What You See Is What You Sweat isn’t at the forefront of the Aretha Franklin canon. In fact, the 1991 album helps bring up the rear, and there’s been very little written on it since its release. It’s just not a solid representation of the tenacity of Aretha Franklin musically […]
I still remember excitedly hurrying down to my hometown Sam Goody in July 2001. I was 11. The copies of Mariah Carey’s new single “Loverboy” were in stock and I was getting mine. It was my first full album cycle as a Mariah fan, and I was prepared to devour […]
Once upon a time, there was a young multi-racial, multi-talented girl from Long Island, New York. Born to an Irish-American mother and an Afro-Venezuelan-American father, she would grow up to have one of the best voices the music world would ever hear, a witty way with words and a masterful gift of […]
The year was 1999. On the personal front, Mariah Carey had just finalized her divorce from her husband Tommy Mottola. Unfortunately, that presented some problems for her career as well. Tommy might’ve been her ex-husband, but he was still the current head of her record label, Sony. His powerful position complicated […]
Checking In by Michelle Williams Michelle Williams has been publicly advocating for mental health awareness for many years. With her debut book, Checking In: How Getting Real about Depression Saved My Life — and Can Save Yours, she takes it to the next level. Throughout the book’s 211 pages, Michelle bares […]
“She was afraid she didn’t belong there,” Aretha Franklin’s producer Jerry Wexler told David Ritz in Respect: The Life of Aretha Franklin. That was Aretha’s mentality about staging a show in the heart of the hippie revolution: San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury district. For all her hesitance, Aretha Franklin was sitting on […]
I woke up at the crack of dawn on May 3, 2011. I drove from my West Philly apartment down to South Philly’s Wal Mart and basically opened the place up. It took about 20 minutes for a staff member to retrieve a copy from the back because they weren’t […]
To say that the year 2020 has been a disaster would be an understatement. We’ve been living through a pandemic, fighting for our lives, our jobs, our safety, and our sanity. Though no one thing could fully distract us enough from the horrors of the time, it’s vital to cling […]
The year was 1995. Mariah Carey was only five years into her career, soaring off the success of her blockbuster selling album, Music Box (1993), and her very first holiday album, Merry Christmas (1994) – which would later go on to become the best-selling Christmas album of all time. Within […]
Who can #Verzuz Janet? Who can #Verzuz Mariah? There is one answer to both questions: Janet V. Mariah. While Jackson released her breakout album 4 years before Carey, the 2 co-existed harmoniously in the 90s as perfect complements to one another. There were never any rumored rivalries, just respect.
