culture

Don Cheadle is set to play legendary jazz trumpeter Miles Davis in a biopic that the actor co-wrote and is also slated to direct. BiFrost Pictures told the Associated Press on Wednesday that it will finance and produce Kill the Trumpet Player. Cheadle has been trying to make the film for years, AP reports. The…

As the holiday season looms large and lines form outside of stores’ doors for must-have items, New Yorker Robert Samuel has made a business of waiting. The 38-year-old Chelsea resident will stand in line for the everything from the latest iPhone or a cronut—a donut-croissant hybrid that’s New York’s latest baking sensation—for those who must…

In 2011, Sam Hurd had the world in his hands. The wide receiver had just signed a three-year, $5 million contract with the Chicago Bears. But being a professional athlete making big money wasn’t enough for Hurd, who wanted to be a drug kingpin who specialized in brokering “high-end deals.” “You had everything going for…

“My Ghanaian boyfriend is upset because I left his family’s party without him knowing. The feud between his mother and me came to a head at the event. She told me I wasn’t good enough for her son because I’m African American, I don’t have an Ivy League degree, I have kinky hair, I don’t…

Editor’s note: Read part 1 here. Talking about the intersection of gun violence and schools instantly draws our hearts and minds to the tragic shootings at Columbine, Sandy Hook and Sparks Middle School. However, in communities like Chicago and Detroit, where shootings take the lives of hundreds of people each year, the relationship between violence…

Whether it’s W.E.B. Du Bois unpacking the question, “How does it feel to be a problem?”—as the unspoken query that society has historically put to black America—or the Notorious B.I.G. unapologetically claiming Casanova status, despite being a “heartthrob never, black and ugly as ever,” the issue of black self-image never leaves us. And it’s come…

Nearly 50 years ago—when segregation ruled college football in the South—a transformational game took place, pitting a team led by African-American players against one from a powerhouse that was almost entirely white. The black team won, and the cult of white supremacy on the gridiron was shattered. And given football’s powerful cultural influence, the game…

As the saying goes, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Apparently so is the road to terrible music videos. English singer-songwriter Lily Allen seems to have decided to make a statement on the Miley Cyrus-ification of pop culture by making her latest video an in-your-face attack on the sexual exploitation of women…

Since Kim Kardashian replaced her as America’s sex-tape superstar-turned-reality-show celebrity du jour, Paris Hilton has spent much of the last few years battling to remain relevant and to stop her descent into becoming a Hollywood punch line. But she recently earned ridicule for a surprising reason: her positive review of the film 12 Years a…