Whats Buzzing in the Streets – Page 15

Dave Chappelle

David Khari Webber Chappelle (born August 24, 1973) is an American stand-up comedian, actor, writer, and producer. After beginning his film career in 1993 as Ahchoo in Mel Brooks’ Robin Hood: Men in Tights, he landed supporting roles in box office hits including The Nutty Professor, Con Air, You’ve Got Mail, Blue Streak and Undercover Brother. His first lead role was in the 1998 comedy film Half Baked, which he co-wrote with Neal Brennan. Chappelle also starred in the ABC TV series Buddies. His comedy focuses on racism, relationship problems, social problems, politics, current events, and pop culture.

In 2003, Chappelle became more widely known for his sketch comedy television series, Chappelle’s Show, also co-written with Brennan, which ran until his retirement from the show two years later. After leaving the show, Chappelle returned to performing stand-up comedy across the U.S.

In 2016 he signed a $20 million per release comedy special deal with Netflix, which has released four of his specials.

By 2006, Chappelle was called the “comic genius of America” by Esquire and, in 2013, “the best” by a Billboard writer. In 2017, Rolling Stone ranked him No. 9 in their “50 Best Stand Up Comics of All Time.” Chappelle was awarded an Emmy Award for his guest appearance on Saturday Night Live In 2017. He received a Grammy Award for his Netflix specials The Age of Spin & Deep in the Heart of Texas.

David Khari Webber Chappelle was born in Washington, D.C. on August 24, 1973, the youngest of three children. His father, William David Chappelle III, worked as a statistician before becoming a professor at Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio. His mother, Yvonne K Chappelle Seon (née Reed), is half white and was a professor at Howard University, Prince George’s Community College, and the University of Maryland. Seon also worked for Congo Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba. She is also a Unitarian Universalist minister. Chappelle has a stepmother and a stepbrother. He is the great-grandson of Bishop William D. Chappelle, a former president of Allen University.

Chappelle grew up in Silver Spring, Maryland, and attended Woodlin Elementary School. His parents were politically active, and family house visitors included Pete Seeger and Johnny Hartman. The latter predicted Chappelle would be a comedian and, around this time, Chappelle’s comic inspiration came from Eddie Murphy and Richard Pryor. After his parents separated, Chappelle stayed in Washington with his mother while spending summers with his father in Ohio. In 1991, he graduated from Washington’s Duke Ellington School of the Arts, where he studied theatre arts.

Written by Dianne Washington

Viola Davis

Viola Davis (born August 11, 1965) is an American actress and producer. She is the only black woman to be nominated for three Academy Awards, winning one, and is the only black actress to win the Triple Crown of Acting. In 2012 and 2017, she was listed by Time Magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world.

After graduating from the Juilliard School in 1993, Davis began her career on stage and won an Obie Award in 1999 for her performance as Ruby McCollum in Everybody’s Ruby. She played supporting and minor roles in several films and television series in the late 1990s and early 2000s, including the films Kate & Leopold (2001) and Far from Heaven (2002), and the television series Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. In 2001, she won the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play for her role as Tonya in the original production of August Wilson’s King Hedley II. Davis’ film breakthrough came in 2008 when her supporting role in the drama Doubt earned her several nominations, including the Golden Globe, SAG, and the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. Greater success came to Davis in the 2010s. She won the 2010 Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play for her role as Rose Maxson in the revival of August Wilson’s play Fences. For her lead role as 1960s housemaid Aibileen Clark in the comedy-drama The Help (2011), she received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress among others, and won a SAG Award.

Since 2014, Davis has played lawyer Annalise Keating in the ABC television drama How to Get Away with Murder, and in 2015 she became the first black woman to win the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series. Her portrayal also won her two SAG Awards in 2015 and 2016. In 2016, Davis played Amanda Waller in the superhero action film Suicide Squad and reprised the role of Rose Maxson in the film adaptation of Fences, for which she won the Academy Award, BAFTA Award, Critics’ Choice Award, SAG Award and Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress. Davis and her husband, Julius Tennon, are the founders of the production company JuVee Productions. Davis has starred in their productions Lila & Eve (2015) and Custody (2016).

Written by Dianne Washington

Danny Glover

Danny Glover was born on this date in 1946. He is an African American actor and director and an activist.

Danny Lebern Glover was born in San Francisco. He is a graduate of San Francisco State University. As a young man he was a member of the Black Panther Party.

At the University, he met and married his wife, Asake Bomani, in 1975; they have one child named Mandisa.

Glover received his dramatic training at the American Conservatory Theatre’s Black Actors’ Workshop. He made his film debut in “Escape from Alcatraz” (1979). In the early 1980s, Glover made his name portraying characters ranging from the sympathetic in “Places in the Heart” (1984) to the menacing in Witness (1985) and “The Color Purple” (1984).

He reached boxoffice gold status with the three Lethal Weapon movies. Glover contributed an amusing cameo in “Maverick”(1994). That same year Glover made his directorial debut with the Showtime channel short film “Override.” In 1998, Glover again had his role for “Lethal Weapon 4,” and that same year gave a stirring performance in the little-seen “Beloved.” He also joined the ranks of actors such as Humphrey Bogart, Elliot Gould, and Robert Mitchum who have portrayed Raymond Chandler’s private eye detective Phillip Marlowe in the episode “Red Wind” of the Showtime network’s 1995 series “Fallen Angels.”

On television, Glover played the title role in “Mandela” (1987), Joshua Deets in the 1989 miniseries “Lonesome Dove,” legendary railroad man John Henry in a 1988 installment of Shelley Duvall’s “Tall Tales,” and the mercurial leading character in the 1989 “American Playhouse” revival of “A Raisin in the Sun.”

In March 1998, he was appointed ambassador to the United Nations Development Program. Among his many awards, he has won five NAACP Image Awards for his achievements as a Black actor. Danny Glover is also chairman of TransAfrica.

While attending San Francisco State University (SFSU), Glover was a member of the Black Students Union, which, along with the Third World Liberation Front and the American Federation of Teachers, collaborated in a five-month student-led strike to establish a Department of Black Studies. The strike was the longest student walkout in U.S. history. It helped create not only the first Department of Black Studies but also the first School of Ethnic Studies in the United States.

Hari Dillon, current president of the Vanguard Public Foundation, was a fellow striker at SFSU. Glover later co-chaired Vanguard’s board. He is also a board member of The Algebra Project, The Black AIDS Institute, Walden House, and Cheryl Byron’s Something Positive Dance Group. He was charged with disorderly conduct and unlawful assembly after being arrested outside the Sudanese Embassy in Washington during a protest over Sudan’s humanitarian crisis in Darfur.

Glover’s long history of union activism includes support for the United Farm Workers, UNITE HERE, and numerous service unions. In March 2010, Glover supported 375 Union workers in Ohio by calling upon all actors at the 2010 Academy Awards to boycott Hugo Boss suits following announcement of Hugo Boss’s decision to close a manufacturing plant in Ohio after a proposed pay decrease from $13 to $8.30 an hour was rejected by the Workers United Union.

In January 2006, Harry Belafonte led a delegation of activists, including Glover and activist/professor Cornel West, in a meeting with President of Venezuela Hugo Chávez.

Glover was an early supporter of former North Carolina Senator John Edwards in the 2008 Democratic presidential primaries until Edwards’ withdrawal, although some news reports indicated that he had endorsed Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich,[27] whom he had endorsed in 2004. After Edwards dropped out, Glover then endorsed Barack Obama.

Glover was an outspoken critic of George W. Bush, calling him a known racist. “Yes, he’s racist. We all knew that. As Texas’s governor, Bush led a penitentiary system that executed more people than all the other U.S. states together. And most of the people who died were Afro-Americans or Hispanics.”

Glover’s support of California Proposition 7 (2008) led him to use his voice in an automated phone call to generate support for the measure before the election.

On April 6, 2009, Glover was given a chieftaincy title in Imo State, Nigeria. Glover was given the title Enyioma of Nkwerre, which means A Good Friend in the language of the Igbo people of Eastern Nigeria.

Glover has become an active member of board of directors of The Jazz Foundation of America.[33] Danny became involved with The Jazz Foundation in 2005, and has been a featured host for their annual benefit A Great Night in Harlem[34] for several years, as well appearing as a celebrity MC at other events for the foundation. In 2006, Britain’s leading African theatre company Tiata Fahodzi appointed Glover as one of its three Patrons, joining Chiwetel Ejiofor and Jocelyn Jee Esien opening the organization’s tenth-anniversary celebrations (Sunday, February 2, 2008) at the Theatre Royal Stratford East, London.

Glover is also an active board member of the TransAfrica Forum.

On January 13, 2010, Glover compared the scale and devastation of the 2010 Haiti earthquake to the predicament other island nations may face as a result of the failed Copenhagen summit the previous year. Glover said: “…the threat of what happens to Haiti is a threat that can happen anywhere in the Caribbean to these island nations… they’re all in peril because of global warming… because of climate change… when we did what we did at the climate summit in Copenhagen, this is the response, this is what happens…”In the same statement, he called for a new form of international partnership with Haiti and other Caribbean nations and praised Venezuela, Brazil, and Cuba, for already accepting this partnership.

On November 1, 2011, Glover spoke to the crowd at Occupy Oakland on the day before the Oakland General Strike where thousands of protestors shut down the Port of Oakland.

Glover is a member of the board of directors of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, a think tank led by economist Dean Baker.

Glover wrote the foreword to Phyllis Bennis’ book, Challenging Empire: How People, Governments, and the UN Defy US Power.

Written by Dianne Washington

Donna Summer

LaDonna Adrian Gaines (December 31, 1948 – May 17, 2012), widely known by her stage name Donna Summer, was an American singer, songwriter, and painter. She gained prominence during the disco era of the late 1970s. A five-time Grammy Award winner, Summer was the first artist to have three consecutive double albums reach No. 1 on the United States Billboard 200 chart and charted four number-one singles in the U.S. within a 12-month period. Summer has reportedly sold over 140 million records worldwide, making her one of the world’s best-selling artists of all time. She also charted two number-one singles on the R&B charts in the U.S. and a number-one in the U.K.

Summer earned a total of 32 hit singles on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 chart in her lifetime, with 14 of those reaching the top ten. She claimed a top 40 hit every year between 1975 and 1984, and from her first top ten hit in 1976, to the end of 1982, she had 12 top ten hits (10 were top five hits), more than any other act during that time period. She returned to the Hot 100’s top five in 1983, and claimed her final top ten hit in 1989 with “This Time I Know It’s for Real”. Her most recent Hot 100 hit came in 1999 with “I Will Go With You (Con Te Partiro)”. While her fortunes on the Hot 100 waned through those decades, Summer remained a force on the U.S. Dance/Club Play Songs chart over her entire career.

While influenced by the counterculture of the 1960s, Summer became the lead singer of a psychedelic rock band named Crow and moved to New York City. Joining a touring version of the musical Hair, she left New York and spent several years living, acting, and singing in Europe, where she met music producers Giorgio Moroder and Pete Bellotte.

Summer returned to the U.S., in 1975 after the commercial success of the song “Love to Love You Baby”, which was followed by a string of other hits, such as “I Feel Love”, “Last Dance”, “MacArthur Park”, “Heaven Knows”, “Hot Stuff”, “Bad Girls”, “Dim All the Lights”, “No More Tears (Enough Is Enough)” (duet with Barbra Streisand), and “On the Radio”. She became known as the “Queen of Disco”, while her music gained a global following.

Summer died on May 17, 2012.

Written by Dianne Washington

Jaguar Wright

Jacquelyn Suzette Wright (born May 17, 1977), better known by her stage name, Jaguar Wright, is an American R&B and neo soul singer and songwriter. She is part of the Okayplayer collective. She started her career as an intern with various record labels. Wright has performed and collaborated alongside rap acts such as The Roots, Jay-Z, and Blackalicious.
Wright was brought to the attention of hip-hop group The Roots in 1998, which eventually led to her going to tour with them. She later appeared as a back-up singer for Jay-Z in 2001, and appeared in a Coca-Cola advert as part of the brand’s “Nu Soul” campaign. She has released two solo albums to date: Denials, Delusions & Decisions in 2002, and Divorcing Neo 2 Marry Soul in 2005. Wright also recorded an album entitled. And Your Point Is? which was due for release in 2003 on MCA Records (who also distributed her debut), before the label folded. However, many of the tracks recorded for that album later appeared on Divorcing Neo 2 Marry Soul. In 2007, two new songs appeared on her MySpace profile. One was a live version of new song “Sometimes”, the other a cover of “Let’s Do It Again”. A further two new songs surfaced in 2009, “Beautiful” and “Surely Shawty”, although neither saw an official release. She has toured every year since her debut album was released. In March 2008, she toured Europe with Bahamadia and Hezekiah for the “Philly Sounds” tour. Wright did not perform any new material on the tour, but did live cover versions of Cherrelle’s “Saturday Love” and Crystal Waters’ “Gypsy Woman (She’s Homeless)”. During the tour, Wright announced that she was in the process of writing a novel, and working on a third album. No release dates have been confirmed for either as yet. In 2008, she supplied backing vocals for Al Green’s album Lay It Down. In January 2011, Jaguar Wright toured Europe with Lady Alma on the “Philly Sounds 2011” tour. She revealed that she was working on a third album, due out in the summer of 2011, the lead single from the new album to be called “Switch”. In the summer of 2012, she assembled a “rock & soul band” of seasoned Philadelphia musicians called The W.E. ft. Jaguar Wright.

Written by Dianne Washington

Sugar Ray Leonard

Ray Charles “Sugar” Leonard (born May 17, 1956) is an American former professional boxer, motivational speaker, and occasional actor. Often regarded as one of the greatest boxers of all time, Leonard was part of “The Fabulous Four” a group of boxers who all fought each other throughout the 1980s, consisting of himself, Roberto Durán, Thomas Hearns and Marvin Hagler. “The Fabulous Four” created a wave of popularity in the lower weight classes that kept boxing relevant in the post-Muhammad Ali era. Leonard was also the first boxer to earn more than $100 million in purses, won world titles in five weight divisions, including a run as the undisputed welterweight champion, and defeated future fellow International Boxing Hall of Fame inductees Hearns, Durán, Hagler, and Wilfred Benítez. Leonard was named “Boxer of the Decade” in the 1980s.

Leonard, the fifth of seven children of Cicero and Getha Leonard, was born in Wilmington, North Carolina. He was named after Ray Charles, his mother’s favorite singer. The family moved to Washington, D.C., when he was three, and they settled permanently in Palmer Park, Maryland when he was ten. His father worked as a supermarket night manager and his mother was a nurse. He attended Parkdale High School, Leonard was a shy child, and aside from the time he nearly drowned in a creek during a flood in Seat Pleasant, Maryland, his childhood was uneventful. He stayed home a lot, reading comic books and playing with his dog. His mother said: “He never did talk too much. We never could tell what he was thinking. But I never had any problems with him. I never had to go to school once because of him.”

Leonard started boxing at the Palmer Park Recreation Center in 1969. His older brother, Roger, started boxing first. Roger helped start the boxing program, urging the center’s director, Ollie Dunlap, to form a team. Dave Jacobs, a former boxer, and Janks Morton volunteered as boxing coaches. Roger won some trophies and showed them off in front of Ray, goading him to start boxing.

In 1972, Leonard boxed in the featherweight quarterfinals of the National AAU Tournament, losing by decision to Jerome Artis. It was his first defeat.

written by Dianne Washington

Sammy Davis Jr.

Samuel George “Sammy” Davis Jr. (December 8, 1925 – May 16, 1990) was an American entertainer. Primarily a dancer and singer, he was also an actor of stage and screen, musician, and impressionist, noted for his impersonations of actors, musicians and other celebrities. At the age of three Davis began his career in vaudeville with his father and Will Mastin as the Will Mastin Trio, which toured nationally. After military service Davis returned to the trio. Davis became an overnight sensation following a nightclub performance at Ciro’s (in West Hollywood, California) after the 1951 Academy Awards. With the trio, he became a recording artist. In 1954, he lost his left eye in an automobile accident, and several years later, he converted to Judaism.

Davis died in Beverly Hills, California, on May 16, 1990 at age 64, of complications from throat cancer. Earlier, when he was told that surgery (laryngectomy) offered him the best chance of survival, Davis replied he would rather keep his voice than have a part of his throat removed; he subsequently was treated with a combination of chemotherapy and radiation. However, a few weeks prior to his death, his entire larynx was removed during surgery. He was interred in the Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California, next to his father and Will Mastin.

On May 18, 1990, two days after Davis’s death, the neon lights of the Las Vegas Strip were darkened for ten minutes as a tribute to him. He was survived by his wife, his daughter, his sons, his sister, his mother, his grandmother, and two grandchildren.

Written by Dianne Washington

Kevin Samuels Dead at 57

Kevin Samuels an Youtube influencer and self-proclaimed image consultant, lifestyle coach and dating expert died Thursday in Georgia. EMS was called to Kevin’s home Thursday morning for a “person injured” and found Kevin unresponsive on the floor of his apartment. A police report states they talked to a woman who said they met Kevin Wednesday night and spent the night with him at his place in Atlanta. The woman who is a nurse said Kevin started to complain of chest pains on Thursday morning, and she tried to help him. She told cops he fell on top of her, so she called 911 and requested a defibrillator from the front desk of the apartment complex. Kevin was taken to Piedmont Hospital and was pronounced dead.

His mother, Beverly Samuels-Burch, declined to release details about what happened. She said she learned of her son’s death from social media.

Samuels known and operated under the self-proclaimed title of an “image consultant.to his more than 1.4 million subscribers discussing topics that included dating and relationships. His views, which many people on social media felt were an attack on Black women, often sparked outrage. Last month he was recently stated a controversial was “If you live to 35 and you’re not married, you’re a leftover. You’re leftover. Men know you may have a problem,” he said. “Whether you want to hear it or not,”

Samuels social media is now buzzing over his death. This platform will not speak ill of the dead instead will direct you to his personal YouTube channel to allow you to judge for yourself in regards of his treatment to women. https://www.youtube.com/c/byKevinSamuels

A. J. Johnson

Anthony Johnson (born May 5, 1965), sometimes credited as A. J. Johnson, is an American actor and comedian.

Born in Compton, California, his father was a stuntman and a founder of the Black Stuntmen’s Association. Johnson began acting in his early twenties. In 1990 he landed a starring role as E.Z.E. in House Party, after which he started doing stand-up in bars in Los Angeles. He later appeared in Lethal Weapon 3 as a drug dealer and in Menace II Society. His biggest role was in the 1995 comedy Friday, as Ezal, a crackhead and thief. He has also appeared in Panther, The Players Club, B*A*P*S, I Got The Hook Up, Def Jam’s How to Be a Player and Repos, and in rap videos: in Dr. Dre’s “Dre Day” (1992), he played Sleazy-E, a parody of Eazy-E, and he appeared again as Sleazy-E in the video for Eazy-E’s “Real Muthaphuckkin G’s” (1993), this time being assaulted.

On July 31, 2017 Johnson had a panic attack at LaGuardia Airport in New York on his way to a comedy show. In August 2018, Johnson attended the White Family Reunion in Paducah, KY.

Written by Dianne Washington

Kidd Creole

Rap pioneer from Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five just got a lengthy prison sentence for his conviction in the stabbing death of a homeless man. On August 2, 2017, The Kidd Creole real name Nathaniel Glover was arrested and charged with the murder of a New York City homeless man. Nathaniel Glover stabbed a homeless man on the way to his copy-shop job. Nathaniel Glover, guilty of manslaughter for John Jolly’s Aug. 1, 2017, killing. Glover was acquitted of second-degree murder. On May 4, Glover was sentenced to 16 years in prison plus 5 years supervision.