culture

Time Is Illmatic, a documentary released for the 20th anniversary of Nas’ debut album, Illmatic, is opening in select theaters. The Root sat down with the fillmmakers, Erik Parker and One9, to hear the story behind the creative process of making the film.

New audio has a white South Carolina state trooper telling a very different version of the events surrounding his shooting of an unarmed African-American man as the man reached into his car to retrieve his wallet. Video footage recorded on now-fired State Trooper Sean Groubert’s dash cam Sept. 4 shows Levar Jones, 35, reaching inside…

With the Secret Service under intense scrutiny amid reports that an armed man jumped the fence at the White House and made it all the way to the East Room, the Associated Press is now reporting that earlier this month, the president was on an elevator with an “armed security contractor who had three criminal…

As of press time, the first Ebola victim had been diagnosed here in the U.S.—and approximately 3,000 people have died because of the Ebola outbreak in West Africa. But what has been neglected and underreported are the children the dead are leaving behind. West African orphans, many of them with one or both parents deceased, are…

The only thing that stopped an anti-Islam advocacy group from running an incendiary ad in New York City’s bus and subway system is the phone call it got from the attorney representing the family of James Foley—the American journalist who was beheaded by ISIS in Syria—begging the organization not to. The ad would have featured Foley’s face…

The Zimmermans really know how to party on another person’s tab. According to a profile in the October issue of GQ magazine, George Zimmerman and his brother, Robert Jr.—who told the magazine that before George’s fatal 2012 shooting of unarmed teen Trayvon Martin, “he was the family f—kup”—racked up $3,600 in comped fees in February at…