Resources

It can do anything, but just don’t try to make it do everything

Let’s get one thing out of the way — I love em dashes. For instance, that last sentence should’ve used a colon. Let’s get one thing out of the way: I love em dashes. Nope! You’re outta here, colon. Go find a serial list to preface.

Loving the em dash treads a fine and dangerous line, though. It’s one of the most flexible pieces of punctuation at a writer’s disposal, but that flexibility can lead to pitfalls from overuse to straight-up misuse. In other words, you should probably learn to be judicious in deploying it, lest your work start to look like a second-rate impression of Emily Dickinson. Or a 17th-century pamphleteer. …

40 Over 40

Aging used to signal the end of a rap career — now it’s a way to forge a tighter bond with fans

I don’t remember the first rapper I ever interviewed — a 20-plus-year career in journalism will do that — but I definitely remember the first rapper I thanked: Common, aka Lon-chikka-Lonnie Lynn. This was back in the Like Water For Chocolate era; as we sat there in a New York hotel room talking about everything and nothing at the same time, I realized that this dude had already made three albums that had hit me at different points in my young life. The hyperactive yawping on his debut, Can I Borrow a Dollar?, slid perfectly into my adolescent, Das EFX-loving ears. A couple of years later, Resurrection matched up with me being out of my folks’ house and learning how to think for myself. And with its first Soulquarian stirrings, One Day It’ll All Make Sense found me fresh out of college, navigating grown-man B.I. and wondering what my next step would be. …

Even as we begin to re-enter the world together, a small — but crucial — element of male friendship will be missing. And we may never get it back.

Big Blue was her name. An ’81 Impala, stock save for the Pioneer tape deck Norm had thrown in the dash. That tape deck held just about the entirety of the early ’90s while we drove through the Indiana night doing nothing. MC Breed, Cube, Tribe, Pac, Redman, X-Clan. Sometimes nothing would turn into something — wood-tip Swishers stuffed with what passed for weed back then, off-campus parties that didn’t mind a couple of high school kids — but always, ultimately, the night would end the same way it began. Big Blue idling outside my house, or my shitty Prelude idling outside Norm’s. …

The Ultimate Guide to Black Men’s Hair

Chrome that dome and stay nick-free, word to Mariah

Welcome to Medium’s new publication for Black and Brown men. Tell us your stories.

Welcome to LEVEL. We’re new! (For now, at least.) It’s important to know what we’re trying to do here, the kinds of stories we want to run, and how to maximize your chances of writing those stories.

Our mission and our readers

It’s simple: We aim to fundamentally change what you think of when you hear the phrase “men’s publication,” and to do so through and for the worldview of Black and Brown men. To unpack that a bit:

1. “Men” is a broad descriptor, and we intend to reflect that breadth. If we run a piece about sex or relationships, the piece will, whenever possible, not presume the sexuality of you or your partner(s). Similarly, the voice and stance of the publication won’t presume that the reader has always identified as male. We’ll cover explicitly LGBTQ+ issues as well, but even when we’re not, we want all our readers to see themselves in as many stories as possible. …