True story: I’ve known the founders of VSB, aka the blog Very Smart Brothas, for a minute. They are my friends, fellow black-blog pioneers who hopped into the game in 2008 and revolutionized and remixed it to the degree that their greatness had to be acknowledged.
And that greatness is coming to The Root.
VSB co-founders Damon Young and Panama Jackson will be joining The Root this July as senior editors, while VSB—the site—will be joining The Root on the Kinja blogging platform shortly after.
Who’s stoked? We’re stoked! In fact, we’re honored that Damon and Panama have decided to join us in forming a kente-cloth-covered Voltron of black creatives, adding ever more sweet, sweet blackness to the berry that is our little blog site.
When you name your site “Very Smart Brothas,” you better be able to back it up, and boy, have Damon and Panama done just that with witty insights, unique perspectives and hilarious takes on American culture, relationships, politics, music, television and film. They’ve garnered accolades from everyone from the Washington Post to Oprah.
(Like for real, Oprah totally called Panama once ... on the phone!)
While VSB has been around since the hardscrabble “Everybody is on Blogger cuz it’s free” early days of the black blogosphere, the site underwent a transformation in 2013, rebooting itself from a relationship-focused blog to its latest and greatest iteration as the one-stop shop for biting commentary on black popular culture.
Damon, who’s been editor-in-chief of VSB since 2014, and co-founder Panama, will now be writing daily for VSB on The Root. When not regaling us with their virtual presence in blog form, Damon will be working on his book of essays (coming in 2018) while also writing a column for GQ, while Panama will be dabbling in adding to The Root’s video and events roster.
So for those longtime VSB fans, welcome to our little nook of the internet! We hope you play nice (or not so nice) with our vibrant Kinja commentariat. And for those new to VSB—that is, Damon and Panama—be assured that not only are these two a pair of the dopest people we know and our homies in real life, but they are also insightful, often hilarious and always profound writers whom we have enjoyed for years.
We know you’ll enjoy and love them, too.