Author: Shekari Philemon

Having a baby changes everything, including your face. Acne that disappeared years ago can return overnight. Dark patches appear on cheeks and foreheads. Skin becomes dull, dry and unfamiliar. And somewhere in the middle of the sleepless nights and the enormous emotional weight of new parenthood, many new mothers find themselves staring into the mirror feeling like a stranger. The cultural pressure to look exactly as you did before giving birth is real and it is relentless. Social media amplifies it. Well-meaning comments reinforce it. And for many women, the anxiety around postpartum appearance quietly becomes one more thing to…

Cardi B is one of the biggest touring artists in the world right now, selling out arenas across North America on her Little Miss Drama Tour. Her seven-year-old daughter Kulture would probably love to be there for every single show. Her school, however, has other plans. In a recent interview with Allure magazine published on March 24, Cardi B opened up about balancing life on the road with the responsibilities of raising four children. The conversation covered her rap career, her new haircare line Grow-Good Beauty and the parenting philosophy she has been quietly building for years. When the subject…

A short clip from a recent interview with Jada Pinkett Smith has taken over social media, racking up millions of views across platforms within days of its release. The reason is simple. Someone finally asked her directly whether Will Smith would be moving back in, and she answered without hesitation. Her position was clear. Not right now. She is enjoying her space, she said, and that space has become something she values deeply. The simplicity of the answer is precisely what made it land so hard online, where speculation about the couple’s living arrangement has never really gone quiet. A…

Cardi B has never been one to do things halfway. When the rapper decided to launch her own haircare and beauty brand, she did not hand the formula off to a lab and walk away. She rolled up her sleeves, got into her kitchen and started experimenting. The results were mostly promising. Except for the garlic. Appearing on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon this week, Cardi B took a moment away from promoting her Madison Square Garden concerts to talk about Grow-Good, her new haircare and beauty line. The conversation quickly took a detour into one of the more…

Ten years is a long time to show up, speak up and build something from nothing. Audrey Indome and Tolly Shoneye did exactly that with The Receipts Podcast, a show they launched in 2016 as a dedicated space for Black women to speak openly about love, life and everything in between. Now, after nearly 300 episodes, the two founders are stepping down as hosts. The decision, by their own account, was not an easy one. It was emotional, deeply personal and a long time in the making. Both women describe it as one of the hardest calls they have ever…

There is a conversation happening inside your head right now. It has been going on your entire life. And according to decades of psychological research, it may be one of the most powerful forces shaping your emotional wellbeing, your performance at work and your ability to recover when things go wrong. Self-talk, the internal dialogue that runs constantly beneath the surface of your daily experience, is not a quirk or an eccentricity. It is a psychological tool, and like any tool, its impact depends entirely on how it is used. The five types below represent the range of what that…

Few moments in recent memory rattled the entertainment world quite like the wave of legal accusations that swept through it in 2024. For Jay-Z, one of those moments landed with particular force. The rapper and business mogul, born Shawn Carter, is now speaking openly about the emotional aftermath of a rape lawsuit filed against him last year, describing a level of anger he had not felt in years. In a recent interview with GQ magazine, Jay-Z reflected on how the allegations affected him personally. He described feeling heartbroken from the moment the claims became public, and said the experience was…

Earl Sweatshirt and MIKE are taking their creative partnership on the road, announcing a run of Australian and New Zealand headline shows in May that will arrive just weeks after the release of their highly anticipated collaborative album. The tour marks one of the more compelling live propositions in underground hip hop this year, pairing two artists whose chemistry has been building quietly for over a decade. The run opens in Auckland at Studio The Venue on May 22, before moving to Melbourne’s The Timber Yard on May 23 and Brisbane’s The Tivoli on May 27. A headlining set at…

Not long ago, Daniel Chenjerai who performs under the name DC3 was an unknown teenager from Northampton writing rap verses in relative obscurity. Now, at 18, he finds himself nominated for two MOBO Awards, rubbing shoulders with some of the most talked about names in British music, and still trying to process how quickly everything has changed. Chenjerai, earned nominations for Best Newcomer and Best Gospel Act at the awards, which celebrate excellence in black British music. The ceremony is set to take place in Manchester, where he will share the spotlight with established acts including Olivia Dean, PinkPantheress and…

For decades, gym culture operated on a widely accepted rule: the body can only utilize somewhere between 30 and 40 grams of protein in a single meal. Anything beyond that threshold, the thinking went, was simply burned off as fuel or otherwise wasted. The practical implication was that protein intake should be spread evenly across four to six meals per day to maximize muscle building, a structure that worked well for people with flexible schedules but left little room for anyone eating differently. The problem, it turns out, is that this rule was never really tested in a rigorous way.…