At 6 feet 5 inches, Winston Duke already stands out as the gentle giant who has to get brolic in Jordan Peele’s new nightmare Us. But the real star is what he’s wearing throughout the film—a sweatshirt with the word “Howard” emblazoned across it. This fact was not lost on the campus of Howard University, a star HBCU…

The crowd was feverish with anticipation to see their NBA All-Star darling, Golden State Warriors point guard Steph Curry, who, because of flight delays, was late to the stage at Howard University’s Cramton Auditorium on Wednesday night.

Cinematographer Hans Charles wanted to visually frame the Wu-Tang Clan and all of their personas in a way that celebrated each of them as thriving black men in America. Likewise, director Sacha Jenkins understood that the real story in their four-hour documentary on Wu-Tang’s music and legacy is really about “black…

In 2010, Baltimore resident Jovonne Walker was a party planner and a nurse. She and her husband, Jamal, planned three parties over one weekend and had $43,000 in cash on hand that her husband was taking to the bank around 11 a.m. As Jamal stopped to talk to his friends, Baltimore City Sgt. Wayne Jenkins and his…

As the number of homicides in Baltimore this year climbs past 300 and the city’s Police Department remains embroiled in scandal, with officers caught on camera planting evidence and eight others facing federal racketeering charges, fed-up Baltimore City residents have decided to take matters into their own hands.

Marilyn Mosby is fighting new battles. She’s used to that. The Baltimore prosecutor—an African-American woman, putting her among the 1 percent of all elected prosecutors in the nation who are women of color—made a name for herself by doing what shouldn’t have been considered remarkable: prosecuting six police officers…

Most Law & Order junkies and millennials probably only know Ice-T affectionately as the gruff, no-nonsense NYPD Detective Odafin “Fin” Tutuola on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. But the rapper Ice-T came well before his nearly 20-year run on the television show. The story of Ice-T the rapper, including his…

In the fall of 1991, the feel-good single “I Love Your Smile” set five-octave singer Shanice afloat with a music video in which her wholesome, girl-next-door charm and wide smile fit perfectly with what she was singing about. Although the single peaked at No. 2 on both the Billboard Hot 100 and the U.K. Singles Chart,…

The story of Switch, the group that paved the way for the group DeBarge with sibling harmonizers Bobby and Tommy DeBarge, is a story as much about the journey for self-love as it is about their ability to seduce audiences with falsettos, rich love songs and lush harmonies.

Marvin Sapp is more than a preacher who sings or a singer who preaches. Both singing and preaching represent spiritual experiences for him. On Sunday’s episode of TV One’s Unsung, he and family members outline his personal story—a fully lived story with high highs and particularly low lows—which provides insight into…

For ’90s hip-hop heads, Wyclef Jean will always be known as one-third of the legendary group the Fugees. And anyone paying attention over the last few decades probably thinks he or she knows everything about Jean: how he became a sought-after producer, his near-presidential run in his home country and his starring…

Twins Brian and Brandon Casey, along with their friends Richard Wingo and Kyle Norman, made up the 1990s R&B group Jagged Edge. Unlike boy groups like New Edition or Jodeci, the individual members didn’t become household names or branch out into solo careers, but their sound was so unusual that even traditional R&B…

If you wondered when R&B singers became rappers and rappers became R&B singers, you just need to take a trip back to the ’90s, when Jodeci first took the hip-hop aesthetic and seamlessly blended it with baby-making jams. Before them, rhythm and blues balladeers were known for their impeccable suits and precise dance…

Every year around this time, the National Urban League releases a “State of Black America” report, with its successes and challenges for the future. This year, under the Trump administration, the need for a cohesive plan is more urgent than ever.

Two weeks ago, I logged into my email to read a note written by the headmaster of my daughters’ school about the white supremacist terrorist who traveled to New York from Baltimore—one of the blackest cities on the East Coast—to find a black man to kill. The note said this terrorist had graduated from my daughters’…

It was the summer of 1989 when the R&B trio After 7 dropped their infectious eponymous debut album with the lead single, “In the Heat of the Moment,” a mischievous dance tune about the wonders of lust. Even though that album went platinum and the following two went gold, After 7 disappeared from the scene. Wednesday…

When a federal judge made the unusual move earlier this month to allow key parts of a lawsuit filed by five of the six police officers in the Freddie Gray case to go forward against Baltimore City State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby (as well as Assistant Sheriff Samuel Cogen, who wrote the statement of probable cause), the…

In one of the most poignant scenes in the BET miniseries The New Edition Story, the young Ronnie DeVoe, Bobby Brown, Ricky Bell, Michael Bivins and Ralph Tresvant are fresh off their first major world tour. The tour bus, painted with the group’s name in graffiti letters on the side, pulls in slowly to drop the singers…