The Root ’s greatest summer anthems of all time.

Summer Groovin’
By Stephen A. Crockett Jr.
Damn the iPod.

It will not now and nor will it ever be the cassette tape. Sure, it’s fancy and plays music with a clarity that has yet to be surpassed. But a pod-mix just doesn’t sound right. There is an art to making a mixtape, an ebb and flow. The beauty of it is that it makes the common man a composer. It blends the music and forces the listener to find the intended groove and see the musical vision.

My dad made mixes all the time. It wasn’t so much a hobby as a carefully crafted surgical procedure. So this is my ode to the summer mixtape and to cassette tapes everywhere buried in boxes behind old times that spoke of restlessness and resilience. This is for the flowers that grow every year without insistence, and the breeze that moves without command. This is for summers gone by and the summers to come. This is my all-time summer listening list.  Now press Play.

TOP 5 SUMMER RAP JOINTS

1. “Summertime”

D.J. Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince

Summertime (the season) just called me and said this is the official anthem of its life.

(mix with Summer Madness—Kool and the Gang)

2. “Today Was a Good Day”

Ice Cube

Mama cooked the breakfast with no hog…

This is Ice Cube at his best, telling the story of a day where everything just seems to fall into place, which summer, in theory at least, is all about. The potential of summer is one long, endless day when everything works out, when the sun and the shade provide the yin and the yang.

This song holds in it the potential of an endless forever and foreshadows a kinder, gentler Ice Cube who would shift from hardcore gangsta rapper to comedic movie dad.

(mix with “Footsteps in the Dark”—Isley Brothers)

3.  “A Rollerskating Jam Named ‘Saturdays’ “

De La Soul

An ode to roller-skating and the relief of Saturdays after a long work week. It is the carefree playfulness that summer embodies. This song makes you want to dig out your rollerskates (real roller skates, not those ice skates with wheels) and Walkman and go bobbing down the sidewalk.

(Mix with “Bounce, Rock, Skate, Roll” by Vaughn Mason and Crew)

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Straight Men, Gay Women Have Similar Brains

Swedish researchers have found that the brains of straight men and lesbians display many of the same characteristics. What do you think?

Kevin O’Malley,
Systems Analyst
“Great—I’m going to start asking my straight male friends to cat-sit.”

Chelsea Carter,
Home Theater Installer
“Though one group’s inclination to fetishize the other is highly disproportionate.”

Sam Glaumann,
Beer Vendor
“So which group is defective?”

Can you guess this one hit wonder? (If you already know, don’t spoil it for everyone else!)

Today’s video of the day comes from the comedic genius George Carlin, who passed away yesterday at the age of 71. A disciple of Lenny Bruce, Carlin is widely regarded as one of the greatest comedians of all time. This video, “Seven Words,” caused Carlin to be arrested for obscenity. The case, which went all the way to the Supreme Court, helped change the nation’s legal and entertainment history. R.I.P.

Sure, black people need to celebrate winning their freedom, but is this really the right day for the picnic?

Why Juneteenth’s Not My Thing
By John McWhorter

I am John Hamilton McWhorter, the fifth. The first John Hamilton McWhorter was a slave. This Thursday is Juneteenth, when I might be inclined to celebrate the emancipation of John Hamilton McWhorter, the first.

Or not. Truth to tell, I have never quite gotten the hang of Juneteenth.

I suppose I should. What could be wrong, after all, with celebrating slaves in America being freed? Technically, Juneteenth arose to mark the day slaves in Texas were freed, but over the years it has been embraced nationwide as a celebration of emancipation.

But at the end of the day, I just can’t wrap my head around celebrating the fact that someone else freed my ancestors. It puts too much focus on a time when we were so starkly in the down position. Juneteenth seems to be about what someone else did.

Whites had been crucial to keeping the Abolitionist movement going. Certainly blacks worked alongside them: The career of Frederick Douglass is Exhibit A. And there were more slave revolts than we are often aware of.

However, we cannot say that blacks in America made their freedom happen. Freedom happened partly as the result of whites making other whites see the error of their ways. And Abraham Lincoln’s commitment was to preserving the Union as a political arrangement, which inherently included abolishing slavery. And even then, the Emancipation Proclamation did not free all slaves, just slaves in the Confederacy, over which Lincoln had no jurisdiction.

So, yes, blacks played a part—but if for some bizarre reason blacks had not participated in the Abolitionist movement and had never revolted, it is thoroughly plausible that emancipation would have happened anyway.

Think about it: The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was something that happened because we made it happen. As we have recently revisited in the wake of Hillary Clinton’s famous comment, Lyndon B. Johnson was the one who pushed it through Congress. However, he wouldn’t have done what he did absent the ferocious tenacity of Dr. King, his black comrades and the countless black people who gave their time, energy and sometimes their lives to battling Jim Crow to its knees and changing the nation’s mind on bigotry.

Juneteenth has also always left me a little cold because of what happened after slaves were freed.

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