They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us

Abdurraqib recalls going to see a concert that Atmosphere, a rap duo from Minneapolis, performed in St. Cloud, Minnesota. He attended because a woman he was interested in loved the band and wanted to see it perform. He mentions that there is something especially exciting about watching artists perform in (or near) the city they are from, and he found the concert exemplary. Toward the end of the show, Slug (one half of the duo) told the audience that they should forget about what was going on outside the venue, assuring them they would survive no matter what: “[W]e’re gonna be all right. We’re going to make it” (170).

At the end of the concert, Abdurraqib turned his phone back on and saw that Trayvon Martin had been murdered five hours earlier. This was a pivotal moment in his life, “the first time [he] was reading about the murder of an unarmed Black person in near-real time” (171). He wondered if others around him were reading the same story and hoped that they were sharing the same experience: “What a country’s fear of Blackness can do while you are inside a room, soaking in joy, being promised that you would make it through” (172).

Abdurraqib explores how Black people’s emotions—joy and rage—are often viewed as threatening by white people. He remembers once being pulled aside by a police officer with his friends and laughing, causing the police officer to snap at him. He remembers playing soccer in high school and college and being labeled “passionate,” “fired up,” and “emotive.” He tells a story about a white man calling the police on his Black neighbor because he heard a raised voice and assumed it meant trouble. When the police arrived, the Black man was simply singing, practicing for his church choir. Abdurraqib wonders what would happen if Black people’s rage and anger could just be accepted “as a part of the human spectrum” (176).

Abdurraqib reflects that Black women are labeled “angry” far more often than Black men. He remembers how his mother always went out of her way to smile and laugh loudly, even when she was sad—a performance to put white people at ease.

Abdurraqib’s mother died unexpectedly in June 1997 following a fatal reaction to a medication she took to manage her bipolar disorder. The rapper Biggie Smalls had died earlier in 1997 amid a spate of violence in the rap community, and for Abdurraqib, who was 13 at the time, it felt as if the genre was in danger of dying out; his mother had reservations about letting him listen to it, afraid of the violence associated with it. In this environment, the posthumously released single “Mo’ Money, Mo’ Problems” felt like a reprieve. Abdurraqib argues that the music video began the “‘shiny suit era.’ That commercialization of hip-hop taken to the extreme” (179). Though not without its problems, this era of “excess” in the genre helped Abdurraqib cope with his own grief, assuring him that rap would survive. He reflects on how many people celebrate their dead with music, making death itself “less fearful.” He believes his mother would have loved “Mo’ Money, Mo’ Problems,” and though he remains uncertain of the existence of an afterlife, he hopes she is happy and that he will see her again.

Abdurraqib recalls the first time he heard Nina Simone’s cover of “Pirate Jenny,” a song about a poor maid getting revenge on all the people who have mistreated her. Sung by a Black woman, the song reappropriates symbols of slavery—ships, chains, etc.—which Abdurraqib suggests embodies Simone’s power and defiance, in art and in life. In this context, Abdurraqib was particularly disappointed by the 2016 biopic Nina—a film that Simone’s estate did not even want made. Zoe Saldana, a light-skinned Black actress, played the title role of Nina Simone, donning makeup to darken her skin and wearing a prosthetic nose. Abdurraqib associates this with the longstanding erasure of Black people from their own stories; he notes that a white jazz teacher once told him that his lips were unsuitable for playing the trumpet.

Abdurraqib details the 16th Street Baptist Church terrorist bombing that killed Addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson, and Denise McNair in 1963. Black churches are still being attacked and burned at the time of the essay’s writing, despite legislature to prevent such terrorism. Abdurraqib highlights the recent mass shooting at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina. He ends this section considering the value of rebuilding and having a community to turn to in times of despair.

The second section of the essay uses the legacy of Ida B. Wells—her strong advocacy against lynching and “her consistent refusal of silence” (193)—to explore Sandra Bland’s death. Bland was arrested in 2015 after a traffic stop in Texas. She was taken to jail where, three days later, she was found hanged in her cell. It is unclear what exactly happened to Bland, but many believe her death was murder rather than suicide. Abdurraqib notes the similarities between Bland’s death and lynchings, saying, “When Black Men die, they live on, almost forever. When Black women vanish, they often simply vanish” (192). He hopes that Bland’s death and other Black women’s deaths will not be forgotten or ignored.

The last section of the essay focuses on Black grandmothers, the elderly women who have survived the traumas in the previous two sections: “Survival is truly a language in which the Black matriarch is fluent” (197). He ends the essay fondly reminiscing that Black grandmothers teach younger generations how to survive and how to hope for a better life.

This essay is formatted differently than any other essay in the collection: The majority of the text is struck through, while the words that remain are bolded.

Read fully through, the essay opens on a plane as a Black mother tries to convince Abdurraqib and other passengers to switch seats with her son so he can sit in a window seat on his first flight. Her son loves watching airplanes, and she wants him to be able to see out of the plane so he won’t be as scared. Abdurraqib agrees to switch with the woman, watching the mother tenderly carry her son into the seat.

Leaving out the struck-through text, the passage describes a mother yearning for her son to come home. Abdurraqib recognizes both her desperation and his own fear, though he tries to pretend he does not notice her. Eventually, however, he decides that there is no point surrendering to fear and “watches” the mother’s efforts to bring her son somewhere she believes will be safe.

Abdurraqib explains that, contrary to many people’s assumptions and insinuations, his Muslim identity and Arabic name do not mean his family recently immigrated to the US; rather, his parents converted to Islam and changed their names in the 1970s. Growing up Muslim, Abdurraqib faced discrimination and teasing but also curiosity. The latter vanished after 9/11, replaced simply by anger and the desire for vengeance. Abdurraqib was a freshman in college when 9/11 happened. In the aftermath of the tragedy, he returned to certain aspects of his faith, saying the Maghrib prayer most nights, asking for forgiveness and mercy for the United States.

Abdurraqib then turns to Trump’s 2016 executive order banning refugees from predominantly Muslim countries. Discussing the war crimes the US committed in the wake of 9/11, he notes that “[t]here is no retaliation like American retaliation, for it is long, drawn out, and willing to strike relentlessly regardless of the damage it has done” (206). As he did after 9/11, Abdurraqib feared for the safety of himself and his family following Trump’s order, though he found some beauty in the spontaneous protests that arose. He reflects that he is now glad his prayer for mercy for the United States was not answered, believing that through “resistance” to the country’s injustices, something better might be created. Though his relationship with his faith is tenuous, Abdurraqib takes this as a sign that “Allahu Akbar,” God is indeed “greater.”

Abdurraqib reflects on the November 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris, France—particularly the attack on the concertgoers at the Eagles of Death Metal show. He remembers how, as a young Muslim teen, he snuck out to concerts, finding a “small mercy for young people who found no mercy elsewhere” at live music events (208). Noting the West’s tendency to demand retribution in “Muslim bodies” after such acts of terrorism, Abdurraqib considers all of the young Muslims who have died and also the ones who are still living, worrying that they will no longer view concert venues as safe places or sanctuaries. He ends the essay hoping that these young Muslims “have somewhere to be unafraid and un-feared” (213).

Abdurraqib recalls his first police stop, which occurred in Bexley, Ohio, the town where his college was located. Bexley sits between two historically Black and poor neighborhoods, so residents tended to associate Blackness with poverty” (216). Growing up in Columbus, Abdurraqib had always viewed Bexley simply as another suburb and did not worry much about being Black in a predominately white environment.

Abdurraqib’s first car had an electrical fault that led to the car’s alarm going off when he unlocked the driver’s side door. Because of this, he often would unlock the passenger door and slide over to the driver’s seat. While Abdurraqib was doing this one night in Bexley after leaving a party, a resident called the police on him. While the police interrogated him, he moved to get his wallet, which the officers considered threatening and led to them pinning him to the ground. They kept him on the ground while they ransacked the car, ultimately finding nothing and simply saying, “Interesting name. Sorry for the trouble” (218). Abdurraqib sat on the curb trembling, realizing that no one had come out of their home to see if he was okay. He has had other experiences with police officers since, and every time he hears of an unarmed Black person being shot by the police, he wonders whether the circumstances leading to their murder resembled his first police stop.

Abdurraqib tracks Serena Williams’s upbringing, emphasizing that she was originally from Compton, a city in California that was predominantly Black and very dangerous in the 1980s; Serena’s own half-sister was killed there in 2003. Abdurraqib implies that Williams’s father moved Serena and her sister Venus away from Compton because he wanted to protect them.

Abdurraqib notes that Serena Williams’s expressions of confidence—often labeled aggressive or scary—are inseparable from her background. Speaking to the intersection of race and gender that Williams faces as a Black athlete in America (and in the very white sport of tennis), he highlights how unfair the tennis world’s policing of her behavior is given that it did all it could to keep her out.

After moving to the Northeast, Abdurraqib realized that the Midwest has explicit and “bold racism,” while in the Northeast he experienced a subtler kind of racism—one that made him feel “invisible.” In one incident, a woman dropped her grocery bags in his lap while waiting for a bus and did not apologize; another time, a man stopped him outside his apartment and acted incredulous that Abdurraqib lived in the building.

Abdurraqib describes people in the Northeast as taking part in a “liberal performance” of being antiracist, saying he feels more fear there because he cannot “tell who wishes for [him] to be gone” (230).

Abdurraqib notes the allure that crime, violence, and suffering can have to those who haven’t really experienced them. He describes the fame the Migos, a rap group, garnered due to their hit song “Bad and Boujee.” However, the Migos faced criticism for claiming they were from Atlanta when they were actually from one of its suburbs. He argues that bringing up their home city is “signaling some larger criticism about the type of Black people allowed to talk about certain things” (236).

Similarly, Abdurraqib brings up Johnny Cash’s outlaw persona. Though Cash never spent more than a night in jail, many of his most famous songs took place in prisons, narrated by people who had committed murder or other serious crimes. Pondering the necessity of firsthand experience in art, Abdurraqib notes that Cash went on to struggle with drug addiction, while a member of Migos was incarcerated for possession of narcotics and carrying a loaded gun. Abdurraqib is not sure either experience made the artist’s subsequent work more “authentic,” though he notes a kind of relationship: “It is hard to build a myth so large without eventually becoming part of it” (237).

The ending of the essay focuses on Cash’s last music video—“Hurt”—and his death soon after, noting that number achieves its emotional weight without references to the “deeper evil” that animated much of Cash’s music. The last paragraph features Offset, the member of the Migos who spent time in prison, saying he’s happy they made “it out of where they are from” (239)—“from” being, to Abdurraqib, the most memorable part of this statement.

Abdurraqib meditates on President Barack Obama’s global and national visibility as a notable political figure and Black man. He highlights how much of Obama’s popularity—his “cadence, tone, and crowd control”—harkens back “to rap music, which is rooted in a Black oral tradition” (242). While Obama is celebrated for welcoming rappers into the White House and American culture, Abdurraqib acknowledges that Obama is an American politician, meaning he is involved in the very systems that have repeatedly disadvantaged Black people, including those that rap itself arose in part to address. However, Obama—like these rappers—is a nuanced and complex person who deserves to have his full story told. Abdurraqib ultimately celebrates Obama for encouraging these more nuanced stories, even if he didn’t always tell them perfectly.

This essay traces the white rapper, beginning with Vanilla Ice and continuing through Eminem, Machine Gun Kelley, Bubba Sparxxx, Asher Roth, and Macklemore. Some of these artists—e.g., Machine Gun Kelley—merely appropriate Black culture and experiences, even using Black people as props in their performances. Abdurraqib argues that the most interesting white rap is that which examines (or even criticizes) white culture; he is fond of Bubba Sparxxx for rapping honestly about rural Southern poverty with the backing of a banjo and harmonica, and he recalls enjoying Eminem’s vitriol toward pop music. However, it appears that few white audiences want to listen to this kind of rap, leading the majority of white rappers to continue benefiting from their white privilege of “being able to say whatever you want, with no respect for the masses, with the masses rarely wanting you silenced” (248). Indeed, Abdurraqib suggests that it is hard (perhaps impossible) for white rappers not to benefit from their privilege; growing up, Eminem’s anger struck Abdurraqib as relatable, but he was always uncomfortably aware that no Black person could express that anger so violently without consequences.

Abdurraqib ends the essay by discussing Macklemore, a white rapper who has not only rapped about his white privilege but given space during his own concerts for Black artists to “read poems about police violence and gentrification” (257). Abdurraqib finds the inclusion of these facts to be “necessary” in white rap, which is only popular because of the success of Black rap. At the same time, he suggests that even Macklemore’s position is untenable; Abdurraqib prefers Macklemore when he is less “serious,” finding his professions of white guilt boring and less than fully convincing.

Focusing primarily on the rapper Future, Abdurraqib explores how the public consumes expressions of grief and heartbreak. Future, following his public break-up with the singer Ciara, went on to release a string of albums in a short amount of time. He turned his private grief into commercially successful work and was celebrated for his pain.

Abdurraqib also explores the grief he experienced when his mother died, as well as his father’s heartbreak. The essay ends with a 2017 postscript depicting Abdurraqib on his mother’s 64th birthday. As he cries in the airport, he picks up a copy of the Columbus Dispatch, which he is featured in. He wishes he could tell his mother “what [he] did with the path [she] made for [him]” (263). Abdurraqib is listening to Future as he considers how he has turned to artistic work to manage his grief and heartbreak. The cashier at the newsstand asks him to turn down his headphones’ volume, not commenting on his tears.

Abdurraqib considers a Thanksgiving he spent with his white partner’s family in southern Ohio. A year earlier, he had experienced racism in a gas station in the same town; the white man working behind the counter jumped when Abdurraqib reached into his pocket for his wallet. Abdurraqib told his partner’s father about the incident, and he was outraged and wanted to confront the worker. Abdurraqib views this reaction as genuine and kind.

This Thanksgiving, Abdurraqib and his partner’s father watched the news, which focused on the upcoming grand jury decision on whether Darren Wilson should be charged with the murder of Michael Brown. Abdurraqib’s partner’s father believed that Wilson was just doing his job and said he hoped “those people [didn’t] riot in that city” (267). While Abdurraqib knows that everyone at his Thanksgiving wanted the same thing—survival—he realizes that privilege allows some people to succeed more easily.

This essay additionally considers white and Black Americans’ differing relationships to guns. Abdurraqib recalls being scolded for playing with a water gun as a child; as an adult, he recognizes the danger of carrying anything that looks like a weapon as a Black person. Nevertheless, as a child, he learned to distinguish the sound of fireworks (long echo) from that of gunshots (short echo)—a distinction that would also be familiar to white Americans invested in gun culture.

Abdurraqib praises the value of childhood innocence and joy, especially during difficult years. He reflects on the growing trend in contemporary poetry to view “the elegy [as] a type of currency” (271). He argues that there is value in remembering the dead but that one must also spend time “speaking to the living” (271). A healthy existence requires both grief and joy.