this summer is less DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince’s ‘Summertime’ and more Run-DMC’s hard times / spreading/ just like the flu. I’m listening to a lot of Donna Summer and Erykah Badu, but we all dealing with things as we can ✊🏾please register to vote immediately✌🏾⬇️
snap/shot 📷
📸⤴️Steve Shapiro
protests.pandemic.politics ⤵️
⤴️a socially-distanced Barack Obama and Joe Biden sit-down launches Thursday via their social feeds ➕ Florida — what are we doing? you really not going to the Bahamas rn ➕how the Black Lives Matter generation remembers John Lewis ➕ ‘I don't really feel like arguing with this negro’ ➕‘I was naive to think this couldn’t touch my family’: Pacific Islanders hit hard by the coronavirus ➕the protests and the body-snatching in Portland
music+
⤵️White artists really don’t hire Black tour managers ⤵️
➕ Erykah Badu is blazing a new trail (from Badubotron) ➕ DaBaby talks rap’s 2020 MVP debate ➕‘she must’ve slept with label executives’: why women in hip-hop deserve more respect (Jaelani Turner-Williams) ➕before NKOTB, it was black and brown boy bands that paved the way ⤵️
words + screen
Rishi Reddi’s Passage West (‘follows the arrival of immigrant farm workers from Punjab to California’s Imperial Valley’) and 10 other novels starring essential workers ➕
⤴️ Gina Prince-Bythewood’s The Old Guard is on track to reach 74 million households in first four weeks ➕is Clueless still the best Jane Austen adaptation?
🏀 clutch
📺 ⤴️what to watch: Jayhawkers, a ‘thrillingly analytical’ film about Wilt Chamberlain’s college years (Amazon Prime)
media + style
here’s proof: black influencers are way underpaid ➕for Black women in media — is a “dream job” a myth? ➕while at home, Black hairstylists return to their roots (Darian Harvin and Jessica Cruel) ➕ let’s talk about Hollywood’s neglect of black men’s hair (Angelique Jackson)
throwback
the story of Willie Earle and the twenty-eight men acquitted of lynching him (Rebecca West, 1947) ➕ flashback to Barack Obama’s outro ⬇️
outside/free
this is your newsletter. diverse work curated by a diverse team for a diverse readership. in this curation you see work from writers you know (and some you don’t). work from creators of color. from women writers. and LGBQTI creators. basically storytelling curated with the idea that the many segments of our multiverse are equally interesting and important.
team HRDlist
Danyel Smith || Elliott Wilson || Darian Harvin
special thanks this issue to Parker Williams, Benjamin Meadows-Ingram, Dyana Larios, Wesley Harvin, Nicole Jones and many others.