1. Black people

I don't want to bury the lede, so here's the punchline: On Friday, I left my day job after 14 years to work for VSB full time; nobody at my day job had any idea about VSB. Full stop.

1. It was the first time I went to a pitch black movie theater — while wearing some nice jeans and some really fresh sneakers, if I say so myself — and somehow felt underdressed. I felt like I was wearing house party clothes to a day party.

1. This surprisingly tasty gluten-free donut I just ate 17 minutes ago.

Lupus was part of my life story long before I gained firsthand experience as a young tenderoni. I've watched my mother battle the autoimmune disease for my entire life, and she had already dealt with the shit for 15 years before I entered the world.

At midnight EST, Jay-Z dropped his latest album 4:44 amidst one of the better promo runs we’ve seen in a while. Of course, to listen to it you had to either sign up for Sprint and why would you do that or have a subscription to Tidal, which is only slightly less unreasonable than signing up for Sprint in 2017. I’m not…

On November 4, 2008, we witnessed a collective moment of hope and inspiration in the Black community with the election of Barack Obama as President of the United States.  As a moment of pride and patriotism, I don’t think there has ever been a time in the African American experience where we’ve felt as though we’d…

I finally saw All Eyez On Me, the Tupac Shakur biopic that’s been years in the making after a bunch of fits and starts. It was pretty universally panned by critics, but I loves me a good bad Black movie so a bad review is like catnip to a thug. Also, I’m a big fan of Tupac so there’s almost no way that I wasn’t going…

Full disclosure. This will not be a recap of the entire show. Because I did not watch the entire show. Because I'm old as fuck and took a nap at 8pm and woke up at like 10pm. Because old ass niggas take evening naps. And then for the first few moments of watching the awards, I was only kinda, sorta paying attention…

It appears as if Bill Cosby has lost his damn mind.

It’s been established that I’m a Super Saiyan-level hater (h/t Panama), especially when it comes to contemporary mainstream hip-hop.

I have three kids. One is 8 (I have no idea what you call the 8-year-old phase of life) and the other two are toddlers. This means that I have some experience - and expertise - in the art of what toddlers like. Which is important because one of the most frequent questions I’ve received in life is “what should I get…

Have you heard of SZA? I feel like most people fall into one of two camps: 1) you’re very familiar with her and have developed opinions on all of her previous efforts like S and Z, which you like, natch; or 2) you have no idea who that is, what that is, and are trying to figure out if I just cursed you out in whatever…

Before my son was born, I did not cry much. For instance, I was able to successfully navigate the untimely demise of both Rickey and The Boy in the Striped Pajamas without so much as shedding a tear.

If you were to ask me to list my top five greatest R&B or soul singers of all time, the list would would at different times include any of the following people: Donny Hathaway (he’d always be in the top five as a personal favorite but because he is one of two people whose voice ever made me cry), Phyllis Hyman (the…

Co-workers are basically the Tyrese of our professional lives. You can’t live with them and you certainly could live without them. No matter your career there’s a strong possibility you’ve encountered some pretty annoying people in your quest to make a dolla. And while all co-workers and their endless stash of Lean…

In my head, Clifton Powell is my homeboy. Ever since I first saw Menace II Society in 1993 and Chauncey called Kane a “cockblockin’ motherfucker”, I  knew there was something special about him. Roughly an almost literal hundred thousand trillion roles later, I’m still rockin’ with him. When I fire up Netflix,…

At the top of 2017, I brought in the New Year with a girlfriend and we wished for positivity and stability. Literally two weeks later the relationship ended.

Any self-respecting churchgoer knows Easter Sunday is basically the Beyoncé of Sundays. Ushers in formation, hats on hats on hats, and Church Mothers wishing a nigga would sit in their pew; it’s a big deal, and rightfully so. Jesus was dead, chilled for a second, said hell nah, Xmen’d a stone, waved bye to his haters…

Following the election, my Facebook feed lit up with threats of a #blaxit, which excited the hell out of me since I had #blaxited a few years prior. In 2013, I moved from New York City (Where Brooklyn At?) to Geneva, Switzerland, after my wife secured a position at an international organization. Four years later,…