' Erika Alexander is known for her roles on the Emmy nominated series Living Single , the Oscar Award Winning movie Get Out , the CW’s Black Lightning and Wu-Tang: American Saga on hulu. In this episode of TheBlerdGurl Podcast with Karama Horne we discuss her work as a producer on Good Trouble the CNN documentary about the late Rep. John Lewis and she co-created at the comic book series Concrete

"When I look outside, when I go to the front door. That is my new canvas. Today. It's not really what happens in the studio. It's what happens outside of the studio." 'Visual Artist Nick Cave joins Helga Davis to talk about the evolution of his sculptural work, his community collaborations, and how to move from Black sorrow to B lack excellence .'

'Homophobic remarks made onstage by rapper DaBaby sparked widespread criticism from fellow musicians as well as concert promoters. DaBaby was slow to issue an apology, and while he has since put several out, that hasn’t stopped festivals including Lollapalooza and Governors Ball from dropping him from their lineups. For queer, Black fans of hip hop, offensive comments like the ones made by DaBaby

'Brooklyn-based singer-songwriter Madison McFerrin joined All Of It for an interview and two special performances.'

'More than 30,000 people have been shot in Chicago over the past decade. Of them, five out of six survived. A new series from The Trace investigates the impact of gun violence on survivors and communities, specifically in the Roseland neighborhood of Chicago. Lakeidra Chavis , Trevon Bosley , and Diane Latiker join 1A for the conversation.'

'In Gold-Diggers Sound , Leon Bridges steps firmly into the present compared to his two previous Southern soul albums. Bridges and his producer Ricky Reed talked about the idea of encapsulating a “samurai cowboy” on the album. A samurai cowboy is a lone ranger, a taciturn defender of freedom with a face of granite and a heart of gold, wandering the vistas and picturesque landscapes of Texas with

Adia Victoria's "Magnolia Blues" from A Southern Gothic (2021)

'Melbourne alt-soul collective Hiatus Kaiyote tricked out its avant-garde recording studio, The Villa, and lathered it with props: a miniature desk, alien costumes, and loads of furry friends. Frontwoman Nai Palm shared with me the impetus behind the design. "I'm a treasure hunter at heart," she said, "and the beautiful thing about dressing a set with sentimental artifacts from my house is that I

'The artist Julie Mehretu joins All Of It to discuss her mid-career survey show at The Whitney Museum of American Art, titled simply, " Julie Mehretu ." The exhibit spans over two decades and features almost 70 works on both canvas and paper. The selected pieces reveal Mehretu's wide range of source material and her commitment to finding new avenues of expression within abstract painting.'

'Best-selling authors Kwame Mbalia , Jason Reynolds , George M. Johnson , Jerry Craft and Tochi Onyebuchi gathered at a coffee shop in Brooklyn, New York, to discuss their collaboration Black Boy Joy: 17 Stories Celebrating Black Boyhood and the importance of representing Black boys in joyful stories and with a full range of emotions.' -- CBS This Morning

'The title of Leon Bridges 's third album, Gold-Digger’s Sound , comes from the Los Angeles hotel and studio where the Grammy winner wrote and recorded it. Bridges joins All Of It for a Listening Party.'

'The film catches up with young Black men who were part of the 2015 New York Times digital short film “A Conversation about Growing Up Black.” These young men reflect on who they are now and how their perspectives on race, justice, and social inequity and inequality have changed. “Learning to Breathe” is the second of three original films from WORLD Channel’s “The Conversation” series that revisi

Evgenia Eliseeva/Commonwealth Shakespeare Company 'Scholars have a mantra: Shakespeare is universal and his works are for everyone. But for Black actors and audiences, does an implicit whiteness in the Bard's canon hinder access and identification? "There is still the pervasive understanding of Shakespeare as implicitly white," said Patricia Akhimie , a Black Shakespeare scholar who teaches at Ru

' Katori Hall didn't want to gloss over Tina Turner 's life in the Tony-nominated musical Tina . Instead, she says, it was important to be "brutally honest" about the pain and trauma Turner has survived.' -- Fresh Air

'The wage gap persists between men and women in the U.S. — and it's even wider between Black women and white, non-Hispanic men. The wage gap persists between men and women in the U.S. — and it's even wider between Black women and white men. And this pay discrepancy leads to a wealth gap over the course of a career, says Fatima Goss Graves , president and CEO of the National Women's Law Center. As

'Ed Gordon talks with singer, actress, and entrepreneur Tamela Mann . This multi-talented Grammy winner discusses: her marriage to comedian David Mann, their successful association with Tyler Perry , why music is her passion and her latest album, Overcomer .'

'How should organizations support employees who experience racist incidents in their personal lives and how can those kinds of experiences affect their work? In December 2020, jazz trumpeter Keyon Harrold and his teenage son, who are Black, were attacked by a white woman who falsely accused Harrold’s son of stealing her smartphone. Captured on video, the incident made worldwide headlines as an ex

George Floyd protest, summer 2020. (Photo credit: Nina Berman) 'The issue of police violence and racism is a familiar one. It’s been present in the United States since the Republic’s beginnings. And the stories of George Floyd , Breonna Taylor , Tamir Rice and others cannot be understood if we do not know and comprehend that history. In this episode of How We Got Here , Jelani Cobb discusses race

"How exactly do we listen to images? We listen by feeling. We listen by attending to what I call 'felt sound'." ' Helga Davis invites Scholar and Author Tina Campt to explore her relationship to her practice and her family, centering the conversation on the power and pleasure of listening to images . Campt is Owen F. Walker Professor of Humanities and Modern Culture and Media at Brown University.

' The Pillar , a Substack dedicated to Catholic news, used a mysterious data set to identify a high ranking Catholic priest — a monsignor. From there, they outed the priest as a user of the hook-up app Grindr. Next they plotted out his movements — from his home, to work, to gay bars and private residences. It was all made possible by data that Grindr itself collected: data subsequently made avail

'In this talk, Arthur Jafa talks about his concluding exhibition at the Julia Stoschek Collection Berlin as well as his latest project “The White Album.” The title of the exhibition, A Series of Utterly Improbable, Yet Extraordinary Renditions, concerns the sense of absence Jafa sees haunting Black life. The word “rendition” refers to his interpretation of the aesthetics associated with Black bei

' An interfaith, interracial choir in Durham, North Carolina is forced to take a new direction during the COVID-19 pandemic. Members of the choir, which is dedicated to racial unity, must grapple with the dual crises of the coronavirus pandemic and police killings of African Americans, all while trying to sing as one unit while living miles apart. Directed by Dilsey Davis .'

'Belo Horizonte is Brazil’s sixth largest city and including its surrounding districts, the country’s third largest metropolitan area. The capital of Minas Gerais, a state built on mining, dairy products and coffee production, Belo Horizonte is often seen as a parochial, conservative backwater, yet its thriving alternative arts scene provides robust forms of musical and cultural resistance to the

Samora Michel and Maurice Bishop 'A Marxist revolution, a Cold War proxy battle, and a dream of a Black utopia. In 1983, Ronald Reagan ordered the U.S. military to invade the island of Grenada. Almost four decades later, many Americans don't remember why — or that it even happened. “This was a Black country with people making their own success and failure,” says Dessima Williams , Grenada’s forme

' Russell Peters knows the power of using comedy to challenge the status quo and how to make light of unconscious bias. In this episode of I nvisible Blackness with Adrian Younge , Russell discusses the expression of cultural intelligence through comedy, the power of hiphop to inspire identity and the subtitles of understanding intention when applied to humor.'

'Highway Mike is the story of Mike , a formerly homeless addict who used to live below the bridge in a park where hundreds of users gather every day to do drugs. Now he does outreach work to prevent overdoses in that same park. Mike tries to balance his past with his present as he leads us into the underbelly of one of New York City’s most overlooked communities, and gives us a firsthand glimpse

'For much of her childhood, Ashley Ford 's father was incarcerated, and her mother struggled to raise her while grappling with her own upended life plans. In her new memoir, Somebody's Daughter, Ford looks at how these formative conditions shaped her understanding of childhood, authority, forgiveness and freedom.' -- Code Switch

'Fast food is a staple of American culture, but in recent decades there has been a new focus on health and wage inequality. PBS NewsHour 's Jeffrey Brown talks to Pulitzer Prize winning author Marcia Chatelain about the complicated history of McDonalds in the Black community: how the fast food giant supported Black franchise owners, but was a trap for unhealthy diets and low wages. It’s part of o

| @NewBlackMan | NewBlackMan (in Exile) What is a more mainstream example of America, than a sandwich made with white bread? And that is perhaps what Motown’s Berry Gordy was thinking when he launched a short-lived merchandising partnership with Schafer Bakeries in Lansing, MI. “The Supremes Special Formula White Bread”, featured Motown’s flagship trio, The Supremes, on its packaging. Long-forgo

' Mach-Hommy 's latest album, Pray For Haiti , was released in early 2021 on the respected Griselda Records and is already being considered one of the year's best. Simultaneously, a place he cares deeply about sinks further and further into crisis. As a member of the country's diaspora, the artist says he's used to holding disparate thoughts, like these, in his head at the same time. Hommy says t

'As uprisings spread across the country, a young poet in Birmingham, Alabama becomes involved in local protests against decades of police brutality. As he tries to reconcile the city’s modern image as a diverse and welcoming metropolis with its violent and complex civil rights history, he suddenly becomes a part of the story when he’s arrested at a demonstration. Missing Magic is directed by Anis

Whitewashing History and Suppressing Voters Go Hand in Hand by Ben Jealous | @BenJealous | NewBlackMan (in Exile) There’s been a lot of news about the Democratic legislators in Texas who fled the state to prevent Republicans from pushing through sweeping new voter suppression laws. Gov. Greg Abbott has threatened to have them arrested to force them to attend a special session of the state legisla