Today is the 23rd day of Black History Month. I tend to use this time as a way to remind readers – and everyone else of a couple of important facts:
- You can’t love Black artists and their work, and not see them as people
- Black lives — and Black art matters
- Black culture is American culture
So as we go through the month, I’m going to talk about a collection of Black artists. It’ll be fairly comprehensive and eclectic list — although it won’t be a complete list.
So far I’ve mentioned the following artists:
- Patti LaBelle
- Rick James
- John Lee Hooke
- Janet Jackson
- Aretha Franklin
- Chaka Khan
- Sister Rosetta Tharpe
- Curtis Mayfield
- Bob Marley
- J. Dilla
- De La Soul
- Ella Fitzgerald
- Dionne Warwick
- Grace Jones
- Whitney Houston
- Louis Armstrong
- A Tribe Called Quest
- Maceo Parker
- Nina Simone
- Marvin Gaye
- George Clinton and Parliament Funkadelic
- John Coltrane
- Miles Davis
- Erykah Badu
- The Supremes
- Al Green
Today, I wanted to celebrate KRS One, one of the greatest and most important rappers to ever spit bars on wax. Without him and his work, I’m not sure if you’d have emcees like Yasiin Bey, Talib Kewli and a growing list of others.