Cheese! With big papa Snoop missing from this cute family photo, Corde, momma Shante, Cordell, and little Miss Cori put on their Kool-Aid smiles for an exclusive Broadus pic. Everyone looks cute, even though it would have been nice if Corde would have at least thrown on a shirt, but hey, whatever works!

Twitter

Speaking of family photos, our girl Brandy, aka, B-Rocka, 33, took a very cute photo with her 10-year-old daughter, Sy’rai Smith. Taking from her mom’s fashion sense, Sy’rai rocked braids, including some adorable pink and white extensions we’re digging.

Twitter – Christina Milian

It’s fall, ya’ll! So with that, everybody is hitting the pumpkin patches and trying out the hay rides again, including Christina Milian and her little lady, Violet. The cutie patootie in her colorful floral dress and braided coily curls posed on top of a pumpkin and cheesed it up for the camera. Milian captioned the photo, “A pumpkin for my little pumpkin!”

And who needs models when you can get your kids to be in your ads? Diddy got his son Christian, his other “son” Quincy (Kim Porter and Al B Sure’s son), and model Tyson Beckford’s son, Jordan Beckford, to pose for the new fall Sean John ad. Aren’t they fresh?

And guess who just turned 8? The son of Lebron James, Lebron James Jr! Savannah Brinson posted this picture via Instagram of her son over the years. As she said in the caption, “Happy 8th Bday Jr! Wow time is flying by.” Doesn’t it always?

And here’s an up-to-date photo of “Jr.” hanging out at dinner with his family. Sounds like dad is proud: “Happy Bday again to my 8 year old young man Bronny. Love u son!!”

Adorable-ness all around!

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Source: thehollywoodgossip.com

Despite my earnest efforts to try to help Oprah save her fledgling network, she is still hell bent on doing it her way – mainly by interviewing us to death.

And who can blame her? Oprah’s signature program, “Oprah’s Next Chapter,” has produced the second highest viewership in the short lived network’s history.  Yet as the viewership numbers appears to be looking up for O, Oprah might be running out of A-listers willing to appear on the show and it looks like she is scrounging through the bottom of the barrel looking for quality interviews. It has also been reported that she has even considered getting OJ Simpson on her show so that she can get him to confess to the 1992 murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman. I guess there is nothing like circling the drain of failure to force you to go back on your very public vow to never have OJ on as a guest.

Nevertheless, since Oprah insists on doing things her way, I’m still willing to help a sister out. What can I say? Oprah is my shero. Therefore, as a hard and fast stan, who wants to see her succeed, I have put on my thinking cap and came up with a list of five people Oprah should consider interviewing for her next chapter:

Source: gumbumper.com

Lil’ Kim.

What Will Make Her a Good Guest: Seriously this woman is screaming for a sit down, tell all (and I mean ALL) interview. There is no more intriguing person right now in my mind than Lil Kim. Not only was she the pioneer in the smut rap genre, her rise to fame crosses all sorts of intersections between race and gender and sexuality. She even had good Christian girls walking around, talking about, I used to be scared of the d**k, now I throw lips to the s**t, handle it like a real b****h… Heck, I bet after reading this, about a dozen people went straight to YouTube to pull up her entire archive of music.

What Oprah Should Ask Her: Listen, there is no need to beat around the bush. Just go right in and ask her, “What the hell happened to your face?” Maybe not in that manner, but you get what I’m saying. Then you can talk about what’s holding her back from a comeback; her beef with Minaj; her time in prison and her relationship with Biggie Smalls. But most importantly talk about her face. Heck make it a two-part special. After Oprah gets down to exposing all the pathology behind her…er…transformation into a Puerto Rican cat, she can then hand the reigns over to Iyanla Vanzant, who can lay hands on her, do some chanting and help Kim find her inner peace.  On a more serious note: body dysmorphic disorder is a very real thing, even in the African American community. And with so many folks of darker hues doing all sorts of craziness like skin bleaching to appear lighter, that interview could help lots of folks work through some of the same sort of self-esteem issues we’ve seen on full display with Kim.

We’re all about positively profiling adorable children in Hollywood (unlike some folks), and so in another installment of Cute Kid Alert (brought to you with the help of Black Celeb Kids!), it’s time to check out some very adorable kids and what they’ve been up to this week.

To start, why not showcase proud papa, Ne-Yo? The singer/songwriter is the father of two (Madilyn Grace Smith and Mason Evan Smith), and even though he doesn’t get to spend as much time with his babies as he would like, when he does, they get to see daddy in action! Check out the below photos of the singer with his little girl, Madilyn (aka, Maddie) who will be two in November.

Source: Black Celeb Kids

Source: Twitter – Ne-Yo

In more cuteness, David Otunga, Jr. turned three recently! The little man of Jennifer Hudson and her fiance, David Otunga, took a few adorable photos before and during his b-day festivities, including one of him playing with his dad’s action figure (remember, papa David is a professional wrestler…and a lawyer on the side). Check out the cute pics!

Source: Black Celeb Kids

Source: Twitter – Jennifer Hudson

Source: Twitter – Jennifer Hudson

Source: Twitter – Jennifer Hudson

Ha! Love this cake, and the picture. The caption for JHud’s photo said, “Happy 3rd bday boss baby!!! U r the greatest n best Blessing ever! God is so good!!!”

And how could we forget about #Dembabies, aka Moroccan and Monroe, Mariah Carey’s 15-month-old twins? She was snapped and shared photos of her alone time with the kids as they played by the pool and prepared for nap time! Adorable, much? Indeed.

Source: Twitter – Mariah Carey

Source: Black Celeb Kids

Lastly, despite all the drama occurring between these two (or three if you include Mama Dee) on “Love & Hip Hop: Atlanta,” Lil Scrappy and Erica Dixon came together with their daughter Emani for a children’s fashion show in Atlanta. They all were big smiles (including Mama Dee), and looked like a happy family. Rumors are swirling that the two are engaged now, but we’ll wait and see what happens. Or watch for that matter…

Source: Black Celeb Kids

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Another day, another opportunity to be nosey and find out which stars have ties/roots/connections to the Caribbean. This time though, we’re professing our love for some of our favorite Bajan stars, even if we didn’t know half of them were of Barbadian descent in the first place…Either way, enjoy!

Source: howmuchdotheyweigh.com

Stacey Dash

I know what you’re thinking. Stacey Dash is clearly a mix of a lot of things, but the actress and even singer (random) is repping Barbados. Not necessarily in the public…but you get what I mean. Born in the Bronx, she’s the child of a Bajan father and a Mexican and Native American mother (Aztec and Blackfoot Native American). Definitely an interesting mix culturally, but then again, she’s an interesting lady.

Source: Starcasm.net

For those who think I only have a problem with white rappers being stupid, allow me to assure you I also don’t appreciate 6-year-old male rappers being allowed to be do inappropriate things on camera or in studios either.

The Internet has been lit up for the past few days with a song and video by Albert Roundtree, Jr. known as “Booty Pop,” which on the surface would appear to be just another run of the mill rap song but coming from a 6-year-old boy it comes off as something altogether different. The only people bouncing their heads to this song are the scantily clad women in the video, and truthfully they’re bouncing their butts more than anything else—right alongside this child’s pre-pubescent face. The rest of us, however, are shaking our heads wondering who thought this was a good idea and it appears it’s some concoction between the boy’s parents and a Florida producer by the name of Tyler Council. (Is anyone else shocked Brian McKnight isn’t behind this?) Tyler claims the song and video are supposed to be satire, telling the Sun Sentinel.

“People Don’t Get It,” he said, adding that the video is a spoof of “all that waka-flaka foolishness on the radio.

“I’m all into the positivity movement. I make free videos for charities working against bullying. Now I’m the devil.”

How anyone is supposed to pick that up from the two-and-a-half minute clip is beyond me. From the quality of the video, you might think, “they can’t be serious,” but this looks like a child having age inappropriate fun by the pool, spewing lyrics like, “I’m the baddest boy in town, you the hottest girl around. We can have some fun tonight, cause we both feelin’ right,” that no one wants to hear from a 6-year-old’s mouth.

The story also changes a bit when Tyler says he had the same reaction to the song as most of the public when Albert’s parents approached him with it and said their young child wrote it. However, since he, admittedly, is not in a position to turn down income he suddenly changed his tune and thought this could be a feel-good summertime video.

Though it would have been nice for Tyler to turn down this offer which he says he got “peanuts” for, the parents are the real problem. The fact that they thought a producer was the first person they should run to when their son wrote a song about rocking a girl’s world and making her booty pop is disturbing. Looks like just another day of child exploitation for the sake of YouTube hits, of which this video has 1,234,000 of. Hope mommy and daddy (who aren’t taking calls from the press) are proud.

Check out the video. What do you think?

Brande Victorian is the news and operations editor for madamenoire.com. Follow her on twitter @Be_Vic.

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Source: Daze News

We all know slavery has considerably limited African Americans’ ability to trace their roots so whenever someone is able to uncover details of their ancestry as far back as Wanda Sykes has, it’s pretty exciting.

As part of a new PBS series, Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates, Jr., the Harvard professor, along with historian Ira Berlin, a professor at the University of Maryland, were able to trace Wanda’s roots back to her paternal ninth great-grandmother, Elizabeth Banks. Elizabeth was an indentured servant who, on June 20, 1683, was given 39 lashes on her bare back and an extension of her servitude as punishment for “fornication & Bastardy with a negroe slave,” according to a York County, VA, court document.

“This is an extraordinary case and the only such case that I know of in which it is possible to trace a black family rooted in freedom from the late 17th century to the present,”professor Berlin told the New York Times.

Mary Banks, Elizabeth’s biracial child, was born around 1683 and inherited her mother’s free status, although she was also indentured. She appeared to have four children and the family continued to grow as the Banks’ descendants married other free people of color. Several generations of Sykes’ have remained in the Virginia area since Elizabeth arrived, most likely from Scotland, and professor Berlin says her story changes the images we typically have of the lives of the first Africans in the New World from popular depictions of plantation life to real communities. According to Paul Heinegg, a respected genealogist and historian, more than 1,000 mixed-race children were born to white women in colonial Virginia and Maryland, but their existence has been erased from oral and written history, since they lack marriage records, wills, and property.

Regardless, professor Gates says, “The bottom line is that Wanda Sykes has the longest continuously documented family tree of any African-American we have ever researched.”

Wanda’s pretty excited about that too, although she said discoveries that some of her ancestors owned slaves and that she couldn’t trace some of her other familial roots back as far were disappointing.

“I’m just grateful I do have a history,” she said. “It’s bittersweet. I was not able to trace the other three grandparents, and that’s huge.

“It shows that we’re still paying for the history of this country, basically. It’s just incredible to go back and see that you did not matter.”

Wanda’s family segment will appear on the new PBS series in May, but the show will debut this coming Sunday. Other figures whose roots will be uncovered include Barbara Walters, Harry Connick Jr., Samuel L. Jackson, Margaret Cho, Kevin Bacon, Georgia Representative John Lewis, Branford Marsalis, Robert Downey Jr. and Dr. Sanjay Gupta.

Brande Victorian is a blogger and culture writer in New York City. Follower her on Twitter at @be_vic.

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Source: Jezebel

It’s unfortunate when an actor who disappears from the scene only pops back up because of drama. Yes, Cuba Gooding, Jr. is currently staring in the Tuskegee Airmen film, Red Tails, but the media is more concerned with the tails he was allegedly grabbing at Maloney’s Tavern in Albuquerque, New Mexico earlier this month.

Here’s the account from one of the victims who gave the rundown to Jezebel.com:

“Cuba Gooding, Jr. came into Maloney’s Pub in Albuquerque on March 1st, and the bar was fairly crowded at the time. No one seemed to notice or realize who he was when he first entered, and he inappropriately touched [Sara] and she immediately dismissed him. Someone then recognized him and swarms of people started crowding around him to take pictures. Sara and I took a picture with him, and he attempted to grab her breasts in the process. Later on the night, he came up to me, grabbed my face, and kissed my cheek. He asked where I was staying and told me I would be staying with him tonight, making lewd comments about his plans to sleep with me that night. He mentioned that he is happily married with three kids, but ‘not tonight.’ He also said I was ‘probably like 12′ years old (I am actually 23 years old). I also witnessed him inappropriately touching a friend of mine, [Meagan], which caused her to be extremely upset. Another woman in the bar gave him a lap dance and when a man tried to take a picture, Gooding grabbed the phone, threatening to ‘break it in half,’ and followed him to the bathroom, where he apparently punched him.”

Sara added to the story with a similar account of that night, saying:

“The sexual harassment occurred when women would be taking pictures with him; he would grab butt cheeks during the picture taking and when women reacted negatively to that, he would proceed to either touch women’s breasts or tell them that he ‘loved them.’ He told me that he loved me because his wife’s name is also Sara. Classy.”

In the days of smartphones of course we don’t just have to take these girls’ word for it, they have photo proof of Cuba’s inappropriateness, like him reaching to grab one girl’s breast “as well as pictures of my friend jumping on his back in anger after he twisted her nipples.” I don’t know if these pictures would hold up in court if they went that route, but at the very least, Cuba looks heavily intoxicated and in the mood for groping.

Cuba’s rep said she hasn’t been able to get in touch with the actor to address these allegations because he’s currently filming, but lucky for him these ladies don’t plan on pressing any formal charges. Sara said their only reason for coming forward was to “warn the general public about [Gooding's] disgusting creepiness.”

Duly noted. What do you think? Are these girls telling the truth?

Brande Victorian is a blogger and culture writer in New York City. Follower her on Twitter at @be_vic.

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Source: Top News

You may not typically equate Tyrese with black consciousness given some of the scrutiny he’s come under lately with his music videos and his relationship with black women, but the singer, actor, director, and producer has shown another side of himself with a new project titled “A Dreamer’s Dream.”

The video, which has gone viral over the past 10 days or so, was directed and produced by Tyrese who brought along Blair Underwood and Jill Scott for the project. Blair stars as the voice of a man who has lost his way and is visited by Dr. Martin Luther King (Tyrese) and Coretta Scott King (Jill) in a dream after praying to God for a sign of what he would have him do with his life.

In the dream, Blair asks Dr. King what heaven is like and how the civil rights struggle affected his family. He then asks both for their thoughts on President Obama’s election, voting, the criminal justice system and modern-day slavery, and even divorce in what appears to be a call to action for the black community.

In the end, the dreamer asks Dr. King what we can do to make his dream a reality today, to which he replies, “Love, vote, education, fight,” adding, “you owe us nothing less than we owed you: to run the race before us so that we may obtain the victor’s crown.”

This is a pretty amazing way to end Black History Month. Check out the inspirational video here and tell us what you think.

Brande Victorian is a blogger and culture writer in New York City. Follower her on Twitter at @be_vic.

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Facebook has proven to be good for something but in a sad way. A chance post by 21-year-old Octavia Barnett just moments before she was shot to death may have led police to her suspected killer.

The mother of two posted a status update saying her ex-boyfriend, Lineten Belizaire, was at the door of her Florida home. Not long after, she was shot dead along with her friend, Natasha Plummer, and her six-month-old son, Carlton Stringer Jr. Octavia’s 11-month-old son was found in her dead arms and was the only survivor of the shooting. Police believe he was spared by Lineten because he’s his son.

Investigators only revealed part of Octavia’s last post in which she wrote the phrases “open the door” and “who is it.” She also referred to her 11-month-old son, writing “your daddy came back from out of town from 4monthes [sic] ago better late then [sic] never.”

With no leads after police arrived on the scene, they say her last posting was crucial to the case.

“Octavia Barnett’s last posting actually pointed to the suspect, and thankfully she did that because that one post on Facebook could be the thing that brings justice to this case,’ said Broward County Sheriff Al Lamberti.

“There was no 911 call at that time. There was an entry on her Facebook page indicating he was at her door. We believe that shortly after that post is when the incident occurred.”

Sgt Dave Elwood, agreed:

“I don’t know if that was her intention at the time. I don’t know if she had a feeling or some kind of premonition, but it definitely has become helpful in this case, extremely.”

There’s nothing like handsome black men to celebrate black love and Ebony knows that. Gracing the cover of their February issue are Nate Parker, Terrence Howard, David Oyelowo, and Cuba Gooding, Jr, the cast of George Lucas’ upcoming movie, “The Red Tails,” which tells the story of the heroic Tuskegee airmen.

Inside, they also have the leading men’s cast mates, Elijah Kelley, Ne-Yo, Tristan Wilds, Michael B. Jordan, Method Man, and Leslie Odom, Jr.

The story of the the first African American pilots to fly in a combat squadron during World War II is one that definitely needed to be told on the big screen and it’s great to see such as strong cast of black men working in Hollywood.

Check out a trailer for Red Tails below. Do you plan to see this movie when it’s released Jan. 20?

Brande Victorian is a blogger and culture writer in New York City. Follower her on Twitter at @be_vic.

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