Simply Cheris. . .

When I first heard Thicke  singing When I get You Alone, I was hooked. I didn't think Robin Thicke would eat Jon B's career, but it seems as if these days you can only have one white boy with soul in R&B. But I digress. So, Babyface couldn't duplicate the success of Jon B with Robin. I'm thinking it may have had more to do with long hair and bike riding video. Then the Neptunes took over and The Evolution of Robin Thicke was born. My favorite song from that CD was Wanna Love You Girl.  Pharrell is a damned genius. So, I was drinking the Robin Thicke Kool-Aid and pretending that he wasn't corny Alan Thicke's son. Then I saw he was married to Paula Patton. I'm a sucker for a love story. They were high school sweethearts, she was the inspiration for his music. She was on the cover of his first album and the star of many of his videos. Aww, the romance writer in me was pleased. Then, Robin started tripping. It started with some off handed comments ...

Some people aren't going to like this. I may lose a few friends -- oh well. The Olympics are finally over and I'm so happy. Do you know what I've learned from the 2012 games? It's hard to be a light skinned black woman. Lolo Jones , this is for you. We treated Lolo like crap. And when I say we, I mean the media, Twitter, Facebook, bloggers and the like. We gave her shit because she's a 30-year-old virgin, because she admitted having a crush on Tim Tebow and because she talks publically about God. Dude from the New York Times talked about her looks and how she's like the Anna Kournikova of track. Yo, Jere Longman, I dare you to challenge Lolo to a race. Now, we showed Gabby Douglas much love after people started talking about her hair. That was the right thing to do, though. But Lolo? We mocked her. Even her teammates got pissy about the attention that Lolo received --even though it was negative attention. Colorism is an evil animal in the blac...

Singer loving life Eric Benet’s brings new outlook on Love and Life to Charlotte By Cheris Hodges The last time we saw R&B singer Eric Benet, he was defending himself against his divorce from Academy Award winning actress Halle Berry. For a while, people knew Benet as Mr. Halle. “Take that as an occupational hazard,” he said of his time with Berry. “I was with somebody who was internationally famous and successful. Had I been a recording artist who made the mistakes that I did with someone who wasn’t famous it definitely wouldn’t have been quite as earth shattering to the press. But it overshadowed things for a while.” Those days are gone and with his latest CD “Love & Life,” Benet has shown that he’s moved on to better things and the focus is back where it belongs—on his music. “I’m at this really great place in my life right now where I like singing, dancing and laughing and making love and just experiencing the fruits of being a little wiser and a little older,” says Benet. ...