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The Top 5 Longreads of the Week

by Longreads April 14, 2023June 4, 2025

This edition highlights stories by Robin Kaiser-Schatzlein, David Gauvey Herbert, Kit Chellel, Ashley Stimpson, and Nate Rogers.

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Feature

Best of 2025: All Our Number Five Story Picks

by Longreads December 18, 2025December 19, 2025

Every story we selected for the number five slot in our weekly newsletter, in a handy digest.

Arts & Culture, Commentary, Current Events

Michael, Aretha, Beyoncé, and the Black Press

by Danielle Jackson August 31, 2018October 19, 2022

The Black press has always been where Black artists could have their work spoken about with integrity.

Arts & Culture, Feature, Nonfiction, Story

Shelved: Jimmy Scott’s Falling In Love Is Wonderful

by Tom Maxwell November 29, 2018January 7, 2026

Greed and contractual disputes kept one beloved jazz singer’s masterpiece off the shelf for 40 years, and sent him into retirement.

Arts & Culture, Nonfiction, Story

Wonderful Things: The Kid Creole and the Coconuts Story

by Michael Gonzales December 18, 2019December 30, 2022

Combining island sounds with stylish clothes and an unforgettable stage presence, one of New York City’s most original bands helped influence 1980s pop culture, and they never sacrificed their unclassifiable artistic vision.

Nonfiction

It’s Like That: The Makings of a Hip-Hop Writer

by Michael Gonzales June 10, 2019February 24, 2023

Hip-hop was a different kind of music that needed a different kind of writer to cover it. This is how Michael A. Gonzales came of age in a time when Black writers began breaking the white ceiling.

Arts & Culture, Nonfiction, Story

When Black Male Singers Were Sex Symbols

by Ericka Blount Danois January 21, 2019October 19, 2022

Teddy Pendergrass was the R&B singer women wanted and who men wanted to be. And the one whose life-sized cardboard cutout stood in one family’s living room.