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Scarface's Tiny Desk concert radiates with his decadeslong passion as an emcee and producer. There's calculated intent behind every word and note of this 30-minute set and I learned that his love for golf also runs deep during our initial meeting. He was playing a round and had difficulty dividing his attention between the plan and the course. Three days before the show, amid rehearsals, I got a call from Facemob asking, "What if I brought Mike Dean?" My expectations were already high, but that final addition set the stage for something special.

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For nearly a decade, Hughes had been writing columns for the influential Black newspaper. These short articles have been rightly lauded as a proving ground for Hughes’s craft—and a spirited defense of his ideals. “Things that happen away off yonder affect us here,” Hughes wrote in his first column, on November 21, 1942. “The bombs that fall on some far-off Second Front in Asia rattle the dishes on your table in Chicago or New Orleans, cut down on your sugar, coffee, meat ration, and take the tires off your car.”

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Several common threads connect Arthur's reflections to an earlier episode featuring professor and former council member Dr. Deonte Hollowell. Both contend that electoral offices require Black men to code switch and contort their identities, prioritizing decorum over pressing issues facing the community. Unapologetically grassroots activists clash with expectations to maintain the status quo.

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It was the summer of 2022 and the Bronx resident was hoping her insurance would approve a new wheelchair, as her old one kept breaking down. Render-Hornsby was born with spina bifida, a spinal cord issue that limits use of her lower legs. This fall, more than a year after receiving that first denial letter, the 33-year-old aspiring cosmetologist still does not have the working, well-fitting wheelchair she needs to live independently.

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In fact, “Black children in stable, two-parent families are more likely to experience poverty and incarceration, and less likely to graduate from college, compared to their white peers from stable, two-parent families,” per the Institute for Family Studies.

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The streaming giant is planning to apply a minimum annual threshold to all songs on its platform, meaning that every track will have to generate 1000 streams before any money is paid out to the artists and rightsholders behind it. Until this point, every song played on Spotify for longer than 30 seconds generated a royalty payment: this will no longer be the case.

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The ordinance has been refined since 2020, said Councilman Jecorey Arthur, who has championed it on Metro Council. It will create a "displacement assessment" matrix, which will be used when land developers seek Metro resources to establish residential developments and will analyze the potential for displacement from the development.

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“We are here to speak for the innocent people. We are here to let the world know that what Israel and the United States are doing is not self-defence; it’s a genocide. And we’re not supporting that regardless of religion, regardless of our ways, regardless of agenda. We are all human beings.”

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No you silly goose, Drake isn’t actually going to be at the Mahaffey Theater. But The Florida Orchestra—under the direction of Steve Hackman—along with rapper Jecorey Arthur, three vocalists, a bassist, and a drummer, will blend 22 of Champagne Papi’s songs in with Tchaikovsky’s fifth symphony. There’s no intermission, so if you’ll be poppin’ bottles before the show, hit the John before curtain, OK?

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Overall, more than 3,000 people in Gaza have been killed, including 14 staff members from the UN agency that assists Palestine refugees, UNRWA. More than 12,000 people are injured and hundreds more are unaccounted for. Mr. Griffiths reported that the death toll has already exceeded that of the 2017 hostilities which lasted more than seven weeks. “The pace of death, of suffering, of destruction, of breaches of international law, cannot be exaggerated,” he said. Meanwhile, one million Palestinians have escaped their homes with nowhere to go, and as supplies of food, water, fuel and medical items dwindle. UNRWA has been forced to ration water to one litre per person per day, far less than the minimum standard of 1.5 litres.

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Even as the current proposal is still being debated, there are more potential changes already being discussed. Some are pushing for the government to expand gender beyond male and female options. Other activists are asking to create a “Black” subcategory called “American Descendent of Slavery,” as part of a push for reparations. “There is so much conversation now around descendants of slavery and the need to really deal with the legacy of slavery head on,” said Evan Shepard, a spokesman for the American Descendants of Slavery Advocacy Foundation. “This is a small step in that direction.”

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The Kentucky Court of Appeals has rejected a 2022 state law aimed at curbing powers of the Jefferson County school board because it singles out the school district for special treatment, which the judges said violates Kentucky’s Constitution. The decision could hamper efforts by Republicans who control the General Assembly and who have been highly critical of the Jefferson County Public Schools (JCPS) in recent years. Republican lawmakers from Louisville recently announced an interest in splitting up the state’s largest school district and other changes.

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‘I do believe that it’s warranted. I think it’s something that my father without directly using the word spoke to,’ said King. Less than a decade ago, the idea that reparations could be a real possibility would have felt inconceivable to many. Now, California, the largest economy in our nation, is seriously considering a reparations proposal. And cities and states across the country have begun the task of working out what reparations for Black Americans could look like for them.

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Researchers with the Vera Institute for Justice found the expansion in Kentucky’s criminal justice system has coincided with economic decline as coal and manufacturing jobs left the state. If Kentucky was a country, it would have the 7th highest incarceration rate in the world. That’s from a 2021 analysis by the Prison Policy Initiative, and a new report shows the rate is the result of criminal justice policy decisions made in the last three decades.

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Experiences like these are among the reasons behind a growing movement to stop assigning conventional A through F letter grades to first-year college students and, sometimes, upperclassmen. Called "un-grading," the idea is meant to ease the transition to higher education — especially for freshmen who are the first in their families to go to college or who weren't well prepared for college-level work in high school and need more time to master it.

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The University of Louisville and Simmons College of Kentucky are embarking on a new project to answer that question and discover how changing a place can improve the health of its residents. A $500,000 grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation will fund an 18-month study to identify the features all neighborhoods should have in order to promote the health of all residents.

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Jecorey Arthur explains the importance of local vs national politics. And how local politics effect you immediately.

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The Rev. Jesse Jackson plans to step down from leading the Chicago civil rights organization Rainbow PUSH Coalition he founded in 1971, his son’s congressional office said Friday.

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Written just a month after the Great Sadness of the first quarantine orders due to COVID-19, facing the shock felt by the whole globe as well as personal crisis, I find myself struggling to define what actually brings me joy. And I’m at a stage of making peace with sadness as it comes and goes like any other emotion. I’m learning to observe sadness for the first time not as a negative emotion, but as a necessary dynamic to the human experience.

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