In anticipation of the upcoming Coming to America sequel, we decided to devote a week to some observations, questions, and theories we’ve always had about the iconic original.

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This week at VSB, in dedication to and preparation for Friday’s release of Coming 2 America, we’ll be digging deep-ish and having fun with the original, 1988's Coming to America.

In anticipation of the upcoming Coming to America sequel, we decided to devote a week to some observations, questions, and theories we’ve always had about the iconic original.

I don’t need a ton of words to describe the way I feel about the cover for Public Enemy’s sophomore album, 1988's It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back. Mostly, I just need to say how bad ass it is. And especially how bad ass it was to a 9-year-old whose big sister was into Black Power and hip-hop with…

Ain’t no way in the world this monthlong series would pass without a nod to one of the greatest albums ever that also happens to feature Michael Jackson at his Blackest. 1979's Off The Wall is a certified classic. It’s the album that launched Thriller. But the cover let’s you know it’s about to be the jams. Mike has…

It all started over the past year when like many of us, I made a very hard turn into damn near exclusively buying clothing pieces by and for Black people. While I’ve always been very much into F.U.B.U. as a philosophy (while oddly never buying an actual FUBU apparel) my Buy Black meter hit an all-time high.…

The cover for jazz guitarist Sonny Sharrock’s debut album, 1969's Black Woman, could have easily doubled as a movie poster for the 1970s version of Queen & Slim. The photo taken by Ray Gibson (with design by Haig Adishian) features Sonny and his wife and frequent collaborator—until their divorce—Linda Sharrock lookin’…

Can you be attracted to your own beard? Not the face it covers. Just the beard. My face is fine, I guess. It’s a nose and some eyes and a mouth, like most faces. I’m grateful for it. But I’m not, like, thinking about boning it, like the way I’d try to bone my Chewbacca pandemic beard, if such a thing were possible and…

The cover for Leon Thomas’ 1973 album, Full Circle, does not look like what it sounds like, to me at least. The album cover looks like some “diamond in the back, sunroof top...” vibe jams. But Leon Thomas is both a jazz and blue vocalist and this album is rich with both. Thomas was also a percussionist, but more…

There is no discussion about Black album covers, iconic or otherwise, that doesn’t include the string of album covers the Ohio Players put together in the 1970s. I could have included any album cover from 1972's Pain to 1981's Everybody Up and it would be a worthy inclusion to the conversation. But 1975's Honey is…

Max Roach was a famed jazz drummer and composer who has countless albums with various configurations of artists. His career spanned decades and if you are up on jazz at all, you know Max Roach even if you don’t know that you know Max Roach. One thing that stands out to me about him is how socially conscious his albums…

Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly (all parts of it) has been think-pieced to death, so that’s not what’s going to happen here. Plus, I probably already did that and am too lazy to look it up. And this series is about Black ass album covers anyway. To Pimp a Butterfly is one Black ass album cover.

I love the album cover for multi-hyphenate Dee Dee Bridgewater’s debut album, 1974's Afro Blue. Dee Dee is a Grammy-award winning singer, actor, philanthropist, etc. She’s bad bad. Just like this album cover. It is art. I’d hang this album up in if I owned a physical copy of it.

When watching any television show or movie depicting police officers, it’s not hard to see why this sort of copaganda is so consistently effective. The presence of law enforcement on screen usually means there’s also an entity present that the law enforcement is attempting to stop, and this gives you a quick and clean…

Mary J. Blige’s My Life is a personal choice for me. For my money, her 1994 album is one of the best albums ever made, seemingly for all of the wrong reasons. Mary was clearly going through it. Every single song on this album speaks to that in both sound and tone. Even one of my favorite records of hers, “Be Happy,”…

Has there ever been a man, real or fictional, as pathetic as Ted Cruz? That was not a rhetorical question. I’m genuinely curious. Of course, there have been worse people. Hitler. King Leopold II of Belgium. Rush Limbaugh. Grayson Allen. But pathetic exists in a different stratosphere; a singular entity at the…

It’s possible that you’ve never heard of the London-group Shut Up and Dance. They were (are) a British production/rap duo who got started at the very tail end of the 80s and made music through the 2000s. If you listen to their early music, it sounds a lot like the hip hop coming out of New York City, except sped up to…