CBU October/November 2018 Emagazine by John Roach

DASOUL UNDERWEAR FALL/WINTER 2018

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Allen Iverson still gets $800,000 a year from Reebok, and the CEO says itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s still worth it by Katie McInerney for www2.philly.com

Allen Iverson last played in an NBA game in February 2010, when he scored 13 points for the Sixers in a 122-90 loss to the Bulls in Chicago. But eight-and-a-half years later, Reebok is still paying him $800,000 a year, as it has been since they signed "The Answer" to a lifetime contract. And last week, Reebok CEO Matt O'Toole said the company thought it was still worth it. "He has a place in our heritage, and there is a group of consumers who want to connect to that," O'Toole said on the Bloomberg Business of Sport podcast. "He's relevant for a lot of our consumers.“ Iverson quickly received a 10-year, $50 million contract from Reebok when the Sixers made him the first overall pick in the 1996 draft. The company then released the Reebok Question, which the guard wore en route to winning rookie of the year honors for the 1996-97 season. When Iverson led the Sixers to the 2001 NBA Finals and was named league MVP, Reebok signed him to a lifetime deal. In addition to the $800,000 the former guard receives annually, the contract famously includes a trust fund worth $32 million that Iverson can't touch until 2030, when he turns 55. It's been reported that when he can access it, he'll only get half as part of a divorce settlement with his ex-wife Tawanna. The company sent Iverson to Asia last year, and O'Toole said they're sending him overseas next month. "He's an iconic personality," O'Toole said. "Let's get on a plane to Shanghai together. You bring Allen Iverson into a market like that. I'll stand firmly that he has a big place in basketball and sports history.“ Iverson was slated to return to the court in Philly last summer — not with the Sixers, but as part of the BIG3 League's appearance at the Wells Fargo Center. But Iverson abruptly backed out right before he was set to play (he coached instead) and was booed while standing courtside.

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Singer

Ella Mai ! on her breakout debut and how ! 'Boo'd Up' changed her life! Alex Suskind for ew.com

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More than a year after its appearance on her 2017 EP Ready, Ella Mai’s smash hit “Boo’d Up” became the little heartbeat-flutter that could, turning the 23-year-old artist into a household name. Now, the British singer has set pulses skipping anew with the release of her self-titled first album, which dropped earlier this month. Along with “Boo’d Up,” the LP includes Mai’s second R&B No. 1 hit, the piano-heavy groove “Trip,” along with appearances by John Legend and H.E.R. The previous EPs were “like a little introductory peak,” she tells EW, adding that the new album is closer to “a full, complete story.” Ahead, Mai chats further about what that story means to her, growing up in England, and how “Boo’d Up” changed her life. Ella Mai is your first album after three EP releases. Does this feel like a debut to you, or is it just another release, only longer? It definitely feels like a debut. I think with the EPs, they were only five or six songs.

Quite short, 20 minutes each. You can tell a story on an EP and you can show versatility, but I think that albums are really made for storytelling. What was different from before “Boo’d Up” became a hit and since then? Is it just a signpost that tells you that you’re on the right path? Ultimately, as a human being, I think I’m still very much the same person, but there’s definitely been a difference in my career and having a lot more eyes on me and a lot more people aware of who I am and the music that I make. I think that’s also why the debut album was so important, for people to really hear my versatility and how I like to put stuff together and make it into a story. Is that why you also included “Boo’d Up” on the album in addition to on Ready? Yeah. “Boo’d Up” has changed my life, and I think it would be a disservice to the song to not be on my debut album.

You were born and raised in England until you were 12, when you moved to New York, and then later moved back. Did that give you any kind of advantage as an artist? I think so. Even just as a person, I think moving to New York and being taken out of my comfort zone and being placed somewhere where I didn’t know anyone, it helped me adapt in a lot of situations that a normal 12-year-old or 13-year-old wouldn’t probably be comfortable in. And it opened my eyes to see how different everywhere in the world is and how different people live. Your album has appearances by John Legend, H.E.R., and Chris Brown, and you’re currently touring with Bruno Mars. I’m sure they probably gave you advice, but did you have any advice for them? Um, no. Well, being that me and H.E.R. are in similar situations -— we’re around the same age, we’re both up-and-coming R&B artists — I think it was very important for us to come together. Especially as women and as black women in an industry that’s so male-dominated and so focused on pitting women against each other, I think it was very important for the culture for us to really come together and make a real R&B song that everyone can love. But I don’t think there’s anything I can really tell them as advice, I think. Everyone’s path is a little bit different.

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Black Fathers Get Big Love In The New Film ‘The Hate U Give’ By Jeneé Osterheldt for the Boston Globe.com Photo: Suzanne Kreiter/Globe Staff

Russell Hornsby plays Maverick “Mav” Carter in the film adaptation of the bestseller “The Hate U Give.”

“The Hate U Give” is the #BlackLivesMatter book and film we all need. Your heart is in its hands, being made to beat with empathy as you see there are humans behind the hashtags and bodybags and protests against brutality. It delves in to the beauty, strength, and the sting of 16-year-old Starr Carter (Amandla Stenberg) finding her power as a young black girl forced to codeswitch between her rich, white private school and life in her black neighborhood. But it’s also an ode to black fatherhood. Maverick “Mav” Carter (Russell Hornsby) is one of the most important black dads on the big screen since Laurence Fishburne’s Furious Styles in “Boyz n the Hood” (1991).

Styles is aggressively loving, guiding and keeping his son in line as he teaches him about violence, gentrification, responsibility, and community. Twenty-seven years later we have Mav. “The Hate U Give,” opening Friday, starts with him giving his kids “the talk.” Not the birds-and-bees awkward convo most kids endure. The talk black children get to prepare them for interaction with police. Mav wants them to comply under all circumstances. But he also instills within them the tenets of the Black Panther Party’s Ten-Point Program, “We want an immediate end to police brutality and murder of black people,” he has them memorize and recite. Something Starr, his daughter, will take to heart when she witnesses a cop murder her best friend and has to make the choice to speak up or not.

The role of Mav has been an emotional matrix for Hornsby, 44. At times, he got choked up filming. As a husband and father who grew up in Oakland where the spirit of the Black Panther Party was born, it was important for him to reflect that old-school strength and the reality of black life.

“I can only look through the lens I have as a black man in America who has been called nigger before, who has been pulled over by the police unjustly, who has been put to the ground by the police,” says Hornsby, a Boston University alumnus. “Ain’t no two ways about it. We’re fighting against injustice. Kids — black kids — are forced to grow up too soon. Mav wanted to impart wisdom, knowledge, and understanding to his kids.”

He doesn’t just preach to them. He leads by example. Mav dotes on their mama. He owns the neighborhood market. He believes in giving back to the community. Mav’s a force of love and lessons in their lives. “Angie could have easily made Lisa [Regina Hall] a single mom,” Hornsby says of the book’s author, Angie Thomas. “That’s what I love about her. She included a strong black father. There are times when I feel like we have been forgotten.” From “Lincoln Heights” to “Seven Seconds” to “The Affair,” Hornsby is drawn to portraying the nuance of the black family and showing strong black men. “I don’t mean to offend anyone,” he says, “But there’s an old saying a friend once said to me: ‘There was a time when the boats were made of wood and the men were made of steel, now the men are made of wood and the boats are made of steel. Isn’t that a shame?’ I take that to mean different things at different times.”

Conservatives often weaponize this 2013 Centers for Disease Control report statitistic: 71.5 percent of black, non-Hispanic children in 2013 were born to unmarried women. The recurring narrative in America is black dads are absent. “The Hate U Give” upends the trope while recognizing one doesn’t have to be perfect to be a loving and present dad. Mav is not Uncle Phil, of “Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.” He willingly went to prison for something he didn’t do, he’s a former gang member, he cheated. Yet he has turned his life around. The complex layers of Mav dispel the stereotypes Americans have been taught about black people. “I wanted to represent the brothas I have seen when I go to the rhythm section of Oakland, hearing brothas speak and tell me about their journeys,” he says. “Men who have been to prison and found themselves, brothas who have made mistakes but are loving their wives and children trying to protect them and educate them. These men do exist.”

And they are active fathers. If folk bothered to look closer at the studies, they’d realize unmarried does not equal deadbeat dad. CDC figures also show nearly 60 percent of black fathers live with their children and are more likely than white fathers to take their kids to activities and review homework with their children on a daily basis. “It’s important to understand cultural dynamics,” Hornsby says. “We wanted to show a loving couple and family. We honor each other. And black ain’t no monolith, but this is uniquely and unapologetically black. We used to wear shirts that said, ‘It’s a black thang you wouldn’t understand,’ and I had a mentor that said, ‘Nah brothas, you got it wrong. It’s a black thang, let me help you understand.’ ”

“The Hate U Give,” Hornsby believes, is a time for that empathy and understanding. The book, at the top of the New York Times bestsellers YA hardcover list for 83 weeks, was the eighth most banned book of 2017. We can’t keep hiding from uncomfortable truths. “We are not apathetic in this country,” he says. “There is so much stimuli coming at young people, you don’t even have time to grieve before something new happens. We are desensitized to the issues. This film gives you two hours and 13 minutes to just sit and feel and absorb it in your spirit. You’re going to open your heart.” That’s what we need to change the future: the love you give when your heart opens.

NETFLIX'S 'QUINCY' MAKES THE REMARKABLE LIFE OF A LEGENDARY PRODUCER RELATIVELY ORDINARY

By DAN JACKSON for Thrillist.com

There's a truism that the artists who make for the best interview subjects are often at the beginning or the end of their careers. The thinking is that the rising stars have a vulnerability, an eagerness to tell their story, and a lack of cynicism about the larger entertainment journalism apparatus that makes them fun to talk to; on the other end of the spectrum, the older stars have nothing to lose, more wisdom to impart, and a willingness to reveal their true self. Quincy Jones, the subject of both a recent GQ profile and a widely shared interview with Vulture, is the epitome of the latter, a music industry legend who has seen it all and isn't afraid to share what he's learned. Like, say, an anecdote about Marlon Brando having sex with Richard Pryor.

These two recent interviews were so controversial, aggregated by content-hungry websites and screen-shotted by readers on social media obsessed with tossed-off quotes like "you like Brazilian music?" and "heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d fuck a mailbox," that they actually lead to a follow-up statement from the 85year-old producer and composer where he apologized for his "wordvomit" and attempted to put out some fires with the people he offended. The note, which lacked the free-wheeling candor of his interviews, said that his six daughters had staged a "family intervention" to address "some silly things" he'd said. Even for an aging public figure, there's still an image to maintain.

The biographical documentary Quincy, which debuted on Netflix September 24, was co-directed by one of those intervening daughters, Parks and Recreation actress Rashida Jones, and is pitched somewhere between the joyful frankness of the Vulture interview and the PR-friendly tone of the apology statement. Like many recent nonfiction films made by family members of significant figures -- Netflix's recent Joan Didion portrait, which was directed by her nephew Griffin Dunne, or the recent HBO doc about Nora Ephron, which was directed by her son Jacob Bernstein -- Quincy offers access and intimacy, but occasionally skimps on psychological nuance or insight into the work itself. As a subject, Jones has lived one of those rollicking, shape-shifting American lives that's difficult to condense into a two-hour narrative. (In the GQ profile, Jones jokingly referred to himself as the "the Ghetto [Forrest] Gump.") We learn of his childhood in the South Side of Chicago during the Great Depression, a period defined by traumatic violence and a tumultuous family life; then he's off to Seattle, where he got his start as a musician and linked up with band leader Lionel Hamilton, who took him on his first tour; soon he's crashing New York's jazz scene in the 1950s, learning from giants of the genre and playing venues like Birdland; blink and he's in Paris, studying classical music. This is all before he teams up with famous collaborators like Frank Sinatra and Michael Jackson.

Jones's curiosity about different genres -- at one point, he talks about Duke Ellington telling him he needed to help "decategorize" music -- is reflected in the film, which opens with him sitting for a podcast interview with hip-hop elder statesman Dr. Dre and later makes a point of showing him chatting with Kendrick Lamar. The viewer is also given a sense of just how exhausting the business of being Quincy Jones can be: Flying across the country from gig to gig, staying out all night partying at galas, and putting in long hours at the studio can put a strain on your body. The movie pings between the past, where we see Jones luxuriating in his workaholic lifestyle, and the present, where the decades of nonstop activity have begun to take their physical, mental, and emotional toll. "He wasn't even of this world," says his ex-wife (and Rashida's mother) Peggy Lipton in voice-over at one point, describing her husband's breakdown following the production of 1985's The Color Purple, which quickly followed the monster global-success of Thriller. To give the present-day footage a sense of urgency, the story builds towards a climactic performance celebrating the opening of the National Museum of African American History and Culture. Known as a man with an unparalleled rolodex of famous names, Jones is tasked with producing the event and some of the scenes of him finessing the nitty-gritty details, working the phones and overseeing rehearsals, have a low-key, fly-onthe-wall charm. Watching Jones personally dial up Colin Powell to get him to RSVP to the event is surreal. You end up wanting more of that and less of the (well-deserved) myth-making.

Quincy and Chaka Khan

Quincy and Oprah Winfrey

Stevie Wonder and Quincy

Will Smith and Quincy

Quincy and Aretha Franklin

Michael Jackson and Quincy

Kendrick Lamar and Quincy

In a recent piece for The New York Times, critic Jon Caramanica mourned the loss of the glossy celebrity magazine profile, which he argues has been crippled primarily by image-conscious stars choosing to tell their own stories on social media. The same time period discussed in the essay has seen a mini-explosion of biographical documentaries, often about musicians and typically supported by the deep pockets of companies like Netflix, and many of these films suffer from the same problems Caramanica describes, particularly when they are produced and directed by filmmakers with a close proximity to the subject. He writes that we "miss out on what happens when someone in the room is pushing back," and it's hard to not feel that while watching a movie like Quincy. The ride shouldn't always be so smooth. There's enough compelling archival material and honest reflection in Quincy to make it worth recommending to music fans looking for a deeper-than-Wikipedia history. He's lived a fascinating life, one that would probably benefit from being sliced into thinner slices. For example, Spike Lee's 2016 documentary about the making of Off The Wall, Michael Jackson's first record with Jones as a producer, offers a process-oriented look at his musical gifts. In comparison, Quincy is content with keeping things cozy; the man himself got where he is by taking big risks. After all, you don't win 28 Grammys and make headlines at the age of 85 by staying in your comfort zone.

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What Every NFL Player Can Learn From

Colin Kaepernick By Daniel Scott for forbes.com

“Believe in something, even if it means sacrificing everything.”

In this September 25, 2016, file photo (next page), San Francisco 49ers' Colin Kaepernick kneels during the national anthem before an NFL football game against the Seattle Seahawks, in Seattle. Kaepernick has a new deal with Nike, even though the NFL does not want him. Kaepernick’s attorney, Mark Geragos, made the announcement on Twitter, calling the former 49ers quarterback an “All-American Icon” and crediting attorney Ben Meiselas for getting the deal done. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren, File)

There could not be a better campaign to capture Colin Kaepernick’s legacy. There also could not be a better campaign to elevate his legacy. Nike’s controversial decision to go with Kaepernick as the new face of its “Just Do It” campaign is everything every athlete should strive to achieve. Not that every athlete should be a politically divisive figure—that’s not the point. What Nike and Colin have brilliantly achieved is taking the essence of a player—in this case, defiance, empowerment, protest, dissent, integrity—and authentically used it for a branded campaign. It’s perfect. More importantly, it serves as a lesson every athlete needs to learn: You are more than the game. It is no secret that most athletes struggle financially when they leave the game. According to Sports Illustrated, nearly 80% of retired NFL players go broke within three years of being out of the league. The reason? While most will talk about poor financial decisions, bad (or no) investment advice/planning, etc., the real root of the problem is that most athletes do not know who they are outside of the game. Without knowing who they are, without finding some other purpose, retired NFL players lack direction, which often leads to financial disaster. Instead of making their wealth work for them and applying it with purpose, retired NFL players can quickly burn through their fortunes, making purchases and investments without knowing why. Making it to the NFL takes extraordinary conviction and hard work. For most NFL players, football is all they have known since they were very young. They live, breathe, eat and sleep football. However, the average NFL career lasts under 4 years, and the average age of retirement is only 30 years. This means that, like it or not, NFL players have to prepare for life after the game. They have to find a purpose other than football that they can serve and fulfill. That purpose is already part of a player when he is playing—the player just needs to find it. Colin Kaepernick has found his purpose. As a result, Kaepernick is writing his own story both on and off the field. Endorsements can make up a significant amount of a player’s earnings and, undoubtedly, Kaepernick’s Nike deal is no exception. Any sports agent will tell you that a great brand endorsement comes down to one thing—authenticity. That is, the player needs to authentically represent the brand and vice versa. Otherwise, the audience will not buy into the brand’s campaign. It will fail if it is not genuine. What Kaepernick and Nike have done is create a truly authentic campaign because it is defined by who Kaepernick is and what he stands for.

Too many brand campaigns are defined first by the brand and then by a player matched to that campaign. What players need to be doing is first defining themselves— who are they and what legacy do they want to create on and off the field? Then, their agents can proactively find brands and campaigns to match their purpose beyond the game, which will continue after retirement. By defining their legacies first, players will be able to find brand endorsements and other business opportunities that are more sustainable long term. This way, a player’s legacy will define a brand and not the other way around. Nike, a brand, is now part of Kaepernick’s legacy. Nike, however, is not the whole of Kaepernick’s legacy and does not define him. Like him or not, Colin Kaepernick was a once promising quarterback whose name nobody could remember. Now, he is perhaps the most recognizable name and face in the NFL, and he is not even currently signed to any team. That’s because Kaepernick has not let the NFL or football define him. He has defined himself. In order to establish a lasting legacy, in order to ensure a fulfilling life after the game, every NFL player needs to look in the mirror and ask himself: What do I believe in?

DISCLAIMER: The information contained in this article is for informational purposes only and is not intended, and must not be taken, as legal advice on any particular set of facts or circumstances. You need to contact a lawyer licensed in your jurisdiction for advice on specific legal issues.

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THE STARTUP THAT HELPS YOU BUY A CAR NO MATTER YOUR CREDIT SCORE OR INCOME Today only 6% of nearly 18,000 dealerships are minority-owned within the continental United States. As Damon Lester, president and CEO of The National Association of Minority Automobile Dealers (NAMAD) says, â&#x20AC;&#x153;There is a real need for dealerships to look like the community they will be serving.â&#x20AC;? Enter startup company PTG365, founded by Brandon Medford, Dave Obaseki, and Eric Whitehead. The trio of millennial-aged friends is trying to eradicate the stigma associated with low-income and urban communities and creating equal opportunities to ensure everyone, regardless of socio-economic status or credit standing, can buy a car. One day at a time, one customer at a time, PTG365 shares the secret of their unorthodox, successful brand.

Tell us about PTG365 and how it differs from your typical car dealership. Obaseki: PTG365 was started almost a year ago and founded by three experienced car guys who were in the car industry collectively over 10 years. We offer a service that a lot of dealerships don’t; bringing a car to your home without you ever driving to a dealership. Our prices will always be lower than a dealership because we have less overhead and we focus more on referrals off of our deals than anything. The better we do by you; the more clients you bring; the less in advertising we need to spend. Whitehead: [We’re] a company that not only ensures the best deals but makes the automobile buying process painless and easy without setting foot into an actual dealership. We work with both new and pre-owned vehicles of all brands, makes, and models. We work with all credit and we have relationships with over 40 finance institutions. We also deliver the cars to our clients. PTG stands for Prices Too Good and the 365 is for every day. Medford: PTG365 is a unique auto brokerage based out of New York City. We offer many different services for all automobile needs during the automobile buying process. We are a one-stop shop where we offer services such as credit repair, credit restoration, new car sales, pre-owned car sales, auto insurance, and financial education services. What makes us very unique from car dealerships is that we’re not limited to inventory whatsoever. Car dealerships sometimes force customers into cars that are in their inventory because it’s more convenient for them. On the other hand, because of the licenses and relationships that we carry, we’re not limited to anything. We go above and beyond to exceed our client’s needs and to make them family to PTG365 for a lifetime. Because of me and my partners years of experience working in a car dealership, we understand that MAKING OUR CLIENTS HAPPY is the most important thing.

How did this concept of a ‘one-stop shop’ for all of your financing needs happen? Obaseki: This happened with us networking with the right people in the industry and getting a lot of finance managers and directors on board with our cause. Remember, it’s not what you say, it’s how you say it. Whenever we have conversations with banks, we make sure we leave a good impression so when we do need favors for approvals it’s done without question. So when we get clients and they want a list of cars, getting answers for each bank is easy and done quickly. Whitehead: This concept started with the idea of car buying being a long, drawn-out experience that isn’t as exciting as it used to be. The purchasing of a vehicle is the second largest purchase of a consumer’s life. We make this process exciting and easy being a one-stop shop because we do all the shopping and legwork for you while you save time and tons of money. Medford: We came up with this idea from working in multiple car dealerships and listening to the feedback from customers about why they weren’t happy at other places. With such a non-traditional business one must have a non-traditional business model. Could you explain your business model? Obaseki: Why sit in a dealership for hours and hours just to pick up a car you dreamed about? Why go through the headache of them saying you’re approved on one monthly payment and then go inside the finance office and hear another? With PTG365, every price is too good and you’ll never have to worry about being forced into anything. We do good by your side without you even knowing. Whitehead: Any car your heart desires and your finances could afford, we will make it happen. Shoot for the moon—if we miss, we land on the stars. We make this process fast and smooth while delivering your vehicle to your doorstep. We shoot for the moon with your vehicle of choice but we give you other options that you may qualify for and would definitely work within your budget so you’ll still land on the stars and be completely satisfied with the outcome. Medford: By any means necessary. Aim to do anything necessary to be successful. Without strategically planning; just go for it, aiming high thereafter figuring out the course of action.

You mentioning catering to high-end clientele but on the flip side, you specialize in helping lowincome communities receive financing. How important is that balance for your business? Obaseki: This balance is key to our success. We make sure every client is catered too; doesn’t matter what the score is. Getting really low credit scores done is usually more of an achievement for us because it’s difficult. We share the idea that it doesn’t matter what your credit is, there’s always a car for you. High-end clients bring other high-end clients so we try and keep that consistent. Whitehead: The balance is very important because we have a diverse portfolio. We want to help any and everyone. The challenging deals with the tough credit scores also feel very accomplishing when you see the smiles on the client’s faces after they once felt they wouldn’t get any help. Also, the accomplishing feeling of high-profile clients who are ready to build the vehicle of their dreams the exact way they wanted and the end result concluding with the exact purchase order of the vehicle they wanted. Medford: This is very important, more important than anything. This is how the economy balances. I believe no one should be ruled out whatsoever. Who cares where you come from? It’s about where you’re going and what can PTG365 do to help

What Color Suit or Tuxedo Should the Groom or Grooms Wear for a Fall Wedding?

Black isn't your only option. By Aleesha Thomas for marthastewartweddings.com

Photography by: Shannon Skloss Photography

Planning a fall wedding?

One of the many things you'll be thinking about is the groom's attire; specifically, how to select a look that reflect his personal sense of style and the season. To get the scoop on choosing fall wedding attire that feels both seasonal and timeless, we went to the experts. While there's nothing wrong with black, there are more options to consider. Here, Brice Pattison, fashion director of The Black Tux, shares his three tips will help you decide on the right color tuxedo or suit.

Choose a Dark Color

Most fall wedding color palettes include a dark, moody color like navy, burgundy, or hunter green. If you like them, feel free to consider these hues as you choose the groom's and groomsmen's suits. "Darker colors make sense in a fall wedding, especially later in the season," says Pattison. If you're hosting a daytime ceremony, or else tying the knot earlier in the season, a true blue suit would work better, the pro adds. For an evening event, navy is a nice choice.

Surprise Guests with a Light Hue

If your ceremony and reception will feature lots of deep, moody colors, you may want to use the groom's attire as an opportunity to switch things up. For this reason, Pattison likes a white dinner jacket. "It's perfect for a formal wedding," says Pattison, and that's not just because of aesthetics. "It'll keep you just as warm as a classic black tuxedo if the weather is chilly. If it's hot, the white fabric will keep you cooler than black.â&#x20AC;?

Try Layering

Wearing a few different layers is a good idea for more reasons than just looks: Layers can also help keep the groom warm on an unusually cool day. "Layering is so important in the fall, because you never really know how the weather is going to play out," says Pattison. Whether you choose a classic black tuxedo, something colorful, or a traditional blue, you can mix things up with accessories like your tie, bow tie, or a vest, and wearing the latter is what our expert really recommends. "Whichever suit or tuxedo you choose, be sure to include a vestâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;it's like coldweather insurance, and you can skip it if it turns out to be a warmer day."

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THE ! BLACK ! MALE ! NURSE: ! WHY WE NEED AND CELEBRATE YOU From: blackdoctor.org

Gender roles in the workplace have been in place since the beginning of time. While traditionally, men have stayed away from the loving and caring jobs while women have traditionally stayed away (or have been locked out of) high-power jobs. But times are changing.

Women have been entering male-dominated fields for decades, but it’s less common for a predominantly female occupation to have a substantial increase in its share of men. That is, until now. The need for male nurses has grown. The experiences of male nurses offer lessons that could help address a problem of our time: how to prepare workers for the fastest-growing jobs, at a time when more than a quarter of adult men are not in the labor force. Only 13 percent of nurses in the United States are men, but that share has grown steadily since 1960, when the number was 2 percent, according to a working paper published in October by the Washington Center for Equitable Growth. But don’t get it twisted: some gender roles are still in effect. Even though men are a minority, male nurses are paid more than women. The stigma against men still runs deep, particularly among older patients and in parts of the country with more traditional gender roles, nurses have said.

But for some men, the notion that caregiving jobs are women’s work is outdated. Progressive attitudes about gender roles, as measured by the General Social Survey, were associated with more men who entered nursing, the new paper found. “This narrative that men can’t provide care in the way that women can is part of that broad cultural narrative that misunderstands what nursing’s about,” said V.A. hospital student nurse, Mr. White, to the New York Times. He is earning his nursing degree at Oregon Health and Science University in Portland. “We need to talk with young people about caring as a gender-neutral idea, but also as something that’s rooted in skills, in expertise.” “You’re a caregiver, providing quality, dignified care. It’s not you doing it as a male or a female, but just generally as a caregiver,” says Justin Kuunifaa, 41, a former in-home caregiver turned family practice nurse. So here, we celebrate those men who are taking on the hard job of caregiving, prepping, managing and engaging with patients and the medical community every day.

14 Best Nursing Scholarships For Men It is very important that if you want to go to college or university, you look into whether there are scholarships out there for you. Additionally, you need to learn how to make sure that you have more chances of being successful in your application for scholarship as well. The reality is that scholarships are vital to ensuring students become successful in what they do because college and university education programs are incredibly expensive. Indeed, tuition is continuously on the rise, by an average of 5% a year above inflation. This is true for both public and private educational institutions. Additionally, it is unlikely that your parents will have been able to save up for your college education. Once upon a time, this was something parents did, but the economy has been so bad for so long that â&#x20AC;&#x153;college saving fundsâ&#x20AC;? are a thing of the past. Whatever money is left in that fund is generally not enough to cover any of the major costs. Furthermore, the cost of living is increasing as well. Most college and university students need to move out, which means they have to pay for room and board as well. Unfortunately, this is yet another expense that most of us are unable to afford. To make things worse, there is less and less state support available for students, which means that public services have been cut tremendously. Finally, when we consider that 25% of the people in America have $700 billion in debt on their student loans, it becomes clear why applying for a scholarship is so important. Reading all these statistics, it may seem as if it is not worth getting an education. However, this is not true. The majority of people are now able to get work again in their field of study and they earn back any student debt that they have accumulated. This is particularly true in the field of nursing. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the field of nursing is projected to grow by around 20% by 2020 and the salary expectations will grow alongside with that. The more education someone has, the higher their salary expectations can be. There are many scholarships available for people who want to enter the nursing profession. Many scholarships focus on minority and underrepresented parts of society. Within nursing, this often includes men. Nursing is still a female-dominated profession and there is a strong drive towards making the profession more interesting for men. As such, there are also a number of scholarships available specifically for men. Letâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s take a look at some of these.

American Assembly for Men in Nursing (AAMN) American Assembly for Men in Nursing (AAMN) The majority of male-only scholarships are provided by the American Assembly for Men in Nursing. They access a range of funding sources every year, including some made available by Johnson & Johnson, and offer scholarships designed exclusively for men. Although there are only a few options out there, it is definitely worth trying for each of these. 1. Jadeh Marselis-Moore Student Nurse Essay Contest This is a $500 scholarship designed for undergraduate students. In order to be able to apply, students have to be AAMN members and the program they want to study towards must lead to an NCLEX-RN examination. In order to apply, students must already have completed and financed an academic term in the field of nursing. They also need to write a 500-word essay on the topic of â&#x20AC;&#x153;Why I choose nursing as a career.â&#x20AC;? Each year, the topic changes, however, and students must remain aware of what the new topic is. 2. MurseWorld Student Nurse Essay Contest The MurseWorld scholarship also provides $500 and is also for undergraduate students. Again, applicants must be AAMN members and must be studying in an accredited program, and must have completed one academic term. The essay subject is generally the same as the Jadeh Marselis-Moore one and changes every year as well. 3. $500 AAMN Foundation Student Nurse Essay Contest This is another $500 undergraduate scholarship, but only six are handed out each year. The same terms apply as with the previous two scholarships and the essay topic is the same again. As always, the topic changes yearly. 4. $1000 AAMN Foundation Student Nurse Essay Contest This is a $1,000 scholarship and only two are awarded each year. Applicants must be AAMN members and must already hold a BSN. The topic is the same as with the previous three and changes yearly as well.

Good Scholarships Not Necessarily for Men

There are also a number of excellent scholarship programs that can be awarded to all students, men and women alike. Although this means that as a prospective male nurse, you will have to compete with far more applicants as women will apply too, they can still be very interesting. Let’s take a look at the three best ones. 5. Emergency Nurses Association’s Assistance Through the Emergency Nurses Association, students can receive assistance during their educational program, either when they are already studying or if they are just starting. They have, to-date, handed out around $1.5 million and much of this has gone to male students. The group focuses on continuous education and they have offered short-term help to those who wish to gain extra certification. Additionally, the ENA has an annual leadership conference, and a select number of students are sponsored to attend this. 6. Braintrack Scholarships Through BrainTrack, students can receive financial assistance towards their educational expenses, but only for those on LPN or RN tracks. However, more and more money is being made available for those who want to study further and achieve their master’s or even doctorate degree. The group advocates for Hispanic students in particular and hands out two scholarships to the first and second place winners, of $1,000 and $500, respectively. They have a number of eligibility requirements and applicants must submit an essay on a set topic. 7. Tylenol Future Care Scholarship Through the help of Tylenol, students have been awarded more than $8 million in scholarships. These are handed out to those who show a true dedication to the field of health care. Every year, aid is given to 40 students and the amount they get depends on their academic performance, the leadership activities they are involved in and how much they have done for their community. There is a particular encouragement towards male health care students.

Minority Male Scholarships

Finally, there are a number of scholarships that are awarded particularly to minorities. These are often minorities in terms of ethnic background, but if you happen to be of that ethnic background as well as being a male, you will have far more chances of being awarded the scholarship. Some of the better ones include: 8. National Association of Hispanic Nurses has a number of local charters where members can be awarded as much as $8,000 per scholarship. Every year, around $40,000 is awarded through their Health Foundation. Additionally, they have partnered with companies such as Lilly, through which they are able to hand out even more money. 9. San Diego Black Nursing Association. Obviously, this association offers assistance to AfricanAmerican students. They must have a good standing within that organization and have to have been in school for at least six months. 10. Hispanic Scholarship Fund, which offers scholarships for Latino students. The HSF is the largest organization of its kind in the country. They offer not just financial awards but also have a range of assistance programs for direct education. 11. Gates Millennium Scholars Program, which is designed for minority students who have proven to be high achievers. The awards are incredibly generous, but have very stringent requirements. Students are only eligible if they are of an ethnic minority, a U.S. citizen, have a GPA of at least 3.3, are studying towards their first degree, have leadership qualities, can apply for Pell Grants and have completed a full application. 12. National Black Nurses Association offers up to $2,000. This is awarded to those who have received reference letters from their teachers, have demonstrated to have a true aptitude for nursing and are taking part in relevant extracurricular activities. 13. National Coalition of Ethnic Minority Nurse Associations provides scholarships together with AETNA. 14. Philippine Nurses Association of America provides scholarships for students who have demonstrated outstanding performance. Scholarships are available both for those in graduate and post graduate nursing degree programs. Awards are up to $1,000. It is very important to understand that the majority of scholarships that are out there are not exclusively for men. However, they arenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t designed solely for women either. Any applicant has an equal chance of getting the award, regardless of their gender. However, the reality is still that the profession of nursing is very female-dominated and this puts male applicants for minority scholarships in particular ahead in terms of being awarded the grant. For more inf0o log on to www.nursejournal.org.

TRIED AND PROVEN WAYS TO BUILD MORE MUSCLE ARE YOU A HARDGAINER WHO’S ITCHING TO PUT ON SIZE? THEN ADD THESE TWEAKS – MINUS MORE TIME – TO YOUR PROGRAM. By Joe Wuebben for mensfitnessmagazine.com.au

You know the saying “less is more”? Well, it applies to building muscle, too. Carelessly piling on weight and doing more work can be a one-way ticket to overtraining and injury. A smarter way to add 3cm to your arms or bulk up your legs: Train with these simple gym--rat-tested techniques that don’t require you to spend more time in the gym, just more effort. But the pay off is big.

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1)  REVERSE PYRAMIDS Most pyramids begin with the lightest weight/highest reps and move to heavier weight/fewer reps – so, a 15-rep first set, 12-rep second set, etc. Reverse pyramids start with the heaviest weight/fewest reps, when your muscles are less tired, and end with the lightest weight/most reps. More overload means more growth.

FORCED REPS

2) FORCED REPS To achieve more reps in a given set than you can physically do on your own, have a spotter help you eke out a few more after reaching failure. This causes your muscles to adapt and grow stronger to meet the beyond-failure demands. Limit yourself to one to two forced-rep sets per workout. This method is easiest when you’re training with a partner; ask a stranger if necessary.

DROP SETS

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3) DROPSETS Dropsets work best on machines that let you quickly decrease the load. After reaching failure on your last set of an exercise, immediately drop the weight by 20-30% and continue till you fail again with the lighter weight. Do two sets, then call it quits.

REST-PAUSE

4) REST-PAUSE Youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll train beyond failure without using a spotter or lightening the load. Once you fail or break form, rest 10 to 20 seconds, then go to failure again.

How

Aretha Franklin Planted the Seeds of Hip-Hop

by Sasha Frere-Jones for billboard.com

That Aretha Franklin changed every corner of pop is not a shock, not now. But you can also listen to one album of Franklin’s -- maybe even a single song -- and find all of hip-hop and R&B. Implausible? Goofy? This is the recursive quality of DNA, which is always at once iterated and never fully iterated. In 1972, a Rolling Stone critic wrote that Young, Gifted and Black was erratic, which is true insofar as the wind and the ocean are erratic. We spend a lifetime studying the forces that generate us, and it seems reasonable to say that in 2018, we may have finally caught up with this album. We work backward to the peak, which, if pop song rules obtained, would come about three-quarters of the way in. The players on Young, Gifted and Black are the All-Stars of Sampling years before sampling. Flautist Hubert Laws? Sampled by JAY-Z. Guitarist Cornell Dupree? Sampled by MC Eiht and Buckshot. Dr. John? Sampled by dozens of acts including Fatboy Slim, John Legend, Massive Attack and Ice Cube. And the rest of the band wasn't sampled so much as transferred whole into the body of hip-hop: Donny Hathaway, Billy Preston and the three wise drummers: Al Jackson Jr. of Booker T. & The MG’s, Ray Lucas and Bernard “Pretty” Purdie. Aside from the who, the what of this album embodied a sensibility that would take decades to become the basic operating language

of pop. “Day Dreaming,” a Franklin composition, could be lifted from the new Kali Uchis album, a dose of easygoing R&B heavy on bass and backing vocals, twisted off at both ends with psychedelic production fillips. Franklin’s recording of The Beatles’ “The Long and Winding Road” summons hip-hop covers not yet recorded, especially Fugees’ version of Roberta Flack’s “Killing Me Softly.” Drummer Lucas is strong beneath the surface, part of the pulse that can make pop and hip-hop the same, slow enough to relax but pronounced enough to move heads. If hip-hop took over the world, it’s because the world was always already in hip-hop, a music experienced as a practice of both innovation and excavation. By the end of this brief performance, Franklin and her band have referenced blues and gospel and varietals of funk that don’t yet exist. Franklin’s voice announces and hot-wires everything the band does. She dials up the catharsis of the choir, floats into a vernacular mood and shatters the fringes of her range like Maceo Parker making his saxophone boil over. What Franklin’s voice does is everything, and that’s the first thing all of her recordings tell us. And then there is “Rock Steady,” the fire over water. The song is just a sketch, one chord for the verse and one for the break. In performance, it blooms into a kaleidoscope. The backup singers, two of them Aretha’s sisters, are full of joy but mixed down quietly enough to sound like they’re encouraging Aretha from across the street. The Memphis Horns are forceful and confident, maybe even a bit loose. And then there is the drummer, Pretty Purdie, the only person on the track who can challenge Franklin.

The song exists as a spiral, working its way backward from its penultimate moment, when Franklin’s sheet music went flying and Purdie -- according to Purdie -- had to improvise for four bars while everyone else laid out. This is a mirror moment -- break dancing and hip-hop sound like this moment because this moment became hip-hop culture. Purdie uses the ride cymbal, kick and snare to subdivide the whole in a way that reflects how hip-hop would later take songs apart. It isn't just that this break is such a great loop -- it is that Purdie breaks “Rock Steady” into pieces that you didn't know were there. When you run the song back to the top, high off the break, you hear Franklin light up the runway, building in intensity from her opening levels (already hotter than most) to her wordless whoops, which seem to be crying for Purdie, asking someone to whack the earth in half and let the light bleed out. At the 2:37 mark, it is as if Purdie, intending to or not, airs out the whole room, sending everyone out and bringing them back, all in a few seconds. The first words Franklin sings after Purdie’s break -- “It’s a funky low-down feeling” -- speak to what has just happened and what must happen next.

2.5 Million Black Men Are in the Upper Class

by Wendy Wang, @WENDYRWANGW. Bradford Wilcox, @WILCOXNMPRonald B. Mincy

The racial news in America has been sobering in recent years. From Trayvon Martin to Walter Scott, from Ferguson to Charlottesville, one incident after another has cast a pall over race relations in the nation. In fact, the share of Americans who consider racism a big problem has almost doubled in the last decade. Meanwhile, recent research on race—including Raj Chetty and colleagues’ new study showing that black boys’ chance of moving up the economic ladder are much lower than white boys—only makes the picture look worse. But the negative news about race in general and black men, in particular, is not the whole story.

Our new report, Black Men Making It In America, finds that despite the burdens they face—from residential segregation to workplace discrimination to over incarceration—more than one-half of black men have made it into the middle or upper class as adults. This means that millions of black men are flourishing financially in America. But how many black men have made it, specifically, into the American upper class? In a new analysis of Census data, we find that slightly more than one-in-five (or about 2.5 million) black men ages 18 to 64 have made it into the upper-third of the income distribution.

In fact, black men have made marked progress over the last half-century in reaching the upper ranks of the income ladder. The share of black men who are in the upper-income bracket rose from 13% in 1960 to 23% in 2016, according to our analysis. Moreover, poverty among black men has dropped dramatically over the same time, with the share of black men in poverty falling from 41% to 18% since 1960.

Notes: Based on adults ages 18 to 64. Income refers to total family income adjusted by family size.

What is Fueling Their Success? Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (1979) that tracks black men from their teenage years to midlife, we find that a majority of upper-income black men in their fifties today are from humble roots. For example, 59% were lower-income when they were teenagers or young adults. And about half of them grew up outside of an intact, two-parent family. Yet, these men made it into the upper class despite the challenges they faced through thirty-plus years of life. What paths did they take to the top? We identified three major factors that are linked to the financial success of black men in midlife today: education, work, and marriage. Black men who have a college degree, a full-time job, or a spouse are much more likely than their peers to end up in the upper-income bracket as fiftysomething men.

About half of black men with a bachelor’s or higher degree have made it to the top income by age 50, compared with only 14% of high school graduates and 22% of black men with some college education. And more than 3-in-10 married black men (regardless of whether they are in their first marriage or not) are in the upper-income group, compared with only 6% of never-married black men. In a multivariate analysis that includes a range of factors, education, work, and marriage are highly predictive of black men’s economic success.

Notes: Based on adults born between 1957 and 1964. Income refers to total family income adjusted by family size.

Moreover, a number of early life experiences are associated with black men’s elevated odds of being financially successful. Black men who served in the military or attended church regularly as young adults are more likely to have made it to the upper class by age 50. The impact of military experience on black men’s success seems to work through its links with black men’s work and marital status. That is, black men who served in the military early in life are more likely to be working full time and to be married later in life. Having a sense of personal agency also is linked to black men’s success. Black men who believed at a young age that they were mostly responsible for their lives rather than outside forces (measured by a locus of control scale) are more likely to flourish later in life.

Our story is not entirely positive. Clearly, the racial gap in success is large, with African American men being about 20 percentage points less likely to reach the upper class today compared to white and Asian men. One reason that’s the case is that black men were more likely to have contact with the criminal justice system. In our analyses, early contact with the criminal justice system hurt black men’s chance of being financially successful many years later. After holding education, work, and marriage constant, black men’s contact with the criminal justice system reduced their chance of making it to the upper class by about 70%. However, focusing only on the negative side of the story for black men has its limitations. First, it renders millions of successful black men, and the paths they have taken to the American Dream, invisible. Second, it can lead to a sense of hopelessness for young black men. As Ian Rowe, the CEO of a charter school network in New York City has noted, with so much talk of “black failure” today, black boys may start to feel “why even bother when the odds are stacked against you?” .

In order to engender hope for the next generation of young black Americans, we need to spotlight the many positive stories of successful black men that are out there and identify the routes that these men have taken to rise up the economic ladder. This is especially the case since the majority of black men who made it to the upper class in their mid-fifties came from lower-income households when they were 14 to 22 years old. To those ends, our new research indicates that one-in-five black men have made it into the upper class, and it suggests that education, work, marriage, and military service provide paths that help black men achieve the American Dream.

Click Here To See The Trailer

Courtesy of Coach

Michael B. Jordan Is the New Global Face of Coach Superstar actor and producer Michael B. Jordan has been tapped by Coach to star as the first global face of Coach menswear. The legacy fashion and accessories brand announced details on Thursday about the global campaign via WWD, and also revealed plans to collaborate with Michael on a men’s capsule collection. As the global face of Coach menswear, Michael’s face will appear in global advertising campaigns for men’s ready-towear, accessories and fragrance, beginning with the brand's upcoming Spring 2019 season. The brand additionally announced Michael will team up with Coach’s Creative Director Stuart Vevers for special design projects and participate in various philanthropic endeavors with the Coach Foundation. In a press statement released by Coach, Michael shared his excitement about working with the Coach team, in particular, its Creative Director Stuart. “I’m honored to be joining the Coach family and have so much respect for Stuart Vevers’ vision,” said Michael. “I’m looking forward to jumping into the creative process and exploring fashion through a different lens.” Stuart seems to also be looking forward to collaborating with the actor. “Michael is cool and authentic, and he really embodies the Coach guy,” said Stuart. “I’ve had the chance to get to know Michael over the last couple of years. He always looks great in Coach, so it felt really natural to build our relationship.”

“I’m honored to be joining the Coach family." Over the past few years, Michael has topped several magazine's best-dressed lists. His daring red carpet suiting has become somewhat legendary in men's fashion circles. Assisted by his stylist Jeff K. Kim, Michael has experimented boldly with printed and slim cut suiting. At this year's Met Gala, he pulled out a striking pinstripe Off White Suit with an exterior belt and orange wrist patch. These kind of bold fashion risks is exactly what attracted a brand like Coach, which is looking to maintain its new edgy and downtown cool aesthetic.

Michelle Obama’s memoir, “Becoming,” will hit bookstores on Nov. 13. It will be published by Crown, a Penguin Random House imprint, which acquired world publication rights of it along with a book by former President Barack Obama in February. (The undisclosed details of the deal, . which The Financial Times reported at $65 million, have been subject to widespread speculation.) “Writing ‘Becoming’ has been a deeply personal experience,” Mrs. Obama wrote on Twitter. Crown wrote in a statement that the book will also touch on Mrs. Obama’s time in the White House, motherhood and her public health campaign and more. The book will be published simultaneously in 24 languages; an audio edition, read by Mrs. Obama herself, will be released at the same time. She also announced that Penguin Random House will donate a million copies in her family’s name to First Book, a nonprofit that provides books and learning materials to children. Mrs. Obama’s previous book, “American Grown,” promoted healthy eating through recipes and historical vignettes. Mr. Obama has yet to release the details of his own memoir.

Michelle Obama’s memoir promotion will look like ‘A Madonna Tour’ Former first lady making a dramatic return to the public sphere with 10-city tour for new book, 'Becoming' Michelle Obama's book tour has been put together by Live Nation, the world’s largest concert promoter ( REUTERS/Kamil Krzaczynski )

A fifth-row seat at the Barclays Centre goes for $1,256.00. A seat in the front row, with a “meet & greet package” thrown in, will cost you up to $3,000. Wheelchair seating in the back of the house is listed at $400, while a spot in the upper tiers could be had for $29.50.

The latest mega production from U2 or Beyoncé? Nope. It’s the price of admission to see Michelle Obama on tour for Becoming, the former first lady’s memoir, which is scheduled to be published on 13 November.

After keeping a relatively low profile since leaving the White House, Ms. Obama is returning to the public sphere in dramatic fashion. While other authors typically follow a circuit that may include podcast interviews and stops at the 92nd Street Y in New York and Powell’s Books in Portland, Oregon, Ms. Obama is set to embark on a 10-city tour put together by Live Nation, the world’s largest concert promoter, which manages about 500 artists, including Miley Cyrus, Beyoncé and U2. Tickets are available, while they last, from Ticketmaster.

The tour is to begin in Chicago, Ms. Obama’s hometown, at the United Centre. The arena, the home of the Chicago Bulls, has a usual seating capacity of 23,500. After wending its way through venues of similar size in Inglewood, California, Washington, DC, Boston, Philadelphia, Detroit, Denver, San Jose, California, and Dallas, the month long run will end in Brooklyn at the Barclays Centre (seating capacity: 19,000). On its website, Live Nation said Ms. Obama’s show would “feature intimate and honest conversations between Ms. Obama and a selection of to-be-announced moderators, reflective of the extraordinary stories shared in the wide-ranging chapters of her deeply personal book.” Because of high demand during the presale period, which ended on Thursday, the promoter recently added second shows in Washington and Brooklyn. Hearst Magazines will promote Becoming, with content sprinkled through its publications and websites, according to seven people familiar with the arrangement. Steven Barclay, a book agent who has planned large-scale tours for authors Ina Garten and David Sedaris, was virtually speechless as he checked the Ticketmaster landing page for Ms. Obama.

“Huh,” he said. “Wow. OK. It’s like you’re looking at a Madonna tour. That’s the first thing that comes to mind.”

#LivingWhileBlack

From: goodmenproject.com Originally published on LeRonBarton.com

How do you answer what #LivingWhileBlack is in any context?

If I were to ever be asked, “What is life as a Black person?” I would be totally aghast. Not because I couldn’t answer the question, but because of how vast it is. Where would I start? •  Would it be with our current condition, how we cope, how we as Black people interact with each other with other races, ethnicities, and cultures? •  How we live, die, or have survived an unending onslaught of brutality since the Middle Passage? •  How we find the time to celebrate and carve out a little time for sunshine and joy in a world that has never shown us the slightest? •  How do you answer what #LivingWhileBlack is in any context?

If I were to try and describe my life as an African American, it would be the navigation of different circumstances that could cost you freedom, standing, family, and life. You try and maintain a sliver of sanity while dealing with the everyday horrors of racism/white supremacy past, present, and the future. Think of a high wire act at the circus: you marvel at the persons’ ability to maintain balance while each step is more dangerous than the other. We cheer at the man or woman who is able to concentrate as they walk on a wire that is not designed to hold anyone up. If they misstep or lose their balance, they fall to the net and the crowd groans in disappointment. Only in the shoes of an African American, there is no safety net – just a free fall to death. Being Black is all about avoiding the inevitable free fall for as long as you can. No piece of art in recent memory embodies the high-wire act better than Donald Glover’s This Is America. Glover’s mental dive is a provocative mind fuck of a video that captures Black people’s attempt to keep the music, singing, dancing, and smiling going while the carnage slowly engulfs us all. As I watched the clip I thought, “We just want to block out the shit around us as much as we can.” Again, African Americans walking on the tight rope are trying to “never let them see us sweat”, but at the end, we all fall off.

When I ask myself the question, “What is life like as a Black person?” unfortunately, I can’t come up with too many rosy responses. Yes I love my (very) Black skin, the history and fight of my people, and how we are the needle that moves the conversation of oppression and equality. We are the group that kicks the door down for everyone to follow, with abundance of love and forgiveness shown to so many people. With that being said, I also cannot ignore the fact that Black life is hard. It is a difficult journey that has driven many to depression, hopelessness, and death. I cannot talk about living as a Black individual without describing these challenges we face. If I were to gloss over them and say “Things will get better”, I would not be true to myself. Our struggle is a big part of who we are. Below are 13 examples of what I believe #LivingWhileBlack is: Living while Black is a constant selfpolicing experience. If there is a disagreement at your job, you can’t show too much disappointment, anger, or raise your voice. Doing this will reinforce the stereotype that Black people are violent. As an African American, if you are confronted by law enforcement, you have to “lower yourself” and become as meek as possible, in order to make the officer feel as if you aren’t dangerous. If Black folks are having fun in public, you can’t be too loud or laugh too hard, because that can be looked at as disturbing the peace and you get kicked off the Napa Valley Wine Train.

Living while Black means that coming in contact with the police in any way could result in an arrest, assault, or death. It does not matter if you have committed a crime or have even been accused of a crime. The mere sight of your skin color will highlight you as threat, someone who poses eminent danger, and must be neutralized at all costs. On July 6, 2016, nutrition supervisor Philando Castille was pulled over in Falcon Heights, Minnesota by officer Jeronimo Yanez for a traffic stop. Complying with Yanez while having his hands up, Castille was shot five times in front of his girlfriend and baby by the officer. Living while Black is a daily reminder that you are not beautiful. The world looks at your skin as ugly. Your features are called unattractive. Our hair is seen as “nappy” and unkempt, bodies as fat and disproportionate. We are not reflective of the worldwide beauty standard. Many Black people have been conditioned through years of racism to not want to be dark. We all want to be seen as “pretty” and “gorgeous”, so some of us purposely mate with lighter complected Black people or even seek out white people so our kids can be “beautiful.”

Living While Black is seeing your neighborhood gentrified. The place where you grew up and had many memories is being transformed into a haven for yuppies, techies, and young white people with money who think living in the city is cool. Streets are repaired and police presence increases. Mr. Jones who owned the local grocery store has been bought out; it is now a martini bar. A new restaurant two blocks down opened up and only serves a “specific crowd.” Today Harlem, New York is less brown and The Fillmore District in San Francisco, CA, once dubbed the “Harlem of the West” is seeing many of its’ Black owned businesses leaving. Oakland, CA, home of the Black Panthers, lost 50% of its African American population from 1990 to 2011. Living while Black means that the art you create (jazz, hip-hop) will never be seen as great until white people duplicate and bastardize it. When it is done by vastly inferior talents, then the praise will be sang around the world about it. Creators will be forgotten and the imitators will be hailed as the greats. In this world Little Richard is forgotten and Elvis Pressley is the “King of Rock N Roll.” Dave Koz replaces Miles Davis and Louie Armstrong as the face of jazz. Led Zepplin repeatedly stole songs and rifts from Black musicians such as Howlin’ Wolf, Muddy Waters, and Robert Johnson, but are lauded as one of the greatest bands in history.

Living While Black is knowing that a white person’s word will always be stronger than yours. The power of accusation by white people, regardless if you are innocent or not, can be life changing. Many African Americans throughout time have been arrested, sentenced, and put to death by allegations from a white person, especially white women. Historically, white women have been able to “weaponize” their femininity into having Black men arrested and even convicted of assault and rape, which resulted in many lynchings. An example of this is the April 2018 arrest of Rashon Nelson and Donte Robinson. While waiting to meet a friend at a Starbucks in Philadelphia, the white female manager on duty felt so threatened by the presence of the two Black men in the coffee shop that she called the police. The crime that they committed? Simply waiting.

Living while Black is knowing that there is a real possibility you could be incarcerated at any point in your life. Attorney Antonio Moore cited in his 2015 report â&#x20AC;&#x153;The Black Male Incarceration Problem is Real and Catastrophicâ&#x20AC;? that in America, there are about 745,000 Black men in some form of confinement. That is more than the total prison population of England, India, Argentina, Canada, Lebanon, Japan, Finland, Israel, and Germany combined.

Living while Black means that no matter what achievement you make, accolades you receive, or success you earn, it will never be looked at as good enough. Under the white gaze, your accomplishments will always be second rate. If you get a job at a highly sought after company, people may attribute that to affirmative action. If you earn a place in a prestigious university, talks of “needed diversity” will be heard. When you are Black, you have to be absolutely perfect in any way to possibly avoid these assumptions. Even if a Black person can walk on water, some will say, “Well they can’t run on it.” Living while Black means there are absolutely no Black spaces. There are virtually no places that Black people can congregate by themselves without being accused of being “exclusive” or discriminatory. African American and other people of the African Diaspora are not supposed to have groups or organizations that are only feature them. We are supposed to be inclusive and always include everyone. Satya X of the Women of Color Healing Retreat in Costa Rica, a workshop for Black women to reconnect with their African roots, was criticized for having a “safe space” for Black women only. White people called Satya racist.

Living while Black means when you discuss racism/white supremacy with white people, there is a certain way you have to talk with them. You cannot be brutally honest and describe how racism terrorizes us daily. How our lives are on edge due to white supremacy. No, you have to be kind, gentle, and not too tough, not too real. When we discuss the history of racism, Black people have to cater to the fragility of whiteness; we cannot indict all white people for the crimes against non-white people. Black people have to give hope that there are some good white people out there doing anti-racist work. In other words, “It ain’t all white folks.” Writer Reni Eddo-Lodge realized this and wrote the essay, “Why I am no longer talking to white people about race.” In the piece, Eddo-Lodge said, “The journey towards understanding structural racism still requires people of colour to prioritise white feelings. Even if they can hear you, they’re not really listening. It’s like something happens to the words as they leave our mouths and reach their ears. The words hit a barrier of denial and they don’t get any further.”

Living while Black means that you have a responsibility as a Black person to teach other Black people about racism and our history in America. Many of us have no knowledge of our past due to education from schools or have not been taught about racism by our parents. Because of this, Black people are confused about white supremacy and don’t understand that it controls every facet of our lives – from employment, law, and housing to healthcare, racism affects all things. We all hear the same message from our elders: work hard, focus, and ignore the problem, only then can Black people be “successful”. This can lead to disappointment, resentment, and depression. It is up to us to inform and educate other Black people about the system of racism. We are all we got.

Living while Black means that there is no option to be race neutral. This world has always viewed us a certain way, and because of that, our lives are impacted a certain way. Living while Black is accepting your past – lineage and history, your current circumstance, and what your future may hold. Everything that we do and are must be viewed through a lens of “Blackness.” We are not just men, women, or children. We are Black and that come with an extra weight. Attempting to opt out of this is dishonest and impossible. There is no color blindness when you are of African descent.

Living while Black means your life is a resistance against the US. We were brought here simply as property for labor. Black people have been dehumanized, beaten, enslaved, sexually assaulted, miseducated, imprisoned, exposed to drugs, killed, had our culture ripped away, and we are still here. The fact that Black people are attending college, raising families, being employed, creating art, speaking out, and embracing who we are under these circumstances is incredible. It is a blow to white supremacy. Fighting and thriving is who we are. Essayist Kara Brown wrote about the resilience of Black people during the Ferguson protests urging us to â&#x20AC;&#x153;Protest. Write. Sing. Dance. Ace their tests. Beat them at their own game. Let America know that we are here and we are alive right now and forever. Let your shining blackness blind them. Let the sound of our chants deafen them. Let our collective living manifest itself in an energy so powerful and unwavering that to deny it would be to deny the sun.â&#x20AC;?

Join The Good Men Project Community. “Here’s the thing about The Good Men Project. We are trying to create big, sweeping, societal changes—–overturn stereotypes, eliminate racism, sexism, homophobia, be a positive force for good for things like education reform and the environment. And we’re also giving individuals the tools they need to make individual change—-with their own relationships, with the way they parent, with their ability to be more conscious, more mindful, and more insightful. For some people, that could get overwhelming. But for those of us here at The Good Men Project, it is not overwhelming. It is simply something we do—–every day. We do it with teamwork, with compassion, with an understanding of systems and how they work, and with shared insights from a diversity of viewpoints.” —– Lisa Hickey, Publisher of The Good Men Project and CEO of Good Men Media Inc.

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These Top-Rated Adjustable Bowflex Weights Are Finally Within Your Budget by Tatayana Yomary for menshealth.com

Whether you’re a weight lifting newbie or a seasoned veteran, a great set of weights will put you on the right track to meet your fitness goals. While it’s easy to hit the gym and stock up on all the weights you need, you can also get the weight training workout you love from the comfort of your own home. Thanks to BowflexOpens a New Window., you can now spend less time waiting for that guy to stop hogging the weights and more time sculpting your physique.

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Hannah Beachler [Photo: Daymon Gardner]

No. 22 on the 2018 Most Creative People in Business list

From “Moonlight” to Wakanda: production designer

Hannah Beachler’s playbook

The creative mind behind Black Panther‘s Pan-African sets shares her approach to kingdom-building.

The Afrofuturist sets of Marvel’s 2018 blockbuster Black Panther, with their blend of modernist forms and traditional African motifs, were the brainchild of Hannah Beachler, the production designer behind Miami’s sun-drenched underside in Moonlight and the working-class Philadelphia of Creed. She also helped develop Beyoncé’s Southern Gothic look for the visual album Lemonade. For Beachler, every project is a distinct creative challenge. “There’s no unique tool that I use, other than my imagination,” she says. Fast Company: Wakanda, the hidden African utopia in Black Panther, is a fantasy, but it also feels real and textured. How did you approach that? Hannah Beachler: We were representing Pan-Africa. All the cultures came together to create a Wakanda aesthetic. I always do research, but the Wakanda [set design] “bible” that we used took me months to put together. I think the final version was 515 pages, covering the 187 sets on the film. Every time someone asks me about a particular item, I can recite the thought behind it. FC: One of the most stunning sets is the throne room for the character of M’Baku, who lives on a snow-capped African mountain. What went into that? It’s one of my favorite sets: simple, eloquent, and beautiful.

HB: People have asked me about the walls [made of hanging birch logs]. There’s meaning in the birch log itself. It grows in the north; it grows in the cold. And birch is what Native Americans gave to the first [European] settlers when they came, as a sort of peace offering, because birch symbolizes ancient wisdom and truth. We sharpened the birch at the end–weaponizing that truth. It’s protecting yourself, and your ancestry, from those who come to take it. FC: Black Panther was a big-budget action movie, but you’ve worked on several indie films about poverty. How does the process compare? HB: For Moonlight, we didn’t have a lot of money, so I did simple stuff. I knew we had to see [the main character’s] mom’s drug habit getting worse. I thought, You know what she would do? She’d look around her house and see what she could sell. The next step was things just slowly disappearing from the house. Any electronic that could get her $5, $2, $1, it went out of that set gradually. The thing that a lot of people noticed was when the TV was gone.

By Mark Wilson for fastcompany.com

Kobe Bryant Announces Book Release 'The Mamba Mentality: How I Play' By Kyle Newport for bleacherreport.com

With his playing days firmly behind him, Kobe Bryant is onto the next chapter of his lifeâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; retirement. Rather than just sitting around on the couch, though, he has opted to take on another challenge. The Black Mamba revealed on Tuesday that he has a book, titled The Mamba Mentality: How I Play, on the way:

As noted in the tweet, Hall of Fame coach Phil Jackson and six-time All-Star Pau Gasol also contributed. The trio teamed to win back-toback championships in 2009 and 2010, with Bryant and Jackson also being part of a threepeat from 2000-02. The book reflects back on Bryant's 20-year career with the Los Angeles Lakers and details the legendary Mamba Mentality, according to MCD Books:

"For the first time, and in his own words, Bryant reveals his famously detailed approach and the steps he took to prepare mentally and physically to not just succeed at the game, but to excel. Readers will learn how Bryant studied an opponent, how he channeled his passion for the game, how he played through injuries. Theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll also get fascinating granular detail as he breaks down specific plays and match-ups from throughout his career." The Mamba Mentality helped create one of the greatest careers basketball has ever seen. Bryant won an NBA MVP award, five championships, a pair of Finals MVP awards, two Olympic gold medals and won four All-Star Game MVP awards in 18 All-Star selections. He finished third on the NBA's all-time scoring list with 33,643 career points. He also had two different jersey numbers retired by the Lakers. Now, Bryant is giving fans an inside look at what went into the making of the Black Mamba.

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Spike Lee Just Made the Movie of the Year With BlacKkKlansman, the legendary director returns to the subjects he’s helped define for a generation of filmgoers—racism, power, and the inescapability of history. It’s a film that feels vital to the Trump era, even though, as Lee knows, the story behind it stretches back decades.

Spike Lee lights a candle. He motions wordlessly to the spot on the red couch where he'd like me to sit. He lights a second candle. The two of us are inside an editing room in Lee's memorabilia-filled office in Fort Greene, Brooklyn. He has his reference materials on hand here: Joe Louis's boxing trunks, flattened and framed. Copies of the New York Post and the Daily News with headlines about Spike Lee and his adventures at Madison Square Garden, where he holds Knicks season tickets. Books about lynchings, about history, about people whose stories haven't yet been told—or told right—on-screen. In the quiet of the editing room he lights a third candle without speaking, then sits in an office chair set low to the ground, so that even at Lee's modest height his knees push up into the air. Knicks-orange glasses, Knicks-orange Nikes. “All right,” he says, sighing. “Let's go.” Lee has directed nearly 30 films, including documentaries, in a little over 30 years. From the very beginning, he's also done a lot of this: trying to explain himself, or his movies, or the basic facts of American history, to some journalist sitting on a squeaky red couch on the other side of the room. “I've always considered this a part of the moviemaking process,” he says. “Because I understood, coming from independent filmmaking and being a black filmmaker, that the studios were not gonna spend millions and millions of dollars. They weren't gonna buy TV ads. So I had to be the person to bang the drum.” In Lee's early years as a filmmaker—beginning with his 1986 feature debut, She's Gotta Have It, through 1989's Do the Right Thing and 1992's Malcolm X—his movies had such clarity and force that the conversations around them often seemed redundant. Do the Right Thing is a masterpiece of nuance, ambiguity, style. Then someone would sit there and ask him what it meant. Like it wasn't all there already.

She's Gotta Have It established Lee as one of the most promising directors in America; the Nike commercials he starred in with Michael Jordan, starting in the late '80s, made him famous. He became an icon, someone whose opinion was sought after, or heard too often, or both. In this century, Lee's output has been more uneven. There have been some successes —2002's 25th Hour or 2006's Inside Man—but Lee is also aware of the perception that he increasingly struggles to get his films made, in part because fewer people come to see them. Lee had to go to Europe in search of funding for 2008's war film Miracle at St. Anna. He battled with the producers of 2013's Oldboy so much that he says now: “That was not the film that we wanted to make, that cut.” His romantic horror film from 2014, Da Sweet Blood of Jesus, was funded via Kickstarter. Lee is confident that history will vindicate this later period in his career: “A lot of my films people didn't get when they came out,” he says. “They didn't get 25th Hour. Now people love that film.” But it's also been a long time since a Spike Lee movie arrived in theaters with the energy and momentum that he used to routinely bring. Until now, that is.

“I’ve always been a hard worker. And I get it from people like James Brown, Prince, Michael—those guys worked on their craft. They weren’t halfstepping.”

In May, Lee premiered his newest film, BlacKkKlansman, at Cannes to ecstatic reviews. Cannes is a place of significance for Lee. Do the Right Thing premiered there in 1989, losing the Palme d'Or to Steven Soderbergh's sex lies and videotape. Lee was angry about that then, he says, and he's angry about it now: “Sally Field and the late, great Héctor Babenco, who directed one of my most favorite films, Pixote”—both on the jury that year, which was chaired by director Wim Wenders—“they told me that it was Wenders that did it. He was not letting it happen. He just lied again at Cannes this year and said jury presidents have no power. I woulda left the hatchet buried, but now he lied again.” Klansman was Lee's first entry into the official program at Cannes since 2002. The film tells the true story of Ron Stallworth, the first black member of the Colorado Springs police department, who successfully infiltrated a local Ku Klux Klan chapter—by telephone—in the late 1970s. Stallworth is played by John David Washington, son of longtime Lee collaborator Denzel Washington. Adam Driver plays a white cop Stallworth enlists to meet with the Klan in person. Lee's Colorado Springs is overflowing with college protests, corrupt cops, gunwielding racists, and languid creekside debates about blaxploitation flicks. The film is at once a comedy and a tragedy, half satire, half thriller, larger than life and yet deeply grounded in real events. In that sense, it's a Spike Lee film—his best in a long time, and maybe the single most effective piece of art about our current political moment anybody has made since we fully entered—or, rather, re-entered—hell in this country. The script came to Lee via Jordan Peele, who then helped develop the project for Focus Features. It's the first movie Lee has done with a major studio in more than a decade. In the Sunday silence of his office—muffled,

languorous, a little anxious—I ask him if Peele ever told him why, exactly, he thought Lee might be a good fit for the project. “Oh, he said…” Lee looks at me again, like he's trying to ascertain if he was really just asked the question he was asked. “He chose the right motherfucker for the job! That's why!” Lee is laughing now, it's so obvious. “Be honest here, my brother. No one should have to think long and hard why Jordan Peele asked me to do this. He's seen my body of work. It's simple. He's seen my body of work! I knew he had a list. I don't know who else was on the list. But I did not find it strange that Oh, my God! Jordan Peele is asking me to do this?! I mean, I knew why he wanted to.” Another incredulous look. “Because he knew I can do this shit. Simple.” Lee spent some of May and most of June shooting the second season of his television adaptation of She's Gotta Have It, and today he and his cast are in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn, filming at the third annual Prince Born Day Purple People Party, hosted by…Spike Lee. Still great by the way, the original She's Gotta Have It. Shot in black and white, it tells the story of Nola Darling, a Fort Greene artist who is dating three men, one of whom—Mars Blackmon, a bike messenger who repeats almost everything he says twice—was played by a young, extremely charismatic Spike Lee. The new version, which Lee is making for Netflix, has the same set of characters, but it also broadens Nola's world, making time for her female friendships, her career as an artist—at the end of the first episode, she wheat-pastes a poster onto the front gate of Spike Lee's office—and the complicated evolution of Fort Greene itself, with its rising rents and constant construction.

Lee sits alone on a low concrete bench as the block party begins to ramp up, annotating a script with a red pen, in full Prince regalia: Mismatched Prince sneakers, one white, one black. Yellow T-shirt with Prince's face on the back. Purple fanny pack on a gold chain. Princepurple glasses. Some percentage of the people assembling around him are paid actors and background extras. The rest of the people here are just Prince fans hoping to dance to “1999.” When Lee directed Do the Right Thing in this neighborhood, nearly 30 years ago, he was criticized by some for sanitizing it: cleaning up the brownstones, buffing away graffiti. But Spike Lee's Brooklyn—polyglot, primarycolored, full of music, always on the verge of gentrification, obsessed with the oeuvre of Spike Lee—and real-life Brooklyn have more or less converged these days, and it can be hard to tell which is which once the cameras come out. Lee turns a page of the script and writes NO MUSIC in big red capital letters at the top of the next one. He stands up. Time has bent the director into a slight C shape. It does not appear to have improved his patience. His assistant director, Randy Fletcher, approaches, bearing a question about whether a particular cast member is done for the day. “Nobody is wrapped until I fucking say it,” Lee says. He communicates with his crew mostly by pointing at someone, loudly and irritably saying their name, and then rapidly turning his finger in a circle: Hurry up. Production assistants mutter angrily when his back is turned. Lee works quickly: a scene here, right on the street, with his four main actresses, and then another, just a hundred yards down on the opposite side, where Mars Blackmon, played by the actor Anthony Ramos, is hawking mixtapes, and so on, this big amoeba of people drifting around Bed-Stuy, with a solitary Lee at the center of it.

“I've always been a hard worker,” Lee says to me later. “And I get it from people like James Brown, the hardest-working man in show business. James Brown, Prince, Michael—those guys worked on their craft. They weren't halfstepping.” That's the lineage Lee claims for himself. “The baton,” he says. Lee still rises early, often at 5 A.M. He works six or seven days a week. He's got a house on Martha's Vineyard on the 18th hole of a golf course he's never actually been on—“I don't play golf. Hell no”—except to greet Barack Obama when he plays through. For the final shot of the day, Lee walks out onto the stage and addresses the crowd—the civilian crowd, the one he's not paying, the ones who just showed up to dance to Prince songs. “Sorry for the delay,” he says, “but we're filming an episode of She's Gotta Have It.” He asks if the crowd might participate in this next shot and tells his DJ to start playing “Nothing Compares 2 U.” Lee stands onstage, in front of thousands of people: conducting them, doing a little side-to-side step, urging them to sing when the chorus comes around. He's hosting, he's directing, he's grooving to Prince. He allows himself a half smile, his first of the day. He hoists the microphone and puts his finger to his ear for one last bit of direction: “You gotta sing! Sing the song!” BlacKkKlansman begins, without explanation, with a scene from Gone with the Wind: Vivian Leigh's Scarlett O'Hara, making her way through the carnage in the aftermath of the Battle of Atlanta, as the camera pulls back to fit a Confederate flag in the frame. Lee is a student of film history. He's also a scorekeeper, and a score settler. “I saw Gone with the Wind on a class trip,” Lee says. “So when Malcolm X came out, I was like, ‘Fuck that. I had to see Gone with the Wind. Go see Malcolm X now.’ ”

Lee's cinema is full of cinema. He first conceived of She's Gotta Have It as an homage to Akira Kurosawa's Rashomon—three men's differing perspectives on an unknowable woman. In Inside Man, the pizza-delivery guy is played by the same actor who played the pizzadelivery guy in Dog Day Afternoon. The logo on the box says “Sal's Famous Pizzeria,” which is the restaurant in Do the Right Thing. As a filmmaker, Lee is an enthusiast: His movies are kinetic, hovering just over human life in all its exuberant, contradictory messiness. But as a teacher and a historian—Lee has been a professor at N.Y.U. for 25 years—he is constantly trying to correct the record. Increasingly, as Lee himself has become part of film history, the two projects collide. In the first episode of the new She's Gotta Have It, Nola Darling gives a speech about how Denzel Washington was robbed of the Oscar he deserved for Malcolm X. Lee was given an honorary award by the Academy in 2015. But he's never won: “To be honest, after Do the Right Thing, I said, ‘That's it.’ You know? That's not to say I wasn't happy to get the honorary award, but as far as Oscars, my thing has always been my body of work. What film won best film of 1989?” Driving Miss Daisy. “Driving Miss motherfucking Daisy. Who's watching that film now?” Lee opens BlacKkKlansman with Gone with the Wind to make a point about the dark mythology that lurks at the heart of American movies. “But here's the thing,” he says. He sits up in his chair. “It's not Gone with the Wind. It's growing up and watching motherfucking cowboy movies where Native Americans look like savages. I'm gonna say what I've said before: These bullshit John Ford, John Wayne movies are lies. They're lying on the humanity of Native Americans.”

In another early scene in Klansman, Kwame Ture, the activist formerly known as Stokely Carmichael, comes to speak at the Black Student Union in Colorado Springs. Ture talks about Tarzan: growing up and watching the original 1930s films, in which Tarzan beats up the black natives, and rooting against the natives. Lee points out that movies have always been a powerful agent of indoctrination. “That's been the history,” he says. “Not the whole history, but a large part of the history of Hollywood—to dehumanize people, whether we're black, Hispanic, gay, whatever.” In his first year of graduate school at N.Y.U., Lee says, his professors screened The Birth of a Nation: “All you're taught is that D. W. Griffith is considered the so-called father of cinema.” But Birth of a Nation also led to the revitalization of the Klan, which at the time was dormant. “The film was shown in the White House,” Lee says. “Woodrow Wilson says, ‘It's like writing history with lightning.’ ” In BlacKkKlansman, there is a sequence in which Klan members jubilantly watch Birth of a Nation. Lee juxtaposes this scene with one in which Harry Belafonte narrates the true story of a 17-year-old boy named Jesse Washington, who was lynched in Waco, Texas, in 1916, the year after Birth of a Nation was released. Belafonte plays a friend of Washington's who witnessed his brutal death, which became known as the Waco Horror, and who has come to Colorado Springs to educate the students about the kind of history not taught in their school. Near the end of the film, a climactic shot of Klansmen burning a cross leads into documentary footage from the whitesupremacist marches in Charlottesville last year. BlacKkKlansman is superlative entertainment. It finds that exhilarating space between comedy and horror. (Lee names Dr.

Lee's cinema is full of cinema. He first conceived of She's Gotta Have It as an homage to Akira Kurosawa's Rashomon—three men's differing perspectives on an unknowable woman. In Inside Man, the pizza-delivery guy is played by the same actor who played the pizza-delivery guy in Dog Day Afternoon. The logo on the box says “Sal's Famous Pizzeria,” which is the restaurant in Do the Right Thing. As a filmmaker, Lee is an enthusiast: His movies are kinetic, hovering just over human life in all its exuberant, contradictory messiness. But as a teacher and a historian—Lee has been a professor at N.Y.U. for 25 years—he is constantly trying to correct the record. Increasingly, as Lee himself has become part of film history, the two projects collide. In the first episode of the new She's Gotta Have It, Nola Darling gives a speech about how Denzel Washington was robbed of the Oscar he deserved for Malcolm X. Lee was given an honorary award by the Academy in 2015. But he's never won: “To be honest, after Do the Right Thing, I said, ‘That's it.’ You know? That's not to say I wasn't happy to get the honorary award, but as far as Oscars, my thing has always been my body of work. What film won best film of 1989?” Driving Miss Daisy. “Driving Miss motherfucking Daisy. Who's watching that film now?” Lee opens BlacKkKlansman with Gone with the Wind to make a point about the dark mythology that lurks at the heart of American movies. “But here's the thing,” he says. He sits up in his chair. “It's not Gone with the Wind. It's growing up and watching motherfucking cowboy movies where Native Americans look like savages. I'm gonna say what I've said before: These bullshit John Ford, John Wayne movies are lies. They're lying on the humanity of Native Americans.”

Strangelove, Network, and even Stalag 17 as tonal reference points: “It's been done before. It's not new. It's hard to do.”) But it's also meant to be an answer of sorts to what's come before: history written in lightning. The last time I see Lee is the day after the block party. When I ask him how it went, he says he was mostly just relieved people came. “This is a fear I always have,” he says. “This comes from my father: No one's gonna show up.” Lee's father, Bill Lee. A great artist in his own right. In the '60s, he was one of the most sought-after session musicians on earth. “He was on a Bob Dylan album,” Lee says. “My father's on ‘Puff the motherfucking Dragon’ with Peter, Paul and Mary. Judy Collins. Gordon Lightfoot. Joan Baez. He was the man. And when Bob Dylan's set went electric, everybody followed him, and so there's people who want to use my father, but they say, ‘You have to play electric bass.’ And he wouldn't do it.” Crooklyn, Lee's seventh film, is a lightly fictionalized version of this story: Delroy Lindo plays a jazz musician and father of five with a good heart and a bad habit of bouncing checks. The film is full of love—the script was originally written by Lee's younger siblings, Joie and Cinqué—and exasperation. The mother in Crooklyn is a relentless disciplinarian, but she's also the provider. This too is based on real life. Lee's mother, who died around the time he turned 20, had to support the family after his father stopped working: “When my father was the top bassist, when he was the go-to guy, my mother didn't have to work. She was shopping at Bloomingdale's, Lord & Taylor. And then my father wouldn't play electric bass, so my mother had to work. So she started teaching at Saint Ann's. You know, he believed in his music. He wasn't gonna sell out. He had principles. That's great. That's one thing. On the other hand, he had five kids.”

And you were one of them. “I was the eldest. And we were starving. 'Cause he was not gonna play electric bass.” How do you feel about that now? “I can't be mad at my father, because many people are miserable now because their parents killed their dream. And my mother, my father, my grandmother, no one in my family ever said, There's no black directors.” Have you ever had to make a decision like the one your father did? “Because of my father, I never bought into that whole narrative of the pure artist who's broke. I saw firsthand. Uh-uh.” In Crooklyn, there is a painful scene in which Delroy Lindo's character plays a concert to an almost empty house. It's another autobiographical moment: “I wanted people to come see my father, but these motherfuckers don't give a fuck about my father. They don't know who he is!” So from the very beginning of his career, Lee has seized every opportunity to make a case for his own work. He likes to cite Kurosawa, who made films into his 80s. He figures he's got 20 more years at least. “I've done films that didn't click with the audience, but people discovered them years later and love 'em,” Lee says. “Crooklyn. People love Crooklyn more than Do the Right Thing and Malcolm X. It wasn't like that when it came out. I think what people don't understand is, for a film to become a hit—and let's leave Star Wars and Marvel comic books out, but other stuff— unless things line up perfectly, it might not happen. Making a good film is a crapshoot. You roll the dice.” Anyway, BlacKkKlansman was a straight-up sensation at Cannes. Lee knows that already.

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After 20 years,

Lauryn Hill’s music

is still impactful By Kamal Morgan

This past summer, I wanted to explore more hip-hop music from the past, especially albums released in the golden age, the 1990s. One of the most critically acclaimed and revered albums during this period is Lauryn Hill’s “The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill.” I have always known about Hill’s importance to hip-hop culture because she was a rapper and singer who blended R&B, pop, hiphop and reggae. I wanted to make sure to listen to this album to truly comprehend why so many people admire her and consider her one of the best artists ever. When Lauryn Hill came into the spotlight, she was an actor in the television soap opera “As the World Turns,” and in the 1993 film “Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit.” In 1993, she joined the genre blending group, the Fugees, with Wyclef Jean and Pras Michel who released two albums during their tenure. Hill and Wyclef’s romantic relationship became strained and eventually led to the band’s split in 1997. This led to each member exploring their own solo careers. On August 25, 1998, Hill released “The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill.” Which got its name from Carter G. Woodson’s book “The Miseducation of the Negro.” The album was critically acclaimed and debuted number one on the Billboard 200 while selling over eight million copies in the U.S. and 12 million worldwide. Her singles, “Lost Ones” and “Doo Wop (That Thing)” reached 27 and number one, respectively, on the Billboard Hot 100, giving her early praise on her authentic blend of pop, soul and R&B. It received 10 Grammy nominations and won five of them, including Album of the Year and Best New Artist. She appeared on multiple magazine covers from Essence to People magazine and was named to Ebony magazine’s 100+ Most Influential Black Americans list.

Her album dove deep into her life as she was redefining and discovering herself as a mother and a black woman, and breaking down her relationship with Wyclef and the Fugees. “Lost Ones,” the second track of the album, deals with her break up with Wyclef. The song begins with, “It’s funny how money changes a situation,” describing her rise in fame and estranged relationship with Wyclef who had problems with Hill’s new man Rohan Marley. “To Zion” dealt with her first pregnancy and the pressure she was receiving to get an abortion to not hurt her music career. “Doo Wop,” the most popular song of the album, warns men and women not to be exploited for sex by the other and rather to have selfrespect. Hill’s entire album is filled with timeless tracks on redemptive love, fear, forgiveness and making it okay to be scared when hope seems small. It is also a favorite album to be sampled, as Drake and Cardi B used her song “Ex-Factor” to create the chorus for Drake’s “Nice for What” and Cardi B’s “Be Careful.” This album will forever stand as a classic and an important project that inspired many up and coming musicians.

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CBU October/November 2018 Emagazine

Articles inside

Spike Lee Just Made the Movie of the Year