Morgan Wallen’s choice last Sunday night to refer to one of his white friends as a “pussy ass n***a” was, to paraphrase the artist’s own words, “an inexcusable embarrassment.” In an unprecedented turn of events, Wallen has been “indefinitely suspended” by his label Big Loud Records. He’s had his videos scrubbed from CMT and songs immediately removed from radio playlists by Cumulus Media, Entercom, iHeartmedia, Pandora, and SiriusXM. It’s a spectacular backlash against the top-selling artist in all music at the moment.

The fallout from the event finds Wallen’s supporters on social media asking variations of the same question: “If…

In vino veritas.

Loosely translated from Latin to English, it means that a person tells the truth under the influence of alcohol.

In the past six months, the number one pop music artist in America, country star Morgan Wallen — while inebriated — has, via his unsavory behavior, told many truths about himself. For pop’s top star, these truths have had considerable life and career consequences.

However, Wallen’s latest error — uttering the word “n***er” out loud while being filmed, on the first day of 2021’s Black History Month no less — is too shocking to sweep under the rug…

My text messages have inspired my best work over the past decade-plus that I’ve worked as a professional freelance journalist. Yes, roughly 90% of my best stories are birthed from my friends messaging me about how they perceive that I’m going to think about the news. How my daily, off-the-cuff conversations turn into a completed post is a process that requires harnessing raw emotion into carefully selected words. Then I use a combination of logic and research to refine those rash opinions into poignant editorial copy.

If I hadn’t published 10 features a month for the past decade as a…

Let’s face it: Every Black person has at least one White icon they idolize.

Elvis Aron Presley doesn’t mean shit to most of my Black friends, but he does to me. Instead of falling in love with White rock and “blue-eyed soul” icons like so many of them did, I was excited by the reckless behavior of country music’s White male stars. Elvis’ sound and style perfectly blended equal parts Marlboro Man, Glen Campbell’s Rhinestone Cowboy persona, pop-rock idol, and soul superstar.

When I was a child, my mother told me Elvis was “much less of a redneck asshole than…

King Noire has spent two decades rapping, but his Twitter bio also notes his other expertise: “Master Fetish Trainer” and “Renaissance Fornicator.” As booties clap and latex glistens while Cardi B extols the joys of oral sex on “WAP,” there’s never been a better time for a sex worker — let alone one co-signed by the likes of Brand Nubian’s Lord Jamar and Masta Ace — to release a song like “Poly Sutra.” Here, he gets candid about music’s current sexual reawakening and how Black men can advocate for sexual freedom for all Black people.

Before James Brown’s “(Say It…

Labor Day 2120 saw Vocaloid heroine Hatsune Miku and legendary rap superstar Drake’s virtual avatar Drizzy 2.0 beamed into a VR-enabled crowd at National Mall in the city of Federal Square, Douglass for a unique concert and celebratory event surrounding their ubiquitously popular “MM 2020” single and album collaboration. Impressively, the show counted the currently feuding 65th United States President Belicalis Cephus and business magnate Jeffrey Bezos V (sporting as per usual a seemingly impossibly curved-brimmed black, “JBV” baseball cap with gold Washington Post New Roman-lettering) in attendance. Outside of the Secret Service physically separating both parties and their administrative…

Neither candidate in the race for America’s Presidency has consistently demonstrated the talents to run a democratic society in the throes of a destructive viral pandemic, alongside terrifying fascist and racist unrest, plus a general national existential malaise. Thus, like a high school chemistry student, I’m paralyzed in intrigue by wanting first to see just how far our nation metaphorically centrifuges itself before reaching the peak of resolute separation. …

Georgetown men’s basketball coach John Thompson, who died this week at age 78, didn’t just create winning teams—he won by rearing responsible men.