They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us

by Hanif Abdurraqib

Rap is the genre of music that least allows for its artists to comfortably revel in fiction, even though all of us know we are watching a performance. So much music is made by someone steeped in persona, building a digestible image. Because of rap’s roots, and because so many people who saw it at the start are still alive to turn a critical eye toward it, it comes under fire for turning away from what feels real. 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 unique and varied weight.