If you live under a (non-cocaine) rock, there’s a better than 100 percent chance that you were confused as to why Soulja Boy (is it still Soulja Boy Tell ‘Em?) was all over your social media timelines on Wednesday. It is the year of our lord 2019—why in West Hell would that lil “Superman dat ho” nigga be taking up…

Spoiled milk-filled boat shoe repurposed as a moat for mice with sentience Tucker Carlson is a person who exists in the world and is paid money to say things on TV. He is, also, a racist. Which is less an accusation or an insult and more just an articulation of a relatively mundane observation. He’s racist the same…

Shortly after I entered the world via Detroit’s now-shuttered Grace Hospital one summer day in 1981, I set upon what was an unmistakably black-ass upbringing in one of America’s chocolatiest cities.

One of the best parts about VSB over the course of our existence—which is going on 11 years(!!!!!) come March—is that we’ve had the opportunity to write about and share many different aspects of blackness in America. Some of it has been serious and some of it has been fun, but the vast majority of it has been rooted…

Surviving R. Kelly is not just an apt title to describe the harrowing accounts of the women and families who came forward to detail their experiences with Robert Sylvester Kelly. It’s also (to a much lesser extent) an accurate description of the experience viewers had after engaging all six hours of footage detailing…

When I was younger, say 7 or 8 years old, I wanted to be an astronaut/pediatric neurosurgeon/inventor/NBA player. Though my life has been successful, it’s safe to say I’ve stopped just short of being the most awesome multi-hyphenate careerist of all time. By the time I hit my teen years, I wanted to be some version of…

Back when Cash Money was takin’ over for the ’99 and the 2000, at least once a week, the homies and I would trek from various points on the west and southwest sides of Atlanta to the Circuit City at Greenbriar Mall. We made this weekly pilgrimage because, for some reason, Circuit City, at least the one at Greenbriar,…

Eh, nevermind.

Although black people wanting to get away with the things that white people seem to be able to do will always leave a bitter taste, I’d get it if the black people who do/did this sort of thing were a tad more ambitious. I’d be inclined to grant their whataboutisms more sympathy if they made their requests a little…

This morning started out like any other day. I hopped up out my bed, turned my swag on, looked myself in the mirror and said what’s up, and then promised myself not to throw any 10-year-old lyrics from Soulja Boy songs into anything I wrote today. But things happen. When I sat down to decide what to write about today,…

VSB, in conjunction with a black-owned and -serving bricks and mortar bookstore in Washington, D.C., Mahogany Books, started a book club a few months back. So far we’ve read James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time, Glory Edim’s Well-Read Black Girl Anthology, and Kiese Laymon’s Heavy. Next month’s book is all about love by…

Like what I can only presume was the vast majority of black America, I spent a significant portion of the past weekend either watching the dream hampton produced/directed Lifetime docuseries, Surviving R. Kelly or talking about it. The discussions dominated social media and actual face-to-face interactions with…

According to the Economist Intelligence Unit, the organization that produces the annual Global Livability Index, Pittsburgh is America’s second most livable city. (Honolulu is first.)

If you’re like me, and presumably millions of other folks across Los Estados Unidos, student loan debt is a monkey on your back. I personally know people whose student loan burden ranges from $4,000 to as high as $200,000. Whether you’re on the low end or the probably-need-to-stay-high-to-manage-it high end, no…

The internet can take you down very strange rabbit holes, but sometimes those rabbit holes remind you of good times past. Such was the case recently as I perused Facebook looking to see what shenanigans the people I follow were up to. Somebody posted the music video for “Bist du down?” a 2017 single with a ’90s-era…

Radical acceptance. The Serenity Prayer. “It is what it is.” That’s just a few of the myriad methods many of us employ when trying to come to grips with shit we don’t like. You didn’t get that Chrimmuh bonus you just knew you deserved? It sucks, but being unwilling to accept it isn’t going to change that reality. You…

Attending an HBCU tends to unlock one’s awareness about the other hundred or so HBCUs that you’re not attending. Some of us get to school and know the big name ones, but our football and basketball schedules put schools like Benedict College, Paine College, Lane College and Lemoyne-Owen College (to name a few) on the…

When many of us think about athletic paths for our children to follow, competitive swimming isn’t typically high up on the list. Black Kids Swim (BKS) is an organization trying to change both the way we look at swimming in general and competitive swimming as an outlet and scholarship source for black children. We…

Just about every hip-hop critic and cognoscenti has had the same response about the amount of new music released in 2018: Too damn much.

When it comes to the holiday season there are a few keywords that likely come to mind: snow, presents, Christmas trees, Santa, hot cocoa, family, seasonal depression and the overwhelming anxiety of being able to afford to participate in a tradition of ravenous consumerism. All festive and wondrous things! And then, of…