The My-Stery: Five Black Witches Is Too Much for Black Audiences?

On Wednesday night after watching American Horror Story: Freak Show, I tuned in to watch the latest of TV One’s Hollywood Divas episode, “Five Black Witches.” One of the opening scenes is the de facto leader of the group, Paula Jai Parker, presenting to producer Carl Craig the idea agreed upon in previous episode for […]

Otherworldly Videos: Ase + Dantago (The Icarus Project) Trailers

Nappy Nation Media presents Ase, an African historical fantasy short film and TV series concept. Shot on location in Nigeria, it is “set in the ancient West African kingdom of Oyo, and is about three ordinary teens on a seemingly ordinary day who have a not-so-ordinary supernatural encounter with a dark and evil spirit known as […]

Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth: Poets Verb + Reggie Eldridge

While watching the past two episodes of the spoken word series, Verses and Flow, on TV One, two poets stood out to me, Verb and Reggie Eldridge. Verb spoke a critique of our current dependency on hi-tech technology and it reminded me of Louis C.K. rant on smartphones. It does make you think about how […]

Otherworldly Videos: Evolve: The Series + Room 9

Here are two web series, one set in New York, the other in South Africa: Written and directed by Kia T. Barbee, Evolve: The Series is about a young teenage girl, Donia Reyes, who on her 16th birthday is developing supernatural powers (including “super strength, forcefield, enhanced senses, super agility, telekinetic and telepathic powers“) and her […]

Otherworldly Videos: Web Series

Besides FutureStates and Misadventures of An Awkward Black Girl, these are some other web shows that I recently started watching: The Silent City: A man tries to survive in a post-apocalyptic New York City.

Moving On the Wires: The Abandon

NEWS! Award-winning playwright and screenwriter Keith Josef Adkins is preparing to shoot a pilot for a new TV show called The Abandon, which will feature an all-black cast. Adkins, who was once a TV writer for the show Girlfriends, will be not only be a writer, but also a director and producer of the pilot.This […]

Otherworldly Videos: Interdimensional Black People

In his “Threatdown” segment of The Colbert Report, Stephen Colbert uses a multidimensional explanation for why Black men in New York City are stopped and frisked so much (there are more stops done than the number of Black men actually living in the city). Another well done satire from Colbert.

The My-Stery: My Speculative Return Home…

For the first day of “Black History Month” (although Black history should be all day, everyday), I want to give a little background history of my return to speculative fiction. Looking back, I have always enjoyed speculative fiction, including science fiction, horror and fantasy. Growing up, I love fables, books and films about talking animals, […]

BABALU!!!!!!

Remember Desi Arnaz’s performance of Babalu on the show I Love Lucy? Well, Afrodiaspores wrote a post about the Afro-cuban origins of the song: “Last night was the vigil, and today the day, celebrated as that of Saint Lazarus, associated among practitioners of the Afro-Cuban tradition Lucumí with the orisha Babalú-Ayé, also called Asojano. He […]

#Trendin’

The Original 7ven, originally The Time, is back with their first single, “Trendin’.” Including members Morris Day, Jimmy Jam, Terry Lewis, Jellybean Johnson, Monte Moir, Jesse Johnson and Jerome Benton, this group became popular in Prince’s film “Purple Rain.” Two of its members, Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, became well-known producers for artists like Janet […]