Sheldon Taylor's Souls of Black Notes

“What did Marvin say? The boy that made slaves out of men?” A pivotal scene in Harlem crime thriller New Jack City (1991) finds reformed crack addict  Benny “Pookie” Robinson in surveillance mode alongside a cadre of cops bent on taking down drug-dealing villain Nino Brown.  Pookie's acid dismissal is sharp as a knife's jagged edge. Sharp as his clear-eyed focus regained after a rehab stint. Still, his words hold no weight: to the cops, they're nothing but an addict's  racial rock toss at a glass (crack) house. Pookie's words meant so much more. M inted in demonic duality, they were two sides of a chaotic coin: clear as day. D ark as night:  The boy that made slaves out of men…… Cribbed by screenwriter Barry Michael Cooper from a track off Marvin Gaye's 1971 magnum opus "What's Going On," the song's title--- "Flyin' High (On The Friendly Skies)" plays on a United Airlines commercial tagline. "What's Going On" lives...

  Michael Jackson has long dominated GOAT talk. Current opinions suggest otherwise, citing Beyoncé and Chris Brown's career durability as justification to supplant the King of Pop's long-standing reign.  It's a conversational coup that deserves to be toppled.  In a rare moment of self-celebration, Jackson encapsulated his career in a 2001Vibe Magazine piece: "Its a rarity. I had number one records in 1969 and '70. I entered the charts at number one in 2001. I don't think any other artist has had that kind of range." Seven years later, Jackson was dead at 50: eighteen  days shy of an ambitious 50-date farewell UK tour before walking off into the sunset (with his lucrative publishing catalog), having secured the bag, solidifying his triumphant destiny.  Jackson's legacy is unprecedented. His gravitational reach far.  Tap dance icons Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly---members of the Lost Generation and the Greatest Generation demographic born before the advent...

  Man gives awards. God gives reward . Denzel Washington’s words are both ethereal and emancipating. Transparency and truth are his testimony, finally casting off the cloak of public perfection long shadowing his career. Long devoted, Washington’s faith has increasingly taken a front and center stage position as he slowly winds down an acting career spanning nearly five decades across TV, film, and stage. His past is illustrious, but it’s his beatific future that he’s anticipating. At 70, traces of Sidney Poitier’s regal restraint still remain. In the past, he wielded his high wattage grin like a singular weapon: gracefully fending off critics and dazzling fans. Now it's flashes of Washington’s Money Earnin’ Mount Vernon roots that are roaring to the surface these days: Washington boxes out interviewers with direct frankness and confronts out-of-pocket paparazzi.  Washington's spirituality grounds him, but he's still a live wire.  Instead of high fashion curated by stylis...