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When you think of New Orleans, you probably think of Creole food, beignets, Bourbon Street, and of course — Hurricanes. Jazz singer Robin Barnes is on a mission to change the narrative, and make New Orleans a hub for health and fitness as well. Because it’s all about balance, right?

After overcoming a serious illness, she focused on creating a healthier lifestyle for herself which led her to create to a fitness Facebook group. That group took on a life of it’s own and has inspired hundreds of women in New Orleans (and beyond) to prioritize their fitness and to get up and move.

Today the organization — Move Ya Brass — has grown to hundreds of people with weekly group runs and Bounce Ya Brass, Hip Hop Ya Brass, sunrise Stretch Ya Brass and Twerk Ya Brass classes. 

If you’re planning your next trip to New Orleans for ESSENCE Festival or otherwise, find out more about Barnes’ movement which is inspiring women everywhere.

What inspired Move Ya Brass?  

After overcoming a life altering health issue while on tour, I wanted to create a fitness community that would motivate myself and others to live a healthier life through movement and the music of New Orleans.

What does it mean?  

When I was in recovery, my mom walked into my room and said, “Girl, you better get off your ass and move ya brass!” That stuck with me and inspired our motto of “Getting off of the sideline and into a second line”. Everything about Move Ya Brass ties back to my life as a musician and the culture of growing up in New Orleans. We have second lines for funerals, weddings, and on Sundays just because. People follow the brass band throughout the streets, dancing and moving to the sounds of the band. They’re exercising without calling it exercise – I thought – why not take that format and give it to people weekly as a class? 

How do you infuse New Orleans flair into your workouts? 

It’s all about the music and the movements – we have classes like Twerk Ya Brass and Bounce Ya Brass – those are classes and music that are special to New Orleans. When people finish our classes, they feel the same excitement and exhaustion that you feel after dancing with a second line.

Is your background in health and fitness? 

It’s not! I’m a full time musician. 

Why should Black women prioritize their own self-care? 

Because if we don’t, who will? Black women are always expected to be the strong ones, taking care of everyone and holding everything together. But we can’t do that if we’re not first taking care of ourselves first.

You turned a Facebook post into a movement. Do you plan on bringing Move Ya Brass national? 

That’s the plan! We would love to expand to festivals nationwide and be able to add our live music component to our classes as well, to be able to incorporate more of the New Orleans sound with the class. We activated classes at Bonnaroo last year and it was such a fun experience for us. We’re excited to take that and grow to more festivals and on larger platforms.

The post How A Facebook Group Became A Movement Inspiring Women To Get Up And Move Their ‘Brass’ appeared first on Essence.

Released on October 25, 2019, by Activision, comes the sixteenth installment of the Call of Duty (COD) franchise, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare.

This reboot of the Modern Warfare variation is everything that you remember, but a little better. While there are a lot of technical revisions to the game engine, they basically translate into a smoother game experience, a relatively glitch-free gameplay, and game lobbies that you don’t wait in forever. Well, forget the lobby thing — if you and your squad are looking to put in some work, you may want to stay away from most options in Quickplay.

The return to the tried and true mechanics of COD, instead of trying to be Fortnite, seems to have worked; however, there are a few new things. One major one is the ability of the personal computer (PC) and the console players to compete together. The perks have been slightly reworked so that a few have been designated as field upgrades. You may lament the loss of the specialist classes a little, but their absence makes for a lot more skill-based gameplay. Of course, not as much skill as was needed playing COD: WWII, but 21st-century technology can still be fun.  

Do not be dismayed — the season-themed game mode variations that were found so entertaining with COD:WWII still come and go with the wind. Christmas time saw the Gunfight mode devolve into a snowball fight. Time will tell if they can outdo the Saint Patrick’s Day COD:WWII mode where eliminating the leprechaun grants an awesome killstreak. In between the seasonal modes, they drop other modes in and out. There are many that we have all grown to love, like Dropzone, which is sort of a killstreak free-for-all except you have to secure the dropzone to get the goodies. Also the Grind Mode (behave yourselves) makes an appearance, which sort of merges the tag retrieval of Kill Confirmed with the objective-based modes like Domination, as you have to take any tags retrieved back to one of two locations to score.

Many of the maps will be remembered by the COD loyalists, while the new maps deliver great opportunities to scope out the snipers, eliminate campers, and get your chase on while running and gunning. The main maps are subsets of larger maps played from the Campaign and in the Ground War modes. The Campaign maps are slightly different as some access points are blocked. The Ground War mode plays and feels a lot like any of the Battlefields that you have played. It includes tanks, all-terrain vehicles, helicopters and the like. The teams are large and allow for four-person squads.

Another of the technical innovations makes for a really awesome night game experience using night vision goggles in the realism moshpit on certain maps. From the beta, there is the Gunfight mode, which is a small team versus mode and was not particularly impressive then and hasn’t really improved. This mode can be challenging, if you are just jumping in for a short time waiting for the rest of your crew. It seems like an opportunity to practice camping more than anything else. The cooperative mode is a series of squad-based operations that make unending waves of zombies feel easy. Each operation has specific objectives, and the enemies seem to never stop spawning. On one mission, about halfway through, my squad spent more time reviving each other than actually meeting the objectives. This is due to the very real circumstance of poor planning regarding ammunition and little to no communication. While getting in with perfect strangers may work, I recommend taking your squad and planning well.

The issues with loot boxes potentially being gambling are sidestepped with the Battlepass. Progression on the Battlepass level allows extra skins, weapons, operators, etc. Some of the rewards are free, but most of the better ones require purchase of the Battlepass. Also experience gains the player tickets that can be used in the Trials. The Trials resemble boot camp, but with rewards for timely completions.

After 500 games or so, the game holds up pretty well, and the first group of content upgrades is underway. Unlike Destiny 2 you are not shelling out another $60 bucks for the new content. At this point there is no feeling that too much was spent buying it, unlike another franchise title that is not Star Wars: Battlefront II.

This version of COD really packs a punch with visually stunning graphics and enhanced sound effects with corresponding controller sensations, but is really nothing new. The ability to hear footsteps from the room above or around a corner brings the Doppler effect into a chilling excuse for missing a shot. Science aside, the awards this game has received are well-earned. The $600 million in sales for its first three days of the release eclipsed opening sales for Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker by almost three times (but who’s counting).

So if you haven’t already, gather together those bucks that your grandparents, aunts, and uncles gave you for Christmas or Hanukkah and pick this one up. Also if you’re interested, we posted some gameplay videos on the BGN Youtube Channel. See you there!

The post BGN Plays ‘Call of Duty: Modern Warfare’: Why Change? appeared first on Black Girl Nerds.

One Night in Miami, the feature film adaptation of Kemp Powers’ Olivier-nominated stage play, starts production in New Orleans this week.

Cast includes Kingsley Ben-Adir (The OA) as civil rights activist Malcolm X, Eli Goree (Riverdale) as professional boxer and civil rights activist Cassius Clay (before becoming Muhammad Ali), Aldis Hodge (Clemency) as NFL champion, actor and civil rights activist Jim Brown, and Grammy and Tony Award-winner Leslie Odom, Jr. (Harriet) as singer/songwriter, entrepreneur and civil rights activist Sam Cooke.

Regina King will direct and executive produce and her team includes Jess Wu Calder and Keith Calder of Snoot Entertainment (Blindspotting, Anomalisa”) and Jody Klein of ABKCO (The Durrells in Corfu, The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus) serving as producers.

Set on the night of February 25, 1964, One Night in Miami follows a young, brash Cassius Clay as he emerges from the Miami Beach Convention Center the new Heavyweight Boxing Champion of the World.  Against all odds, he defeated Sonny Liston and shocked the sports world. While crowds of people swarm Miami Beach to celebrate the match, Clay – unable to stay on the island because of Jim Crow-era segregation laws – spends the evening at the Hampton House Motel in Miami’s African American Overtown neighborhood celebrating with three of his closest friends: Malcolm X, Sam Cooke, and Jim Brown. 

During this historic evening, these icons, who each were the very representation of the Pre-Black Power Movement and felt the social pressure their cross-over celebrity brought, shared their thoughts with each other about their responsibilities as influencers, standing up, defending their rights and moving the country forward to equality and empowerment for all black people. The next morning, the four men emerge determined to define a new world for themselves and their community.

”One Night in Miami is a love letter to Black manhood that powerfully explores themes of race, identity and friendship,” says Director Regina King.  “Each of them has contributed so much to culture and history. We’re so excited to have Kingsley, Eli, Aldis and Leslie in the lead roles showing a different side of these iconic men”, said King in a press release.

Originally staged in 2013, Kemp Powers’ critically acclaimed play takes a well-known real-life event and imagines what might have been. Powers explores this pivotal night, the dynamic relationship between these four men, and how their friendship, successes and shared struggles fueled their paths to becoming the civil rights icons they are today.

No release date has been set for the film yet.

The post Regina King Makes Her Directorial Debut with ‘One Night in Miami’ appeared first on Black Girl Nerds.

Source: Slaven Vlasic / Getty

Actor Sterling K. Brown was overwhelmed to the point of tears when he found out key details about his lineage on a recent episode of Henry Louis Gates’ show “Finding Your Roots.”

Before Gates dove into Brown’s deep past, the Emmy-Award winning actor had to come to terms with the loss of his most recent ancestor, his father.

The “This Is Us” star spoke about losing his dad at ten years old and the last memories he has of his father.

“I remember him like winking as they pulled him out into the ambulance,” Brown said of the last time he saw his dad on the episode.

“I remember thinking in my mind, That’s probably it. That’s probably it. It’s just something unsaid.”

Even though young Brown was overcome with emotion, he immediately felt compelled to “hold it together” despite his grief. But as an adult, the father of two learned that letting the tears flow was the best thing for him.

He no longer “holds it together” when he feels the pains of the loss.

“Not anymore. Now I just look at a picture and I’m like, Wah!” Brown revealed.

So it was not surprising that learning the birthplace of his ancestors led Brown to be visibility moved to tears. As Henry Louis Gates read off the birth place of his ancestors, Brown was stunned.

“Wow, man,” exclaimed Brown. “Wow. That’s, uh … That’s cool,” he said while weeping.

You can watch the clip below:

During the emotional conversation, Brown learned that his lineage goes back to Africa. The actor’s great-grandmother and grandfather was born on the continent. It’s very rare for African Americans to find native-born Africans on their family tree, but Brown has someone in his bloodline born on African soil just two generations away. The documents did not disclose where on the continent his family is from.