The Two Minutes of ‘Ma Rainey’ That Will Win Chadwick Boseman His Oscar Now

8 min readDec 19, 2020

When word spread that Boseman’s body had succumbed to cancer, a torrent of questions followed almost immediately. How long had he fought? How long had he known? How had we, the public, never seen his struggle? Never a moment did he falter under the heat of the stage lights. But in his final living performance, as Levee in George Wolfe’s Netflix adaptation of the August Wilson play Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, Boseman gives us a slice of his melancholy: the anger, the existential questioning, and spiritual conflict of his blues. Where he takes Wilson’s text, where he takes himself, is an act of total immersion. A sinking. A drowning. …
Read more · 6 min read
Aliya S. King
·Updated 1 day ago
DEAR LEVEL
Naughty New Year’s Resolutions to Improve Your Sex Life in 2021
Change is coming!
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Illustration: Olivia Fields

Let’s get this out of the way: New Year’s resolutions suck. They’re usually a setup for failure — it takes more than a new calendar for a complete lifestyle change-up. (Save for the 8% of you motivated ones out there, who are probably overachievers anyway.)

For as long as I can remember, my resolutions have been the same: eat better and work out. I’m the one you see in the gym on January 1, going hard on the treadmill, protein shake in hand. Just don’t count on spotting me within 100 feet of any workout equipment once February hits. …
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LEVEL Editors
·Updated 2 days ago
The Year in Comics Wasn’t Black Enough, But Still Beautiful
The industry may have had a rough year, but there was plenty to celebrate
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Photo illustration; sources: Rouzes/Getty Images, DC Comics, Marvel Comics

As with most things in 2020, comics got weird this year. The industry nearly became another casualty of the pandemic, with most series beset by months-long shipping delays. The world of sequential art faced its own #MeToo reckoning this summer as multiple prominent men were accused of sexual misconduct. All the while, creatives and publishers alike tried to more accurately reflect the diverse consumers the big companies have always said they’re trying to reach. Yet, despite the many obstacles, there have been some truly remarkable achievements worth celebrating. As the resident comics heads at LEVEL, we convened over Zoom to discuss N.K. …
Read more · 13 min read
Michael Arceneaux
·Updated 3 days ago
Mitch McConnell Is Guilty of Negligent Manslaughter
Now that Trump is out, it’s time to shift focus to the one man responsible for the ongoing economic crisis
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Photo: Stefani Reynolds/Getty Images

It’s robbing season, but Americans reeling from the economic crisis — a crisis spurred by the nation’s horrific handling of the Covid-19 pandemic — aren’t stealing items typically coveted during the holiday season.

In a recent Washington Post article, reporters Abha Bhattarai and Hannah Denham highlight that shoplifting has been up since the pandemic began earlier this year. According to the retailers, security experts, and police departments they spoke to, however, this isn’t like previous economic downturns. Instead, people are reaching for items to help satisfy the barest necessities.

“We’re seeing an increase in low-impact crimes,” said Jeff Zisner, chief executive of workplace security firm Aegis. “It’s not a whole lot of people going in, grabbing TVs, and running out the front door. It’s a very different kind of crime — it’s people stealing consumables and items associated with children and babies.” …
Read more · 6 min read
The Only Black Guy In the Office
·Updated 5 days ago
THE ONLY BLACK GUY IN THE OFFICE
Work Life Has Forever Changed for Black Professionals in 2020
I somehow survived this wild-ass year, and I’m taking these learnings with me
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Illustration: Michael Kennedy

I may not be Miss Cleo, but I can make the following forecast about the future with confidence: Anyone who lived through 2020 will have a story to tell about it for the rest of their lives. There are people who are not even born yet (shout out to quarantine babies!) who will learn about 2020 in history classes throughout their public school years. It will be discussed the way today’s generation dissects things like 9/11, the Great Recession, Barack Obama’s historic rise to the presidency, and — whether we like it or not — Donald Trump’s election in 2016. But whereas each one of those events defined the year in which they happened, 2020 feels like a year that defined us. …
Read more · 4 min read
David Dennis, Jr.
·Updated 5 days ago
The Untimely Passing of the American Buffet
A lot of people hated them — but you can’t deny what they meant to many of us
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Photo: Ulysse Pointcheval via Unsplash

I used to think it was a character flaw not to eat at buffets.

I’d be with a group of people at a Sunday brunch buffet, and that one person — always one — would invariably ask, “can I get a menu?” It was a personal affront. You’re too good to literally break bread with us? It reeked of bougie-ness. But after 2020, I don’t think I’ll ever eat at a buffet again. I once saw those people as contrarians. Now I’m joining their ranks. And it’s breaking my heart.

Buffets came into fashion in America in the mid-20th century, starting in Vegas as a way to overfeed gamblers and keep them in one place longer with the hopes they’d hang around the casinos and spend all of their money. The buffet skyrocketed into mainstream American popularity during the ’80s when everything was about being bigger and better — or, rather, when being bigger meant better. We had Western Sizzler, Shoney’s, Ryan’s, Ponderosa, Luby’s, and any host of regional spots on every corner. …
Read more · 5 min read
Tirhakah Love
·Updated Dec 11
LEVEL Best Man 2020
2020 Was a Banner Year for Letting Black Women Down
Instead of holding each other accountable, Black men rushed to support celebrities who displayed the worst of us
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Illustration: Franco Égalité

Hip-hop’s brooding edgelord antagonism toward Black women didn’t appear out of nowhere — blame Western patriarchy for that — but it’s thrived because of power-hungry Black men. And in 2020, no instance made this clearer than what went down between Megan Thee Stallion, Tory Lanez, and an internet full of hip-hop fans.

The story’s been told, but it bears repeating. In July, after a post-party dispute, Tory Lanez shot Meg in both her feet. She posted pictures of them, and after some diplomatic restraint explained the whole story on her Instagram, calling out Tory’s team for seeding lies to hip-hop blogs. Rather than show solidarity in the midst of a clearly traumatic situation, hip-hop icons from Cam’ron to 50 Cent took the opportunity to get jokes off instead. …
Read more · 6 min read
Scott Woods
·Updated Dec 10
LEVEL Best Man 2020
Black Conservatives Don’t Care About You — Or Anyone Else
If they only want to go for theirs, they should just say so
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Illustration: Franco Égalité

As the summer roiled with protests over the murder of George Floyd by police and the pandemic drove a wave of activism into Zoom chats, I found myself once again watching an online panel discussion about the state of Black men in America. I had observed dozens of similar events over the years, on those many occasions that this country sparked the flint of racism hard enough to compel public discussion about Black men. Now, in my city and elsewhere, even at my job in a public library, people were attempting to unpack why people that looked like me seemed to be targeted by the state. This time, the pandemic had removed the barriers of travel, cost, and embarrassment that can hinder public race discussions.

The Two Minutes of ‘Ma Rainey’ That Will Win Chadwick Boseman His Oscar Now

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