Jeff Ihaza

On Tuesday, the auction house Sotheby's hosted the sale of 150 pieces of hip-hop history. Artifacts like the gold crown that the Notorious B.I.G. was last photographed in, letters written by Tupac Shakur to his high school sweetheart, and ephemera…

It's never fun to be cynical, but sometimes the news gives you no choice. In a move that was likely intended to engender optimism about America's unwavering condition of racial inequity, it was announced this week that an animated reboot of the…

In I May Destroy You, the critically acclaimed series from Michaela Coel, thorny questions about sexuality, consent, and authorship are unfurled with a stunningly imaginative flare. Coel, who also stars in the series, unpacks a singular moment — a…

In 2008, when Seth Rogen's stoner flick Pineapple Express hit theaters, it marked the beginning of Rogen's tenure as America's pothead-in-chief. Over the years, he's delivered reliably affable performances in a loose constellation of Judd Apatow…

On July 4th, Kanye West took to Twitter to announce his improbable goal of becoming the 46th President of the United States. There were any number of reasons to disregard the seriousness of this quest, most notably the fact that West had missed an…

If the truth can indeed set you free, the comedian and writer Ziwe Fumudoh may very well hold the keys to salvation. Her Instagram Live interview series has become required viewing in the pandemic age. Piercing through the conventional niceties of…

The activist Marion Stokes spent the better part of her life recording television news on VHS tapes. For 35 years, Stokes taped the then-nascent 24-hour news networks round the clock, creating an awe-inspiring archive of American media’s descent…

For 33 seasons, the television series Cops made light fare of the American carceral condition. Its theme song, “Bad Boys,” by the reggae group Inner Circle, became synonymous with the tired dichotomy of good guys versus bad guys — nevermind the…

Last year, the fashion designer Virgil Abloh inspired controversy on social media after he posted an Instagram Story featuring members of his design team. Abloh, who became the first Black menswear artistic director at Louis Vuitton in 2018, was…

I can’t say for sure when it started, but for the past several months I’ve gotten the distinct feeling that rollerblades were, for lack of a better term, “coming back.” It’s possible that I’m more acutely aware of the presence of these eight-wheeled…

On HBO’s Insecure, Jay Ellis plays the perennially confused Lawrence, whose relationship with Issa, the series’ main character played by Issa Rae, is as fraught as it is engrossing. By the end of the show’s third season, the pair reach something of…

The scale of economic damage brought on by the coronavirus pandemic won’t be clear for some time. And initial signs don’t appear promising. Unemployment figures have risen to unprecedented levels, and the U.S. economy reportedly shrank by the…

Isolation breeds strange behavior. A delirious playfulness spurred by the fact that there’s no one around to see how weird you can get. Think of Tom Hanks’s character in Cast Away befriending a volleyball. The coronavirus pandemic has pushed us all…

The Criterion Channel is an embarrassment of riches, which can also make it kind of intimidating. While almost every streaming service is frustrating and repetitive to scroll through in its own way, Criterion doesn’t have a shortage of classic films…

Right as most of the country locked down in response to the coronavirus pandemic, Netflix's latest true-crime documentary Tiger King arrived, providing a kind of hypnotic distraction from the news. The series follows the rise and fall of Joseph…

More than two years after sparking a worldwide reckoning on sexual assault, Harvey Weinstein, the powerful Hollywood producer who became the subject of a cascade of sexual assault allegations, has been found guilty of criminal sexual act in the…

The musician Kaya Wilkins remembers a revelation she had at a karaoke bar. It was during "Sexual Healing," by Marvin Gaye. "I was just complete trash. Garbage," she recalls. In the moment, the song's overt confidence rang untrue. So the 29-year-old…

The movie industry was on its A-game in 2019, without a doubt. Buoyed by infusions of cash from the likes of Netflix and Amazon, studios took more risks and told more ambitious stories. From Adam Sandler's dazzling performance in Uncut Gems to the…

At this point, it’s a cliché to say we’re living in “a golden age of television,” but it really is true. Through all of the confusion of 2019, there were some innovative and remarkable television series that hit the air — as well as streaming…