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10 Thoughts I Had about Coming 2 America—The Sequel to the Best Black Movie of All Time
It’s been almost a week since Coming 2 America dropped on Amazon Prime Video. The movie–highly anticipated by most of African America since it was announced—is the sequel to the 1988 blockbuster, Coming to America. I, a member of African America, highly anticipated it because the original movie is among my favorite movies of all…
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‘This Should Not Have Happened’: HBO Responds to Lovecraft Country Extra’s Claim That Her Skin Was Darkened to Fit a Role
HBO, the network behind the popular Jonathan Majors and Jurnee Smollett-Bell-led horror drama Lovecraft Country, is speaking out following a recent claim from an onset extra that her skin was darkened to fit a role. Per The Hollywood Reporter, actress Kelli Amirah posted a video to TikTok last month recalling her time as an extra…
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On Its 30th Anniversary, New Jack City Is Still the Hardest Crime Drama in the Game
Once I reached middle school, my mom’s policy on R-rated movies got a little…racial? For instance, I wasn’t allowed to watch Shaun of the Dead when it came out for its rating, but she bought a ticket for me to go see Blade: Trinity when it opened that same year. At home, she’d begun showing…
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The 10 Most Significant Black Cultural Institutions or Entities That Never Actually Existed, Ranked
Ever since Ricky Baker caught a few 12-gauge shells to the legs and back in 1991’s Boyz N The Hood—holy shit it turns 30 this year!!!!!!—and moved on up to that deluxe apartment in the sky, he’s been part of the Black consciousness. Boyz N The Hood plays constantly, even in 2021, on TNT and…
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From Uptown to World Wide Funk: Bruno Mars, Anderson .Paak and Bootsy Collins Made an Album, Y'all
It’s Friday and I’m at work (from home), but I’d “rather be with you.” Actually, I kind of am! Hey, readers of The Root, I have some great news to end the week on. There is an actual body of work featuring Bruno Mars, Anderson .Paak and Bootsy Collins (the latter of whom is listed…
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28 Days of Black Joy: Experiencing Black Joy Together
Does Black joy exist if there’s no one to share it with? I imagine that one could make the argument that Black joy could be an individual act, pointing to the joy that one feels within self, and that’s real. But through my life experiences—and recent conversations with scholar André Brock and founder of The…