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30/11/2022

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28/11/2022

Irene Cara walked her own path with a defiant smile. The versatile singer, songwriter, and actress died over the weekend at the age of 63 at her Florida home.

At times, Cara exhibited a Broadway-trained, showbiz DNA that seemed more aligned with singer Barbara Streisand than queen of soul Aretha Franklin. Yet she never shied away from her true superpower: the ability to transform slick early ’80s, headband-adorned anthems into uplifting statements that felt like spiritual testimony.

“I’m gonna make it to heaven/Light up the sky like a flame,” Cara proclaimed on her 1980 debut single, Fame, from director Alan Parker’s Oscar-nominated musical of the same name. The film followed the trials, tribulations and triumphs of students at New York’s legendary High School of the Performing Arts (now known as Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts). Cara’s work on Fame earned her a top 5 hit on the Billboard Hot 100, two Oscar nominations (including for the piano ballad “Out Here on My Own”) and Grammy Awards for best female pop vocal performance and best original new artist. And she proved to be more than just a singer who dared you to take your eyes off her during the post-disco “Hot Lunch Jam” rave-up and Fame’s landmark street dance sequence.

My Heart Is Broken. was such a gifted and beautiful genius. Her talent and her music will LIVE FOREVER! FOREVER REMEMBER HER NAME! pic.twitter.com/ZUnOfGngFT

— Debbie Allen () November 26, 2022

Cara received a Golden Globe nomination for best actress for her portrayal as Fame’s optimistic yet naive Coco Hernandez (her final scene remains one of that decade’s most heartbreaking cinematic moments). “The movie was shot about six blocks from my apartment,” Cara recalled in a 2018 interview with Songwriter Universe. “So working on the movie felt very much like home.”

In 1981, no star shined brighter than Cara, one of a constellation of Black entertainers and athletes who reached unprecedented crossover popularity throughout the ’80s. From Cara, singers Michael Jackson, Prince and Lionel Richie; Chicago Bulls guard Michael Jordan; and actor Eddie Murphy to singers Whitney Houston, Tina Turner; comedian Bill Cosby; hip-hop group Run-D.M.C.; TV talk show host Oprah Winfrey; and boxer Mike Tyson — white America was eager to elevate these gifted figures – on its own terms. All of a sudden, popular Black stars transcended race.

It was clear that Cara wanted no part of that game. When the subject of her biracial heritage came up during a 1981 Jet magazine cover story, the Afro Latina star, born Irene Escalera on March 18, 1959, didn’t mince words. “We have a tendency in this country that when we say Black it automatically means Black Americans,” said Cara, whose musician father Gaspar was Black and Puerto Rican and her mother Louise was Cuban American. “But that’s a big mistake, and that keeps us divided … I happen to be a Black Hispanic person who was born in this country.”

Bruno Martelli (Lee Curreri, left) tries to convince Coco Hernandez (Irene Cara, right) that they should form a rock band, in a scene from Fame in 1980.

United Artists/Archive Photos/Getty Images

Soon Cara, who had already released two studio albums including her debut Anyone Can See, would experience the kind of next-level stardom that few Black entertainers during that period achieved. In 1984 she won the Academy Award for best original song as one of the co-writers of “Flashdance … What a Feeling,” from the soundtrack album for Flashdance, the movie that put actress Jennifer Beals on the map. “Take your passion/And make it happen!” sang Cara, who would also receive a Grammy in 1984 for best pop vocal performance, female, spending six consecutive weeks at No. 1.

“Thank you brilliant Irene for your open heart and your fearless triple threat talent,” Beals posted on Instagram in tribute to Cara. “It took a beautiful dreamer to write and perform the soundtracks for those who dare to dream.”

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Such glowing words are a fitting tribute for an artist who started performing at a young age. At 7, Cara, who grew up in a family of musicians, made her professional debut singing and dancing on local television. Two years later, she landed a Broadway gig in the 1968 production of Maggie Flynn alongside future The Wiz star and singer Stephanie Mills and Emmy-nominated actor Giancarlo Esposito. And she scored a coveted spot on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson in July 1971.

More television gigs followed. Cara was cast on the PBS children’s show The Electric Company and on Roots: The Next Generations. But it was Cara’s titular role in the 1976 movie classic Sparkle that introduced her to seemingly every Black household in America. In 1978, she appeared in the Broadway musical r***e Ain’t Misbehavin’. Record labels were soon calling, and Cara began racking up studio session work as a background vocalist for disco singer Vicki Sue Robinson, musician Lou Reed, keyboardist George Duke, and disco singer Evelyn “Champagne” King. Cara’s friend Luther Vandross, who rose through the ranks of the music industry with her long before they became stars, recorded a cover of her 1982 track “Anyone Can See.”

The poster from the movie Sparkle.

Cara’s industry connections later proved to be beneficial during the recording of some pivotal compositions. “I brought a lot of New York’s greatest session singers to Michael [Fame composer Michael Gore],” she said in a 2020 Shondaland feature celebrating the 40th anniversary of Fame. “He didn’t know Luther Vandross. I did. He didn’t know about Vicki Sue Robinson. I did. Michael wasn’t in with all the badass session players and singers that I knew. I never got any money for it. Never got acknowledged. I wrote ‘Hot Lunch’ to this very cool bassline that he came up with — that was the whole damn song.”

By the mid-1980s, the consensus was that Cara’s trajectory was limitless. She followed up her “Flashdance …” collaboration with synth-pop pioneer Giorgio Moroder with the 1984 top 40 single “Breakdance,” and co-starred in the Clint Eastwood and Burt Reynolds gangster comedy flick City Heat. There was even talk of headlining her own sitcom.

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But following her worldwide acclaim, Cara suffered a career spiral, a victim of what she described as industry blacklisting.

In 1985, Cara sued Al Coury Inc. and Network Records for $10 million for songwriting credit and unpaid royalties for her work on the Flashdance soundtrack, years before Prince’s game-changing legal dispute with Warner Bros. over his master recordings. “I’ll never be that trusting again,” she confided to People magazine in 2001, “believing accountants and lawyers have my best interests at heart.”

Cara eventually was awarded $1.5 million by a California jury in 1993, but the damage was already done. “All of a sudden, I was hearing stories about how difficult I was to work with, ridiculous rumors about drugs and what a diva I was,” she recalled.

Cara returned to her musical roots in 1992 in the revival for Jesus Christ Superstar and continued to perform overseas and in America on the club circuit. And she never stopped writing and recording. During a 2019 episode of her podcast The Back Story, Cara broke down her artistic process. “Very naked, just vocal and piano and a great lyric and a great story within the lyric, those are the kinds of songs I relate to as a songwriter,” she said.

How fitting was it that upon her death a strikingly diverse range of mourners sang her praises from Fame co-star and groundbreaking television director Debbie Allen and Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist Flea to the Roots’ Questlove and veteran Tony-nominated Latino actor John Leguizamo. And as singer-songwriter Lenny Kravitz said, “Irene Cara, you inspired me more than you could ever know.”

Same, Lenny. Same.

Irene Cara walked her own path with a defiant smile. The versatile singer, songwriter, and actress died over the weekend at the age of 63 a...

26/11/2022

We take another look at some of our recent podcasts summarized by Noah Zaret. This weekend are two disruptors who also happened to have found blue ocean and are exploiting it on the engagement and content side, Dylan Sadiq, a first generation Rutgers grad who turned an engineering degree in to a literal artform, and Saurav Banerjee, a serial entrepreneur from India with a background in tech who saw an opportunity to capture an Indian sports community that continues to grow. Take a listen to both, with highlight below. You can hear all our podcasts here as well.

Dylan Sadiq On Making Professional Athletes’ Portraits Using Rubik’s Cubes

Dylan Sadiq, also known as The College Cuber. Dylan is an incredibly talented artist who creates mosaics of professional athletes using Rubik’s Cubes. Through a combination of his exceptional creative talent and entrepreneurial ability, Dylan has collaborated with professional sports leagues and teams such as the NBA, MLB, Premier League, NHL, USTA, FC Barcelona, Tennessee Titans, New York Red Bulls, and many more. An engineering student at Rutgers University, Dylan shares his fascinating story about how his desire to take on a more hands-on project during Covid led him to discover his craft and launch The College Cuber, creating his first mosaic of his favorite player Luka Don?i?. He explains the process of putting together his artwork using more than 500 Rubik’s Cubes in under three hours. Dylan talks about how he has been able to close deals with some of the biggest sports brands and properties and continues to innovate and grow his business. Dylan also describes how he is engaging fans live at sporting events through his incredibly unique artwork by sharing his experience working with the US Open.

– Dylan started this interesting hobby during the peak of Covid: He combined his engineering and artistic skills with his passion for sports

– He says that the process of creating these mosaics is extremely complex, as he starts off researching hundreds, sometimes thousands of headshots of these athletes to find the perfect image

– His mosaics are made up of 560 cubes

– His mosaics are 5.5 ft tall, 4 ft wide, around 150 pounds

– Dylan enhanced his business by creating mosaics during sporting events and engaging the fan experience as a whole

– The unique part of Dylan’s art is that unlike other regular artwork, his is not permanent. He can take his art apart/change it to another athlete at any point in time

– He markets himself as a Rubics Cube artist but in reality, he is a pixel artist and has the ability to create images with almost any medium.

– Dylan has noted that his business has opened the door for him to meet and develop relationships with other entrepreneurs and professionals within the sports industry

– Although Dylan is interested about entering the NFT space with his mosaics, he says he remains focused on creating physical products and how he can be a part of live entertainment

– On a small scale, Dylan says he has one of his friends that helps him out with the outreach aspect of his business to find clients

– He also has a wood craftsman that creates his commission frames

– Dylan says LinkedIn is the platform that consists of most of his target audience

Listen to the entire podcast here.

Saurav Banerjee On Building India’s Largest User-Generated Content Platform

Saurav Banerjee, Managing Director & Founder of MyySports, is a veteran in the media industry and a former venture capitalist, Saurav shares the massive opportunity he saw in the Indian sports ecosystem that could empower youth by offering creator tools that can enable them to capture and broadcast their sporting journeys. He discusses how their user-generated sports content platform can give exposure to millions of athletes to showcase their talent, building a robust community for the sports-hungry audience. Saurav further expands on their platform’s “medium” effect, which can enable International Sports Leagues to gain viewership in India and, conversely, provide media exposure to some of the less popular Indian sports to the global audience. As an entrepreneur, Saurav points out the key difference between the value and valuation of a business, explaining his “ESPD” mantra in building businesses

– Saurav Banerjee: Managing Director & Founder of MyySports

– MyySports: Inclusion of sports for the youth in India

– A user-generated platform that allows one to capture their sporting journey

– Can play your own matches, while being broadcasted live (specifically Soccer and Cricket)

– Stats and moments will be archived for players, as well as for leagues and teams

– MyySports essentially provides the non-major sports on television

– Other non-Indian sports leagues are in the process of being shown on MyySports

– The “medium” effect will have a larger play than the actual media effect

– MyySports is a platform for every athlete to showcase their journey

– The app is free

– Advice from Saurav for people starting/changing careers: “the only limiting factor for the progress of humankind is imagination”

– Never dilute your imagination

– Do not doubt yourself

– The biggest challenge for MyySports: talent acquisition, hiring the right team members, and improving every day from the day prior

– MyySports app is available on the apple store and Android store

You can hear the entire podcast here.

Enjoy listening and being curious!

Two Good Weekend Listens…content creation in New Jersey and community building in India

Source: Global Access News

We take another look at some of our recent podcasts summarized by Noah Zaret. This weekend are two disruptors who also happened to have foun...

23/11/2022

For a teenager who grew up with two older brothers potentially headed to the pros and a headline-garnering pops, it turned out that LaMelo Ball proved to be an instant star.

Now in his third season with the Charlotte Hornets, the All-Star point guard is not only looking to turn around the franchise’s fortunes, he’s also looking to revive Puma’s once-dormant basketball category.

The second colorway of his second signature shoe with the company, the MB.02 Phenom, launches this week, with design details drafted off of his outsize personality, boldly placed tattoos, and love of loud looks.

“He’s Melo, that’s for sure. He is who he thinks he is,” said Jeremy Sallee, Puma Basketball’s head of design. “He’s one of one, rare, not from here – he’s got his own sense of style and he doesn’t care what’s going on trendwise. He’s gonna do what he wants to do, with supreme confidence. That’s the gift with Melo. He’s supremely confident with what he wears, how he plays and who he is.”

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To get a sense of just how his star power has led to an immediate impact on the brand, a 24-hour glimpse of his debut game in the Puma MB signature series says it all.

It was a Tuesday evening in October 2021, the night before his sophomore season in the NBA tipped off.

The 2021 Rookie of the Year award that Ball won as his draft’s No. 3 overall pick in 2020 was clearly not adding to any pressure he felt to follow up his debut season.

The 6-foot-7 point guard was in an uncrowded Charlotte-area gym, weaving through players several inches shorter, but just a few years younger, who played for Ball’s MB Elite AAU team. Ball’s business manager, former NBA player Jermaine Jackson, is the coach of the AAU team, which Jackson’s teenage son also plays for.

There’s nothing on the line during this pickup game against his youth travel squad – except his love of the game.

A heave 3-pointer turns into a no-look pass on the next play. A shifty step back to the left wing comes after that, and myriad drives and floaters soon follow. All were worked on endlessly in Chino Hills, California, then in Geneva, Ohio, with BC Prienai in Lithuania, and even Wollongong, Australia – wherever Ball’s basketball odyssey happened to take him as a teenager.

“He just loves to hoop,” said a Puma rep. “I’m telling you – he just wants to hoop.”

The following night at the Spectrum Center, Ball dropped 31 points, 9 rebounds, and 7 assists in the Hornets’ home opener win of 123-122 over the Indiana Pacers. He didn’t celebrate the stats on social media afterward. Nor did he post a standard game shot with a clichéd caption like “Great team win!”

Instead, from the players’ parking garage, he posted a photo of himself wearing his outfit on Instagram, where his screen name is . He was draped in a custom neon green suit of the elongated variety alongside his custom-wrapped, matching neon green Lamborghini Urus of the excessively stunting variety.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by LaMelo Ball ()

The post tallied more than 1.8 million likes. It had earned no less than 50 million impressions by the following morning and was reposted by every tier of basketball-related social media accounts on every platform.

Just 20 years old at the time – and after once launching a signature sneaker under his family’s Big Baller Brand on his 16th birthday – Ball was stepping into his lane as one of the athletic industry’s most impactful endorsers.

Charlotte Hornets guard LaMelo Ball wears the Puma MB.01 in 2021.

He made his regular season debut that evening in his first signature sneaker with Puma, the MB.01. The vivid “red blast” colorway didn’t remotely match the Hornets’ teal and purple accented uniforms. But it was a perfect fit for someone drawn to showing off the loudest style possible.

He’s also shown love of bright neons, rocks iced-out grills, and 3D UFO chain pendants in the arena entry tunnel. He primarily sticks to a series of emojis for his social post captions. He’s kept his more traditional media sessions about sneakers to a minimum.

“It felt great,” Ball told Andscape following his first game in the Puma MB.01. “You gotta love wearing your own hoop shoes.”

Five weeks later, the shoe smoked out at retail upon its launch. During its first 90 days, more than 120,000 pairs of the MB.01 in four colorways were sold, according to an industry source. Those numbers made the sneaker launch one of the most successful signature debuts, ranking with LA Clippers guard Paul George’s Nike PG 1 and Stephen Curry’s first Under Armour model.

Foot Locker was so sure of his star power that it locked in an exclusive distribution agreement for the MB series, showcasing Ball’s latest model in elevated store wall displays and ramping up availability to more than 700 Foot Locker locations across the country.

“It came at the right time for Puma and the right time for our relationship with them. It also came at a perfect time for basketball,” said Jed Berger, who was chief marketing officer of Foot Locker at the time of the interview in March and was named president of Kenneth Cole in August.

“It’s really good for the sneaker industry when basketball is hot. It’s really good for the industry when multiple brands have talent that is doing great,” Berger said. “We have an amazing partnership with Puma, that is really focused around LaMelo.”

When Puma Basketball was relaunched in 2018, after nearly two decades following a canceled deal with Vince Carter in 1999, the first move they made was not to give out a signature shoe.

“The signature model concept construct is a little broken, and it needs to be challenged a little bit,” Puma chief brand officer Adam Petrick said at the time.

The industry has hovered just shy of 20 signature sneakers for NBA players in recent years. Around 75% of the league’s players wear Nike Inc.’s Nike, Jordan, and Converse shoes in games. In 2015, basketball sneaker sales peaked at $1.3 billion but fell a staggering 13.6% by 2017, according to research from the NPD Group.

Overall sales of current performance hoop shoes, not including retro Jordans, have continued to decline since that peak in 2015.

The Puma Jet — the brand’s private plane for its athletes — is still one of the best endorsement perks out.

Here’s how LaMelo Ball pulled up to NBA Summer League: pic.twitter.com/qLYC0YCvt3

— Nick DePaula () August 9, 2021

Puma was looking for a different approach. The company formed deals with a mix of top draft picks and veterans with expressive personalities and had one model for each half of the season that all players wore.

That all changed once the brand had a chance to land Ball in 2020.

“[To be] a signature athlete, it’s more than just the basketball player. There’s an aura around them,” said Sallee. “Whether that’s a mysterious aura, or a personality thing. It’s like the whole [Allen] Iverson thing, where he was just so different from everyone else. That’s what makes Melo special. He came in with a life of growing up on social media and a family dynamic that we’ve never seen before with a NBA player. We watched him grow up.”

From a Foot Locker perspective, the familiarity that Ball entered the league with added to their excitement for his eventual series.

“The basketball community has known about him for years, and they always called him ‘The best Ball.’ There’s been this enthusiasm for him for a long time,” said Berger. “That also allowed for Puma to have a little more confidence to produce a signature so early on. When they thought they had something, they had the confidence to press the accelerator. In this business, you gotta be willing to be wrong if you’re going to get wins.”

That bet paid off.

When Ball laced up his signature sneakers for his first All-Star Game in February, it was the first time Puma shoes had been worn in the NBA’s annual showcase game since 1990, when Detroit Pistons guard Isiah Thomas wore Puma at All-Star Weekend in Miami.

“It was warranted,” said Sallee. “He’s exciting to watch, and he’s a perfect dude to go to an All-Star Game. He’ll just get better. Just like us, it’s just the start for him. I know he’s working on his game, and he’s a true basketball player. He’s not worried about what’s going on off the court as much as he is on the court. He’s doing it right, and we should see him in a lot more All-Star Games.”

Puma head of design Jeremy Sallee’s computer rendering of the progress of the MB.02.

Fast-forward to his second signature model, the shoe Sallee designed carries over many of the elements that made the first shoe, designed by Jacob Garcia, a success. The silhouette is essentially the same, and there’s a more integrated approach to celebrating the “world of Melo,” as Sallee calls it. Once again, the launch colorway is a blinding blend of bright red and orange.

Wordmarks and phrases such as “1 of 1,” “Rare,” and “Not From Here” were splashed across panels of the first shoe. The second shoe takes a less literal approach with the words designed into the panels and grip pattern on the bottom.

The Phenom edition of the MB.02.

Puma

The second colorway, dubbed Phenom, brings a different approach with a more balanced black-and-blue ex*****on. The cushioning has been upgraded from Nitro Foam embedded in the heel to now being included in the heel and forefoot of the MB.02, a first for Puma in a basketball shoe.

“On the 1, he just wanted all-over, one-color shoes,” said Sallee. “While we have that for the launch color [of the 2], we do have some new finishes for the next releases that are a little bit more dynamic.”

Puma

Charlotte Hornets guard LaMelo Ball (left) meets with the Puma design team in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Puma

A look at the design mood board for the MB.02.

Coming out of the Zoom meeting monotony under which the first shoe was designed, Sallee mentions Melo’s vibrant personality and in-person feedback during a series of meetings at the Puma office just outside of Boston and in brainstorm sessions in Charlotte.

After the first shoe was drafted from the wings of his chest tattoo, the second shoe continued that design language. Ball added more ink over the summer, with that same batch of phrases and red flames taking up some serious real estate across his forearms and hands.

“His personality is about supreme confidence,” added Sallee. “He’s got his own fashion sense and he likes a lot of things, whether we or anyone else likes them. He’s gonna wear it proudly and make it cool. There’s a lot of things that he embodies and has a lot of characteristics that have just worked out for a signature athlete.”

Charlotte Hornets point guard LaMelo Ball’s tattoos, such as the wings and halo artwork on his right forearm, are often featured on his signature shoes.

Puma

As he enters his third NBA season, the impact Ball has been able to drive for the overall Puma brand is already being felt.

“It’s been phenomenal,” Berger said of the Foot Locker partnership with Puma on the LaMelo series. “We had high expectations for it, but it’s unbelievably strong.”

“Puma and LaMelo Ball’s MB franchise consistently remains one of our most popular sneaker offerings at Foot Locker, Kids Foot Locker, and Champs Sports,” said Holly Tedesco, vice president of marketing at Foot Locker Inc. “Since the MB.01 first launched through the recent debut of the MB.02, we have seen tremendous anticipation and interest from our customers.”

That impact has even extended into third-party resell platforms, such as StockX, where Puma hasn’t historically held firm footing in aftermarkets dominated by retro Air Jordan and Adidas Yeezy models.

According to Drew Haines, StockX’s merchandising director of collectibles & sneakers, in just a year’s time, the interest level in Ball has far exceeded other athletes and designers.

In the Silhouettes section under StockX Search Spikes, searches for “Puma MB.01” have jumped by 6,008% year over year. In the platform’s People section, inquiries for “LaMelo Ball” have increased 1,660% year over year. The next highest rising person is sculptor Tom Sachs, whose successful General Purpose collaboration with Nike contributed to a 1,008% spike. Atlanta Hawks guard Trae Young is a distant third, with a search increase of 213%.

Puma

The highest-increasingly searched sneakers and personalities on StockX this year.

Puma

“Performance basketball shoes are gaining popularity on StockX, and LaMelo Ball’s MB.01 is very much at the center of this trend,” said Haines. “Only released in December of last year, it’s already become one of the top-selling performance basketball silhouettes on StockX.”

During that same period, Puma has been the No. 2 fastest-growing brand in the sneakers category on StockX.

“This growth was due in large part to the success of LaMelo Ball’s MB.01 sneaker line,” added Haines. “We’ve seen trades of Puma sneakers increase by 415% year over year on StockX, and that simply wouldn’t have happened without the success of the MB.01.”

The heel of Charlotte Hornets point guard LaMelo Ball’s second shoe features an upgraded heel counter and re-creates the MB1 wings and halo artwork from the tattoo on Ball’s right forearm.

With two colorways of his second shoe out now and a runway for success ahead, the Puma Hoops category has come a long way since its relaunch in 2018.

Landing Ball was the spark the brand was looking for to carry Puma into the next decade.

“It was perfect,” said Sallee. “It’s what we needed, and we got it sooner than later, which was nice too. Having an athlete that could push the brand forward and push the category forward, for real. When you’re starting up the basketball category, if you don’t do it right, you could ruin it quick. Melo definitely helped a lot, and his personality is perfect for being the lead dude at a brand. It was a godsend for real.”

For a teenager who grew up with two older brothers potentially headed to the pros and a headline-garnering pops, it turned out that LaMelo B...

23/11/2022

For many, Thanksgiving is about food and family. We maintain traditions while making new memories. With that in mind, we asked Andscape’s staff members to share stories about their favorite foods from Thanksgivings past and the special people whose hands — and hearts — prepared those dishes.

Grandma Ola’s sweet potato pie

Martenzie Johnson

My grandmother, Ola Mae Barnett, is the architect of many food staples in my family, including her cheeseburgers, her fluffy, loose scrambled eggs, and her salmon croquettes – which, due to a fish allergy, I have never tasted but heard are great. But her sweet potato pies stand apart, both a delicious dessert and an unofficial bonding item for us.

My grandmother has been deaf for most of her life. She’s never heard my voice or many of the daily sounds we all take for granted. Despite that limitation, we have a great and loving relationship, and I can even “talk” to her on the phone through a special device.

Martenzie Johnson’s grandmother, Ola Mae Barnett, always made sweet potato pies for “her favorite grandchild.”

Martenzie Johnson

So she’s never heard me talk about those pies. Those glorious pies. Amazingly, I avoided those pies for the first few years of my life. Why would someone want to eat vegetable pie? I probably thought to myself. And truth be told, they closely resembled pumpkin pies, which we don’t eat. But then I had my first slice – microwaved for 15-20 seconds, of course – and then another, and then another. When I was in high school, my grandmother began making a pie just for me, separate from the community pie. After I went off to college in 2007, every time I returned home, whether it was for Thanksgiving, another holiday, or just a break from school, a pie would be waiting for me.

It’s been said that food can be a labor of love. And that’s true for Grandma’s sweet potato pie. She would do it with no complaint, almost 99% of the time, without me even having to ask. She’s never asked for anything in return except for a periodic phone call or spending a few hours on the couch with her. It’s just something she wanted to do – and don’t let my siblings or cousins hear this – for her favorite grandchild.

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Last year, understanding the reality of mortality, I finally asked Grandma for the recipe. She went to the cupboard and pulled out a book that held what I imagine to be dozens of recipes. And out she pulled a tiny piece of paper with the sweet potato pie recipe written on it in her cursive writing. It contains [redacted] cups of sweet potatoes. And [redacted] cups of sugar and [redacted] eggs. Some [redacted] milk and a teaspoon or two of [redacted]. If I told you the recipe, I’d have to unalive you. She told me I could just have it, but I reminded her that it’s the 21st century and pulled out my phone and took a picture. Nearly two years later, I have yet to replicate her work, but someday I will.

Unfortunately, I won’t make it home this Thanksgiving and will miss out on Grandma’s sweet potato pie. But the next time I make my way back to Milwaukee, I’ll walk into my grandparents’ home, their large kitchen, and find two sweet potato pies sitting on the countertop. One will be for whoever wants the taste of the deliciousness that is sweet potato pie. And the other will be all for me, just as it’s always been.

Aunt Diane’s broccoli cheddar cornbread

Sheila Matthews

Do you know that one dish guaranteed to be in attendance if a specific family member is there, too? That has to be my Aunt Diane’s self-proclaimed “famous” broccoli cheddar cornbread. Some may consider this dish a “Southern thing” or a “holiday thing.” I always considered it “Aunt Diane’s thing.” Although my aunt didn’t create the recipe, she made it better than when she found it, as she did with most things.

My earliest memories of my aunt are centered on the dining room table in her home. The ironic part about that? My aunt was far from a chef. In her words, she “couldn’t even boil water.” Somehow, though, she made one dish flawlessly. I first fell in love with her broccoli cheddar cornbread one random Sunday dinner that my grandmother prepared. The table was set as usual with everything from smothered turkey wings to turnips, and like magic to my adolescent eyes, this cornbread appeared on the table. When I asked who made it and she revealed herself as the chef, I was shocked. It was the best cornbread I had ever eaten, and I made it clear that it was worthy of being present at every family meal from that point on.

Sheila Matthews (right) with her Aunt Diane (left), the woman behind the “famous” broccoli cheddar cornbread.

Sheila Matthews

My aunt might not have been a strong contender in the kitchen, but she was a key player in other areas on Thanksgiving. She would be a timekeeper for all the pots and pans on the stove and volunteer to run to the store when an ingredient was forgotten. That was a trait of my aunt that I loved — the way she would always show up for others. That was also true for her broccoli cheddar cornbread. Every year it would show up at the Thanksgiving table. This year will be different, though. My aunt and her broccoli cheddar cornbread will not be present for dinner.

From the warm feeling of family around the Thanksgiving holiday to my aunt’s signature dish, it’s hard to proceed as usual when a person and their food are a significant part of your life. Last year, a week after Thanksgiving, my aunt was killed in her home, just steps from the table where we had eaten Thanksgiving dinner. A man my aunt said had been stalking her for two decades has been charged with killing her. My family has been robbed of her and what she meant to us, especially during the holiday season.

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There have been elements of this situation that have been hard to process, but the peace that I have found is that although she can’t come back or ever be replaced, I’m able to feel her presence through her broccoli cheddar cornbread. Whenever I want to be transported back to my happy place — my family’s dinner table — or feel a warm hug from her, I can add all the ingredients together and get one step closer to those familiar feelings. However, I can’t quite get it exactly how she did. I don’t think it’s even possible because I know the essential ingredient she put into it was love, and the love she had for her family can never be duplicated.

Aunt Cheryl’s gumbo and fried fish

Marc Spears

For years, I’ve made the pilgrimage to New Orleans to have Thanksgiving with my parents and other family members. The highlight wasn’t the Cajun fried turkey or the other side dishes. It was my aunt Cheryl Armant’s gumbo and fried fish. I will put her gumbo against anybody’s in the world.

Marc Spears’ Aunt Cheryl always made the trip to New Orleans for Thanksgiving special.

Marc Spears

Unfortunately, my aunt died two years ago, just days before Thanksgiving. While she is gone, I will never forget how special her meals were on Thanksgiving and how much she meant to me. In our last conversation, she talked about how excited she was for Thanksgiving and how she had her gumbo ready, and all the other famous dishes that people from Louisiana love so much.

Grandma Russell’s biscuits

Channing Hargrove

This Thanksgiving marks two years and two months since my grandmother Bessie Russell died. The last few times I saw her, she was in her home of 52 years in Mount Airy, Philadelphia. She was barely eating.

While a lot of my most recent memories of her revolve around food: going out to eat with her and my mom — her oldest daughter — after doctor’s appointments or pedicures, bringing her salads and sandwiches once she was in hospice, and not leaving her room anymore. I can’t remember the last time I tasted her cooking.

I’d like to say that I wish I could have appreciated the last time I had her home cooking a little bit more. I can’t lie, though. For me, the lasting memories I have of my grandmother reimagined what femininity looked like for Black women beyond the kitchen.

Don’t get me wrong, she definitely could throw down, and there were dishes I loved. I loved her biscuits. I only ate her greens — a mix of turnip, mustard, and collards with turkey butts, onion, garlic, and rutabaga. Add hot sauce and vinegar as it boils down — for the longest time. My mouth is watering, thinking about the smell of the butter and a little garlic she melted in a saucepan to pour over them.

For me, the lasting memories I have of my grandmother reimagined what femininity looked like for Black women beyond the kitchen.

“She made homemade biscuits that none of us have the recipe for,” my mom said, remembering her favorite dishes of her mother’s. “She could make cakes and pies; I love apple pie.”

When I think of my grandmother, who I have called by her last name, Russell, since I was a baby — never, ever “grandmom,” or, even worse to her, “nana” — I think of all the meals she prepared for other people. And how she wanted more for her girls. My Russell never finished high school. She had the first of her five children when she was 17 and my mother when she was 19. Russell worked as a caretaker, a home aide for other people’s loved ones.

“She never required me to cook,” my mother, Eugenia Russell Hargrove, said. “She was more interested in me getting an education and me being a certain kind of person.” My mom continued, “She didn’t allow me to hang around with everybody.” Instead, my grandmother sent my mom to charm school and took an active interest in her friend group.

My mom’s only “job” (if you could even call it that) at home used to be keeping my grandmother company while she prepared meals, often from scratch, including desserts. Oh, and my mom had to set the table. Russell loved to use her table to set a mood. Eating at Russell’s house was about the ambiance: she liked having candles and flowers and would change the tablescape’s theme each year.

“She wanted to have a nice home,” Hargrove said. “She wanted for things to be a certain way and you just admire women that are like that, even from back in the day, but she knew she didn’t have skills to go out on her own and she wanted those things for me. She wanted me to have options. She wanted me to not have to stay somewhere.”

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I asked my mom why she thought Russell was like that, not requiring extra hands in the kitchen. “I think she had it in her mind how she wanted her daughters to be. She wanted me to be better than her, be able to move differently, and be educated. She didn’t make much money and sent me to a private school that she paid for. I went to Catholic school first and then private girls school again, all because of her.

“I never felt like I had to learn how to cook and I didn’t,” my mom said. “When I graduated from high school, I did not know how to cook and it didn’t bother me. I was like, ‘I can read, I can learn.’ ”

Later in life, when Russell was trying to help my mom learn to cook, my mother joked Russell would say a “pinch of this or a pinch of that.” “And I’d be like, ‘What’s a pinch? Is my hand the same size as yours?’ [My mom is a Virgo, if you can’t tell.] I had to have it exact, and she was never that way.”

I see a lot of my grandmother in my mom. Russell loved for her home to be well kept, decorating seasonally. She loved well-made pieces of clothing and jewelry. She also liked to shop in secondhand stores. Russell’s motto was that people could see when things were nice.

A young Channing Hargrove waits at her grandmother Russell’s table for the meal to be served.

Channing Hargrove

For Russell, being truly fashionable was being able to shop in the best and worst places, and no one could tell. It was about how you put everything together. Russell taught my mother to have the basics in her closet: something to wear to a wedding, funeral, and cocktail party. I still follow that advice to this day.

My older cousin Rian Russell, Russell’s first grandchild, said our grandmother was always the picture of femininity, wearing hosiery and accessories, keeping her hair done, and with perfectly long, glossy nails. But Russell also constantly reminded us to pray, keeping God first — and not just before a meal.

My mother never stressed that I learned to cook, clean, or do laundry. I went to college not knowing how to do any of that. My grandmother’s thinking was her daughters had their whole lives to learn those things. Instead, she taught her daughters to be independent, championing education to achieve the best life had to offer. My mother was her first kid to finish college. My aunt, Russell’s youngest child, was next, earning a bachelor’s and two master’s degrees. Russell always used to joke that she was forever getting an education.

“She always said, ‘It’s nice to look nice but have something in your head,’ ” my aunt Tasha Russell said. My aunt also said that her mother taught her to hang around people who would help her further her goals. “So for me, it was always important to be able to carry an intellectual conversation.”

While my mother always told me school wasn’t a fashion show, my grandmother told my aunt, “It’s important to look nice, but being pretty and dressed nicely will only take you so far … Get something in ya head.”

My grandmother taught my mother to be someone of faith. To be a woman who lives a beautifully curated life of her choosing beyond being of service to anyone other than herself. And that is who my mother taught me I am destined to be, too.

Grandma Clemmie’s upside-down pineapple cake

Justin Tinsley

If dishes were like sports, my grandmother Clementine Marshall’s upside-down pineapple cake would be a unanimous First Team All-American. When I lived at home in my pre-college years, Grandma Clemmie would make it multiple times a year. In part because she’s a sweets addict. But really, because I’d ask, she’d be more than happy to oblige. Over time, the cake would become our annual Thanksgiving tradition when I moved out of the house. I’d always take half the cake back up to my apartments in and around the Washington area. Likely in some Tupperware container, which I promised to return, but we both knew that would never happen. It made the moment that much more special.

I can’t wait to put my son on the legacy of his great-grandmother’s legendary and scrumptious upside-down pineapple cake.

We haven’t had that tradition in a few years, though. We haven’t spent Thanksgiving together since 2019. We still see each other a few times a year. I miss her, and she misses me, but we’re both incredibly excited at life’s changes. I’ve gotten married and expect the birth of my first child shortly after the holidays. She can’t wait to be a great-grandmother again. Meanwhile, I can’t wait to put my son on the legacy of his great-grandmother’s legendary and scrumptious upside-down pineapple cake.

The memories of that cake over the holidays are some of the greatest memories of my life. The mere thought of them warms my heart and provides a necessary escape when life gets hectic or I need to slow down. I can hear the laughter and the debates about whether the Dallas Cowboys were worth a damn that season. I can see the smiles on the faces of all my cousins, aunts, and uncles as we went back for one slice too many.

For many, Thanksgiving is about food and family. We maintain traditions while making new memories. With that in mind, we asked Andscape’s st...