Tricky Sol

A teacher told young Stevie he had three strikes against him: blind, Black, poor. He added "bow-legged" to expose the absurdity. This blog explores how Stevie Wonder refused every limitation framework imposed on him, turning perceived disadvantages into strategic advantages, and built one of music's greatest legacies through faith-based creative practice.

Conflict is revelation. It shows you what matters to each person in the relationship. It exposes the tender spots, the non-negotiables, the places where you're most vulnerable. And if you're willing to be curious enough to figure out why those things matter—that's where intimacy lives.

Kem's "I Can't Stop Loving You" isn't your typical Valentine's song. It's raw honesty about what happens when forever ends but love doesn't. To yearn for someone is to earn them in memory—even when y'all can never be together again. The sentiment is enough.

Phylicia Rashad Picture a nine-year-old girl standing in a segregated Houston supermarket in the 1950s, staring at two water fountains. One labeled "For Colored." The other: "For Whites Only." Curiosity got the best of young Phylicia Allen. She wanted to know what that forbidden water tasted like. So she walked over, turned on the whites-only fountain, and drank. The water tasted exactly the same. "I understood that humanity had tricked itself," she would later reflect. "And

Quincy Jones Here's what everyone knows about Quincy Jones: he produced Thriller , the biggest-selling album in human history. He worked with everyone from Count Basie to Frank Sinatra to Michael Jackson. He has 79 Grammy nominations and 27 wins. He helped break MTV's color barrier. He organized We Are The World . He's a living legend. Here's what almost nobody talks about: Quincy Jones built the most sophisticated love-based production system in music history, and he did it

Every time that front door gets slammed, find the back window left open. But here's the revolutionary part: you can make it better than what was behind the door. The back window isn't second-best. Being forced to find another way forces innovation that improves on the original. Clarence Avant didn't just find back windows—he climbed through them and built something better. Rejection becomes information. Barriers become redirects.

His work reminds me that the space I claim for myself isn't given — it's constructed. When I feel that surge of recognition listening to his music, I'm not being reminded of who Michael was. I'm being reminded of who I can become when I stop negotiating with my vision and start executing it.

What is the price of freedom?' Ryan's answer comes in layers. Community—you can't be free alone. Vigilance—stay alert to who's at your door. Gatekeeping—protect what's sacred. Being willing to say no to the money when it comes with chains. But there's another answer: 'Find something you're willing to die for and then live for it.

They were fucked the moment they bought the mule.' In Sinners, the vampires aren't the real threat. The system already had them marked for death. The vampires just sped up what was always going to happen. And if you think that's just about the 1930s, you're not paying attention.

We can't build a future if we don't know what we're building from. We can't reclaim our power if we don't know where that power comes from. Sinners isn't just about vampires in Mississippi. It's Ryan Coogler excavating our inheritance—the music, the magic, the old ways they tried to make us forget. This is what saved us.

There is a kind of legacy that doesn't announce itself with fanfare. The Clark Sisters built that kind—the kind that lives inside the way other people sound, move, and understand what it means to give everything to something that matters. Five sisters from Detroit who refused to shrink, turned reggae grooves into gospel anthems, and proved that legacy isn't built in moments of fame. It's built in the dailiness of devotion.

At five years old, Tina Knowles heard: "You don't belong here." Her first teacher looked at this pretty, poor Black child and decided to break her spirit. Decades later, while creating iconic costumes now in the Smithsonian, fashion insiders told her the same thing. But Tina transformed that wound into wisdom: "You deserve to be anywhere you want to be...you got to welcome yourself." This is what it looks like when someone decides the wound stops with them—and builds a legacy

It's 2026, and despite the chaos, I'm optimistic. Not because everything's perfect, but because we still hold the most radical power there is: the power to decide who we're going to be. Most of us live on autopilot, following scripts we never agreed to. But what if you stopped and asked yourself Olivia Pope's question: "What do you want?" Not what you're supposed to want—what do YOU actually want? This is your life. Your rules. Time to claim it.

I'll be honest; this cycle looked different. Not because the ideas weren't there, but because I've been figuring out what this blog wants to be in real-time. These are personal excavations shaped into something universal. The thread? Your body knows before your brain does. Intelligence lives there first.

Through meditation, a truth emerged: I am the amalgamation of energies from my ancestors. The universe confirmed it through JoJo, Kamala's coconut tree, and thermodynamics. When energy only transforms—never vanishes—we glimpse something profound: our DNA carries ancestral stories, unfinished missions waiting to emerge.

When Zohran Mamdani responded to Cuomo's attacks with 'What I don't have in experience I make up for in integrity,' I knew I'd witnessed something rare—a politician who actually answers questions, has a strategic plan grounded in precedent, and understands that well done is better than well said. NYC's first Muslim and Asian-American mayor isn't just making promises; he's offering lifelines in a landscape of economic anxiety

Every time someone strums a banjo in Nashville or a rock guitar screams through stadium speakers, you're hearing the echo of the greatest heist in cultural history. From the banjo's African origins to rock and roll's Black pioneers, American music was built by Black hands—but the wealth it generated was systematically diverted elsewhere. Recognition without reparation is just another form of exploitation.

Before there were words, there was rhythm. Before cave paintings, there were bone flutes. Music didn't happen to us—music made us. That unconscious head nod when the bass drops isn't a casual response; it's evidence of the invisible river flowing through you, connecting you to humanity's oldest technology for creating meaning, building community, and conjuring the spirit that makes us most fully human.

We're taught to think in straight lines—progress, growth, liberation—as if you level up and never look back. But that's not how anything actually works. Everything that matters oscillates: sacred and profane, creation and destruction, the versions of yourself you're becoming and leaving behind.

Between 1740 and 1834, it was illegal to teach Black people to read—slave masters knew books were weapons of mass liberation. Now we have unlimited access to more knowledge than any generation in history, and we're choosing TikTok instead. Your ancestors died for the right to read; the least you can do is honor that sacrifice by picking up a muthafuckin' book.