Last Sunday I was blessed to be in sunny Los Angeles. After performing Saturday at the Our Communities Our Jobs rally, I decided to stay a few extra days to network and shoot some videos. My good friend Tahir Jahi was showing me the city and we decided to stop in North Hollywood to get […]
YO! Youth Outlook Multimedia Editor’s Note: YO!TV met up with Kash Gaines and Royshawn Thompson, two turf dancers from YAK Films who have starred in a series of RIP videos that show dancers memorializing their friends who have been killed on Oakland’s streets. Valerie Klinker is a content producer for YO! Youth Outlook Multimedia.
Fox Atlanta | March 29, 2011 Budget cuts meant a DeKalb County library branch was set to close at the end of this month, but then a 12-year-old boy stepped in. It was a first person civics lesson for 12-year-old home schooled sixth grader Sekondi Landry. The DeKalb County boy spent hours at the library […]
If you don’t already know, time is a cruel mistress who demands her “pound of flesh” by yearly ripping away our youth and vitality.  Among my close circle of friends, all in our mid-to-late 20s, we have each begun taking action to thwart her evil plan. The telltale signs of aging are starting to become […]
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uon9CcoHgwA On the last Friday of Women’s Her-story Month, I want to honor black women who are what I call “border-crossers.” Border crossing is centered in the margins and “what moves people” . . . the fluid transmissions and the mergers. It comes out of womanism and black feminism. It comes out the frustration with […]
Jay Smooth, Ill Doctrine | March 24, 2011 Two years after brutally beating then-girlfriend, Rihanna, Chris Brown seems to be under the impression that his fans have forgiven him, the public should move on, and the media should be gentler towards him.  Jay Smooth offers the R&B singer a reality check. httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFOZ3dcNucY
So…Good Morning America gets their studio trashed and tilts their heads in confusion. Why the awesomeness Robin Roberts? On Tuesday Chris Brown visited the ABC morning show, where he was asked to participate in an interview. And of course after two years of repenting for the incident with Rihanna, Robin Roberts, unlike a true friend, […]
Today Show | March 23, 2011 Anaih Rucker, 9, talks about her courageous, split-second decision to push her 5-year-old sister, Camry, out of the way of an oncoming truck, which left her with an amputated leg.
Don’t Judge me for having the Boyz2Men hit single in my head as I traveled back to the states. After spending the last three months outside of the country it feels almost odd to be back on my college campus in Chicago. I witnessed the execution of a chicken in Humakuya Village(and ate it for […]
I was recently honored to appear on Mark Anthony Neal’s weekly webcast “Left of Black”. Mark Anthony Neal is a Professor of Black Popular Culture in the Department of African and African American Studies at Duke University, author of five books, frequent commentator for National Public Radio and a regular columnist for theLoop21.com. The topic […]
When was the last time Hip Hop was this exciting and dangerous? Odd Future is the shot of badass, anti-establishment adrenaline Hip Hop desperately needs right now. Safe, parent-approved rappers are already feeling the heat; flitting around trying to figure out how to co-opt Odd Future and weather the storm. But it’s probably too late.
Before Kobe Bryant and Phil Jackson became staples at the Staple Center (pun intended #swag), before bright colors and skinny jeans became clichĂ© (jerking is played out), before krumping became accepted as a movement and not a bunch of weirdoes parading around in  face point, there was a soulful crooner that gave the West coast […]
