The Root

The entertainment industry is facing the devastation brought on by COVID-19 head-on. With concerts and music festivals being canceled, Broadway having its lights out until at least June, and a slew of film release dates being pushed back or canceled entirely, many are wondering when the industry will be able to…Read more...

With names like The Clipse, Kelis and Robin Thicke to his credit, it’s not a secret that super-producer Pharrell Williams has a knack for breaking new artists. And in looking to continue that tradition, The Man Who Refuses to Age is joining forces with SoundCloud to showcase some of the nicest unsung talent in the…Read more...

I’m currently dating Tracee Ellis Ross.

Ramadan begins this evening, and for many Muslims around the world, the holiday will look a lot different this year.Read more...

Jason Mitchell has entangled himself in some mess again.Read more...

It looks like an authorized feature biopic is coming together for the late Whitney Houston.Read more...

Two black women who had the cops called on them at a Pennsylvania golf course in 2018 for allegedly playing “too slow” can now move forward with a racial and gender discrimination lawsuit against the course’s owners.Read more...

Laughter is some of the best medicine during trying times such as this pandemic, which is why some of the biggest names in comedy are coming together for a great cause.

I know, I know...Why must I make everything about race?Read more...

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As we read report after report of COVID-19 disproportionately affecting the black community, it only makes sense that we have our own special centered around the pandemic. In what looks to be an edu-tainment night, BET will be broadcasting Saving Our Selves: A BET COVID-19 Relief Effort.Read more...

On Wednesday afternoon, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo warned that the coronavirus pandemic is “not gonna be over anytime soon,” suggesting that the city’s overburdened hospital system will have to continue its herculean efforts to treat the outbreak for some time.Read more...

While Missy Elliot’s latest body of work, 2019’s Iconology, failed to capture our attention, she’s been hitting us in the head with dope visual after dope visual since the EP’s August release. And if you thought a global pandemic would prohibit her from continuing to do so, you have much to learn about the…Read more...

Since the coronavirus became a global pandemic, predictive models have been an important—and hotly debated—tool to help understand the spread of the virus and anticipate potential needs. According to the estimates coming out of the White House’s models, slightly more than 100,000 people will die from COVID-19, the…Read more...

On Monday, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp announced that the state would allow some non-essential businesses to re-open this Friday. Though, considering the updated number of coronavirus cases and deaths due to COVID-19 in the state, one has to wonder if that plan needs to change.Read more...

Since the beginning stages of the coronavirus pandemic, our newsfeeds have been filled with horror stories about the devastating impact the outbreak has had on people’s daily lives as well as their very lives. But every so often, we come across inspiring stories that warm the heart. In Albany, Ga., a 99-year-old woman…Read more...

Imagine being able to reflect and reminisce about a passion project about your own life 20 years later with tens of thousands of fans.Read more...

I haven’t physically gone inside a store in weeks. Sure, I’ve done shopping. I’ve purchased several pairs of shoes (well, three pairs of shoes and two pairs of Yeezy Slides) since being on lockdown of sorts. I’ve had to actually force myself to stop going onto Amazon.com to buy shit I don’t need and would never use.…Read more...

You would think a global pandemic would at least put a temporary freeze on fashion designers finding new ways to be racist, but here we are.Read more...

Few can forget the “hymen-gate” scandal of November 2019. The controversy involved Atlanta-bred rapper and thesaurus-enthusiast T.I., who went on a podcast and made claims that he urges his 18-year-old daughter Deyjah’s gynecologist to check her hymen, in order to ensure her virginity is intact. Shortly after, he was…Read more...

A new study reveals that U.S. law enforcement isn’t only disproportionately harsh when dealing with black Americans, but that our Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency is similarly biased in their treatment of African and Caribbean immigrants.Read more...

President 6ix9ine is about to get us into a shitload of shit during a global pandemic when no one can safely leave the goddamn house without a full-on gas mask.

Remember Garrison Hearst?

The Queen’s princess has arrived! No, not that queen, the titular Queen in Queen & Slim. The actress who portrays her, that is.Read more...

An understandable but deeply misguided take on the armed (and mostly white) idiots in the streets protesting stay-at-home orders is that they’ll just spread the coronavirus to each other, like a regifted MAGA fruitcake. Unfortunately, all that does is make everyone else more vulnerable, too.

It only took a few weeks and some light testing for President Trump and Fox News to back up after openly promoting and pushing an anti-malaria drug to beat COVID-19 like America had suddenly become Hamsterdam.

We’ve now lost count of the days that we’ve been sheltering-in-place, but as the blooms emerge and the days grow longer, we are understandably longing to spend time basking in the spring sunshine—but safety first. And news flash, Beloveds—when the day comes that we finally venture back outdoors en masse (Alexa, play …Read more...

Georgia Rep. Vernon Jones, the Kanye West of Candace Owenses, has resigned by announcing that he won’t be seeking reelection just a week after endorsing President Donald Trump.

Thanks to Derrick “D-Nice” Jones, we’ve gotten our fair share of club culture from the comfort of our homes as the persistent DJ has been pulling all-nighters for several weeks now.Read more...

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and truly one of America’s last hopes, was the latest guest on Will Smith’s Snapchat series Will From Home, where he informed viewers about COVID-19 facts, and more specifically, its devastating impact on the black community. The…Read more...

One would think that a governor who was planning to reopen his state during an ongoing pandemic would, at the very least, consult the mayor of the city with the state’s largest population. Apparently, this was not the case for Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp and Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms. Bottoms says she was…Read more...

When Octavia Butler published Parable of Sower in 1993, she fictionally forecasted the year 2024 as a dystopia under immoral and ignorant leadership; wracked by climate change and corporate and political avarice. In Butler’s vision of America, our so-called civilized society buckles under unbearable wealth inequality,…Read more...

Confidence is something either you have or you don’t, and it takes time to develop it for yourself. Sometimes, it presents as overconfidence, which can pop up in places it’s not always welcome. Take rapper French Montana, for example. His overconfidence, although admirable, came in the form of a tweet sent out on…Read more...

What is America?Read more...

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One of the strangest aspects of the coronavirus pandemic has been seeing the pro-life GOP members casually talk about “acceptable” loss of life and how the economy takes precedence over keeping people alive. Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick has been leading the charge with a series of controversial statements, and instead…Read more...

As part of their storied tradition of doing the absolute least when more is required of them, white people remain demographic outliers in their support of Donald Trump, according to a new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll that pits Trump against his presumptive Democratic rival, former Vice President Joe Biden.Read more...

When you’re worth billions of dollars, people love to tell you what you should do with your money in order to improve society. But when it comes to living legend Michael Jordan, he apparently has a pretty good idea on where his proceeds from ESPN’s wildly-popular docuseries, The Last Dance, should go: to charity.Read more...

At this point, it’s not terribly surprising to find out a police department is filled with the same kind of people that see a virus as the perfect excuse to bust out some racism.Read more...

Back when I was a kiddo, there were three absolutes I lived by. First, Batman was the coolest person in human history. Second, Dragon Ball Z was the pinnacle of storytelling. Lastly, parents aren’t good at video games. Like, they just aren’t. Games were our domain.Read more...

It’s important to have news platforms that are specifically tailored to fit the needs of black people who wish to stay informed. This is more true now than ever before, as the current global health crisis has proven to infect and kill black people disproportionately in the U.S. Thankfully, one black journalist was…Read more...

Niles Fitch, who is best known for portraying the teenage version of Sterling K. Brown’s Randall Pearson in NBC’s This Is Us, has a new gig, and it’s history-making.Read more...

It’s been mere days since it was reported that Prince Harry and wife Meghan Markle are severing all ties with several British tabloids, due to the ways the outlets “sought to insulate themselves from taking accountability for what they say or print—even when they know it to be distorted, false, or invasive beyond…Read more...

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Remember when Trump came out and used the same one-liner to encourage black people to vote for him (“What do you have to lose?”) as the mantra to try hydroxychloroquine, a malaria drug, to treat the coronavirus?

Michael Jordan’s 63 against the Boston Celtics in 1986 was the first time I saw him play a full game live. Except it wasn’t. I actually watched a VHS recording of that game, because it came on while we were out of the house, and my dad taped it. But that detail gets obscured in my memory and recollection of this…Read more...

I’m Batman.Read more...

These Verzuz battles are something special. The Timbaland and Swizz Beatz-created Instagram events, where popular musicians, songwriters and producers go head-to-head playing some of the biggest and best songs they’ve placed their magic on, have become an instant hit as we shelter-in-place.

At first, Ebbie and LaVondria Herbert thought their 5-year-old daughter Skylar had strep throat.Read more...

For almost 25 years, “Let Me Clear My Throat” has provided the soundtrack to nearly every black ass gathering, from pool parties and graduations to weddings, game nights and family cookouts. While DJ Kool takes tremendous pride in the ubiquity of his breakthrough 1996 single, one place you should never find this song…Read more...