culture
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4 Beloved Contemporary Classics That Would Be Hated if They Came Out Today
I was late to the Love Jones train. Now, being late to things isn’t something that’s particularly uncommon with me. I think I was the last person on earth without a cellphone (didn’t get one until 2002), I started binge-watching Game of Thrones last spring, and I didn’t realize the Weeknd was just one person…
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Career, Husband and Baby, Too: Janet Jackson Can ‘Have It All’ at 49, but Can You?
“I promise, I’ll be worth the wait,” a then-20-year-old Janet Jackson cooed to ’80s heartthrob Taimak as they nuzzled on a city rooftop, contemplating the next move in their fictional black-and-white video romance. The year was 1986. “Let’s Wait Awhile” was the fifth hit single from Jackson’s breakthrough solo album, Control, which would confirm her…
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The Wire: The Ultimate ‘Where Are They Now?’
In June 2002, when HBO debuted The Wire, no one knew what was happening. No one knew that the show was a five-part story about not only the people but also the city of Baltimore, told through all of the channels that help make its history: season 1, the drug game and the police force;…
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Who’s the Keeper of Your Mother’s Memories When She Can’t Remember Them?
Now, are you someone I’m supposed to know? She’s nice enough on the phone. Pleasant, even. So pleasant that it could be normal if you wanted to pretend. But then, she’s always been nice, always liked to talk, even if she had nothing to say. This was no different, although these days she has good…
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Nate Moore, the Secret Weapon Behind Marvel’s on-Screen Blackness
Nate Moore has achieved a “marvel” feat of his own: going from reading comics as a kid to landing as executive producer alongside Marvel mastermind Stan Lee himself for the iconic brand’s latest global smash, Captain America: Civil War. While I was in there, I was able, with Nicole Perlman [first woman to write a Marvel…
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In Search of the Truth About James Brown
In 2013 James McBride won the prestigious National Book Award for his novel The Good Lord Bird, which follows a teenage slave who joins abolitionist John Brown’s 1859 rebellion. Prior to that, McBride had authored the best-selling memoir The Color of Water and two works of fiction: Song Yet Sung and Miracle at St. Anna.…
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One Woman’s Crusade to Ban the Box on College Applications
There are many ways to stop punishing people with criminal records for crimes for which they have already done the time. One of those ways, about which Vivian Nixon, executive director of the College and Community Fellowship and co-founder of the Education From the Inside Out (EIO) Coalition, is most passionate, is by increasing access…
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20 Things 50-Year-Old Black Men Get to Do Without Giving a Damn
The realization that I’m officially closer to 50 than I am to 18 hit me while I was playing basketball last week. My legs were feeling especially springy, so I decided to actually try to dunk instead of doing the nonchalant, rim-grab, “almost” dunk thing I do to convince people—myself included—that I can still dunk if…
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When Nia Long Told Larry King That J. Cole Wasn’t Too Young, I Lost My Mind
To say that Nia Long is a national treasure is an understatement. Long has been a part of most of our lives since at least the mid-’90s, when she played Beulah “Lisa” Wilkes on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and when a visionary Ice Cube saw fit to cast her in cult classic Friday. Thank…