Nipsey Hussle is a post hip hop icon. In this essay, we mine popular music and media coverage of to describe his artistry advocacy anchored by articulation an African American diasporic identity, ambivalence as independent rapper within mainstream industry, leverage Black capital in Crenshaw community. We address these relationships--identity, community--to situate literacies. By recalling rela...

Since the emergence of Afro-pessimism in early 2000s, focus much critical conversation and around discourse has been on viability its ontological claims as to non-‘Human’ status blackness. Departing from these essential debates, this article turns rather generic qualities Afro-pessimism, suggest that discourse’s formal choices reveal discrepancies theses being argued. In comparing two key texts...

For over twenty years, West African Muslims from the Murid Sufi Brotherhood have organized the annual Cheikh Amadou Bamba Day parade in New York City. It is a major site where they redefine the boundaries of their African identities, cope with the stigma of blackness, and counteract an anti-Muslim backlash. Rather than viewing religion as a subset of ethnicity, this study shows how African Muri...

EPRESSION IS A VERY LONELY DISEASE. Sufferers are unable to see beyond the blackness enclosing them, even if they are surrounded by loving friends and by a supportive family. It is difficult for them to talk to people who do not share their experience, and difficult for those others to understand how they feel. Although there is evidence that depression has been experienced since the earliest t...