Brittany L. Uzzell (a.k.a. BLU) was born in Panama City, Florida and raised in Central Virginia, where she discovered her love for two things: tennis and music. She started competing in tennis at the age of 8, going to become the first student, male or female, in the Central District, to go undefeated all four years of high school. Her tennis skills later led her to earn a full scholarship to Virginia State University. In the meantime, her love of music turned into a passion for radio when she heard the remix for an Aaliyah song on the radio and the way they were talking about it on the radio. While her love for music and radio grew, she began to host parties and events as well. In her senior year at VSU, she would intern at the campus radio station, WVST, graduating in 2014 with a B.A. in Mass Communications. After graduation, she continued to hone her radio skills at WVST, as a paid on-air personality and producer. Then, in October of 2017, she broke into commercial radio when she was hired as a part-time and swing On-air personality at Radio-One Richmond, where she can be heard on iPower 92.1/104.1. Follow her at @BluOnAir
@BluOnAir_
Rapper, actress, and entrepreneur, Queen Latifah, will be honored by Harvard University for her contributions to black history and culture, CBS reports . Latifah is one of seven honorees who will receive the W.E.B. Du Bois Medal on October 22.
Other recipients include poet and educator Elizabeth Alexander, artist Kerry James Marshall, and more. The medal is named after William Edward Burghardt Du Bois—the first black student to earn a doctorate from Harvard in 1895. Du Bois went on to become a scholar, writer, editor, and civil rights activist. Rapper Nas was awarded this honor in 2013.
The Cambridge, Massachusetts, school’s Hutchins Center for African and African American Research will be presenting the medal.
