326 Search results for "black artists"

At Oak Park High School, Tuesday and Thursday afternoons brings together an unorthodox assortment of high school students of all colors, shapes, ethnic backgrounds, economic statuses, neighborhoods, families and yes even cliques making up a thriving community of artists in our Spoken Word club. High school is usually an environment where weakness isn’t understood as making people stronger, […]

The other night, some friends and I were hanging out in a hotel room listening to music.  At some point, the Eric Benet song “Ghetto Girl” featuring Meshell Ndegocello (dude, I know. I assure you that it was not my iPod. I’m not saying I don’t have the album, I’m just saying it ain’t on […]

On Friday night, in the basement of a local church next door to my high school, young people (including myself) gathered together in a positive environment in protest of the violence against women and children around the world. OPRF high school’s Students for Peace and Justice organization rallied students to participate by performing songs and […]

By the end of 2000, D’Angelo was without question THE man, receiving commercial and critical success, and thus free to go in any direction he wanted artistically. And then he disappeared.

At the tender age of 23, and just one album into her solo career, Lauryn Hill was catapulted unexpectedly into mega-stardom, and looked upon with an almost divine level of adoration and respect. Clearly, Hill was not ready for it….

For a long time husbands had been notoriously recognized for outshining, outworking and “bringing home the bacon for” their wives. After a short marriage and divorce in 1991, followed by 19 years of hard work and accomplishment, Kathryn Bigelow has shown ex-husband, James Cameron, that she’s got things covered and won’t need any favors. Her low […]

So as it stands, Love & War is more than a respectable debut for Merriweather. It may not separate him from the pack the way a truly classic release would, but it’s impossible not to at least like.

And all of this makes Scott-Heron’s new album, I’m New Here, all the more stunning; not since the Rick Rubin-assisted resurrection of Johnny Cash’s legendary (and, by the earlier 90’s, similarly derailed) career has an older, seemingly past-their-prime artist returned with something so haunting, so vital, and so unequivocably brilliant.

I would like to believe that there is a moment in everyone’s life that becomes a point of definition. This if nothing else has been the reality of my experience. My moment of definition was March 2006 when I was a participant in the finals of the Cleveland city wide poetry slam. Two weeks prior […]

Since embarking on a solo career in 2003, Beyonce has completely mastered an intoxicating mixture of R&B and Hip Hop that redefined Pop music in the 2000s, her live performances continue to stun audiences around the world, and her fierce protection of her private life from media scrutiny has allowed her to cultivate a largely blemish-less superstar status. All things considered, Beyonce is clearly the greatest and most influential female pop artist of the 2000s.

Like Che printed t-shirts and Darfur doo-rags, tragedy has become fashionable. It isn’t rare that I find someone trading stories (with great excitement) about a friend of a friend who was in Indonesia during the tsunami, or meet an artist eager to proclaim that he lost everything in New Orleans. Surely, a life of meaning […]

When I was in the six grade there was a kid in my class (we’ll call him Rudy) that was what I like to call “The Kyle Washington type”(for all of those who have seen college hill south beach you know exactly what that means). If you have not seen College Hill, allow me to […]