Recently nominated for a Grammy in the Best Urban Contemporary Album, Sydney Bennett is better known as “Syd tha Kyd” - one half of the eclectic soul group The Internet. She famously came out of the closet in the pair’s debut music video for “Cocaine”.
“I decided to do it because I wish I had someone like that [an openly gay female artist] while I was coming up,” she told LA Weekly in January 2012. “People write on my Tumblr just thanking me for making the video, saying that I really inspire them, and they want to be like me. But I wasn’t always this way, this comfortable with myself, and I remember what that was like.”
Since that interview, she has followed The Internet’s debut album Purple Naked Ladies with two additional projects - Feel GoodandEgo Death. She is also known for her production work with the California hip-hop collective Odd Future.
Watch the music video for The Internet’s “Girl” below:
Known as the “Queen of Hip-Hop Soul”, Mary J. Blige helped bridge the gap between R&B and hip-hop in the 1990s, popularizing the rapper/vocalist collaborations we now take for granted on modern radio. In sharing her life, her world and her growing pains, she has connected with fans on a deep emotional level, providing them catharsis with her takes on heartbreak and the search for something real in this often fake, plastic world.
Blige’s voice has transcended beyond her genre, as she’s dabbled in pop,dance and even musical theater with her upcoming role as Evilene in The Wiz LIVE! (which airs later tonight at 8/7c, if you haven’t yet already set your DVR or planned to live-tweet). Arguably, she blows Bono out of the water with her rendition of U2′s “One”, proving that she’s one-hundred percent earned her status as musical royalty.
Watch the video for Blige’s classic single “Real Love” below:
Once nicknamed the “Black Mother of Hollywood”, Jenifer Lewis is known for playing maternal roles films that include Poetic Justice,What’s Love Got To Do With It,Dead Presidents,PantherandPenny Marshall’sThe Preacher’s Wife. It is likely no coincidence that she was selected to portray Dre’s mother Ruby on the ABC sitcom Black-ish, delivering some of the biggest laughs alongside Anthony Anderson, Tracee Ellis Ross and the rest of the cast.
In her early career, Lewis was cast as Effie White in the workshop for Dreamgirls, but when the show moved to Broadway, Jennifer Holliday was chosen for the role instead. Shortly after, she landed a gig as one of Bette Midler’s back-up singers, earning her first television and film credits with the diva’s HBO specials and the 1988 film Beaches. She would also play one of Whoopi Goldberg’s back-up singers in both Sister Actmovies.
On television, Lewis had memorable roles as Dean Davenport on A Different World, Aunt Helen on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and Veretta Childs on Girlfriends. She appeared in six seasons as Lana Hawkins on Lifetime’s Strong Medicine, also performing the show’s theme song.
Lewis has contributed her vocal talents to several animated projects, bringing to life Mama Odie in The Princess and the Frog, Flo in the Cars franchise and Bebe Ho on Eddie Murphy’s television series The PJs. Her stage credits include a Shakespeare in the Park production opposite Meryl Streep and five Broadway credits, including the role of Motormouth Maybelle in Hairspray.
In 2007, Lewis revealed on The Oprah Winfrey Show that she has bipolar disorder. Beyond participating in causes to promote mental health awareness, she has continued to speak out about her diagnosis since then.
Australian actress Clare Bowen - known for her role as Scarlett O'Connor on ABC’s Nashville - surprised fans this month with a new look, chopping off her long, wavy blond locks to debut a much shorter pixie cut. While Bowen, of course, isn’t the first woman in entertainment to get a major haircut, it’s the message that came along with her change that really mattered.
She explained in a November 11 Facebook post that she was diagnosed with end stage nephroblastoma as a child. Her parents were told she would only have two weeks to live if she didn’t undergo an experimental (and potentially deadly) treatment. She spent an extended period in the hospital, growing up around similar children who were “mostly bald, all tubed, taped, bandaged up and stitched back together”.
She reflected on her life as a survivor, writing that, “I look relatively normal on the outside, but on the inside, I am still the same stitched back together little creature, in a world where people are judged so harshly for the way they look.”
Then, she proceeded to explain what inspired her haircut:
“I was really inspired when I heard a story about a little girl who said she couldn’t be a princess because she didn’t have long hair, and I wanted her, and others like her to know that’s not what makes a princess, or a warrior, or a superhero. It’s not what makes you beautiful either. It’s your insides that count… even if you happen to be missing half of them.
“Every scar tells a story, every baldhead, every dark circle, every prosthetic limb, and every reflection in a mirror that you might not recognize anymore. Look deeper than skin, hair, nails, and lips. You are who you are in your bones. That is where you have the potential to shine the brightest from. It is where your true beautiful self lives.”
Bowen went on to thank ABC and Nashville series creator Callie Khouri for allowing her to change her character’s hair, concluding with the following statement - “Self-esteem takes a lot longer to grow back than hair.”
