There is a kind of beauty that comes only after the storm—born of ruin, heavy with truth, luminous as a rain-washed sky. In the year of 2025, when the seams of the United States strained under the pull of its contradictions, Black artists stitched together something new from the frayed edges. And the cloth they made—rich, unruly, iridescent—covered us in a warmth no winter could dim.
We have been here before. We know what it is to create in the shadow of calamity—to turn scarcity into abundance, exile into sanctuary. But 2025 gave us a new vocabulary for survival, one that stretched across the wide spectrum of Black imagination. Across the country, art of every form became both refuge and rally. Painters, poets, dancers and musicians alike carved out spaces for truth-telling. Galleries and museums swelled into sanctuaries; theaters transformed into stages for confession; streets became living canvases; and in the most intimate rooms, the act of creation felt like ceremony.
Perhaps this is what this second renaissance—if that’s what we dare to name it—has taught us: that art is not a luxury, not an afterthought in times of unrest, but the very ground we stand on when everything else crumbles. This year, Black artistry refused the script of despair. It chose, instead, to imagine us whole.
Studio Museum In Harlem Steps Into Its Next Era
Studio Museum in Harlem has long been a cornerstone of Black artistry. It’s more than simply a gallery; it has championed works from across the diaspora, while serving as a hub for creativity and a living tribute to the historic neighborhood it has called home for nearly 60 years. In 2018, the museum closed its doors to embark on a bold reimagining that would expand its capacity for innovation and deepen its ties to the city. And on November 15, 2025, Studio Museum reopens to the world, renewing its -mission to amplify artists of color.
Founded in 1968 under the leadership of its inaugural director, Charles E. Inniss, the museum was born into a nation in upheaval. The assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the height of the Civil Rights Movement and a surge of ingenuity all formed the backdrop to its beginnings. At a time of grief and resistance, Studio Museum’s first home at 2033 Fifth Avenue emerged as both a sanctuary and a stage, reflecting the nation’s hard truths while illuminating Black brilliance. Its next location at 144 West 125th Street served as a furniture store in the early 1900s, before being purchased later in the century by the New York Bank for Savings. Where currency once flowed, cultural capital now circulates, with the museum investing in generations of artists and returning dividends to the community at large.
“What this new building represents for us is a new chapter in the museum’s growth,” says Thelma Golden, Ford Foundation Director and Chief Curator of the museum. She explains that when the repository initially moved to the location in 1980, the space was renovated to suit its needs, through what architects call “adaptive reuse”—the process of taking an existing building and giving it new life.
“This is the first purpose-built museum in our history,” Golden says. “But in addition to being important to us for that reason—getting a building that will fully accommodate our audiences, our programs, our collection—it also represents the vision and the ambition of our founders: to create a home for Black art in Harlem that continues to narrate the story of the work of artists of African descent in the past, working deeply within our present but also building toward a future.”
In many ways, Studio Museum has always functioned as a kind of time capsule, where artistic lineages converge and evolve. Its debut exhibition, Electronic Refractions II, showcased the work of Tom Lloyd, an artist who boldly embraced abstraction and technology at a time when Black artists were often expected to produce representational work. Now the museum returns with a major presentation of Lloyd’s practice, bringing its history full circle. Alongside this, visitors will experience the first installment of a rotating display from the museum’s renowned permanent collection.
The reopened museum’s inaugural programming also includes an exhibition of archival photographs and ephemera from its 57-year history, as well as a landmark presentation by more than 100 alumni of its Artist-in-Residence program. These alums were invited, through an open call, to submit new works on paper—a gesture Golden describes as a way “to quite literally bless the walls of this new studio.” The resulting presentation underscores the impact of generations of past residents, while affirming the program’s ongoing role in shaping the future of artists of African origin. Over the course of the museum’s first year back, new site-specific commissions by Camille Norment, Christopher Myers and Kapwani Kiwanga will also be unveiled.
Several iconic works, closely tied to the building’s legacy, are set to return to the renovated location. Glenn Ligon’s “Give Us a Poem” (2007) will greet visitors upon their entrance in the lobby. Originally commissioned for the former building, the neon installation transforms an improvised verse by Muhammad Ali into a brilliant play of flashing light. On the second floor, Houston E. Conwill’s “The Joyful Mysteries” (1984) will be on display. This piece includes seven bronze time capsules, containing sealed writings from luminaries such as Toni Morrison, Romare Bearden and Eleanor Holmes Norton.
One of the most recognizable symbols of the museum will also be reinstalled: David Hammons’s “Untitled,” first installed in 2004. The piece reinterprets the American flag in the red, black and green of Marcus Garvey’s 1920s Pan-African design. Over the years, it has come to embody both the museum’s message and its commitment to Black expression. It also recalls the social climate of the late 1960s, when the Studio Museum first opened with Lloyd’s groundbreaking light sculptures—while holding a space for Black artists, many of whom were excluded from New York’s leading cultural establishments at that time.
“It seemed like a very incredibly important ideal, to imagine if we could assemble a group of Tom Lloyd’s works—to have that be the way that we not only honored the founding of the museum, but also brought his works into the conversation of this moment,” Golden says. “To introduce them to a new generation of viewers, and to really lift up the work that several scholars have done over these years. Continuing to think about him and his important contribution as an innovative artist, working there in the late sixties through the seventies—that to open the building with an exhibition of these works would be a way not only to point at our past, but to cite Lloyd in the conversation of art in the present.”
Just as these works situate Studio Museum within a continuum of cultural and political history, the museum’s commitment to education underscores its role as a living resource for the people. Since its inception, when cofounder Betty Blayton-Taylor first envisioned a space where Harlem’s children could engage with art without leaving their neighborhood, knowledge has been central to its mission. Today, programs like “Expanding the Walls: Making Connections Between Photography, History and Community” add to that legacy, even as the Education Center creates dedicated spaces for teens, families and lifelong learners to engage fully with art and society.
This next phase in Studio Museum’s storied history marks more than the unveiling of a building; it signals a renewed -commitment to shaping the future of art while honoring its past. With nearly 9,000 works in the museum’s permanent collection, a $300 million capital campaign and a list of exhibitions that have shifted the discourse of American art, this iconic structure is reemerging as a global model for institutions devoted to equity and imagination. Inspired by the form of Harlem’s sidewalks, its new 82,000-square-foot home expands the possibilities of how audiences will experience art and how artists will shape it.
For Golden, it is important to reflect on the significance of this moment—not just for the city but for the global art scene. “The Studio Museum is, to me, very much the tagline that we’re using in all our marketing, because it has always been a feeling that I have held about the museum, which is that the Studio Museum is home—it is ‘where Black art lives,’” she says.
“I see the Studio Museum as a critical part of this story of writing history, reimagining narratives, creating space,” Golden continues. “That’s why I feel so lucky to be the seventh leader of this institution—to be in this moment. What the Studio Museum means to me is what I think our founders imagined at that very beginning: a place, an institution that would center the vision and the voices of artists of African descent.”
ARTS GUIDE
Amy Sherald: American Sublime
Amy Sherald has long been celebrated for painting Black life from a unique lens. Her portraits, rendered in gray-scale skin tones against vibrant fields of color, invite us to see her sitters—ordinary people, cultural icons, figures lost too soon—on their own terms. With American Sublime, the largest survey of her career to date, Sherald confirmed her place as one of the most important portraitists of her generation. But the exhibition, which recently concluded at the Whitney Museum of American Art after opening at SFMOMA, has also become something more: a lightning rod in the ongoing battle over which stories art institutions choose to tell.
Spanning nearly two decades of work, American Sublime gathers close to 50 paintings, from early single-figure studies to more recent multi-figure compositions. Sherald’s use of gray scale frees her subjects from reductive readings, while the saturated backdrops and stylized settings evoke a world where Black existence is beautiful. During a moment when Black lives continue to be politicized, -Sherald offers images that insist on presence, dignity and depth.
Sherald reclaims the word “sublime” to describe the fullness of Black humanity itself. Works like “The Bathers” (2015) and “Ecclesia (The Meeting of Inheritance and Horizons)” (2024) draw on European precedents while deliberately rewriting them, inserting Black figures into historical scenes from which they had long been excluded. This reclamation carries political weight, but Sherald renders it with softness that never loses sight of her sitters’ individuality.
Yet American Sublime has also been marked by controversy. Earlier this year, Sherald withdrew the show from the -Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery after the museum raised concerns over one painting, “Trans Forming Liberty” (2024), a portrait of a trans woman styled as the Statue of Liberty. Rather than allow the work to be contextualized away—or worse, removed—Sherald canceled the exhibition, citing censorship and institutional fear amid the current administration’s hostility toward trans lives. The decision was historic: This would have been the first solo show by a Black woman at the National Portrait Gallery since its founding in 1968.
Sherald’s withdrawal reverberates beyond Washington. It forces us to ask: What does it mean for a museum to celebrate Black art while shying away from its complexities? How can institutions claim to champion inclusion if they cannot withstand political discomfort? These questions strike at the heart of today’s cultural climate, where books are banned in schools, DEI programs are gutted and artistic expression is attacked. In this landscape, the role of Black artists is essential.
By presenting Black Americans in moments of quiet reflection, joy and ordinary being, Sherald resists the narrow scripts imposed on Black life. Her Michelle Obama portrait affirms elegance and modernity on a global stage. Her Breonna Taylor portrait insists on visibility in the face of injustice. Each painting becomes a counter-archive, a corrective to histories that have rendered so many unseen.
EXHIBITIONS
Giants: Art from the Dean Collection of Swizz Beatz and Alicia Keys
Since its debut in 2024, Giants has traveled from Brooklyn to Atlanta to Minneapolis, leaving an indelible mark on each city it touched. The first major public exhibition of the couple’s private collection, Giants celebrates Black diasporic artists—through nearly 100 works, spanning painting, photography, sculpture and mixed media. The title itself speaks volumes, referring to both the towering reputations of figures like Gordon Parks, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and Lorna Simpson and the monumental scale of works by contemporary visionaries such as Derrick Adams, Meleko Mokgosi, Mickalene Thomas, Nina Chanel Abney and Titus Kaphar. As much a cultural movement as an exhibition, Giants reflects the Deans’s ethos of “artists supporting artists,” forging deep relationships with creators and amplifying their voices on a global stage.
Elizabeth Catlett: A Black Revolutionary Artist and All That It Implies
Elizabeth Catlett’s landmark retrospective brings one of the 20th century’s most uncompromising voices to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., the very city that shaped the artist’s formative years. Featuring more than 150 works across sculpture, printmaking, painting and drawing, the exhibition, which ran from March 9, 2025, through July 6, 2025, illuminated Catlett’s decades-long career as an artist-activist who refused to separate her craft from her politics. From the poignant linocut “Sharecropper,” melding African-American and Mexican campesino iconography, to the marble bust “Naima: My Granddaughter,” Catlett’s art bridges geographies, histories and cultures.”
Organized in collaboration with the Brooklyn Museum and the Art Institute of Chicago, the show underscored Catlett’s deep commitment to racial, gender and economic justice, as well as her belief in art’s role as a tool for liberation.
Rashid Johnson: A Poem for Deep Thinkers
In Rashid Johnson: A Poem for Deep Thinkers, which runs through January 18, 2026, the Guggenheim’s spiraling rotunda is transformed into both a gallery and a stage for one of contemporary art’s most important voices. For nearly three decades, Johnson has woven history, philosophy, literature and music into a body of work that’s as intellectually rigorous as it is visually striking. Nearly 90 of his pieces fill the museum; they range from his signature black-soap paintings and spray-painted text works to immersive film, video and large-scale sculpture. At the pinnacle of the space sits “Sanguine,” a monumental site-specific installation with an embedded piano, ready to host live performances that bridge visual art and sound.
Superfine: Tailoring Black Style
With Superfine: Tailoring Black Style, the Costume Institute of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art delivers a three-century journey through the story of Black dandyism. On view through October 26, 2025—and the theme of this year’s Met Gala—the exhibition examines how self-presentation has served as both a form of resistance and a declaration of identity within the African diaspora. Inspired by Monica L. Miller’s seminal text Slaves to -Fashion, the show unfolds across 12 sections—including Champion, Respectability, Heritage, Beauty, Cosmopolitanism and more—each revealing a distinct facet of this aesthetic tradition.
Viewers encounter everything from 18th-century garments to contemporary looks by Black designers. There are also paintings, photographs and decorative arts, by artists including Torkwase Dyson, Tanda Francis, André Grenard Matswa and Tyler Mitchell. These works trace dandyism’s evolution from Enlightenment-era England to the runways of New York, London and Paris, illuminating its fusion of African and European style codes. Curated by Andrew Bolton, with Miller as guest curator, Superfine positions elegance, tailoring and flair not as vanity but as visionary tools—ways Black men and women have long fashioned themselves into symbols of power, beauty and cultural possibility.
The Lost World: The Art of Minnie Evans
A few days ahead of Thanksgiving, Atlanta’s High Museum of Art honors one of America’s most visionary and under-recognized artists with The Lost World: The Art of Minnie Evans. Opening on November 14, 2025, and running through April 12, 2026, before embarking on a national tour, this landmark exhibition brings together more than 100 of Evans’s drawings—from her early, spare works of the 1930s to the vivid, dreamlike mandalas that defined her later career. Born in 1892, in rural North Carolina, Evans spent years working as a gatekeeper at Wilmington’s Airlie Gardens; the experience infused her art with vibrant floral motifs and tropical color.
In 1975, Evans became one of the first Black artists to have a solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art. With The Lost World, the High not only introduces her to a new generation but reframes her place in global Surrealism, revealing how her lived experiences—rooted in the South, yet universally expansive—shaped a body of work that will stand the test of time.
The Genesis Facade Commission: Jeffrey Gibson, The Animal That Therefore I Am
Jeffrey Gibson’s The Animal That Therefore I Am marks a major moment for the acclaimed artist, who made history last year as the first Indigenous artist to represent the United States with a solo show at the Venice Biennale. Opening on September 12, as part of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s 2025 Genesis Facade Commission, the exhibition will run through June 9, 2026; it features four large-scale figurative sculptures installed on the Met’s iconic Fifth Avenue exterior. Drawing on Gibson’s signature fusion of Indigenous worldviews, vibrant abstraction, text and color, the works invite reflection on the interconnectedness of all living beings and the environment.
A member of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians, and of Cherokee descent, Gibson has a multidisciplinary practice that spans painting, performance, film and curation. His work often challenges the stereotypical ways in which Indigenous culture has been represented. This commission marks the sixth facade project at the Met; it runs alongside Gibson’s first solo exhibition in France, This Is Dedicated to the One I Love, opening in October at Hauser & Wirth Paris.
THEATER
Ragtime
Ragtime returns to Broadway this fall, bringing its sweeping portrait of America’s turn-of-the-century struggles back to the stage with fresh urgency. Opening September 26, 2025, and playing through January 4, 2026, at Lincoln Center’s Vivian Beaumont Theater, this revival sees Tony Award–nominee Joshua Henry step into the role of Coalhouse Walker, Jr., a proud Black pianist whose fight for justice lies at the heart of the story. When it premiered in 1998, Ragtime’s original cast featured two icons of theater: Audra McDonald, who won her second Tony for her portrayal of Sarah, and Brian Stokes Mitchell as Coalhouse. Adapted from E.L. Doctorow’s novel, the musical interweaves the lives of African–Americans, Eastern European immigrants and wealthy White Americans, against the backdrop of historical figures such as Booker T. Washington and Evelyn Nesbit. With its soaring score, layered characters, and timeless themes of justice, equality, and the -American dream, Ragtime remains a theatrical masterpiece.
Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater’s Holiday Season
Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater is back at the New York City Center, with a historic five-week holiday engagement that ushers in a new chapter under Artistic Director Alicia Graf Mack. Joined by Associate Artistic Director Matthew Rushing, Mack honors Ailey’s legacy with dynamic revivals while expanding the company’s reach through daring premieres. The new season, from December 3, 2025, through January 4, 2026, features five world premieres, each a celebration of innovation and storytelling: Fredrick Earl Mosley’s “Embrace,” a soulful meditation on human connection set to music by Adele, Stevie Wonder and Ed Sheeran; Maija García’s “Jazz Island,” an Afro–Caribbean folktale inspired by Geoffrey Holder; Matthew Neenan’s exuberant company debut; Jamar Roberts’s “Song of the Anchorite,” a modern reimagining of Ailey’s 1961 “Hermit Songs”; and “The Holy Blues,” a spirited blend of gospel and blues by Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, with Samantha Figgins and Chalvar Monteiro.
LIVE MUSIC
Kendrick Lamar’s Super Bowl Halftime Performance
On February 9, 2025, Kendrick Lamar took center stage for one of the most-watched gigs in the world—the Super Bowl halftime show—and turned in something far more than a performance. Following the critical and commercial triumph of GNX, which claimed the title of the longest-running No. 1 on Billboard’s Top Rap Albums chart (22 weeks), Lamar entered the Caesar’s Superdome with the weight of his legacy and the eyes of millions upon him.
GNX had become a cultural lightning rod before the show even began. Its fearless lyricism, complex production and raw honesty struck a chord with the industry and listeners alike. But beyond the music itself, the album reignited one of rap’s most intense rivalries: Lamar’s ongoing, very public clash with Drake. That feud, splashed across headlines and social media timelines, sparked fierce debates around authenticity, artistic integrity and what it means to hold space at hip-hop’s most exclusive table. Lamar’s halftime performance blurred the line between cultural statement and artistic manifesto.
On stage, Samuel L. Jackson appeared as “Uncle Sam,” in a costume drawn from early 20th-century recruitment posters but altered with 16 stars pinned to his lapel—a subtle nod to Kendrick’s lyric in “Wacced Out Murals.” Against a backdrop of West Coast street tableaux and shifting silhouettes, Lamar moved through a setlist that stitched together the urgency of regionalism with the intimacy of confession. Each beat carried the density of Black history and the contradictions of American life, folding decades of West Coast hip-hop lineage into a performance that still felt unmistakably forward-looking.
Megan Thee Stallion at Weekend One of Coachella
Megan Thee Stallion’s Coachella set on April 13, 2025, was a convocation of Black womanhood and a celebration of lineage. On Weekend One, beneath the vast California sky, Megan claimed the stage by carrying the weight and talent of those who came before. Her 18-song set traced the arcs of joy, triumph and femininity.
The evening’s most profound moments were those of communion. When Queen Latifah emerged, the stage became consecrated ground. Their duets on “Plan B” and the anthem “U.N.I.T.Y.” were more than nostalgia; they served as a dialogue across generations. Latifah, whose voice helped define the era of conscious hip-hop, and Megan, the force of contemporary Southern rap, created a lineage that felt alive and sacred.
Victoria Monét’s collaboration with Megan on “Spin” and “On My Mama” was a choreography of gesture and energy that embodied solidarity—and the unspoken understanding that Black women’s artistry is communal. Later, Ciara’s appearance to perform “Roc Steady”—sampling “Goodies”—reminded the audience of the continuum of influence and the ways mentorship and artistry ripple outward, carrying memory and power across time.
Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter Tour
In 2025, Beyoncé did not simply perform—she testified. The Cowboy Carter & the Rodeo Chitlin’ Circuit Tour, which ran from April 28 through July 26, was an act of cultural excavation. Beneath the weight of decades of erasure, Beyoncé unearthed a history of the Black West that had been relegated to the shadows, brushing off the dust and breathing it back into life. Night after night, under the heat of stadium lights, she summoned a lineage.
The cowboy—mythic, solitary, seared into the American psyche—has long been painted in the pale hues of Hollywood’s imagination. But the truth, the one Beyoncé dared the world to see, is that nearly one in four 19th-century cowboys were Black. Her stage became a living archive. It melded the deep blues of gospel laments, the open-throated wail of country ballads and the kinetic joy of hip-hop.
In the spaces between her notes, Beyoncé told the stories of Black cowboys, Black homesteaders and the overlooked architects of the American frontier. She wove their voices into her own, turning oral history into something you could dance to, cry to and carry home with you. She was not merely singing about them; she was standing with them, in a chorus that spanned centuries.
The tour’s impact was as measurable as it was immeasurable. According to Billboard Boxscore, it became the highest-grossing country-music tour in history—a commercial feat that doubled as a cultural gauntlet. But its ripple effects reached beyond the box office. In its wake came a shift; the Recording Academy announced it would divide the Best Country Album Grammy into two categories for 2026: Best Contemporary Country Album and Best Traditional Country Album. For some, the move was a recognition of how country’s borders have expanded, making it a genre porous enough to hold R&B cadences, gospel swells and the outlaw spirit all at once. For others—particularly White country artists, who bristled at Beyoncé’s win—it felt like a line in the sand. It was a reminder that Black artistry has no fixed boundary, no “proper” lane and no limit to the stages it can claim. Either way, the message was clear: The map of country music has been redrawn, and Beyoncé helped hold the pen.
More than a concert, this was a mirror, polished with truth and turned toward us. It asked: Who do we erase when we tell our stories? Who deserves to be remembered? In that reflection, Beyoncé handed the mic not just to herself but to a people, a past and a future that refuse to be forgotten.
Solange’s “Eldorado Ballroom” Houston
When Solange Knowles returned home to H-Town in 2025, she stepped into this legacy with a vision that was part reverence, part reimagination. Through her creative platform Saint Heron, she curated the “Eldorado Ballroom” series, a luminous, avant-garde celebration of live performance in all its evolving forms. In partnership with Performing Arts Houston, the project unfolded on June 10-20, 2025, across six programs and three venues—Jones Hall, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and the Eldorado Ballroom itself—each evening a different lens through which to view the continuum of Black artistry.
The Eldorado Ballroom is not new to this role. Since its founding in 1939, it has been a sanctuary for Black Houston: hosting jazz legends like Duke Ellington and Count Basie, serving as a gathering place for civil rights meetings and echoing with the steps of countless dancers, whose feet kept time with the hopes and heartbreaks of generations. In a city scarred by segregation and gentrification, the Eldorado has endured as a living archive of Black cultural life.
Solange’s curatorial project transformed this history into a vibrant present. Her “Eldorado Ballroom” series was both homage and reimagination; it wove together sonic textures and movement traditions that honored the ballroom’s legacy while pushing forward into new artistic territories. Musically, the performances traversed genres, melding zydeco, jazz improvisations, hip-hop and gospel. The soundscape invited listeners into a deep communion with history, echoing the ballroom’s early days. Yet it also challenged listeners to envision what Black artistry can become when it is freed from the constraints of expectation.
“On Dissonance” honored the transformative contributions of Black women to orchestral and operatic music, featuring works by Julia Perry, Tania León and Solange herself. It was performed by the Houston Symphony under the baton of Jeri Lynne Johnson, with Zoie Reams’s soprano ringing through the hall like a prayer. “Type of Guest” dissolved the boundaries between music, art and theater through Autumn Knight’s fearless performance art and Liv.e’s genre-fluid soundscapes. Monuments Are Here, Solange’s short film directed by Nuotama Bodomo, meditated on the sacred act of collecting. It anchored a broader film series exploring Black domesticity and the stories our objects hold.
There were nights of homecoming, too. “Paper in My Shoe” brought zydeco back to the Eldorado, with Kara Jackson and Rosie Ledet honoring the genre’s Black roots while shaping its future. “Glory to Glory” gathered the Clark Sisters, Angélla Christie, Dominique Johnson and the devotional works of Mary Lou Williams in a soaring revival of spiritual artistry. Solange herself shared with the audience that “Ms. Twinkie [Clark] has to be revered, like Beethoven, Bach, Quincy Jones and all the amazing composers. I listen to the Clark Sisters on my worst day, I listen to the Clark Sisters on my best day, and they help me to feel closer to God in ways that you can’t imagine.”
And “Go Slow”—a night grounded by Dozie Kanu’s sculptural interpretation of the Parliament-Funkadelic Mothership and a soundscape curated by Crystallmess with HYPERFEMME and Big Ace—was a meditation on Black Southern electronic music.
In reclaiming the Eldorado, Solange offered a master class on how Black culture sustains itself: through movement, through music, through memory. The space became a metaphor for the Black experience itself—a place where pain and pleasure, struggle and celebration exist side by side. Each night was a gathering of ancestors and descendants, a communion of spirits, a refusal to let history fossilize into something static. It was to feel—deep in the bones—that Black culture is not merely surviving but thriving, transforming and lighting the way forward.
Jeezy TM 101 Anniversary Tour
Jeezy’s seminal 2005 album, Thug Motivation 101, marks its 20th anniversary this year—a milestone celebrated with a reimagination that bridges hip-hop’s gritty roots and the grandiosity of classical music. From June 27 to September 12, 2025, Jeezy’s anniversary tour, backed by a live orchestra, challenged the boundaries of genre and history, creating a dialogue between streets and symphonies.
Reflecting on the album’s legacy, Jeezy explains, “Art is to get better over time, to appreciate over time. This was a magnificent piece of art that changed culture. To watch it grow and see it age like fine wine—it only made sense to package it differently, with some evolution on it. When I wrote this album, I was a completely different person. But I can celebrate it 20 years later, wholeheartedly, because I have evolved. And the music has evolved as well. If it hadn’t evolved, people wouldn’t be ready to hear it this way.”
Thug Motivation 101 was a proclamation: Jeezy’s sagas of struggle, survival and aspiration captured a generation navigating the margins. “‘Soul Survivor’ feels, now, more realistic to me,” he reflects. “I truly am a testament to that. I kept my integrity, my values, and stayed on course with my purpose. I became what I wrote about.”
The decision to perform this album with an orchestra transforms that raw energy into something epic: a sweeping soundscape that reveals new dimensions in Jeezy’s work. The orchestra doesn’t soften the grit—it magnifies it, turning trap anthems into anthems of resilience writ large. “Fusing the orchestra with the vibrations of what TM 101 was then and now—it elevated it,” Jeezy explains. “It presented it in a way that the album has matured, and the people have matured with it.”
Historically, the fusion of hip-hop and orchestral music has been rare but revelatory. From Nas’s Illmatic live-orchestra performances to Kendrick Lamar’s DAMN concerts with classical arrangements, these moments reveal hip-hop’s capacity to have a dialogue with tradition while expanding its own horizons.
The production is a study in contrasts: Jeezy commands the stage with his trademark energy, while the orchestra embodies precision and grandeur. “Success is an atmosphere,” Jeezy states. “When people show up, they can feel it—they can be this too. They can live this too. We all deserve that. And that’s a contribution to culture.” Each song becomes a chapter in a larger epic, supported by sweeping musical arrangements that transform the everyday into the mythic. Jeezy’s delivery, mixed with orchestral textures, invites a generation to witness how trap music has matured, how Black artistry evolves, and how resilience, ambition and creative expression continue to define culture.
FILM
One of Them Days
This woman buddy comedy arrived on January 17, 2025, as a warm, wild reprieve. Directed by Lawrence Lamont and written by Syreeta Singleton, One of Them Days marked both a debut role for SZA and an irresistible showcase for Keke Palmer. It chronicles two roommates—Dreux (Palmer) and Alyssa (SZA)—as they scramble across Los Angeles to replace stolen rent money, evading eviction with humor and heart amid the city’s low-fi chaos. Drawing inspiration from classics like Friday, the film is a deeply humorous celebration of Black female friendship.
Sly Lives! (aka The Burden of Black Genius)
Questlove’s reverent, restless documentary excavates the rise and fade of Sly and the Family Stone while laying bare the unseen toll of genius. Premiering at Sundance in January, and released on Hulu/Disney+ in February, the film is a lush portrait guided by voices such as Andre 3000, D’Angelo, Chaka Khan and Suzanne De Passe. It frames Sly Stone’s electrifying brilliance against the weight of expectation, mental health struggles and the erasure that follows Black genius creators who burn too bright.
Sinners
Director Ryan Coogler’s genre-busting film, released April 18, feels like a seven-course feast—dense, intense and haunting. Sinners is a period piece that folds violence, romance, music and symbolism into a cinematic language that is unapologetically Black. Vampires emerge not as mere monsters but as spectral embodiments of racism’s unending drain on Black life in the South, a haunting metaphor for generational trauma. Among the film’s most striking moments is the recreation of Ernie Barnes’s iconic “Sugar Shack” painting. Here, the elongated, exuberant figures of Barnes’s work—long cherished for their celebration of Black communal joy—are transposed into living choreography, a bridge between visual art, performance and cultural memory.
HIM
Jordan Peele’s Monkeypaw Production steps into the arena of sports horror with a chilling twist. Directed by Justin Tipping, the film, which hit theaters on September 19, follows Cameron Cade (Tyriq Withers), a promising young football player invited to train under Isaiah White (Marlon Wayans), a legendary quarterback whose retreat is as dangerous as it is revered. Then the promise of greatness morphs into a psychological nightmare. With an eerie precision, the film takes the hallowed mythos of American sports and refracts it through horror’s lens—making us question whether the pursuit of ambition demands more than we’re willing to pay.
BEST ALBUMS OF 2025
Ledisi, The Crown
Teyana Taylor, Escape Room
JID, God Does Like Ugly
Clipse, Let God Sort Em Out
Bootsy Collins, Album of the Year #1 Funkateer
Destin Conrad, Love on Digital
Metro Boomin, A Futuristic Summa
Amaarae, Black Star
Tyler, the Creator, Don’t Tap the Glass
Durand Bernarr, BLOOM