It was much easier to boycott the NFL last season than I anticipated. For one, I underestimated how much I’d enjoy having my Sundays back. Also, my NFL fandom belongs to a team with a racist name that also happens to suck more often than not, so boycotting because the NFL blackballed Colin Kaepernick was as much “Why…

Editor’s note: This is satire. What is satire, you ask? According to Dictionary.com, satire is the use of humor, irony, exaggeration or ridicule to expose and criticize people’s stupidity or vices, particularly in the context of contemporary politics and other topical issues. Keep that in mind. Thanks.

As it did for so many folks I know, hip-hop changed my life. I don’t mean in the “It saved my life” way, but when I was introduced to hip-hop, I fell hook, line and sinker into the ocean and never came up for air.

Since my daughter was born, I’ve had two very clear objectives: 1) Raise a good human being who goes to Spelman College, and 2) Turn my daughter (and the rest of my kids) into music heads. I want my kids to be the ones who go to school talking about that new Marvin Gaye Here, My Dear album. I want them thinking that…

Editor’s note: Corey Richardson, the author of We Used to Have Money, Now We Have You! A Dad’s Bedtime Story, is a frequent VSB contributor. 

A few months ago, there was an issue with an H&M shirt, a black boy and a monkey. We were all like, fuck yo’ couch, H&M! And then folks shut a few H&Ms down in South Africa, and then H&M was closing down tons of stores (while opening others), and I think Brick killed a guy.

The news has lately been inundated with examples of white folks (and even some nonwhite folks) doing the ultimate white-folkin’ of calling the police for no reason on black folks who were doing nothing but existing and living their everyday lives.

For some odd reason that I cannot quite understand, I grew up listening to a very (un)healthy amount of Kenny G. The track “Songbird”—you know the one—could be heard on any given day throughout my home as a kid. For the life of me, I do not understand why this was the case. Turns out that I was not alone. The…

I have three chirrens. They are ages 9, 3 and 2. At this point, because children are sponges and shit, I am very careful about what I watch and listen to in front of them. The last thing I need is to have my kids absorb some super-profane content and then repeat it. I already accidentally talked my 2-year-old into…

I can be prone to hyperbole. I can see proof of it in my daughter, who has adopted my penchant for saying, “This is my favorite song ever” for nearly every song she hears that she likes. We don’t do things small in the My-Last-Name-Isn’t-Really-Jackson household.

The Temptations are one of my favorite groups of all time. But I have to caveat that: The version of the Temptations that features the “Death Lineup” (no pun intended, seriously) of David Ruffin, Eddie Kendricks, Paul Williams, Melvin Franklin and Otis Williams is my favorite. Even though that lineup is my favorite,…

Editor’s note: It’s very important for me to mention that I have two mothers. I was largely raised by my black mother, but my white mother was ever present in my life and obviously had a significant hand in shaping who I am as a person. God saw fit to gift me with two mothers to help shape me into the person that I…

Much has been said of the government responses to the opioid epidemic—specifically that it is leniently and sympathetically called an epidemic (I agree with that assessment), with sights set on healing and treatment. While necessary to combat the issue, the sympathy with which our nation views the current drug…

I was recently hipped to Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson’s (the Roots) Questlove Supreme podcast on Pandora. I can’t believe I’ve never listened to it before, but now that I’ve found love, what am I going to do with it? I’m going to binge the fuck out of this podcast and treat every day like Christmas.

Over the weekend, Donald Glover, aka Childish Gambino, dropped a video for a new song called “This Is America.” You are reading this, which means there’s a better than 90 percent chance that you’ve both seen the video and had a discussion about it already. Probably several.

1. The hat matches my shoes.

A few weeks back, I was heading to Huntsville, Ala., to attend a track meet for my nephew (which ended up getting rained out). I had a 6:45 a.m. flight out of Washington, D.C.’s Ronald Reagan National Airport—or, as locals call it, National. I got there in plenty of time, but it matters not, because I’m armed with TSA…

I’m not Wale’s biggest fan, but the man can make a hit song. He has several of them. If you listened to the radio at all in 2011, you heard “Lotus Flower Bomb” multiple times a day. His verse on Waka Flocka Flame’s “No Hands”? Stellar. I still know it word for word. He’s got hit albums, hit songs and critically…

Ever since T.I. rapped “you had a bad idea and you makin’ it worse” on his and Kanye’s “Ye vs. the People,” I’ve found ways to apply that statement to so many facets of life. It was so apt and simple and profound that it really encapsulates everything going on in the world of Kanye West right now.

I’m a child of the ’90s, which means that I grew up on R&B that wasn’t rappers harmonizing or singers talking with melody from their souls. Not that I don’t enjoy that; to the contrary, I love it all. But there was nothing like an actual solid slow jam.