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Artist Highlight: The Heart pt.5 (2022) Kendrick Lamar

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Artist Highlight: The Heart pt.5 (2022) Kendrick Lamar

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Artist Highlight: B.O.B (Bombs Over Baghdad): OutKast (2000)

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Artist Highlight: B.O.B (Bombs Over Baghdad): OutKast (2000)

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Outkast - B.O.B. (Bombs Over Baghdad) (Official HD Video)

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Conscious hip-hop is a subgenre that uses music as a tool for awareness, resistance, and storytelling, often addressing systemic oppression, Black identity, and social justice. It goes beyond entertainment, offering commentary on real-life experiences within the African American community. This form of expression intersects powerfully with Afrofuturismand Afro-Surrealism, which both reimagine Black existence beyond historical trauma. While Afrofuturism projects Black people into liberated futures through science fiction, technology, and fantasy, Afro-Surrealism blurs the lines between reality and dreamlike imagery to explore the absurdities of racial life in America. Conscious hip-hop often incorporates elements from both, using metaphor, symbolism, and futuristic or surreal imagery to envision new possibilities for Black life. Artists like OutKast, Lauryn Hill, and even Kendrick Lamar have blurred these lines, embedding their socially aware lyrics within sonic landscapes that feel futuristic, spiritual, or dreamlike, pushing boundaries in both sound and message.

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Artist Highlight: Cowboys (1996) Fugees ft. Outsidaz

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Artist Highlight: Cowboys (1996) Fugees ft. Outsidaz

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Artist Highlight: Tennessee (1992) Arrested Development

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Artist Highlight: Tennessee (1992) Arrested Development

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Arrested Development - Tennessee (Official Music Video)

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Artist Highlight: Drexciya - The Quest pt.1

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Artist Highlight: Drexciya - The Quest pt.1

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Emma Zoia puts pretty good music on Youtube

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Artist Highlight: Dos Cabezas (1982): Jean Michel Basquiat

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Artist Highlight: Dos Cabezas (1982): Jean Michel Basquiat

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Andy Warhol, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and the…

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yall dont love this man like i do 🙅🏾‍♀️…

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Stanford Historian Reexamines the Practice of Racial "Passing"

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Artist Highlight: Raisin in the Sun & The American Dream

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Artist Highlight: Raisin in the Sun & The American Dream

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The American Dream is the idea that anyone, no matter where they come from, can achieve success and a better life through hard work. It often includes things like owning a home, having a good job, and providing more opportunities for the next generation.

In A Raisin in the Sun, each member of the Younger family sees the American Dream differently. Mama wants to buy a house and create a safe, loving home. For her, the dream is about family and stability. Walter thinks success means making money and owning a business—he believes wealth will earn him respect. Beneatha wants to become a doctor and explore her identity, so her dream is about education, independence, and self-expression.

The play shows that the American Dream isn’t one-size-fits-all, and that for many people, especially Black families, it comes with extra challenges. But it also shows the power of standing together and not giving up, even when the odds are against you.

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Ernie Barnes, “Miss America” (1970), Oil on…

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Artist Highlight: Sugar Shack (1971): Ernie Barnes

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Artist Highlight: Sugar Shack (1971): Ernie Barnes

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The 1971 painting by Ernie Barnes may be recognizable as the album art from Marvin Gayes' I Want You. Though, I have always been drawn to it on my grandparent's walls. When I looked at it I always counted how many people were wearing yellow, and I always noticed how their elongated, bronzed bodies seem to drop extensibly over the canvas. I never knew that Barnes had been known for this style, and had been stylistically influenced by his experience as an athlete, playing for the NFL.

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Ernie Barnes created the painting The Sugar Shack…

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Ham's Redemption (1895): Modesto Brocos.

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Ham's Redemption (1895): Modesto Brocos.

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I find this piece by Brocos to lay in the intersections of art, literature, and diaspora. When analyzing the painting itself -- I see a story being told that frames the ideas of assimilation, eradication, passing, and class. I find it interesting that the grandmother figure on the far left is holding up her hands in a form a prayer that I am not familiar with. The hands of the mother (her daughter) next to her are evocative of catholic posture of prayer. Her husband next to her, a white, or white passing gentleman has his hands down but has the most expressive face.

This was made by a Spanish painter, which matters. I think that the lens which I am viewing this story is much different from the lens that painted it. Spain played a large role in the transatlantic slave trade, and introduced a lot of the African diaspora to the Caribbean and South American continent. When taking that into consideration -- I feel as if this painting was initially used to describe the hegemonic idea of afro-culture not being worthy enough to preserve, and miscegenation was prevalent because of this concept.

However, when I view this painting I have the foresight to know that race mixing has always happened, and I am a product of it. I know the culture of grandma's being color-struck. Though the culture that surrounds being black, you can never truly circumvent, especially in the Americas.

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Modesto Brocos - The Redemption of Ham…_ brazil's…

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Artist Highlight: Literature: Toni Morrison

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Artist Highlight: Literature: Toni Morrison

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This is an archived article from the NYT -- originally a review for Morrison's novel, Beloved.

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The New York Times: Book Review Search Article

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In Toni Morrison’s new novel, ″Beloved,″ a runaway slave, her capture imminent, slashes her infant daughter’s throat rather than see the child in chains. ″It was absolutely the right thing to do,″ Ms. Morrison said, ″but she had no right to do it. I think if I had seen what she had seen, and knew what was in store, and I felt that there was an afterlife - or even if I felt that there wasn’t - I think I would have done the same thing. But it’s also the thing you have no right to do.″