This is a Maundy Thursday sermon I preached entitled “This Ain’t Free” on April 2, 2015 at Duke Chapel. I took two texts, Paul’s epistle, 1 Corinthians 11 and the then recent album by Kendrick Lamar “To Pimp a Butterfly.” While the hip-hop lyricist Kendrick Lamar opted to use an expletive for the second track […]
Read more "“This Ain’t Free”"I feel it’s worth noting before I begin the review of HBO’s “Native Son” that I’ve never read the epic novel by Richard Wright. For some that might exclude me from offering critique at all. But if that’s the case, fault my high school English track. I was in a section that required us to […]
Read more "New Notes of a Native Son"I don’t know Willie Moore, Jr. I’ve never met him. I have tangentially followed him over the years. I’ve seen his growth in the black popular Christian world mastering the tools of social media to provide a platform to spread his thoughts and views by embracing a millennial perspective. I’ll be honest, I haven’t always agreed […]
Read more "The Miseducation of Willie Moore, Jr."President Donald Trump, right, bows his head as Relentless Church Pastor John Gray, left, says a prayer during a meeting with inner city pastors in the Cabinet Room of the White House in Washington, Wednesday, Aug. 1, 2018. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik) On Wednesday, August 1, President Donald Trump met with prominent black clergy at the […]
Read more "Don’t Sit, Stand"After watching the episode “The Woods” on the critically acclaimed FX network show Atlanta, I figured it was worth exploring some of the science fiction aspects that the show has consistently presented. This is the second of a three-part series about the show and Afro-futurism. As a combined series, Atlanta has acted as a larger […]
Read more "The Afro-Futurism of Atlanta – Pt. 2"I’ll be brief. There are, possibly, two larger ways in which to understand and make sense of entertainer, part-time genius and iconoclast, Kanye West. The first and most popular way to see him is as a troubled individual who suffered a mental breakdown following the death of his mother. This resulted in him being a […]
Read more "“Wake Up Mr. West!” – The Culture of Kanye"After watching the episode “The Woods” on the critically acclaimed FX network show Atlanta, I figured it was worth exploring some of the science fiction aspects that the show has consistently presented. This is the first of a three part series about the show and Afro-futurism. From what I can tell, the series Atlanta belongs […]
Read more "The Afro-Futurism of Atlanta – Pt. 1"It was announced on April 16, 2018 that rapper Kendrick Lamar was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Music. In a society where awards seemingly get distributed like water bottles after a natural disaster, sometimes the gravity of these awarding bodies gets lost in the shuffle. This was not a Grammy nor a BET or MTV […]
Read more "When Black Culture Goes Mainstream"Some of my earliest memories, ever in life, weren’t just moments with grandmother before she died when I was six, nor me carrying a monkey at my dad’s company picnic, but they were knowing that along with Martin Luther King there were men named Malcolm X and Marcus Garvey. I attended the New Concept Development […]
Read more "What if Black America Were Its Own Country? Wakanda, a Nation on a Hill"I tuned in at work on a livestream for about 15 minutes right before Barack Obama’s portrait was to be revealed. I missed the unveiling of Michelle Obama’s, well, to be nice, portrait. I remember cheering that Kehinde Wiley had been commissioned to do Obama’s portrait and like most, I went to see his work […]
Read more "Unpopular Opinion: Why the Obama’s Official Portrait Should Be Him in the Tan Suit"
Joshua Lawrence Lazard 