culture
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15 Truly Underrated Hip-Hop Albums
Since I had to conceal the “Parental Advisory” sticker to convince my mama to purchase my very first compact disc—Bone Thugs-n-Harmony’s E. 1999 Eternal—from Blockbuster Music back in 1995, I’ve accumulated somewhere just south of 1,000 CDs. After 21 years of collecting so much music, I’ve forgotten about certain albums that were significant to me…
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On Saartjie Baartman and the Ownership of Black Women’s Bodies
The perceived ownership of a black woman’s body is an issue deeply woven into the fabric of the ugliest pieces of history. This poisonous thinking has not been quarantined to one section of the globe. In the United States, it was this idea of “ownership” that dominated the thinking of plantation owners and allowed them…
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Meet Tracy Oliver, Who Will Make You Laugh at Barbershop: The Next Cut
Barbershop: The Next Cut, starring Ice Cube and Cedric the Entertainer as barbers on the South Side of Chicago (the third installment of the franchise), is probably a lot funnier than most people expect, thanks in part to Tracy Oliver. The Stanford-educated, South Carolina native first got our attention as Nina, the work nemesis of…
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105 Real Black Women More Deserving of Book Deals Than Fake Black Woman Rachel Dolezal
On Wednesday, various news outlets confirmed what post-racial turducken Rachel Dolezal alluded to in her recent interview on the Today show. She did indeed receive a deal to pen a book about race. From The Guardian: Rachel Dolezal, the civil-rights activist who was accused of misrepresenting herself as black last year, has been signed to…
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Empire Recap: A Daddy With Mommy Issues
All together now: The pieces are falling into place on Empire. It’s been observed that Empire’s sophomore season has been off-key. In last night’s episode, “The Tameness of a Wolf,” the writers remembered their own history, and the plot points started to come together. Last week Jamal, who was angry with his dad, announced publicly…
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5 Things We Learned at the Hip Hop 4 Human Rights Concert
On Tuesday, April 12, The Root joined sister network Fusion and Univision’s new music vertical, TrackRecord, in Albany, N.Y., for a Hip Hop 4 Human Rights concert to help end solitary confinement. The show brought out hip-hop artists Chi Ali, Ahmen, Peter Gunz, Mysonne and DJ Kay Slay, as well as activists such as Ricky…
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Farewell, Kobe, It’s Been Real
On Wednesday, Los Angeles Laker guard Kobe Bryant plays his last game in the NBA after a storied 20-year career. In that time, he became a five-time NBA champion, a two-time NBA Finals MVP, an 18-time NBA All-Star (with four All-Star MVP trophies) and one of the few players who easily fit into any conversation…
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Questions From BuzzFeed’s ‘27 Questions Black People Have for Black People,’ Ranked From Least to Most Terrible
Along with being so remarkably tone-deaf that its tone-deafness felt intentional, BuzzFeed’s now infamous “27 Questions Black People Have for Black People” actually raised more questions than it answered. Namely, who green-lit this? Were the people in the video actors reading from a script? Or did they come up with their own questions? And where…
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Why I Stopped Caring About Baseball
Growing up, I was fortunate enough to play several organized sports at varying levels from early youth through high school. I played soccer and basketball, ran both track and cross-country, gave football a short stint. In college I took badminton as one of my physical education requirements, and apparently my particular class was so good,…