Once-celebrated 14-time NBA All-Star Karl Malone, who spent nearly his entire career with the Utah Jazz, was recently announced as a judge for the upcoming All-Star weekend for the popular dunk contest.

Some people were not pleased and came out against Malone playing any role in the annual game due to his past dating a 13-year-old girl.

Presenting 2023 #ATTSlamDunk Judge.. Karl Malone! #StateFarmSaturday: Feb. 18, TNT pic.twitter.com/PzGT9003CC

— #NBAAllStar (@NBAAllStar) February 15, 2023

According to Audacy, when he was 20 and playing basketball at Louisiana Tech, Malone impregnated a 13-year-old girl. There were no charges pressed and the child born out of that relationship, his son, Demetress Bell, ended up as an offensive lineman for the Buffalo Bills and Philadelphia Eagles. He didn’t meet Malone until he was 17.

Fans who knew this went on Twitter and social media questioning why the NBA would allow a “pedophile,” to be in such a prominent position.

Malone’s reputation was also soiled because he was labeled a non-supportive father who refused to pay child support to twins he had when he was 17, The Daily Beast once reported. The outlet mentioned that he allegedly made a pass at his then-teammate, Kobe Bryant‘s wife, Vanessa.

Twitter users were quick to point out the character of the man who was known in the NBA as “The Mailman.”

Y’ALL BRINGING BACK AN ACTUAL PEDOPHILE?!? pic.twitter.com/iVrS1Jkmc3

— D.E.O. 📷 (@ImJustDEO) February 15, 2023

Karl Malone when he finds out the 9s and 10s are the scores of the dunk contest and not the ages of the contestants pic.twitter.com/lYRINHpQUN

— Art Vandelay (@KingFavre) February 15, 2023

How does everybody but the NBA know Karl Malone is a horrible human being. Like disgusting. I will never understand. https://t.co/mJNa2vkxee

— 🎄Black Big Lebowski🎄 (@LaJethroJenkins) February 15, 2023

pic.twitter.com/XMud4O9YtG

— Real Name: Grover (@DontrellChillis) February 15, 2023

They were also many Twitter users who made reference to the number 13 in correlation to Malone getting a 13-year-old girl pregnant.

Saint Augustine University (SAU) President Dr. Christine Johnson McPhailmakes history as the first Historically Black Colleges and University (HBCU) president selected to preach for the Washington Cathedral’s fourth annual Holy Eucharist & Annual HBCU Welcome Sunday. The service is on February 19, 2023, in Washington, DC.

“HBCU history is black history,” said SAU President Dr. Christine Johnson McPhail. “I am honored to blaze a trail that elevates the relevance of HBCUs today.”

SAU, founded in 1867 by the Episcopal Diocese of North Carolina, is one of two HBCUs affiliated with The Episcopal Church and is the oldest and largest Episcopal HBCU. In addition, with an enrollment of approximately 1,200 students and 11,000 living alums, SAU also ranks among The Episcopal Church’s largest Black institutions in the nation.

“In the legacy of SAU alumni and former leaders such as Anna Julia Cooper, Bishop Henry Beard Delaney, John Hope Franklin and so many others, Dr. Christine Johnson McPhail has led the University into an increasingly dynamic and generative partnership with The Episcopal Church,” said The Rev. Hershey Mallette Stephens, SAU’s Dean of The Chapel & Spiritual Life. “As the leader of the largest Black institution affiliated with The Episcopal Church in the United States, it is appropriate and exciting to have Dr. McPhail preach at the Washington National Cathedral, the nation’s church, on this HBCU Sunday. I look forward to bringing a delegation of Chapel students again this year to DC for this beautiful tradition.”

The Washington National Cathedral, also affiliated with The Episcopal Church, began its construction when President Theodore Roosevelthelped lay the foundation stone in 1907, forty years after SAU’s founding. The Cathedral has hosted state funerals, memorial services for US Presidents, and presidential prayer services for inaugurations. In addition, The Cathedral has hosted numerous historical events, such as Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s final Sunday sermon before his assassination in 1968.

This weekend, The Washington National Cathedral’s Holy Eucharist & Annual HBCU Welcome Sunday welcomes alums, organizations, families, and communities representing the HBCUs as part of Black History Month. The service includes music and prayers celebrating HBCUs with the choir of Bowie State University, Maryland’s oldest HBCU, joining the Cathedral musicians.

Before joining SAU, Dr. McPhail served as President and CEO of the McPhail Group, LLC, and was a nationally recognized thought leader in higher education. She is the founding professor and director of the Community College Leadership Doctoral Program at Morgan State University. In addition, Dr. McPhail is the former president of Cypress College in California. Since her arrival at SAU in 2021, Dr. McPhail’s impact as the university’s leader includes a 10-year high in Fall Enrollment, record-breaking alum giving, and an outpour of federal funding to cover student account balances, preserving and repurposing historical buildings, expanding broadband access, and reopen campus and community educational centers. In addition, Dr. McPhail’s administration has expanded educational access to students in communities with no HBCUs and leveraged university assets to diversify its sources of revenue.

This service will stream on the Washington Cathedral’s Holy Eucharist page and their YouTube channel.

Click here for more information about Washington Cathedral’s fourth annual Holy Eucharist & Annual HBCU Welcome Sunday.

Meet Ramokone Sannah Kwakwa, a 23-year-old entrepreneur who is the founder and CEO of New Dawn Poultry Farm which sells fresh chickens and eggs at affordable prices. Despite the increasing prices of eggs around the world, it has not become a problem for her.

This news was first reported by blackbusiness.com

One of the Green Berets’ first Black officers will receive his long-overdue flowers in the form of a Medal of Honor for his service in the Vietnam War.

According to CBS News, President Joe Biden called Col. Paris Davis to tell the retired veteran he will be recognized for his valor. 

“The call today from President Biden prompted a wave of memories of the men and women I served with in Vietnam–from the members of 5th Special Forces Group and other U.S. military units to the doctors and nurses who cared for our wounded,” Davis said in a statement released by him and his family. “I am so very grateful for my family and friends within the military and elsewhere who kept alive the story of A-team, A-321 at Camp Bong Son. I think often of those fateful 19 hours on June 18, 1965 and what our team did to make sure we left no man behind on that battlefield.”

CBS News also reported that Col. Davis’ paperwork for the Medal of Honor suddenly disappeared in 1965, at the height of the civil rights movement.  

​​“This is a veteran, a war hero, who was submitted for our nation’s highest honor, and the paperwork for that award was actually lost,” Doug Sterner, military historian, said. “The military is redundant in paperwork, if nothing else. And so it’s very rare for that to occur.”

In June 1965, Davis led a 19-hour raid northeast of Saigon. During this raid he was shot and hit with a grenade, but he would not abandon fellow-Americans, Billy Waugh and Robert Brown, who were both injured, according to CBS News. 

“We were stacking bodies the way you do canned goods in a grocery store,” Davis told the outlet.

The Green Berets were created in 1952 to help stop guerrilla warfare.  

“The Little Mermaid,” visionary filmmaker Rob Marshall’s live-action reimagining of the studio’s Oscar®-winning animated musical classic, opens exclusively in theaters nationwide May 26, 2023. “The Little Mermaid” is the beloved story of Ariel, a beautiful and spirited young mermaid with a thirst for adventure. The youngest of King Triton’s daughters, and the most defiant, Ariel longs to find out more about the world beyond the sea, and while visiting the surface, falls for the dashing Prince Eric. While mermaids are forbidden to interact with humans, Ariel must follow her heart. She makes a deal with the evil sea witch, Ursula, which gives her a chance to experience life on land, but ultimately places her life – and her father’s crown – in jeopardy.

The film stars singer and actress Halle Bailey (“grown-ish”) as Ariel; Tony Award® winner Daveed Diggs (“Hamilton,” “Snowpiercer”) as the voice of Sebastian; Jacob Tremblay (“Luca,” “Room”) as the voice of Flounder; Awkwafina (“Raya and the Last Dragon”) as the voice of Scuttle; Jonah Hauer-King (“A Dog’s Way Home”) as Prince Eric; Art Malik (“Homeland”) as Sir Grimsby; Noma Dumezweni (“Mary Poppins Returns”) as Queen Selina; with Oscar® winner Javier Bardem (“No Country for Old Men,” “Being the Ricardos”) as King Triton; and two-time Academy Award® nominee Melissa McCarthy (“Can You Ever Forgive Me?” “Bridesmaids”) as Ursula.

“The Little Mermaid” is directed by Oscar® nominee Rob Marshall (“Chicago,” “Mary Poppins Returns”), and written by two-time Oscar nominee David Magee (“Life of Pi,” “Finding Neverland”), with a live-action story adaptation by David Magee, Rob Marshall, and two-time Emmy winner John DeLuca (“Tony Bennett: An American Classic”), based on the short story by Hans Christian Andersen, and the Disney animated film by Ron Clements and John Musker. The film is produced by two-time Emmy® winner Marc Platt (“Jesus Christ Superstar Live in Concert,” “Grease Live!”), three-time Tony Award® winner Lin-Manuel Miranda (“Hamilton,” “In the Heights”), Rob Marshall, and John DeLuca, with Jeffrey Silver (“The Lion King”) serving as executive producer. The score is by multiple Academy Award® winner Alan Menken (“Beauty and the Beast,” “Aladdin”), who won two Oscars® for the music in the animated version of “The Little Mermaid,” with music supervised and produced by Mike Higham (“Mary Poppins Returns,” “Into the Woods”). Music is by Alan Menken, lyrics are by Howard Ashman and new lyrics are by Lin-Manuel Miranda.

• Money

by Stacy Jackson

February 15, 2023

Kamala Harris’ Niece Meena Harris and Helen Min Close $6M Fund for VC Firm

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Of course this woman is about her business. She’s Vice President Kamala Harris‘s niece.

Lawyer and author Meena Harris and her investment partner, former marketing leader Helen Min, have closed a debut early-stage-focused fund of $6 million after starting their venture firm, Phenomenal Ventures.

According to TechCrunch, the investor duo’s VC firm closed with investments from 776, Tribe Capital, Slow Ventures and founders from tech companies including Dropbox, Quora, and Pinterest.

With the new fund, Phenomenal Ventures is capable of participating in pre-seed to Series A rounds, averaging out to $100,00 to $500,000.

The duo has already invested in 13 companies, with nine built by underrepresented founders.

“Every company that Meena and I have worked for—as startups employees at Facebook, Slack, Dropbox, Uber, Plaid, Quora, AngelList, they are literally all by non-underrepresented founders—our networks very much reflect those companies and the networks we were a part of for so long,” Min said.

The former Facebook employees bonded over their work in tech and materialized the idea for their joint VC firm in 2021. Min said the funding for their VC firm took about a year.

“There are funds of all sizes still being raised, we know that there’s money out there that is still being deployed and raised, but not many of them are led by solo GPs—even fewer are led by women, let alone women of color, or people like us who are women of color and aren’t career venture capitalists,” Harris said.

“I think that’s a big surprise to people because we are women, and then the Phenomenal brand and just sort of its history,” Min said. “But we’re really focused on things that will have venture-like returns,” Min said.

Reportedly, nearly half of the fund’s investors self-identify as women, and 12% as Black.

“With venture, and doing it at this scale, you have the ability to make an impact with your LPs, GPs, founders or portfolio companies down to employee culture and the end users that they serve,” Harris said.

On a day dedicated to love and partnerships Disney Music Group and Andscape announced their global deal with Good Company Records, a new record label created by Oscar- and Grammy-winning producer and songwriter D’Mile, accomplished Music Executive Natalie Prospere and Grammy-winning mixing and audio engineer John Kercy. The deal was announced yesterday by Disney Music Group (DMG) Head of Creative Mio Vukovic and DMG President Ken Bunt, along with Andscape Vice President and Editor-in-Chief Raina Kelley.

Good Company Records backed by Andscape/DMG is the creation of the award-winning, prolific producer and songwriter, who has worked with H.E.R., Silk Sonic, Rihanna, Bruno Mars, Janet Jackson, Mary J. Blige, Ty Dolla $ign, Chris Brown, Lucky Daye and Charlie Wilson amongst many others. D’Mile is the first songwriter in history to win back-to-back Grammys for the prestigious Song of The Year category for H.E.R.’s “I Can’t Breathe” in 2021 and Silk Sonic’s “Leave The Door Open” in 2022. D’Mile won The Academy Award for Best Original Song for co-writing and producing “Fight For You” from the film “Judas and the Black Messiah” in 2021. D’Mile recently won the BMI Songwriter of the Year award and received the highly coveted Producer of the Year Grammy nomination for 2023. Natalie Prospere is a multi-hyphenate music executive with experience in artist development, talent management and consultation for artists and companies alike. Under Prospere’s management, her roster of world-class writers, producers, and artists has garnered over 10 multi-platinum RIAA Awards, multiple Top 10 Billboard chart entries and numerous Grammy awards. John Kercy is a Grammy award-winning mixing and audio engineer who has worked with an esteemed array of musicians from Lucky Daye, to Lil Wayne, Disclosure, Diddy, Ty Dolla Sign, Normani, Kordae and more.

In addition to signing and developing artists, Good Company will be involved in a variety of projects with other Andscape units. Beginning with the upcoming Andscape documentary, “Shyne,” a film about the life and transformation of hip hop star Shyne from a member of Sean “Puff Daddy” Combs’ Bad Boy record label to a statesman in the Belize House of Representatives.

Prospere is also the creator of “Friends Only” and will spearhead a culture-bridging project that specializes in equitable artists partnerships. The “Friends Only” collective places emphasis on the importance of organic relationships and forward-thinking development throughout the Caribbean and Black diaspora.

“We could not be more excited about working with the talented team behind Good Company and our partnership with Andscape. It allows us the dream of creating a home to cultivate and nurture Black artists through storytelling,” said DMG Head of Creative Mio Vukovic.

Added DMG President Ken Bunt, “It’s special and unique to have a shared vision for the future of music, and the opportunity to visually tell new stories with Andscape. We can’t wait to collaborate with D’Mile, Natalie, and John and the Andscape team to deliver on this goal.”

Andscape’s Raina Kelley added, “D’Mile, Natalie and John are special individuals – each true to Andscape’s vision; deep and dimensional multi-hyphenate storytellers – we’re thrilled to welcome them to the Andscape family. This incredible partnership vaults forward Andscape’s evolution as a content creator across The Walt Disney Company.”

D’Mile, Natalie Prospere and John Kercy added, “We are so excited to partner with Disney/Andscape on our label, Good Company. Disney is a place where we believe all of our creative ideas can come to life and we are looking forward to where this partnership takes us!”

This news was first reported by businesswire.com

Vanessa Bryant honored her late husband, Kobe Bryant, in honor of Valentine’s Day on Tuesday.

Bryant took to Instagram to share two posts celebrating the love she continues to share with Kobe in the years after his untimely death. The first post showed a throwback photo of Kobe and Vanessa smiling together in a garden.

“Happy Valentine’s Day Boo-Boo @kobebryant Forever & Always,” she captioned the post.

In a separate post, Vanessa shared a video collage where Kobe responded to being asked, “what does love feel like for you?” While Kobe responds to the reporter with his definition of love, video clips shared highlights from the NBA star’s marriage with Vanessa.

“Think I would describe love as happiness,” Kobe said at the time. “I thnk I describe it as a beautiful journey.”

“It has its ups and downs whether it’s a marriage, whether it’s a career, things are never perfect,” Kobe continued.

Vanessa’s touching Valentine’s Day tribute comes more than three years after Kobe’s death in a helicopter crash in Calabasas, California. The NBA champion died along with his and Vanessa’s 13-year-old daughter, Gianna “Gigi” Bryant, and seven other people en route to a basketball game.

In the wake of the tragedy, Vanessa continued to celebrate Kobe’s legacy through the Mamba & Mambacita Sports Foundation, a nonprofit named in honor of Kobe and Gianna’s nicknames. Vanessa also shared family moments with her daughters: Natalia, 20, Bianka, 6, and Capri, 3.

Natalia has opened up about the necklace she wears with the word “Slim” inscribed on it, a nickname given to her by her late father, E! News reports.

“It was my nickname growing up,” she told Vogue in December. “All my jerseys said ‘Slim’—I didn’t grow into the jerseys until I was older, so my dad always called me ‘Slim.'”

Natalia noted that she also pairs the jewelry with a medallion from the Mamba & Mambacita Sports Foundation. “It says, ‘Dedication makes dreams come true,'” she said. “It’s a quote from my dad, and it’s something I live by.”

Diddy’s former bodyguard isn’t letting up on his scandalous allegations against the hip-hop mogul. According to Gene Deal’s latest claims, the late Notorious B.I.G. was not killed in a drive-by shooting.

Gene Deal worked as Diddy’s security during the 90s, when the Bad Boy CEO was hard at work building his music empire. Deal recently sat down with The Art of Dialogue where he explained his belief that Biggie’s death wasn’t the result of a drive-by, but was committed by a killer who was allegedly waiting around to pull the trigger.

“It just hurts because they lie too much. A lot of that sh*t be lies the way they put it together ’cause they listening to these white boys who wasn’t even there,” Deal said.

“I don’t want to make this racial, but they take these white boys who wasn’t even there and want to use the stories that they want to tell which is not the truth!”

He continued:

“Wasn’t no drive-by; the car was standing there at the corner. The stories they tell is not truthful. And now people are sitting here believing,” Deal claimed.

“Every Biggie movie that you see, they say it’s a drive-by. When the witness tells you the car was stood right there at the corner — the car was probably there all night.”

This isn’t the first time Deal has spoken out against Diddy. In an interview he gave in March 2022, Diddy’s former bodyguard accused him of snitching on his former artist Shyne during the 1999 nightclub shooting that put the rapper behind bars for nearly a decade.

“They came to Shyne and they asked Shyne for 20 racks ’cause they had somebody that was gonna make sure all of them got off ’cause they was not going to agree to none of them charges, and they was on the jury stand,” he said.

But according to Deal, people were instead “making statements against Shyne.”

“He was like, ‘You supposed to be my brother and you got people testifying against me?’ Those people were testifying, they were brought to Puff first, saying what they saw against Shyne, what they saw Shyne do. The D.A. didn’t even know those people existed.”