The General's Briefing

"We gon' be alright." Kendrick Lamar wrote those words in 2015. In the middle of Ferguson. In the middle of Black Lives Matter. In the middle of a moment when Black people were watching themselves die on camera and the world was debating whether our lives were worth grieving. He knew something the algorithm does not want you to remember: We have been here before. And we overcame. Rig...

It's the Fourth of July. A holiday that has never fully belonged to Black people. And while America wraps itself in a flag, the conversation taking over Black social media is not about the Supreme Court stripping 350,000 Haitian people of their protected status. It's not about the systematic dismantling of civil rights. It's not about Project 2025. It's about Yung Miami's song....

I was sitting on my couch watching a documentary. Notes in my lap. Phone in my hand. Feeling like Webbie, doing what I do, what I do, what I do. Because this is what I do. I watch. I study. I connect the dots. And then I bring it to you. But somewhere in the middle of this documentary about Black and Jewish history in America, something clicked. Something connected. Something that I have been buil...

In 1990, the Broward County Sheriff's Department arrested Luther "Uncle Luke" Campbell on obscenity charges. Not for a crime. Not for violence. Not for theft. For a song. And Uncle Luke said:  No. He fought the United States government all the way to the Supreme Court. And he won.  Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music  (1994) established that commercial parody is protected under the First Am...

When I first saw the headlines about Jay-Z and Target, I felt it. That thing in your chest when someone whose work has shaped the way you think disappoints you. I have spent the last year running Jay-Z's lyrics through digital humanities software. I have tracked every word he has ever used across seven albums. I have quantified his Faustian Bargain with data. Jay-Z is not just a rapper I like....

Today, I saw an ad. John Legend. His family. Target. And I scrolled to the comments. And somebody wrote: "House slave." I understood the frustration. The community has a right to be frustrated. But "house slave"? That's the wrong word. And today, I'm going to tell you why. Because the language we use either frees us or keeps us enslaved. And when we use the wrong words,...

Early voting is underway in Georgia. June 16th is coming. And The General has a briefing you need to hear before you walk into that voting booth. This week, Nikki Porcher, Air Force veteran, founder of Buy From a Black Woman, and Democratic candidate for Georgia Labor Commissioner — called Hilerie Lind personally to say thank you for the Spook at the Door episode. That call opened a conversation t...

On May 31, 2026, a tape from Diddy's federal sex trafficking trial became public. It featured Daphne Joy, a woman believed to have anonymously testified against him. She did not choose to be in that courtroom. She did not choose to have her most intimate moments become public. She did not choose to have her body become evidence in a sex trafficking case. And within 24 hours, the father of her...

In 1935, a gangster named Dutch Schultz lay dying in a hospital in Newark, New Jersey. He had spent years trying to take over the Harlem numbers empire built by a Black Caribbean immigrant woman named Stephanie St. Clair. She sent him a telegram while he was dying. It read: "As ye sow, so shall ye reap." She did not beg. She did not perform grief. She did not negotiate. She named the tru...

This episode is about the body. Who owns it. Who controls it. Who profits from it when we can't say no. And what it sounds like when Black women finally refuse. I connect the RSV lawsuit to the 105th anniversary of the Tulsa Race Massacre, where the state bombed Black economic bodies into silence, and to the 1985 MOVE bombing in Philadelphia, where the city dropped a bomb on a Black radical co...

Chopped and screwed music was born in Houston, Texas. DJ Screw took records that everyone already knew, songs they'd heard a hundred times, and he slowed them down. He chopped them up. He revealed what was hiding underneath the surface. What you thought you knew, you didn't really know. Not until you heard it slowed down. That's what this episode is. Because I need you to slow down wit...

"My skin is black / My arms are long / My hair is woolly / My back is strong / Strong enough to take the pain / Inflicted again and again / What do they call me? / My name is Aunt Sarah." — Nina Simone, "Four Women" (1966) In this episode, I process the outcome of the Georgia primary and what the system revealed about itself. I claim my identity as the ancestor, as Harriet and...

The day before the Georgia Democratic primary. And I'm sitting down with State Representative Derrick Jackson, the man I've been fighting for, the man I believe in, the man who is the most qualified candidate in this race. I'm his campaign manager. I've been putting up signs, organizing events, managing his social media, writing his speeches, hosting prayer calls. I've been doi...

It's Monday, May 18, 2026. The day before the Georgia Democratic primary. And I just got back from driving around DeKalb County, placing signs for State Representative Derrick Jackson. I've been doing this for weeks. Putting up signs. Taking them down when they get vandalized. Putting them back up. This is the work. This is what it means to be a campaign manager for a candidate who is the...

I need to talk about Cheyenne Bryant. And I need to be very clear about why I'm talking about her. This is not about jealousy. This is not about tearing down another Black woman. This is not about being divisive. This is about accountability. This is about protecting the integrity of Black women scholars. This is about refusing to let someone cosplay as a PhD holder when Black women like me ar...

The world is burning. And I still yearn for love." I know that sounds ridiculous. I know that sounds naive. I know that sounds like I'm not paying attention to what's happening around me. But it's the truth. The country is at war because of racism. We have the president we have because of racism. On May 13, 2026, Georgia Governor Brian Kemp announced that he is calling a special l...

In this episode, I teach you about the two-fold Sacrificial Bargain, the impossible choice that Black women have been forced to make for generations: OPTION 1: The Boomer Sacrificial Bargain (Silence + Community) You have a collective. You have a movement. But you have to stay silent about abuse. You have to protect predators. You have to sacrifice your truth for the sake of "unity." OPT...

On May 4, 2026, the Supreme Court issued an emergency ruling that devastated Black political power across the South. The Court struck down Louisiana's congressional map, eliminating two majority-Black districts, and gutted Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. Early voting had already begun. Black voters had already cast their ballots. And the state suspended the election. This is not just a leg...

Yesterday, I recorded three episodes. And I was sitting there wanting to record a fourth one. Not because I had something urgent to say. But because I didn't want to feel what I was feeling. I was sad as fuck. I was lonely. And I didn't know how to sit with it. So I did what I always do: I worked. I recorded episodes. I planned events. I wrote papers. I built businesses. I stayed busy so I...

I am Hilerie Lind. And I am unbought and unbossed. In this episode, I teach you about the Crooked Room, the disorienting psychological and structural space that Black women navigate, where the norms themselves are tilted against us. But the Crooked Room is not just psychological. The Crooked Room is political. The Crooked Room is the Georgia Democratic Primary. Metro Atlanta is the "Black Mec...

A few weeks ago, Kip Carr called me "the Harriet Tubman of this century." And when he said it, I didn't know what to do with it. I didn't know if I was worthy of that title. I didn't know if I could live up to it. But then he said something else. He said: "The way that some of these Black people fetch and step to Mr. Charlie, Harriet would've shot them in the back of...

In this episode, I connect my personal life to Georgia politics to show you how the Sacrificial Bargain operates everywhere, in our relationships, in our political campaigns, in our communities. I tell you about the man I was dating since February, the professional opportunity I gave him, and how he punished me when I operated in integrity. And then I show you how that same pattern is playing out...

On Sunday, April 26, 2026, I executed one of the most successful political events of my career. Over 200 people attended. The execution was flawless. And Congresswoman Joyce Beatty, a senior member of Congress, a former in the Congressional Black Caucus, Associate chair of the DNC, a woman I worked for 20 years ago, stood at that podium and said: "Twenty years ago, I gave her a job when she w...

In 1991, Eric "Eazy-E" Wright—the founder of N.W.A., the man who rapped "Fuck tha Police", attended a Republican fundraiser at the White House and met President George H.W. Bush. Most people think it was a publicity stunt. But here's what they don't know: Eazy-E was invited because he donated $2,490 to the Republican Party. He didn't challenge the system. He didn&#3...

In 1996, Tupac Shakur released a song called "How Do U Want It." It was a hit. It went to #1 on the Billboard Hot 100. It was played on every radio station, in every club, at every party. But buried in the second verse was a line that most people didn't catch. Tupac rapped: "Delores Tucker, you's a motherfucker / Instead of trying to help a nigga, you destroy a brother"...