Today is the 26th 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
- KRS One
- Sharon Jones and The Dap Kings
- Queen Latifah
- Cab Calloway
I also wanted to celebrate Snoop Dogg, one of the most commercially and critically successful artists in hip-hop history. Everybody knows him — hell, everyone loves him.