Unsurprisingly then, both Jenkins’s and Ocean’s returns played out as events. Ocean, on the other hand, was coming off a seemingly endless hiatus, during which fans and media alike grew rabid for a follow-up to 2012’s near-perfect Channel Orange. Amid programming films at the Telluride Film Festival, working as a staff writer on The Leftovers, directing commercials, working as a carpenter, and writing shelved scripts, eight whole years had passed since Jenkins’s San Franciscan debut, Medicine for Melancholy. Moonlight was a long time coming, and its success was only right. But two particular projects rose above the rest: Barry Jenkins’s Moonlight, and Frank Ocean’s Blonde. Last year witnessed the return of legends Dave Chappelle and A Tribe Called Quest the consistent mastery of Wesley Morris, Ava DuVernay and Ta-Nehisi Coates the continued dominance of superstars Beyoncé and Kanye West and inevitable breakouts from Solange Knowles, Donald Glover, Issa Rae and Devonté Hynes. Last year was a banner year for black excellence, in which a perhaps unprecedented number of artists shone across the cultural spectrum. Artistic expression, however, has long played the yin to oppression’s yang, and not for the first time - nor, likely, the last - in 2016, it was African-American voices who carried much of the weight of resistance. Needless to say, 2016 was a taxing year, and 2017 is turning out to be even more so.

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