Beyoncé

Beyoncé is following in the footsteps of many Black musicians before her.

Black cowboys made up as much as a quarter of working ranch hands during late 19th century. That legacy has been obscured.

The first Black woman to play the Grand Ole Opry and hit Billboard’s country music charts.

Family dynasties are neither new nor newly influential in pop.

A new release of an 1891 song by Louis Vasnier deepens what we know about the genre’s origins.

Democrats’ years-long efforts to reclaim the word are cresting in this year’s Presidential race.

Over the course of her 83 years, the megawatt star that was Tina Turner kept telling us who she was in the hopes that we would see her — all of her.

How modern songwriting evolved into a game of aggressive credit—even for the people who didn’t technically do the composing.

How did the controversial term go from middle-school slang to verboten? The answer lies on the other side of the Atlantic.

After the 1927 Great Flood, Black musicians from the Delta produced an outpour of songs testifying to the destruction. The same is true today.

The inventor thought her pregnant sister looked like “a beach ball in an unmade bed.”

A century after the Tulsa Race Massacre, what happened there is finally more widely known—but other "Black Wall Street" stories remain hidden.

Before People was the juggernaut of the celebrity media, it was a magazine “about people.”

A musicological conversation about the history and social value of Black music.

From Amelia Earhart to Michelle Obama, meet 100 women who defined the last century.

A personal account of how one young woman travels to South Carolina in search of her family history and freedom narrative.

An in-depth history of the most important pop innovation of the last 20 years, from Cher’s “Believe” to Kanye West to Migos.

Beyond three strands of hair interlocked around each other, there's a complicated story.

Judy Juanita on her novel 'Virgin Soul,' which incorporates her experiences as a Black Panther living in San Francisco.