By Matt Mueller Culture Editor Published May 11, 2020 at 6:56 PM

Concerts and movies may be temporarily canceled, but Black Lens found a way to bring people together around both tomorrow night.

The film organization announced that it will host a moderated virtual discussion on Tuesday, May 12 at 7 p.m. about Saturday night's wildly popular "Verzuz" Instagram live-stream between award-winning R&B/soul icons Jill Scott and Erykah Badu.

Created by producers Timbaland and Swizz Beatz, the "Verzuz" series has staged several Instagram music competitions between rappers, producers and singers to entertain and engage fans during quarantine, with Saturday night's musical collaboration the stream's long-awaited first between two female artists. But what was promoted as a battle almost immediately shifted into a warm-hearted extended virtual jam session between two musicians, going back and forth spinning hits and deep cuts from their respective catalogues for several hours and racking up more than 700,000 viewers – including former First Lady Michelle Obama, who chimed in the comments to make sure her husband was aware of what was going on too.

Along with moderator Donte McFadden of Black Lens, a trio of Milwaukee's own excellent soul singers – B~Free, Element Everest-Blanks and Robin Reese – will break down the unique virtual joint session, as well as talk about the two artists' impact on film and television with their songs and performances, both as actors and musicians. 

To tune into the conversation, RSVP by emailing Black Lens at donte@mkefilm.org. And in case you missed the show, YouTube caught most of the show, and the official playlist can be found on Spotify.

Matt Mueller Culture Editor

As much as it is a gigantic cliché to say that one has always had a passion for film, Matt Mueller has always had a passion for film. Whether it was bringing in the latest movie reviews for his first grade show-and-tell or writing film reviews for the St. Norbert College Times as a high school student, Matt is way too obsessed with movies for his own good.

When he's not writing about the latest blockbuster or talking much too glowingly about "Piranha 3D," Matt can probably be found watching literally any sport (minus cricket) or working at - get this - a local movie theater. Or watching a movie. Yeah, he's probably watching a movie.