Black News and Black Views with a Whole Lotta Attitude
2025 gave us more than a handful of losses this year and a lot of our favorite celebs sadly didn’t make it. Let’s take a look back in remembrance.
Photo: Tim Mosenfelder/Getty Images; Santiago Felipe/Getty Images.
The year 2025 has one of truly shocking celebrity losses. More than a handful of our favorite Black celebs took their last breaths, leaving their families, close friends and fans to mourn their departure. While every loss is worthy of recognition and honor, let’s take a look back at some of the most notable celebrity deaths that transpired this year that left us taken back and shaken to our cores.
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Activist Assata Shakur, Black Panther Party member and noted revolutionary, died in Cuba on Sept. 26. She was 78. Shakur moved to the Caribbean country in 1984, five years following her escape from a New Jersey prison, where she was serving a life sentence for the murder of a police officer; Fidel Castro granted Shakur (born Joanne Chesimard) political asylum, turning her into a symbol of strained relations between the country. For her supporters, Shakur spent nearly half a century as an icon of Black American freedom fighters and an example of the consequences of an imbalanced and biased criminal justice system.
Neo-Soul singer D’Angelo died on Oct. 14. His death was confirmed by his former manager Kedar Massenberg and other sources close to his family and was attributed to a battle with pancreatic cancer. He was 51. He is survived by his son Micheal Archer II, daughter Imani Archer, and youngest son Morocco.
R&B songstress Angie Stone died the morning of March 1 following a car accident. The Columbia, S.C. native started her career in the 1970s as a member of female rap group The Sequence. She was nominated for several Grammys for her solo work, including in 2007 for her song “Baby” from her fourth solo album “The Art of Love & War.” She was 63.
Malcolm-Jamal Warner, known best for playing Theo Huxtable on “The Cosby Show,” died on July 20. The actor was on a family trip to Costa Rica and died in an accidental drowning while swimming. An official autopsy later confirmed the cause of death as accidental “asphyxia by submersion.” He was 54.
Grammy-winning singer and true pioneering force in R&B Roberta Flack passed away on Feb. 24. She was 88 years old and surrounded by her family. Flack of course is known for her hit songs like “Killing Me Softly With His Song,” “Feel Like Makin’ Love” and her Grammy-winning cover of “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face.”