary Jane Paul is still pompously lacking in self-awareness. While we open to M.J.’s 6-inch heels sauntering down the hallway to a sexy song, it doesn’t take long for M.J. to almost completely unravel in her most vulnerable space: her sexuality and pursuit of love.…
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Fat Joe Is Here to Remind You How Latino Rappers Changed the Game
The South Bronx in New York City has sealed its place in history as the birthplace of hip-hop, where black and Latino youths created something out of nothing. But while the Latino community gets props for certain elements of hip-hop culture—including graffiti, DJing and breakdancing—it hasn’t gotten as much love for rapping. In the ’90s, Fat…
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Being Mary Jane, Season 4: Will a New City Bring a New Mary Jane?
The show Being Mary Jane did not necessarily require much in the way of revamping. However, with the show’s creators and executive producers, Mara Brock and Salim Akil, leaving for a production deal with Warner Bros. TV, a shift was likely unavoidable. Mara Brock Akil spoke for many when she told Fader earlier this year…
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Tyler Perry, Lee Daniels Built Careers on Black Women Stories but Trade in Misogynoir
Did they use us just to lose us? Recent comments from Hollywood mega producers Tyler Perry and Lee Daniels have raised eyebrows about the ways they use gender and class privilege to distance themselves from the very communities from which they come. And they do this all while leveraging patriarchal notions of economic achievement to…
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For New Showrunner Erica Shelton Kodish, Being Mary Jane Is Personal
Editor’s note: Because of President Barack Obama’s farewell address, Being Mary Jane will air at 10 p.m. ET on Jan. 10 and return to its regular 9 p.m. ET schedule next week. When it was announced that husband-and-wife creative duo Mara Brock Akil and Salim Akil had scored a new development deal and would be…
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Get Away From Reality With These 5 Inauguration Day Escapes
We can’t escape the reality that Donald J. Trump will become the 45th president of the United States. And although the last few months have felt like the end of the world as we know it, we can literally escape watching, hearing about or even giving a second thought to the Trump inauguration in Washington,…
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What's Ailing Bishop Eddie Long?
I’m concerned about Bishop Eddie Long. In August of 2016, Long, senior pastor of New Birth Missionary Baptist Church, went viral after video showed that he’d lost an alarming amount of weight. “People are asking, ‘Bishop, what happened to all of you?’” he said on a video posted to Facebook that has since been taken…
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Black LGBT Ministers Speak Out About Kim Burrell, Shirley Caesar
The community is still reeling after a silent churchgoer put Kim Burrell’s violently homophobic sermon on blast for the world to see. Burrell’s tirade—which featured vulgar remarks about gay and lesbian sex and a warning that they would “die in 2017”—led Ellen DeGeneres to cancel the scheduled talk show performance of the gospel singer’s song…
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Unique Views Podcast, Episode 25: Here Comes the Hotepper
Eyes back! Did you miss me? That’s right—the granddaddy of them all, your favorite light-skin’s favorite light-skin, is back, and I don’t have long to be here because surely Patti LaDanielle, aka Mrs. Idris Elba, aka Danielle Young, is going to find another way to try to cancel me out with her Diana Ross-Beyoncé antics.…