Last weekend, I was invited to a brunch hosted by Ebele Okobi, who is Facebook’s Head of Public Policy, Africa, and was my de facto tour guide and event planner during my week abroad. There were nine of us there—an African diasporic reunion of black people scattered throughout the globe but settled in London. Among…

I have a complicated relationship with Alabama because Alabama is a complicated place. Though I’ve lived less time there than anywhere else in the world that could be considered home (fall of 1993 through spring 1997 and only two summers, ever), it is also the state where I went to high school and where my parents…

John Singleton. Dead at 51. Stroke/Hypertension.

Since November 2018, VSB has teamed with Mahogany Books, an online and brick-and-mortar, black-owned bookstore located in Washington, D.C., to do a monthly book club. On the first Friday of each month, we meet in the bookstore and discuss the book we read for the month in a very casual, entertaining and often…

Because of my FOMO and my desire to both understand the bazillion Game of Thrones-related memes and references people can’t help but make, I decided to dive into the show. Plus, my entire ass Mondays are shot on social media and in the news curation service I use; a solid 10 articles immediately surface about the…

The sixth and final season of the STARZ hit television show, Power, is set to premier on Aug. 25. The season will be long as hell at 15 episodes, but considering the extremely high entertainment value, I’m willing to be all in and park my ass on the couch every Sunday night to pray on somebody else’s downfall. It…

For most of my adult life, I’ve been the kind of slim that inspired a stranger to tell me “If you could just eat a pork chop sandwich, you’d be alright!” In the fall of 2017, when my husband and I learned I was pregnant, I figured this baby would be that sandwich—but not anything more than that.

I’m one of those people who live in a neighborhood where anytime I get an “out for delivery” email/text/raven for any package that won’t fit into my mailbox, I know it means it’s time for me to head home. I will either receive the package personally or be present to witness it NOT being delivered even though the…

Legendary filmmaker John Singleton was laid to rest this week after he passed away at the age of 51. Naturally, it has many reflecting on his filmography. For me, I’m specifically thinking about his most important film.

At the beginning of this year, I saw a meme on Facebook where a young man mentioned that over the past year, he had learned to stop “aspiring to sit at tables where he had to bring his own chair, squeeze in between folks and repeatedly convince people that he deserved to be there.”

John Singleton passed Monday, April 29, 2019. After suffering a stroke that left him in a coma, his family ultimately decided to take him off life support. To say it was a life gone too soon is an understatement, especially for a figure who has had such a tremendous impact on the black community at large. I grew up in…

1. Well done.

“I don’t know how you ended up so bougie when we came out of the same family,” said my baby sister one day over the phone.

Illmatic, my all-time favorite debut album and one of my top-five favorite hip-hop albums of all time, celebrated its 25^th anniversary April 19. Whether or not Nas ever released another classic album has been the subject of an interminable debate among hip-hop nerds; what isn’t up for debate is that Nas had a largely…

When confused philosopher king Kanye West rapped, “racism’s still alive, they just be concealing it...” on “Never Let Me Down” from his debut offering, The College Dropout, he was not talking about Mississippi. Or Alabama or South Carolina or, well, you get the point. Regarding Mississippi specifically, it is the last…

Washington, DC, is in the midst of a culture war between the new residents who want to mold the city into their own version of VanillaTown and the folks who didn’t ask for any of this shit but now have to defend their ways of life. Yes, we’re talking gentrification. From new residents of Chinatown trying to stop the…

When I think of the 90s, there are a few specific groups, songs and television shows that immediately come to mind: Martin, Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Jodeci, SWV, Wu-Tang Clan, Jade’s “Don’t Walk Away,” Groove Theory’s “Tell Me,” (for my money, one of the best and most 90s songs of all time) and indisputably Zhané’s…

My friend Toni and I text a lot and for good reason. We are the same age. We divorced young. We have small children. We work together.

Last night, Beyoncé did what Beyoncé does and dropped a whole ass 40-track album, Homecoming: The Live Album, out of nowhere that we didn’t know was coming but we’re all better off for having. Beyoncé, ever since that first secret drop back in 2013, just comes through whenever she wants and takes over the entire ass…

I’m one of those people: I’ve never seen a full episode of HBO’s Game of Thrones. I say full episode because I tried to watch the first episode a few years ago and just couldn’t make it through. I don’t know what happened or why on that particular day I couldn’t complete the task. I binged the entirety of the first…