Empire is coming back for a sixth season, but not the beloved Jamal, aka actor Jussie Smollett.

Salt-N-Pepa is the stuff of legend: They’ve got hits. They’ve won a Grammy award. Heck, even the Queen, Beyoncé paid homage to them for Halloween. But, is their game dominoes or Spades?Read more...

Mainstream media have provided few spaces for black women to discuss politics, but A’shanti F. Gholar is joining a growing group of women of color podcasters who hope to provide more such spaces, with her new podcast The Brown Girls Guide To Politics.Read more...

We’ve wondered for months what Amber Guyger—the former Dallas police officer who shot and killed 26-year-old Botham Jean in his own apartment—was thinking in the immediate aftermath of Jean’s murder and now we finally have an answer.Read more...

It will have been twenty days spent in three cities, two very different climates, juggling business, pleasure and one vicious sunburn until I see my bed again this weekend, and whew! Since mid-April, I’ve hit the Florida beaches for my birthday, revisited my days as a New York City girl at the Tribeca Film Festival…Read more...

It seems like every time I turn around, Uber is in the news for all the wrong reasons. There’s the resignation of their head of HR over how discrimination complaints were being mishandled, various assault accusations, that whole #DeleteUber fiasco, and a bunch of other shit I don’t have the time to point out. Yet…Read more...

On the 2018 Beyoncé-infused “Black Effect,” Jay-Z nonchalantly professed “I’m good on every MLK,” keenly aware that civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr. has roads sprinkled throughout the country carrying his namesake. But on the flip side, our forever president Barack Obama—whose own iconic status wasn’t…Read more...

The Trump administration touted its bullshit tax plan as a win for the little guy with the idea being this: by giving big businesses massive tax breaks, they’d have more money, and with more money, they’d do the right thing and take care of their workers.

When you reach single-name—hell, single initial—status like Oprah Winfrey, do you have room for regrets?Read more...

Nominations are in for the biggest night in Broadway and members of the Tony Awards committee really are coming to see Otis. (*wink*)Read more...

John Singleton passed Monday, April 29, 2019. After suffering a stroke that left him in a coma, his family ultimately decided to take him off life support. To say it was a life gone too soon is an understatement, especially for a figure who has had such a tremendous impact on the black community at large. I grew up in…Read more...

Vizio’s 5.1 channel sound bars changed the game by bringing surround sound to people who didn’t want to buy a receiver or run a ton of wires around their living room, and now, you can get your own setup for just $200, or $50 less than usual.

Jimmy Butler wants to make one thing clear to everyone: His name is not James!

As a black person in America, we’ve all been there.Read more...

Foodies everywhere are familiar with the James Beard Awards, the culinary-focused ceremony considered the “Oscars of food.” And those who look forward to the annual Chicago-based event are swiftly getting a taste for the hottest party of the weekend, the Iconoclast Dinner Experience All-Star Culinary bash.Read more...

How do we know with certainty that the president of the United States is not a high paid sex worker who exclusively caters to Russian President Vladimir Putin?

More than three months after a Binghamton, N.Y., middle school was accused of illegally strip-searching four black and Latina students, the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF) has filed a lawsuit against the school district for failing to redress or apologize for the incident.

“What feeds your soul?” D’Angelo asks. For him, it’s God. It’s Yahweh. And for any fan who wonders why an artist decided to take a 14-year-long hiatus at the height of his career, maybe the answer rests in his gut—maybe, even with the superfluous reinforcement, he was starving.Read more...

It’s been 15 years since Sex and the City set the standard for what it meant to be a successful working woman in New York City, with four white actresses (Sarah Jessica Parker, Kim Cattrall, Cynthia Nixon, and Kristen Davis) providing a weekly dose of humor, friendship, fashion, and yes, sex to devoted viewers from…Read more...

After Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx’s announced that she would no longer be seeking to prosecute Empire actor Jussie Smollett on charges that he made a false report to police in the aftermath of what authorities say was a staged racist and homophobic attack, both a prosecutor in her office as well as a former…Read more...

Halima Aden has been changing the game since 2016, when she became the first contestant in the Miss Minnesota USA pageant to wear a hijab—and made it to the semifinals. In the years since, the Somali refugee-turned-burgeoning supermodel has been lighting up runways and magazine covers alike, reinforcing the fact that…Read more...

We still don’t know exactly what Stacey Abrams has in mind for future office, but we can at least rule one possibility out: a U.S. Senate seat in 2020.Read more...

I have had the good fortune to have seen many a Broadway play (also quite a few off-Broadway, for that matter). But only a very few over the years have stayed with me—a short list would include Fela! The Mountaintop. Choir Boy. The House That Will Not Stand. Denzel Washington in Julius Caesar.

Time’s ticking on Mother’s Day gifts and right now Amazon is blowing out tons of different watches. Both men’s and women’s styles are discounted. Prices start at just at around $29 for a Fossil watch and go all the way up to Michael Kors smart watch for $238.Read more...

Four Northern Virginia school districts are showing support for Gavin Grimm, the young transgender man who’s been in a years-long battle with another Virginia school district over its policy when it comes to what bathroom transgender students can use.

Deputy U.S. Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, has officially submitted his resignation papers, stating that his last day will be May 11.

A Louisiana man whose life was almost thrown away by the criminal justice system when he was overcharged in a case that came to be known as the “Jena 6” is now officially a lawyer.

Puff, puff — hard pass: A pair of Baltimore city judges have denied Baltimore City State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby’s request to throw out some 5,000 marijuana convictions.

California law enforcement officials stopped an Army veteran from carrying out a deadly terror attack at a political rally, officials announced Monday, foiling a plot to retaliate for a recent mass killing at a New Zealand mosque.Read more...

The energy? Buoyant. The crowd? Beautiful. The inspiration? Boundless. In the first stop in their first-ever Beauty Carnival tour, Essence magazine created a mecca for black girl magic this weekend in New York City, with some of the most notable names in the beauty, fashion and entertainment industries on site at the…Read more...

An unseasoned collection of white nationalists who apparently are fed up with all this “inclusion and diversity” nonsense had some things to get off their chest this weekend during a book event in Washington, D.C.Read more...

In the ongoing, gut-wrenching, Handmaid’s Tale-like real-life saga that is the decimation of reproductive rights across the country, yet another state has weighed in on its hatred of women. And yet. And yet, this time, Kansas came through for the bodily autonomy of its women citizenry.

Director, screenwriter and producer John Singleton has died at the age of 51.Read more...

My blood pressure still has not returned to normal after episode three of Game of Thrones.

Before heading into work a few weeks ago, I tweeted an original, now viral series of tweets about a surge of competing emotions that had unexpectedly hit me after placing a bandage on a stubborn, four-day old cut on my finger. But it wasn’t like the typical Johnson & Johnson brand adhesive bandages I’d worn on the…Read more...

It’s been 25 years since the series finale of In Living Color aired (in 1994), and it’s still as vibrant and relevant as ever. At the 2019 Tribeca Film Festival, show creator and star Keenen Ivory Wayans was in the building, as well as popular costars Tommy Davidson, Shawn Wayans, Kim Wayans, and David Alan Grier.Read more...

In a 90’s kind of world, we were glad to have our girls. That notion still rings true with a new program that includes the Queen, also known as Latifah. Latifah, Tribeca Studios and Marc Pritchard, Proctor and Gamble’s chief brand officer, have partnered to bring the dreams of black women to reality.

Monitor arms give you back wasted desk space, and include channels that keep your cables hidden and organized. And if that sounds appealing, you can pick up a dual monitor arm set up for just $43 if you stack an on-page coupon and the code KJ9ONK65.Read more...

A Connecticut mural to slain rapper Nipsey Hussle has been restored after a young white woman was captured on video defacing the memorial and snapping selfies in remembrance of her brazen act of whiteness.Read more...

Grammy Award-winning recording artist Peabo Bryson is currently hospitalized after experiencing a health scare over the weekend.Read more...

Sen. Dwight Walker (R-Beyond the Wall), long thought to be a serious contender for the Iron Throne, abruptly ended his candidacy for president of the Seven Kingdoms late Sunday night after he was reportedly involved in an altercation in the VIP section of a nightclub just outside of Winterfell.Read more...

There are three types of people in this world:Read more...

Let’s just get to the “This Can’t Be Life” punchline first: According to the Washington Post’s Fact Checker Database, a directory that keeps track of claims made by one President Donald J. Trump, in the 828 days since he’s been in office (and as of April 27, 2019), Trump has made 10,011 false or misleading claims.…Read more...

For residents of Los Angeles, April 29 is a day that lives on in infamy.Read more...

A $250 32GB Apple iPad, a discounted Sonos Smart One speaker, a YETI cooler, and an Anker Accessory Gold Box lead off Monday’s best deals.

Despite earlier reports to the contrary, John Singleton appears to be holding on.

Reboots are en vogue, and fan favorites such as Full House, Will & Grace and a Roseanne Barr-less The Connors have enjoyed renewed life as audiences clamor for a taste of nostalgia. But black audiences have been left by the wayside, as shows like Living Single and Martin have thus far remained relegated to the past.Read more...

It’s been 25 years since the civil war that resulted in genocide against the Tutsi tribe of the East African nation of Rwanda. During a three-month period in 1994, as many as one million Rwandans were killed, including approximately 70 percent of the Tutsi population.Read more...

Judge Damon J. Keith, a civil rights icon who became the sixth black person in U.S. history to serve on the federal court of appeals, died at his home in Detroit Sunday morning surrounded by family. He was 96.Read more...

What should have been the best weekend in one college football player’s life turned into tragedy when he was injured and his college teammate killed in a shooting early Sunday morning at a party in Topeka, Kan.Read more...