Clarissa Brooks

Vanessa Newman can remember exactly where they were when they first saw Emory Douglas’s work. They remember the sound of '60s jazz vinyls playing before heading to the grocery store with their dad—an embodiment of their love for Black people as a Black queer kid navigating the world. Douglas's work was integral to the music and, really, every day of their childhood.
A revolutionary artist and the former minister of culture for the Black Panther Party, Emory Douglas was a formerly incarcerated...

The question is: how does the world treat Black women? And Rico Nasty answers: ​“like shit.”
This year has been politically, culturally and spiritually difficult for every Black woman, from watching the murder of Breonna Taylor be justified by the state, to the harassment of Megan Thee Stallion by her abuser, via multiple traumatising points in between.
And in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic and the racial terror of police violence, Rico Nasty – a fearless punk-rapper who’s adored for her ...

We caught up with Hayley Williams to discuss this political moment, Paramore’s Black fanbase, and how a community of loved ones around her made her Petals for Armor album possible.
Healing is not linear. Our ability to move through interpersonal conflict or traumatic events involves a very messy, contrived, and difficult process that requires us to undergo what many call an ego death. Ego death is understood to be a complete loss of subjective self-identity.

“There is something that those who have been to hell and back possess. The rest of the world romanticizes it, wants to know how to attain it without suffering. People travel from all over the world to witness examples of when the human spirit should have broken but did not. They think by being witness, they can be initiated into this secret world of unauthorized joy.”
—From Warsan Shire’s “Letter to New Orleans”
There is a revolution going on down the street from my house. From McDaniel Stree...

At the 1995 Source Awards, André 3000 issued a proclamation, or a prophecy: "The South got something to say." Inspired by his words, this list represents some of the most impactful songs, albums and mixtapes by Southern rappers. It was assembled by a team of Southern critics, scholars and writers representing the Carolinas, Georgia, Florida, Maryland, Mississippi, Texas, Tennessee, Louisiana and Virginia.
We offer this list not as an authoritative canon but as an enthusiastic celebration that...

Unexpected stories about creativity
Told by WeTransfer
The evolution of FKA twigs’ artistry is evident not just in her music, but also her performances and the themes that inspire her multifaceted creativity. Last year the artist continued this exploration by way of a poignant trip to Atlanta, where she met a number of womxn whose wisdom and practices around spiritual healing touched on themes prevalent in her latest album, Magdalene. Atlanta-based writer Clarissa Brooks speaks to FKA twigs a...

The first time I saw a Black person killed by police I was 5 years old. Living on Burkland Drive meant you could see the entirety of the Grier Heights neighborhood, known by me and my fellow residents as Griertown, from the top of the hill that I lived on. My cousins and I survived poverty not because we were exceptional but because our mothers put their wellbeing on the line to scrape together a way of life that could remind us that a different way of living was possible.
That storyline of s...

Essay about noname and J Cole.

In this personal essay, Brooks reflects on the urgent need for abolition in her country, one that has been walking the same path for hundreds of years.

In this op-ed, Clarissa Brooks, Know Your IX organizer and journalist, explains how Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos's proposed Title IX changes stand to hurt black and other marginalized survivors.
Betsy DeVos and the U.S. Department of Education released new legally binding rules on Title IX, a change that gives those accused of sexual misconduct more rights. DeVos — whose appointment to the position as Secretary of Education has been a point of contention for many, notably among Historic...

The legacy of the Atlanta Police Department’s lack of care for missing young Black people has a long history that is best highlighted in the current HBO series Atlanta’s Missing and Murdered. While Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms and Police Chief Erika Shields are attempting to rectify these haunting mistakes 40 years later with new investigations, those failures are ever present.
One recent case that called attention to the systemic failures of multiple institutions — and their propensity for fin...

Through the boring white middle class suburbs of South Charlotte, North Carolina, the artist Ben Evans used to drive to high school every day in a bright orange Hummer. He says the gesture was unintentional, but looking at his artistic practice now, it's hard not to see the vehicle as a statement. It sure stood out in the senior parking lot — I remember, because we were classmates.
Now based in Los Angeles six years later, the Pratt alum continues to rebel with color and camp through his pain...

This decade, Black women shifted and altered how we as a society listen to music. We asked three cultural critics to gather the 10 bodies of work by Black women that defined the 2010s.
It’s easy to look at ten years of music and make assumptions. But it’s difficult perhaps to look at a decade of Black cultural work that reflects the cultural qualms that persist. In a decade of hip-hop and R&B, Black women shifted and altered how we, as a society, listen to music. Black women in this time did ...

It’s 2017, and I’m in Atlanta to attend a Noname concert. I took a bus from Charlotte to see my friends and catch the Chicago rapper live for the first time. An hour goes by after we arrive, and the crowd gets thicker. In between opening acts, a group of five young white men start mosh-pitting and yelling the N-word. This behavior has been going on since the doors opened. They are all smiles and drunken stupor with their one black friend in tow. These individuals clearly feel invincible. Afte...

In her 1995 essay, “Literature and Public Life,” Toni Morrison examined how pop culture affects our relationship to other people. In it, she says, “We live in the age of spectacle...spectacle that promises to be safe, clean and cheap, but turned out to be dangerous, dirty, and expensive.”
24 years later, that assessment holds true in a number of instances on social media. One of the most recent — and disturbing — examples is the fallout of EmoBblackThot, who, up until last week, convinced 170...