358 Search results for "relationships"

It is true that “all the girls wanna play Baywatch” at the swimming pools full of liquor (Kendrick Lamar, “Swimming Pools”). Generation Y parties, both in college and high school, present you with a reality surfacing from the deep end of young adult freedom. Diving through the future, our new understandings of suffering blend with […]

Black life, just like any other life, is always full of action. We begin many relationships that require us to “deal with people”. These other people deal with us too—our ways of sparking reactions from others brings them to us.  In order to have friends, lovers, even families, we make people outside ourselves pay attention […]

This one tells the story of the gender-conscious black male. Nothing is special about these individuals, but the universal disregard for womyn ensures problems in recognition. The people that we showcase, that we respect or esteem at high levels, reflect our understanding of society. What makes us proud of other people is our comparison of […]

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uv658wfVt6I The generation’s identity reveals itself in the sound waves that stimulate the collective conscious. Speech, which is the vocal reality of knowledge, enters the minds of youth through Hip-Hop among other things. We’re not only listening though. Young MCs speak, talk about the experiences of the black future in 2012. Our generation’s sound waves […]

Lupe Fiasco’s “Bitch Bad” has been the topic of conversation all around the internet this week. Lauders and critics alike are leading conversations about the song which takes on the misogynistic trend in hip hop of reducing women to vulgar names and sexual objects. The rapper has stated that he released the song for the […]

I talk a lot about the girls that I mentor and how they order my steps. I find myself factoring my girls into most decisions that I make. In that way, being a mentor has really changed my life. And I hope that the feeling is mutual. I hope that the girls I call my […]

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ccx7xYBArBc Over the past few weeks, the conversation around Black masculinity has been particularly invigorated in several ways. From Frank Ocean’s coming out to Lupe Fiasco’s shedding tears on thinking of the violence in Chicago, we’ve seen Black men produce profound moments of emotion—in a society where the showing of emotion is often positioned as […]

When we blame Black women for our failure to be seen as “real men” in a White racist society we only show ourselves to be immature. Our mothers, our sisters, our aunts, our girlfriends, our wives, and nieces are not our enemy.

California rapper, Murs is sure to generate publicity with the clip for his new video, ‘Animal Style.’ The song chronicles the troubled love affair between two young men, one of whom is not openly gay. Thoughts on the song and video? Is Hip Hop growing more tolerant?

I’ve spent the last week treading in the liquid of a queer-flavored ambivalence, trying to determine why the Anderson Cooper and Frank Ocean coming out announcements mean less to me than other people. I have seen enough episodes of Coming Out Stories and foolishly subjected myself and my partner to the awkward anti-climax of telling my father […]

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60cvtxwlJr8 A friend of mine, of both Black and White heritage, brought the above video to my attention. The video features rapper A$AP Rocky and artist Lana Del Rey portraying president JFK and Jackie-O respectively, while also playing a bit on Marilyn Monroe’s famous singing of Happy Birthday to JFK. The song’s superficial lyrics seem […]

There’s only a black love because relationships with black people make us talk about our problems. Since I’m a black man I tell my girlfriend what frustrates me about the way I’m (un)treated. When my “other” friends always ask about what it’s like to be “black”, I tell her. No matter what she gets me […]