(ThyBlackMan.com) The news of Cassandra Wilson’s passing gave me pause before I could find the words to write. One of the most distinctive and influential voices in American music is gone. News of her death broke today, September 2, 2026. She died at home in Jackson, the same Mississippi ground ...
(ThyBlackMan.com) Country legend Dolly Parton was known for her powerful voice, bubbly personality, and timeless music. But there was another side of Dolly Parton, a side that she quietly and consistently showed up for the Black community. As a lad, this writer grew up in the “hood” but was fascinated ...
(ThyBlackMan.com) There is a particular kind of foolishness that only pride can buy. Duane Davis, the man the streets came to know as Keffe D, spent close to two decades telling anybody with a microphone or a publishing deal exactly how Tupac Shakur died. He talked to police. He talked ...
(ThyBlackMan.com) A little more than seven months have gone by since Kanye West bought a full-page advertisement in The Wall Street Journal and addressed it to everyone left wounded in his wake. That January statement was, on its surface, everything critics had asked of him for years. It started with ...
(ThyBlackMan.com) Darius Rucker turned 60, and something in him finally exhaled. The country singer sat down on The Dan Patrick Show recently and said out loud what plenty of us keep buried. Glancing back at his last calendar, he tallied the concerts. 110 of them. Then came a question that ...
(ThyBlackMan.com) Somebody decided a while back that a serious Black man ought to look as if he is hauling a boulder up a hill. I never agreed to that. My pushback happens right here in the kitchen, volume up, nothing loud about it. Most of what gets published about brothers ...
(ThyBlackMan.com) Folks love to file Michael Jackson under pop and keep it moving. The glove, the moonwalk, the spin that stopped a stadium cold. All of it real. None of it the whole man. Anybody raised on a transistor radio and a decent pair of speakers knows the part they ...
(ThyBlackMan.com) Somewhere between the streaming numbers and the sponsorship checks, rap forgot how to be dangerous. Not violent, not reckless with a pistol. Dangerous to the people who ought to be afraid of it. I sat with that feeling all through this year, watching another awards season roll past in ...
(ThyBlackMan.com) Roc Nation is billing the weekend as history, and for once the label talk holds up. Across three nights in the Bronx this month, Shawn Carter became the first artist to sell out Yankee Stadium three shows running, each with its own setlist and its own staging. More than ...
(ThyBlackMan.com) We asked a child to be a miracle. Not a good performer, understand me. A miracle. Every night, in every arena, under lights hot enough to sweat the paint off his face, thousands of grown people decided before the first note dropped that Michael Jackson owed them something close ...
(ThyBlackMan.com) Most cats find a sound and ride it till the wheels come off. They stumble onto something that works, the crowd claps, the checks clear, and they spend the next thirty years doing a slightly tired version of the thing that made them. Can’t blame them either. Comfort is ...
(ThyBlackMan.com) When Pooh Shiesty walked out of federal custody in October 2025, the videos hit the timeline within hours. There he stood, flush with cash, grinning wide, Big30 at his shoulder, years in prison finally behind him, even though home confinement and federal supervision still waited on the other side. ...