So here is the part that should not require saying out loud. A grown woman can date whoever she pleases, full stop. Nobody owes an explanation for choosing joy. Besides, some of those same aunties clutching pearls over a younger man were cutting the Electric Slide at somebody’s second wedding last summer. Age gaps are not the crisis. Our community has bigger fish to fry than a birthday certificate.

What deserves real attention runs deeper than the math.

Cole has never hidden her scars. She grew up knowing what addiction could do to a family, and in 2021 it took her mother Frankie for good. Most stars would hand that kind of grief to a publicist and keep it moving, but she said the hard part out loud, more than once. That is why the talk around Skrilla sits heavy for some of us. The rapper has spoken openly about past drug use and the changes he has been trying to make in his life. In a January 2026 interview, he described being more sober than before and taking a more disciplined approach to his music. Give the man credit for being honest and making an effort to grow. His past deserves acknowledgment, but it would be unfair to assume those struggles define where he stands today. Personal growth takes work, and everybody deserves room to show they are doing it.

Two people can enter a relationship carrying painful histories, and healing is not what you automatically get. Sometimes love becomes a place where both people grow stronger. Other times, you get two people drowning in identical water, each convinced they are teaching the other to swim. That is a possibility worth understanding in any relationship, not a judgment about what Keyshia and Skrilla may have going on behind closed doors.

Before Skrilla, there was Hunxho, another young talent who was 24 when she went public with their relationship back in 2024. He is 27 now. Same age gap conversation, different chapter. Folks had jokes then too, and she blocked out the noise the way she always has. No shade to her taste whatsoever. The younger men she has dated are gifted and magnetic, but age alone cannot tell us whether somebody has done the work of growing up. That part shows in how a person treats you, handles responsibility, and carries himself when life stops being fun.

Much of her heart has played out on television and timelines for twenty years now, from the early reality days through every headline since. People watch a woman grow up on camera and start believing her business is theirs to run. The internet hands out that boldness for free. What gets lost in all that shouting is the only part that counts: whether she is happy away from the cameras, feels safe, and can still be herself.

Let me pull up a chair and talk to my Sistas for a minute, because we left the gossip about one singer a ways back.

Here is the truth we keep learning the hard way. Being somebody’s woman should never mean misplacing your own self in the process. You can be head over heels and still hold your line without apology. Caring about him does not mean you go blind to the warning signs waving in your face. Too many of us came up on that old story, the one that swears a good woman just fixes, waits, forgives, and takes whatever is handed to her. That belief has buried too many of our mothers and aunties in situations that drained them bone dry.

Black women give and give. We nurture, we defend, we build brothers up and then watch them stroll the finished product over to somebody new. Our capacity for devotion is a superpower and a snare, depending entirely on who holds the other end.

So the real question for Keyshia, and honestly for every one of us watching, is not whether the age gap matters. It is whether she stays whole, whatever the nature of her connection with Skrilla and wherever it might lead. If romance is part of the picture, does it add to her life or quietly subtract? When the cameras cut and the glow of the timeline fades, is there peace in her world? Does she feel supported and appreciated, or is she carrying burdens that should never have been hers to manage? Those are questions worth asking about love in general, not assumptions about what happens in her private life.

A relationship built on rescuing is not a relationship. It is a job with terrible benefits.

None of this means she belongs alone. Companionship at 45 is beautiful, and a confident sister choosing a vibrant mate can absolutely flourish when both arrive healthy. The concern here reaches beyond Keyshia herself. Skrilla has publicly discussed past substance use, while Cole knows firsthand what addiction can do to a family. Neither fact proves there is trouble between them, and his more recent comments about sobriety deserve to be taken seriously. Still, their experiences remind us that love cannot replace the personal responsibility healing requires. Two people can support each other through difficult seasons, but neither should have to carry the entire weight of the other’s recovery.

Real love tends to be quiet, if we are honest about it. It looks like somebody who keeps his word, shows up consistently, and has already done the work of growing up before entering your life. Anybody can bring fireworks. What almost nobody brings is steadiness, the slow dependable kind that keeps a heart safe long after the spark settles down.

Cole is moving at full speed these days, and that grind is a big reason folks pull for her the way they do. She records, tours, and commands a stage decades into a career that could have folded a dozen times over. You cannot fake that kind of staying power. My hope is that she pours a sliver of that same fire into guarding her own peace the way she guards her setlist.

Sistas, hear me good. Your companion can be fine, talented, and crazy about you, and the thing can still cost more than it hands back. Watch the patterns, not only the chemistry. A rescue project today will need rescuing tomorrow, and the day after, until your whole identity shrinks down to being his lifeguard.

Keyshia Cole owes us nothing in the way of a different choice. What she does owe herself is an honest one. If Skrilla is grounded, growing, and good to her, then God bless the both of them and let the haters stay salty. Nobody watching from the outside knows enough to declare otherwise. But should any woman find herself loving someone through serious personal struggles, she must remember that devotion has limits. Addiction, when it is present, requires more than promises and affection. Recovery belongs to the person doing the recovering, and no measure of loyalty can do that work for him. That particular fight is one nobody wins by caring harder.

Black women deserve people who meet them at their level, not projects dressed up as princes. We have earned the right to be chosen by somebody who takes responsibility for his own growth. Dating younger was never the sin. Disappearing into anybody, at any age, is the thing that quietly steals the shine from strong Black women who hand the world their best and forget to save a little for themselves.

Whatever unfolds next for Keyshia, I am pulling hard for the version of this story where she keeps her name, nerve, and self respect fully intact.

Staff Writer; Raven Jones

Raven writes about music, relationships, and the everyday ups and downs of Black women… She keeps it honest, encourages other sistas, and can be reached at RavenJ@ThySistas.com.

Let me catch anybody up who got here late. Since her 1990 breakthrough, Mariah Carey has written or co-written eighteen of her nineteen Billboard Hot 100 number-one hits. Not just sang them. Helped create them. The Long Island kid grew into one of the most accomplished songwriters this country has produced, and I say that with paperwork behind me, not fandom. When “Vision of Love” introduced her that first year, most ears caught the acrobatics and missed the architecture underneath. She co-wrote that song with Ben Margulies, shaping a melody and vocal arrangement that announced something special. The phrasing, the way the song builds, the way a bridge lifts you right when your chest needs it. All of it revealed a young woman who understood how to make a record reach people.

Sit with that picture a minute. A girl barely out of high school walks into boardrooms stacked with seasoned men in an industry that often preferred to package young women rather than recognize their creative authority. Yet she arrives with songwriting credits already attached to her work and a clear idea of how she wants her music to sound. Her debut single was produced by Rhett Lawrence, with additional production by Narada Michael Walden, but Carey’s writing was part of the foundation from the beginning. Over time, she would take an increasingly active role in producing her records as well. For a young artist in a business built on other people’s ownership, having that creative voice mattered.

This is where the songwriting deserves its flowers. Take “Hero.” Underneath all the vocal gymnastics sits a flat, plainspoken pep talk about finding your own backbone, the sort of thing an auntie tells you while you are falling apart. “We Belong Together” gets at something trickier. The words move the way heartbreak really moves, circling around memories, songs playing on the radio, and the painful realization of what has been lost. Specifics are the whole difference between somebody who sings and somebody who writes, and Carey loads her best records with them. Think of it as a diary slipped inside a radio single. More than twenty years later, people still turn to those cuts for comfort, celebration, and remembrance. That tells you plenty about what she was really making.

Then comes her ear for where the culture was heading. Back in 1995, the remix of “Fantasy” paired that honeyed hook with Ol’ Dirty Bastard, and the gatekeepers clutched their pearls. She pushed anyway. The collaboration helped establish a blueprint for the marriage of hip-hop and pop melody that we now treat as a regular part of popular music. Plenty of stars topping charts today, the ones who sing sweet over a hard drum and drop a rapper into verse two, are walking a road she helped pave. Praise rarely travels backward to the architect, though, especially when the architect happens to be a Sista.

Listen to what younger artists keep saying about the singers who shaped them. Ariana Grande has openly acknowledged Mariah Carey as a major influence, and you can hear echoes of that approach across generations of pop and R&B performers. Those careful runs, layered harmonies, and moments when a soft phrase suddenly opens into something enormous do not happen by accident. Study the phrasing on a tender slow jam and you will hear her fingerprints pressed into the top line. Younger Sistas study those techniques, practice them, and build their own sounds from what they have learned. That is part of how R&B keeps growing. Call it what it is. Black women keep getting waved off as just naturally gifted, when the truer story is hard, deliberate labor, the kind you grind at until it changes what the genre sounds like.

Now stack the mogul brain on top, because this is the piece that stays buried. “The Emancipation of Mimi” was no cute title. Mimi chose that word deliberately after reclaiming a stronger sense of creative freedom following a brutal public stretch, and the project became one of the defining comebacks the charts have ever seen. She understood the importance of songwriting credits, publishing rights, and having a meaningful say in the music released under her name. That does not mean she owned every master recording in her catalog. Her songwriting gave her a financial and creative stake beyond performing somebody else’s material. Our Sistas in this business have been shorted for generations, their work lifted and their checks clipped, so an artist who fought for greater creative control and recognition belongs in business school case studies, not just karaoke bars.

In 2022 the Songwriters Hall of Fame finally put it in writing, bringing her in alongside the Neptunes and the Isley Brothers. Understand what that room is. It honors the pen, not merely the performance, and its membership represents a select company of writers whose compositions have left a lasting mark on music. Carey entered that room with eighteen self-written or co-written number-one singles already to her credit. That is a remarkable achievement by any standard. The honor put an official stamp on something her songwriting credits had been saying for decades. An elite writer had been tucked inside that famous throat the whole time.

Which brings us to the present, because the lady has not slowed down one bit. In September 2025 she dropped her sixteenth studio album, “Here For It All,” her first since 2018’s “Caution.” This past July she released an expanded anniversary edition of “Daydream,” packed with previously unreleased material, live performances, and remixes. Additional physical editions arrived in October. On October 30 she marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of “Glitter” with a deluxe reissue, reclaiming an era the press once mocked her over. Come winter she carries her holiday spectacle to UK arenas, with Birmingham on November 27, London on November 30, and Manchester on December 2. She has even hinted that more music could arrive in 2027, although no official release date has been announced. Rest, apparently, is nowhere on the agenda.

I need the young folks reading this to catch the real lesson underneath. Black women are not the scenery in American music. We write the songs, we run the sessions, we sign the checks and sketch the blueprint everybody after us borrows from. So when a culture hollers about the bodies of Black women and goes mute on their minds, it is telling you flat out what it actually values. Clapping for the high notes is fine, pretty even. That part is only the paint, though. Under it sits a mind that built a catalog, fought for what it was worth, and helped drag a whole industry around to her own taste.

So this December, when a certain holiday record comes on and your cousin starts carrying on about the big note, go ahead and cut in. Tell them she co-wrote that. Add that she co-produced it with Walter Afanasieff, too. The real gift was never just the sound. It was a woman thinking three or four moves ahead, helping create something that would still be standing once the tinsel came down. Anybody can entertain a room for a night. Mimi helped build something that has lasted for generations, and her name is written all over it.

Staff Writer: Brenda Poole

BP writes about entertainment, relationships, faith, and life in general… She enjoys speaking on things Black women can relate to and hopefully giving a sista something useful along the way…

Feel free to email her at BrendaP@ThySistas.com.

Janet Jackson crossed into her sixties this past May, and the celebration told us plenty about the woman she had become. Loved ones gathered in California for a birthday party her sister La Toya helped host, and the sash she wore read Sixtylicious like every letter had been earned. Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, the producers who built that signature groove with her ages ago, were among those celebrating. A few weeks later, she was off to Japan for four arena concerts, a sign that six full decades had taken nothing off the fastball.

What stays with me, though, is not the glitter of any milestone. It is the way the star has carried herself through the years. Sistas my age grew up watching this icon teach a lesson without always needing to raise her voice. The work spoke for itself. Control, Rhythm Nation 1814, The Velvet Rope, those records arrived and rearranged the whole landscape while their maker stayed cool as the far side of a pillow.

Here is the thing many of us were never handed as girls. Somewhere along the way, a lot of us picked up the idea that our worth had to be argued, defended, footnoted, and resubmitted before anyone would accept it. We explain. Then we overexplain. We show up to meetings carrying three extra reasons we belong in them, braced for a question that never comes. None of us came out the womb like that. It gets trained in. A Black woman walks in and the assumption is already sitting there waiting on her, that she is mediocre till she shows different. And when she does show different, well, now they want to double-check the receipts.

Watch the youngest Jackson sibling for even a minute and you catch it. Somewhere along the way, she seemed to opt out of the whole circus. She did not need to turn every slight into a public argument or explain herself on a talk show couch whenever somebody questioned her place. What she did was show up ready and give the crowd more than the ticket cost. The response said everything a speech could have. People slept on the baby of the family for a good while. A kid skating by on a last name, that was the read on her back then. The catalog kept answering back, year after year, till the doubters just wore out.

All of that hits different once you have put some miles behind you. In my twenties I confused being loud with being strong. The woman running her mouth the most, the one correcting everybody at the table, read to me back then like the person in charge. Took me a long time to see it the other way around. Most of the genuinely settled people I have met are the calm ones off in the corner, not because they are working hard at it but because they stopped auditioning for anybody ages ago.

The same thing plays out on a stage. Dancers moving at full speed, lights flashing, bass shaking the floor, and somehow the whole house keeps returning its attention to Janet. Even her smallest movements carry authority. Nothing feels forced. The entire performance still hangs on her. That kind of ease does not come cheap. You pay for it through years of discipline, experience, and being certain of who you are. When the room already leans toward you, forcing anything turns into noise.

Growing old in front of the whole world has to be rough on any entertainer, above all one whose early fame ran on youth and heat. This culture is stingy with grace when women age, and meaner still toward the ones who refuse to shrink or say sorry for their years. Miss Jackson has continued moving forward despite those expectations. The years keep passing, the industry keeps changing, and still she carries herself with the assurance of a woman who knows her worth is not measured by youth. Looks to me like somebody who has learned to make room for time instead of treating every passing year like an enemy.

Look at the whole road she has walked. Growing up meant living as a child under glass, inside one of the most dissected families alive. The fallout from the 2004 Super Bowl halftime controversy brought intense scrutiny and professional consequences, with Janet facing a backlash widely criticized as disproportionate. Then her brother Michael was gone, about as publicly and cruelly as a loss can land. Through those years, she continued making music, became a mother to her son Eissa, and eventually returned to the stage on her own terms. Life kept changing around her, but she never completely surrendered the right to decide what came next.

Janet’s place in music history has already been recognized by institutions responsible for preserving it. Her landmark album Rhythm Nation 1814 entered the Library of Congress National Recording Registry as part of its 2020 class, announced in 2021. This past May, the Grammy Hall of Fame honored that same recording, with Janet attending the ceremony. Janet has also confirmed that she has been recording new music, expressing hope that fans might hear something before the end of 2026. A release date for another full studio album, her first since Unbreakable in 2015, has not been announced. Whether new music arrives soon or not, the point already stands. A legacy this deep stopped needing a press release a long time ago.

So what do the rest of us pull from all this? For the Black women reading who feel worn down by the daily grind of justifying their presence, real medicine sits in this example. Quiet is not weakness. Reserve is not the same as having nothing to say. Sometimes the loudest thing you can do is handle your business and let the work argue the point you never bothered to make yourself.

My grandmother had a saying, that cream rises whether anybody is looking or not. I nodded at it for years without really getting it. Then I started noticing the people who move the way Miss Jackson moves, with that settled, unbothered calm, and it clicked. There is a difference between chasing a stamp of approval and already having given yourself one.

Sistas, we do not owe anybody a performance of our value. We never did owe it. Janet, the youngest of ten, has spent fifty years quietly demonstrating that lesson, and at 60 the teaching continues for Black women everywhere paying attention. Let the work speak. Hold your head level. Save your energy for the things that actually deserve it.

Turns out the most powerful voice in any room belongs to the person who feels no urge to raise it.

Staff Writer: Brenda Poole

BP writes about entertainment, relationships, faith, and life in general… She enjoys speaking on things Black women can relate to and hopefully giving a sista something useful along the way…

Feel free to email her at BrendaP@ThySistas.com.

Let me name the plain thing first. Most of us Sistas got handed a silent instruction somewhere along the way, never written down, never spoken out loud, that a season eventually arrives when a grown woman is supposed to fold herself up small. Go gray without a fuss. Find a pew and stay put. Hand the spotlight to the babies and act grateful. Patti missed that lesson completely, or maybe read it, cackled, and tossed it in a trash can on the way to soundcheck.

Look at what fills her calendar as we speak. The 80/65 celebration, honoring her eightieth birthday and sixty-five years in the business, marked another remarkable chapter in her career. A planned January trip to Australia and New Zealand was canceled, but her schedule back home hardly went quiet. Washington welcomed her at Constitution Hall in April. Houston got its moment in May when she joined Gladys Knight, Chaka Khan, and Stephanie Mills for The Queens tour. Colorado Springs followed in July. November brings more performances across the country, and December 17 has her name on the calendar at the Dr. Phillips Center in Orlando. Somewhere between the rehearsals and costume changes, this octogenarian keeps a schedule that would flatten performers a third of her age.

And that instrument. Lord.

People love to describe an aging singer as sounding good for her age, which is a backhanded little compliment if I ever heard one. LaBelle does not simply sound good for 82. The sound is good, period. High notes climb. Those familiar runs still bring audiences to their feet. That famous shoe comes off, and the crowd knows the woman holding the microphone has no intention of delivering a halfhearted performance. That is not merely nostalgia. It is a working instrument, still capable of moving people after more than six decades in the business.

Think about the sheer range packed into one life. A younger Patti torched the seventies with “Lady Marmalade” before breaking hearts clean in half singing “If Only You Knew” in the early eighties. Then came “New Attitude,” making a whole room feel bulletproof walking through the door. Her duet with Michael McDonald on “On My Own” and the later “If You Asked Me To” wrecked people slow, the kind of songs you play alone in the car. None of it landed in one burst. It piled up over a long career, her style evolving even as the radio chased something newer.

Here is what nobody warns you about endurance at this stage of the game. It costs something real.

Ms. LaBelle has lived with type 2 diabetes for years and never hidden it, speaking openly about her diagnosis and the changes she made to protect her health. Think about what a live show asks of a performer doing it at 82. Hot lights. A live band to stay ahead of. Hours of preparation before an audience ever hears the first note. The crowd sees sequins and a smile. What it misses is the discipline behind the performance, the travel between cities, and the commitment required to keep showing up after sixty-five years of leaning on a remarkable gift. None of that happens simply because somebody once had a beautiful voice.

Alright, the ugly part.

There is a particular cruelty aimed at older Black women in this country, a steady hum telling them they are meant to become scenery. Useful, sure, as grandmothers, caretakers, and the backbone of every church and cookout, but never centered, never desired, never loud. The entertainment business has a way of celebrating longevity in certain performers while treating older Black women as though they ought to be grateful merely to be remembered. The message is rarely delivered directly, but it is understood. At some point, somebody expects them to step aside and stop demanding attention. LaBelle answers that expectation with her calendar.

Confidence like hers was not handed over at birth. It got built.

Back when girl groups came a dime a dozen, a young Bluebelle already understood how quickly the music business could move on to somebody newer. The industry changed around Patti more times than most performers could count. Musical trends shifted. Groups broke apart. People she loved passed away along the way. Her transition from the groundbreaking group Labelle into a successful solo career required patience, reinvention, and faith in what she could still accomplish. Every few years another trend rolled in carrying the same memo, modernize or get gone. The memo never took. Sounding more like herself was the only trick that ever actually worked.

I think about my own mother whenever I watch Patti work.

The elders in my family carried themselves the exact same way, dressed sharp for a quick grocery run, wore the red lip to a Tuesday doctor’s appointment, refused to be talked over by anybody. They understood something the culture keeps forgetting. Visibility is not vanity. For Black women especially, taking up space in public and refusing to whisper about it carries real weight. It puts people on notice that we are here and worth looking at, invitation or none.

So what keeps Patti out on the road when half her peers parked it years ago?

Plenty of her contemporaries earned their rest and took it, and there is no shame anywhere in that choice. Touring is brutal. Bodies give out. Some lost the voice, some lost the hunger, some just wanted grandbabies and gardens in peace. That road is not a verdict on theirs. Hers simply runs on different wiring. A stage seems to feed the headliner instead of draining her, like oxygen found nowhere else.

Beyond the music sits a business empire most entertainers only fantasize about. The Patti’s Good Life line holds shelf space at Walmart, and anybody who remembers the great sweet potato pie frenzy a while back knows that lady can move product. Cookbooks, television appearances on Empire and American Horror Story, and a food brand built around her personality have extended her influence far beyond the recording studio. Her name now carries weight in entertainment, publishing, and the food business, creating a legacy that does not depend entirely on another hit record. The reach is real, the catalog is deep, and none of it apologizes for her years. Smart. Grown-woman smart.

So when folks ask why the Godmother of Soul has not disappeared, I want to flip the whole question around. Why on earth should she?

Disappearing was never the assignment. Somebody decided, a long time ago, that women who age in public make everyone else squirm, and plenty of us swallowed that lie without ever checking the receipt. She checked it. The math was bogus. At 82, the bookings keep coming, her music continues to draw audiences, and her public appearances still provide opportunities to support meaningful causes. Her April concert in Washington helped honor women veterans, another reminder that her influence extends beyond entertainment. When that gown and those heels walk out under the lights, the audience gets another opportunity to experience what a real legend sounds like.

Aging, done her way, is not a slow fade. It is the volume going up, not down.

That is the gift handed to the rest of us, free of charge. For our Sistas up in the balcony, the young girls watching from the cheap seats, and every Black woman ever told her best days were behind her, Patti offers living proof planted right there in the light. Watching her refuse to shrink gives permission to the rest of us who were quietly planning to. Disappearing is optional. The lady opted out. Decades ago, loudly, and has not glanced back once.

Old? Sure. Loudest one in the room? Also her. Thank God for that.

Staff Writer; Raven Jones

Raven writes about music, relationships, and the everyday ups and downs of Black women… She keeps it honest, encourages other sistas, and can be reached at RavenJ@ThySistas.com.

Staff Writer; Raven Jones

Raven writes about music, relationships, and the everyday ups and downs of Black women… She keeps it honest, encourages other sistas, and can be reached at RavenJ@ThySistas.com.

Here is a teenager from Brooklyn, and she lands the role of Dorothy in the original Broadway production of The Wiz in 1975. Then she opens her mouth on “Home” and turns it into one of those songs that still makes grown folks tear up at a wedding. The show celebrated fifty years in 2025. Think on that. Half a century later, that ballad can still bring a room to its feet, just as it did back when disco ruled everything.

Nine years old, and that little girl was already out there performing. The stage basically did half the work her mama started. Now, most kid stars burn out the second they stop being adorable. Bad money gets them. Burnout gets them. Folks hanging around with their hand out and no loyalty in their heart get them too. This one? She made it through decades of an unforgiving business, carrying the gift into grown stardom with her feet planted and her mind clear. Six decades of practice will do that for a person. Few entertainers have logged that kind of experience.

Pull up the catalog and the receipts speak plainly. “Never Knew Love Like This Before” earned a Grammy in 1981 for Best Female R&B Vocal Performance, and that silky confession still fills dance floors whenever a deejay has sense enough to spin it. Radio could not get enough of “I Have Learned to Respect the Power of Love” or “Sweet Sensation,” both proof of a vocalist who treated every lyric like it mattered. Later cuts such as “Something in the Way You Make Me Feel” and “You’re Puttin’ a Rush on Me” kept the streak alive, quiet masterclasses in phrasing. The Wiz itself hauled home seven Tony Awards, cementing the launchpad that sent a Brooklyn kid toward soul royalty. Decades of musical achievements tell you the gift was never a fluke.

Fast forward to the present moment. The Queens: 4 Legends, 1 Stage tour became one of the most celebrated gatherings in R&B, pairing our girl with Patti LaBelle, Chaka Khan, and Gladys Knight. Audience demand helped carry the production into additional performances, giving music lovers more opportunities to see four extraordinary women share the stage. Here sits the detail that ought to make every executive straighten up. Those Sistas are still stepping onto major stages and delivering the songs generations grew up loving. Their performances remind audiences that experience, vocal discipline, and genuine stage presence cannot be manufactured in a recording studio. Four legends who have been at this for decades, still commanding attention through the sheer force of their talent. That is the kind of staying power the music industry ought to celebrate instead of treating like some rare exception.

Now hold that picture against what gets demanded of younger singers today. Some twenty three year old blessed with a stunning instrument will get three singles to prove she moves product, maybe a generous four, and then the suits start murmuring that her moment has cooled. Reinvent, they tell her. Chase whatever sound is popping on the apps this week. Shave a couple years off the bio, hide the birth certificate, do anything that keeps the algorithm curious. Pressure of that kind would flatten most people, and it has flattened plenty of promising artists who deserved a far longer runway. The ugly message hiding underneath feels painfully familiar, particularly for Black women in this business. Be fresh, be flawless, be gone before anybody clocks your real age.

Our heroine built a wholly different blueprint. Rather than wait for some label to decide whether the magic had faded, the Brooklyn native took greater control of her recording career through her independent label, JM Records. That decision gave her more freedom to release music on her own terms, away from some of the pressures that traditionally come with major record companies. Taking charge of your music, making your own decisions, and refusing to let somebody in a corner office determine your future, that is grown woman business done right. The decision also whispers something firm about staying power. You remain relevant by refusing to let anyone else define the word on your behalf. Around the way, we simply call that knowing your own worth.

And Stephanie is hardly slowing down. Audiences received a fresh recording in 2025, a house flavored version of “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough,” the Ashford and Simpson classic that Diana Ross helped make famous. It was another reminder that Stephanie still enjoys making music rather than simply revisiting yesterday’s hits. Festival crowds have caught recent performances too, including an appearance at the Jazz in the Gardens Music Festival down in Miami Gardens. Between performances, the legend continues pouring love and energy into her son Farad, who has Down syndrome. Her devotion also extends to advocacy through the 444LOVE Foundation, supporting individuals with Down syndrome and their families. Picture a full life in motion, not some sentimental farewell lap.

The tenderest stretch of the night arrives during “Home.” Behind the band, a screen lights up with the faces of beloved entertainers who have passed, including Michael Jackson, Aretha Franklin, Whitney Houston, and Luther Vandross. These were giants who poured themselves into the culture before leaving us far too soon. Try singing about the comfort of belonging while the people who once felt like home stare back at you from that screen. Most performers do not own the kind of emotional strength that takes. Grief and gratitude somehow share the very same breath up there. Anybody who has buried someone they loved knows precisely what that moment costs.

Here is what keeps turning over in my mind as a grown woman who came up on this sound. I played it at cookouts, wept to it after breakups, and blasted it driving home from a double shift. Nobody handed this icon a map for aging in public with that much grace. Youngbloods rising today get to watch living proof that the gift does not evaporate at forty, or fifty, or sixty. Skill can deepen. Phrasing grows wiser. The lived stories behind each lyric gather a weight you simply cannot counterfeit at twenty two.

Life has taught me to question the myths our culture repeats until people start treating them as facts. One of the biggest myths in popular music is that female singers carry a sell by date stamped somewhere between their shoulder blades. Our Dorothy has spent fifty years peeling that label off and pitching it in the garbage. Respect, in this instance, never gets requested politely. When the band kicks in, the admiration shows up on its own, no asking required, right as that first note cuts the air.

Think about that the next time some jittery label suit wrings his hands over whether a vocalist past forty can still move a room. Send him to an arena filled with people cheering for a Grammy winner who walked onto a stage as a child and never glanced backward. What sits in that room belongs to all of us, to every one of the Sistas side eyeing the calendar, wondering if her time is almost up. Talent does not expire. Soul does not spoil. And Black women with something real to say earn the right to say it for as long as the good Lord keeps breath in the body.

Staff Writer: Brenda Poole

BP writes about entertainment, relationships, faith, and life in general… She enjoys speaking on things Black women can relate to and hopefully giving a sista something useful along the way…

Feel free to email her at BrendaP@ThySistas.com.

Jennifer Hudson keeps poking holes in that whole script, quietly, just by living her life out loud.

Look at where she had already been. For nearly a decade, the singer was engaged to David Otunga, the former professional wrestler and father of her son, David Jr. They got engaged in 2008, welcomed their boy in 2009, and separated in November 2017 without ever making it down the aisle. Their breakup was complicated, with a public custody dispute that eventually led to an agreement in 2019. It was not some easy goodbye, and there is no reason to pretend otherwise. But an engagement that never turns into a wedding is not automatically the tragedy folks make it. Nearly ten years together, a child, a thousand ordinary mornings between them. That history does not disappear because there was no marriage certificate. Relationships can end painfully without making every year that came before them meaningless. J.Hud lived through that chapter, kept raising her son, kept building her career, and eventually found herself open to love again.

The next love came in slow. J.Hud and the rapper Common shared Chicago roots, and their paths crossed professionally when they worked on the science fiction thriller Breathe in 2022, a film that would eventually reach audiences in April 2024. By then, the whispers about those two had already been circulating. No grand announcement. No rushing to tell the world their business. Just two accomplished people getting to know each other while everybody else tried to figure out what was going on.

By January 2024, the speculation finally got its answer on The Jennifer Hudson Show. Cameras caught Common playing coy at first, describing a special someone who, wouldn’t you know it, held an EGOT and hosted a daytime television show. The crowd started hollering before he even got the name out. Everybody in that studio did the arithmetic. The applause filled in the rest. It was playful, affectionate, and just public enough to let folks know that whatever they had going on was something both were comfortable acknowledging.

What came next is the part that rattles folks raised on fairy tales. Common went on record, more than once, making it clear that if marriage was ever in his future, Jennifer Kate Hudson was the woman he could see standing beside him. Full government name included. During an October 2024 appearance on her show, he repeated that sentiment while she sat across from him smiling. A declaration like that usually starts a countdown clock. Instead of sprinting toward a ceremony, the couple let the words sit. When Common turned the question around and asked about her feelings, Hudson called the possibility beautiful and made it clear that she appreciated the thought. Then came those three unbothered words about timing: in due time. She even left room for the possibility that marriage might never become their next step. No panic. Not a single public ultimatum. Grown folks enjoying each other while the rest of us clutched our pearls.

That ease is the whole lesson, and it is one plenty of us never got taught.

The double standard our sistas know too well is old and stubborn. A brotha can glide deep into his fifties unmarried and pick up flattering words for it, selective, discerning, a man who knows his worth. Let a grown woman do the same, and the whole block turns into a prayer committee over that lady’s ovaries. Those scales have never been fair, and plenty of Black women have swallowed the imbalance so deep they measure their own joy against a jeweler’s receipt. Somehow, the question is never simply whether she is loved, respected, supported, and happy. Folks want to know whether somebody has officially chosen her, as though she wasn’t already a whole woman before that man showed up.

What does J.Hud point to? Peace. Common presented her with a hummingbird necklace and a blanket embroidered with the title of her holiday album, The Gift of Love, during that October 2024 television appearance. He also contributed to the album, joining her on the song “Almost Christmas.” The gifts were presented in front of cameras, sure, but the thought behind them mattered more than the applause. Here was somebody paying attention to what she loved, supporting her work, and finding ways to celebrate her accomplishments. That kind of consideration matters in the everyday moments too, when there is no studio audience cheering. A wedding can celebrate a bond like that. It cannot fake one into being.

Let me keep it real, because this one sits heavy on Black women specifically. We’ve held up churches and families and entire neighborhoods, carried movements on our backs, and still got told our worth came down to whether some man finally made it official. That’s a lot of living to shrink into one yes or no at an altar. Turning that measuring stick down isn’t bitterness talking. It’s a sista who knows better. Marriage can be a beautiful thing, and plenty of Black women genuinely want it. There is nothing wrong with that dream. The problem starts when everybody treats it like the only respectable ending to a woman’s love story, or worse, the final proof that she deserves to be loved in the first place.

None of this means she’s against commitment, so don’t twist it that way. She’s clearly affectionate toward the man beside her, and the admiration appears to go both ways. Watch how easily they praise one another in interviews and how comfortable they seem sharing a little of their relationship with the public. Common has spoken warmly about her faith, her compassion, and the strength she has shown through difficult experiences. Hudson has described having a partner who understands her and supports her professionally as well as personally. The truth is simpler than rebellion. Two people can build something meaningful without making a wedding their immediate destination. That does not mean marriage lacks value or that commitment should be taken lightly. It means companionship counts, respect counts, and the people actually living the relationship get to decide what comes next.

So what is J.Hud up to these days? Plenty. Her daytime show entered its fifth season on September 14, still powered by that warm church cousin energy, right down to the Spirit Tunnel where the staff cheers guests in like family. Those trophies sit easy on the shelf, EGOT fully intact. And on October 6, during an appearance on Today with Jenna & Sheinelle, Hudson offered perhaps her clearest explanation yet of how marriage fits into her life. Calling her relationship with Common “divine,” the singer spoke appreciatively about having a partner who understands and genuinely supports her. The conversation also turned to society’s expectation that women should automatically want marriage. Hudson explained that walking down the aisle has never been a requirement in her mind and questioned why women are expected to make it a priority. Marriage remains a possibility, but not an obligation or a deadline. If that day comes, it should happen because the time feels right, not because the public has grown impatient. As of that interview, the couple remained together, speaking warmly about their relationship, with no wedding announcement to report.

That, right there, is the quiet revolution a lot of folks keep missing.

So here is what I want for you. Let somebody love you good and give it right back, and quit waiting for him to sign something by month three to make it count. Find the partnership that feeds you, and if marriage is what you truly want, don’t be afraid to say so. Just make sure the dream belongs to you and not to the aunties, the church mothers, the group chat, or anybody else keeping score. Your softness, your history, the fact that you deserve to be adored, none of that was ever on layaway until a ring showed up. Sistas, stop waiting for permission to call what you have a success. Jennifer Hudson has spent years building a life that includes motherhood, music, television, hard lessons, and another chance at love. Now, she has made her position clearer than ever. Marriage might become part of that story, or it might not. Either way, her happiness does not need the world’s approval. We would all do well to catch up.

Staff Writer; Raven Jones

Raven writes about music, relationships, and the everyday ups and downs of Black women… She keeps it honest, encourages other sistas, and can be reached at RavenJ@ThySistas.com.

To understand the backlash, you have to rewind a few years. In 2018, during the first Trump term, this same woman took to Instagram and spoke out sharply against the administration’s treatment of immigrant families. Something shifted in the years that followed. The girl who came up in Queens, the one who once sounded the alarm, now openly praises a president she previously criticized. It is a striking turn for someone born in Trinidad who built an early reputation on speaking up for the overlooked. There were earlier moments when her lyrics stirred political debate. Back in 2012, she referenced Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney in a song, although she later explained the lyric as sarcasm rather than an endorsement.

The transformation picked up real momentum toward the close of 2025. That November, she appeared at a United Nations event addressing violence against Christians in Nigeria, lending her voice to a cause the Trump administration had been highlighting. Then, on December 21, she surprised the crowd at Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest in Phoenix, joining Erika Kirk onstage and offering praise for both President Trump and Vice President JD Vance. January 28, 2026, brought the image that landed on phones across the country: Nicki and Trump standing together at a Washington event promoting Trump Accounts, a savings initiative that includes a one-time $1,000 federal contribution for eligible American children born between January 1, 2025, and December 31, 2028. She declared herself his number one fan, held his hand before the cameras, and later proudly displayed a Trump Gold Card.

Spring brought a lengthy TIME magazine conversation in which the Pink Friday star tried to lay it all out. Trump, she suggested, carries his own brand of energy, much the way Marilyn Monroe once commanded attention. She also spoke about feeling disappointed with Barack Obama and frustrated by the expectation that Black entertainers should automatically support Democrats. By July, Trump publicly praised her looks and talent during a White House luncheon. Her supporters cheered. The ones who cannot stand her rolled their eyes and went hunting for screenshots. Online, it became the same tired slugfest it always does, with both sides dug in well before the day was out. The gestures continued from there. She had already shared images of a Bible bearing Trump’s signature earlier in the year, another moment that left fans debating just how close the relationship had become.

All of which brings us to the present, October of 2026. The midterms are only weeks away, and Nicki has become a prominent celebrity voice publicly supporting the president. A bitter public feud with California Governor Gavin Newsom has consumed plenty of attention, particularly over his positions on transgender issues and the sharp words exchanged online. Ask her why she has changed, and her explanation reaches beyond party politics. She has described feeling drawn toward something bigger than music, a calling she believes has been developing since childhood. Whether people believe her or not is another conversation altogether.

It has been a stretch since Nicki delivered another full studio album. Pink Friday 2 landed in December 2023, and while she has released music since then, much of the conversation surrounding her lately has had less to do with records and more to do with politics. For an artist who once kept everybody guessing about her next verse, that alone says plenty about how dramatically the public conversation has changed.

So what are the folks who grew up on her supposed to do with all this? Could be growth. People change, and the hungry young striver chasing a dream at twenty rarely lines up with the person staring back in the mirror years down the road. Could be the priorities moved around on her. Money talks. A seat at the big table talks louder, and only a fool believes celebrities are somehow immune to the pull of either. But those are questions outsiders cannot answer for her, and assuming every political decision comes with a financial motive would be unfair without something concrete to back it up.

Then there is the thing a lot of us keep circling without quite landing on it. Somebody who once criticized a president’s policies turns around years later and praises that same man, and naturally people want to understand what happened in between. Nicki has spoken about feeling misunderstood, about growing tired of expectations placed on her, and about a sense of purpose that reaches back to childhood. She has also made it clear that she believes people should be free to change their minds. Those explanations may satisfy some listeners while leaving others with even more questions. Her ballot is hers, nobody is arguing that. The question underneath all of it is simpler: What exactly stayed the same?

For Sistas, the cut goes deeper. Black women have been one of the Democratic Party’s most dependable voting constituencies for generations, turning out at the polls while often questioning whether their loyalty has been properly appreciated. That does not mean every Black woman votes alike, nor does it mean any of us owes a political party lifelong allegiance. Still, when one of our own, rich and famous the world over, becomes close to a president many Black women strongly oppose, the disagreement can feel personal. For some longtime fans, it lands like your favorite auntie taking the wrong side at the cookout. Mad is not the word. Hurt gets closer, and the two are nothing alike.

Think about the first place you lived on your own. A heartbreak that flattened you. That ride home at 2 a.m. after a shift that would not quit, just you and whatever came on the radio. She was in the car for a lot of it. The people who make those songs start feeling like blood even when we have never stood in the same room with them. That is a whole different tie than some streaming stat, and it is why this one stings. A politician changing positions might make you angry. Watching an artist whose music carried you through difficult years embrace politics you disagree with can hit another way entirely.

Now let me be fair about a few things. A woman’s politics are her own business, period. We never bought lifetime loyalty with the price of a concert ticket, and this reflex of tossing an artist in the trash the second they step off the approved script has gotten tired, maybe even a little scary when you really sit with it. Nicki has every right to support Trump, just as her fans have every right to question that support, criticize his policies, or decide they no longer want to spend money on her music. Nobody should have to surrender their political convictions to remain part of a fan base. You can argue with someone and still claim them. Our mamas taught us that much, fussing all through dinner and still fixing each other a plate.

So where does that leave us? Nowhere clean, probably. Might be growth. Could be a genuine change in how she sees the country and her place in it. Maybe some of those conservative ideas were sitting quietly in the background longer than anybody realized. Whatever brought her here, only Nicki knows the whole story. One thing holds steady, though. Folks never forget who sat with them through the long nights, and something in the gut catches the second a familiar tune bends into a key it never used to play. Her road is hers to walk. The rest of us get to notice, to question, to hurt a little, and to carry our own values straight into that voting booth. That conversation, messy as it has gotten, is one worth having out loud.

Staff Writer; Jada Williams

This sister writes about politics, money, family, and the issues that shape everyday life… Her work looks at how decisions made in government, changes in the economy, and challenges within our communities affect Black women and their families…

Feel free to email her at: JadaW@ThySistas.com.

Staff Writer; Raven Jones

Raven writes about music, relationships, and the everyday ups and downs of Black women… She keeps it honest, encourages other sistas, and can be reached at RavenJ@ThySistas.com.

Staff Writer; Raven Jones

Raven writes about music, relationships, and the everyday ups and downs of Black women… She keeps it honest, encourages other sistas, and can be reached at RavenJ@ThySistas.com.