Additionally, when black people singing songs about guns and drugs make it to number one in a country where black people are arrested and killed for guns or drugs or less than that, it can feel a bit like life as spectacle is more protected than life as a fully lived experience. I understand these things and also say that we’ve allowed the rappers we grew up with to grow up and still rap about selling drugs with platinum records and sold out tours at their backs, but a suburban zip code is where we draw the line, as if growing up all kinds of black in all kinds of ways doesn’t carry its own
...more
