When Paris was changing, when Spain was in civil war, when Los Angeles was on fire, when drugs decimated her city—what did people do? They made art about it. Art unlike anything that had come before. Jay-Z, in her opinion, was no different than Picasso; Nas, on par with Manet. She studied, in class, the history of the world through the eyes of artists. She felt, in her soul, that what she was witnessing with hip-hop was some of the most inventive artists in history documenting the culture of her time.
