An ode to Right On! & Word Up!

Disclaimer. I don’t care about being grammatically correct nor polished here. Purely for enjoyment. and for the sake of blogging. I’m just letting my thoughts out lol, no I’m not going back to edit + correct things. Authenticityyyyy!!

May 17, 2026

When did you fall in love with journalism? For me as a millennial, one of the things I looked forward to as a kid was going to the grocery store to grab my latest spread of magazines. Those included Seventeen, XXL, The Source, JET, Word Up! and Right On!

But ESPECIALLY Word Up! and Right On! Those were my holy grails!!!!

I spent my morning going through Word Up! and Right On! magazines I still have 20 years from original release date.

Anything that had B5 or Pretty Ricky on the cover was coming home with ME! Was I too young, yes? But I think I turned out pretty good so who caresss lol. I had so many B5 posters. I remember being on B5’s street team and even getting to meet them at Hot 103.3 Jamz in my hometown Kansas City. You know how that happened? MYSPACE! Ahh, we love a throwback lol. I still have my signed poster from them that day!

April 2006. One magazine date says.

I fell in love with having access to my favorite celebs at my finger tips with interviews, posters and all of the hottest gossip and trends. Anyone else remember tearing up their Word Up! magazine just for the posters? My room was overloaded with posters of B2k, B5, Pretty Ricky, Bow wow, Lil Wayne..you name it it was on my wall!

I do it for the girls that use to claim their favorite band member was ‘their man.’ Lil Fizz, Slick ’em and Patrick Breeding were mine btw, just saying. *Shrug*

As I turned the pages of the February 2006 issue of Right On! magazine, I couldn’t help but to think how refreshing it was to just read the pages in peace. To formulate my own thoughts, feelings and emotions behind whatever outfit I was processing, interview I was reading or the fly picture collages they were notorious for.

I fell in love with journalism and media through the lens of the culture. Hip-Hop. R&B. Artistry. Gaming. Sports. Gossip. Make-up and fashion tips from the hottest entertainers at the time.

Sometimes my world truly is just a collusion of the 2002 Romcom Brown Sugar, the 90s Living Single and the 1997 cinematic romance of Love Jones.

That’s what Right On! and Word Up! did for me. It was exclusive. It was creative. It was ACCESS, people! A time in the culture that felt less of a curation but more authentic. more alive. more true to self.

I flipped to a page and saw a picture of Baby Blue showing OUT on stage with the caption “Baby Blue at Scream Tour”

Scream Tour 4, circa 2005, was my first concert ever. Yes I had my airbrushed t-shirt and possibly a light up belt because who didn’t have a light up belt? HELLOOOO. I couldn’t believe my young eyes seeing Pretty Ricky on stage in just boxers and speedos but now as an adult who just went to the Boyz 4 Life tour 21 years later? Babbbby lol. Missed Slick ’em BAD this time around!

Right On! and Word Up! fed the youth. One of my favorite things about flipping through these 20+ year old magazines this morning was how much it fueled my imagination. Don’t get me wrong, I’m with the times and social media is cool but it’s so much less to the imagination. I often thing, if I don’t continue to exercise my imagination, will I lose it? What about my creativity?

Social media is so curated…polished…everyone wants the same aesthetic. I genuinely hate that. Sorry, not sorry. I fell in love with storytelling through reading stories.

Thinking..I want to be like THAT when I grow up. The cool girls whose names are next to these interviews with exclusive info from some of my favorite celebrities who felt soooo out of reach at the time. I’d never meet my favorite celebs..ever…right? welllll lol. And I will say, that is a perk of social media! And non-social media related, a band member in of my favoritest groups called me beautiful when I assisted him at my sneaker store job back in 2019. *shrug lol*

Did you know Right On! was the first full-fledged entertainment magazine for the youth market?! Specifically the black market. The first issue’s cover was the Jackson 5 in 1971!!!!! Black Culture magazines provided an escape from the project windows, the crime and the tiresome ache of having to be 2-3x as good just for half of a chance.

Those early 2000s movies + TV Shows of the creative, fashionable, story chasing journalists who were just so uberly cool (hellllloo Sex and the City and Living Single) lit my soul ablaze. I needed to be like that.

Khadijah James was my spirt animal. Not sure if social media will ever replace my Flavor magazine fantasy lol.

An ode to Right On! and Word Up! I miss you dearly.