notes on: Set It Off

MEDIUM: Film 

GENRE: Action/Crime Thriller

STUDIO: New Line Cinema 

DIRECTOR: F. Gary Gray

CAST: Jada Pinkett Smith, Queen Latifah, Vivica A. Fox, Kimberly Elise, Blair Underwood, Dr. Dre

RELEASE YEAR: 1996

F. Gary Gray’s Set It Off is a hood classic and needs no introduction but I’ll set the stage. Set It Off is Gray’s second feature film and follow-up to the equally classic Friday. The film centers four black women- Frankie played by Vivica A. Fox, Stony played by Jada Pinkett Smith, Cleo played by Queen Latifah, and Tisean played by Kimberly Elise- up against the wind; namely the socioeconomic pressures of growing up in the LA projects as black women. Eventually these women tire of their circumstances and seek escape through a series of high profile bank robberies. What should be a simple high-octane 90s inner city action romp is instead a tender and heartbreaking meditation on black sisterhood, feminism, afropessimism, womanism, localized tragedy, captive maternals, capitalism, and the christological story. Agape meets escape. 

The film’s opening scene follows Frankie. She works at a bank and a man she knows from around the way named Darnell is robbing it. Darnell is unassuming at first but Frankie quickly realizes the danger when he threatens her with his loaded gun. Instead of following procedure (pull money clip from right hand drawer, signal with left hand) Frankie begs Darnell to change his mind- an important and lasting example of attempted solidarity. Darnell refutes Frankie’s solidarity and proceeds with the robbery, which turns into a bloody affair. This is the first time in the movie that a black woman is failed by a black man. The robbery is “successful” and Darnell along with his accomplice Lorenz make off with a lot of money. Frankie is questioned by the LAPD’s Detective Stroud and fired because she knew the robbers and didn’t follow the aforementioned procedure. A jaded and increasingly hysterical Frankie laments the bank owners for their disloyalty and even cites her own loyalty (counted 240,000 dollars by hand for them the day before). None of it matters, Frankie is out of a job despite being the victim of a harsh and traumatizing violent crime. On the way out she makes note of more unfulfilled solidarity, this time in the form of the black female police officer, Detective Waller (played by Ella Joyce), neglecting to “bother to ask if I was thirsty sister.” 

Frankie broke the procedure out of fear and empathy but also due to an assumed camaraderie between herself and those who came from a similar background. This failure of this assumed camaraderie is a driving force for her character throughout the remainder of the film. 

From there we are introduced to the rest of the central characters at Stevie's graduation party. Stevie (played by Chez Lamar Shepherd) is Stony’s little brother but essentially her son as well. They’re orphaned due to a car crash that occurred a few years earlier. The mood is light and everyone is costumed. Cleo and Tisean help Stony ruin her little brother’s groove with the ladies, Stevie is smart and handsome and capable. It’s a good time, she’s a good sister and a good mother- even if it was a role forced on her by circumstance. Immediately we’re shown the personalities and states of our characters: Cleo’s rambunctious, vociferous, and volatile. Stony’s responsible, gritty, and street smart. Tisean is timid, loyal, and a single mother. Frankie’s vengeful, mad at the world, and ready to do something about it. It is also here that we can see Stony’s rearing of Stevie was a communal effort. These women are there for her. 

Even at times of celebration there is cause for hesitation. Stevie appears to be stressed out and after some prodding from Stony, he reveals that he did not receive a scholarship from UCLA to become the “college boy” they were so proud of him for becoming. Stevie suggests just getting a job and sticking around the hood but Stony is quick to shut that idea down, stating that she’ll find a way to come up with the money. How Stony is to go about doing this isn't clear. She works a shitty nighttime janitor job for Luther’s Janitorial Service with an overbearing and disrespectful boss (Luther, played by Thomas Jefferson Byrd) along with Tisean, Cleo, and suddenly Frankie too. Essentially, the film has demonstrated that she and everyone she cares for are stuck in a loop of poverty and violence with no escape. Rather than engage in the self-destructive activities that often malign people in the same circumstances as them, they built a community and decided to be there for each other. They’re firm exemplars of  “captive maternals.” 

Joy James defines a captive maternal in In Pursuit of Revolutionary Love: Precarity, Power, Communities as such: 

an ungendered function that cares for children and elders to keep them stable and protected. Often its labor is used to stabilize the very structures that prey on Black lives and honor in schools, hospitals, jobs, and prisons. Generative powers stolen and repurposed by the state and capital for accumulation can also be stolen back for rebellions. 

James also states that captive maternals are “central to the reproduction of the world. Without this form of caretaking, without this form of sacrifice, without this kind of glue to social order- which is tied to the economic order and the political order, and the very notion of what is familial and the familiar in the world- we see that things do not function” (page 118). From here, we can recall the people in our own lives that were forced by circumstance into motherlike roles and how important they are to any continued success we may have. Stony and Tisean are captive maternals in the most literal sense but even Cleo and Frankie assume responsibility for Stevie and Jajuan (Tisean’s son) as well as for each other. 

Stony resolves to call Nate Andrews, a wealthier man in the neighborhood who’s sweet on her, and ask him for a job. He only wants one thing in return and refuses to give Stony an advance on her first check unless she has sex with him. Nate Andrews demonstrates a similar lack of solidarity that Darnell showed to Frankie and the entire exchange is unsavory. Stony relents with her brother’s education in mind and sells her body with no pleasure, tearfully. She couldn’t scrub hard enough in the shower. To make matters worse, Stevie was lying about getting into UCLA and the money was no help. He storms out of the house after he gets into a big fight with his sister. Stevie’s asylum is Lorenz’s apartment in the Acorn housing projects. 

We immediately recognize Lorenz as a rambunctious, violent, reckless, knucklehead. He has “AP” cut into the back of his head, something that made him easy to identify in the bank robbery footage. Stevie seems quite taken with Lorenz though, uneasy in his presence and seeking his approval. This dynamic makes it easy for Lorenz to pressure Stevie into getting the same haircut. The visit was friendly enough however, Stevie even leaves with a congratulatory bottle of champagne. However, unbeknownst to Stevie, the police have the apartment staked out and they surround him upon departure. Stevie needs to take the champagne from his inside jacket pocket in order to lie down flat on his stomach as they’re demanding but the pigs (police, twelve, five-oh) mistake the bottle for a weapon and open fire, killing him. Innocent, eighteen, and unarmed. 

Unarmed Black Americans are no stranger to police violence. Many Black victims of police brutality and state incompetence have been murdered by “accident” before and after the release of the film. Eleanor Bumpurs, 66-year old disabled Black woman, was shot and killed by the NYPD in 1984 while they were trying to evict her from her home. Amadou Diallo, 23-year old Guinean student, was fired upon 41 times (hit 19  times) by four NYPD officers in 1999 while reaching for his wallet. Tamir Rice, a 12-year old boy, was shot and killed by a Cleveland police officer within seconds of arriving on the scene while playing in the park in 2014. Breonna Taylor, 26-year old woman, shot and killed in her sleep after Louisville Metro Police Officers forced entry into her home and opened fire in 2020. In 1992, the city of Los Angeles burned in a series of riots after a gang of police officers got off for viciously beating Rodney King on video.  

I invoke these real life tragedies to illustrate the familiarity of the struggle and pain felt by Stony as she arrived and saw her brother’s hot blood and cold corpse lie shiftless among the glass bottle shards. This movie was made in the wake of ongoing tragedy and it is important to recognize that because Stevie’s death marked a severance of responsibility for Stevie. Nothing mattered anymore but the means of her escape from a similar fate, which seemed not just likely but promised. 

Tisean, the other mother in the group, also deals with the loss of her son. She cannot afford a sitter and is forced to take him to work with her but she is negligent and ingests some cleaning products. They rush him to the emergency room and manage to save his life but child protective services steps in and takes custody of Jajuan until she can secure a better financial situation. This is the final domino to drop and lays out the desires and motivations of the main characters out plainly. Frankie is angry and wants revenge on the banking industry, feeling as though her hard work and loyalty has gone unrewarded. Stony wants to escape her life and needs money to do so. Tisean needs more money to retain custody of her son. And Cleo is a thrill-seeker, angry about her lack of funds. 

They stake out several banks but at the biggest one, Stony meets Keith (played by Blair Underwood). He’s immediately infatuated with her and insists on getting her number, she declines but she takes his. He’s a debonair, well-off Black man and about as far from Stony’s lifestyle that she can imagine. Keith represents an alternate avenue of escape for Stony, one without personal agency. He is also the first positive example of Black male solidarity to appear in the movie. 

The second example is Black Sam (played by Dr.Dre). Dre’s portrayal is pretty wooden but he’s a roughneck hood nigga with a soft spot for Cleo, who talks him into loaning them the weapons necessary to pull off a bank robbery. It isn't completely altruistic, they promise him a cut of the loot.

Cleo appears to be a professional even on the first bank robbery. They steal a getaway car and Cleo disposes of the music selection, beginning a fun if not childish and dangerous tradition. They wear wigs and sunglasses to disguise their appearance and it goes without a hitch. Well, almost. Tisean gets cold feet and abandons them at the last second. They steal 12,000 dollars and split it four ways despite reservations (mainly from Cleo) about Tisean going awol. Giving Tisean the money despite her not partaking in the robbery is a display of Black sisterhood and further displaying the understanding that comes from shared experience. 

The money secured from the first robbery was not enough for them to really change their lives. Stony goes on a date with Keith and upon seeing his apartment, she outright divulges that she feels trapped. She sort of begins a double life or a dual identity. Stony is provided temporary exposure to escape while with Keith and he wants her to join him for good but she doesn’t truly consider him as an option. Even without Stevie, she has an obligation to Cleo, Tisean, and Frankie. The new influx of money and the dangers of being caught also challenge their allegiances and threaten to fracture their connection. Stony and Cleo argue and point weapons at each other and curse each other out but it’s all love. 

The conflict between the two is not just about money, it’s a battle between two opposing dispositions. Stony’s entire being is dedicated to escaping the life she’s been given in the projects while Cleo does not know escape at all. She doesn't know any future and doesn’t care. As she says, “I’m just trying to make it through today.” This defeatist and pessimistic outlook is rooted in her experience of immense loss. Her erasure as a Black homosexual femme living in the hood is out of her control and she understands that there is no way to escape what is coming for her. Joy James defines afropessimism as follows: 

lens of interpretation that accounts for civil society’s dependence on anti-black violence: a regime of violence that positions Black people as internal enemies of civil society, and which cannot be analogized with the regimes of violence that discipline non-Black workers, women, natives, queers, immigrants, etc. Afropessimism argues that the Black (or slave) is an unspoken and/or unthought sentience for whom the transformative powers of discursive capacity are foreclosed from the beginning. 

I’d be lying if I were to say I thought Cleo’s character is familiar with this term but she lives it in her everyday actions. She oscillates between hedonistic and nihilistic actions with a real madness but she’s arguably the most caring and tender of the group as well. Cleo is a woman without a future and is painted against Stony, a woman who wants one so damned bad.

Futures aren’t cheap, so they rob another bank, this time they get a lot more even if things do not go as smoothly. Cleo needs to steal an additional getaway car after some mess with the first one. Tisean doesn’t bail this time around, she even has a pretty cool crowd control moment from the ground. Oh yeah, they drive through a wall on the way out before stealing 300,000 dollars- 75,000 a piece. They formulate a plan to skip town because things are getting hot for them. LAPD, namely Detective Stroud, suspects them being urged to leave them alone (he’s partially responsible for Stevie’s murder). They hide the money in the ventilation shafts of the building they clean for Luther’s Janitorial service to be picked up at a later date. 

Stony continues her temporary escapes with Keith, who invites her for a night out at a swanky banker event. She shows up in an ugly outfit that isn't right for the occasion because she doesn’t have any fancy evening gowns. Keith takes her and buys her a really nice black evening gown. At the party she mingles with the white people and gets a taste of traditional white femininity, not captive. She is able to be delicate and be tended to and unwind and relax and just be taking care of. She’s Stony, tough as stone (lol) and nails and Keith makes her butter. It’s nice to see, but Stony knows it is temporary. “I feel free now,” she says, “But it’s not my life. I’m just borrowing pieces of yours.” They go home after the event and have hot oily soul-shaking sex as Deborah Cox’s  “What’s It Gonna Be” plays. In the morning, Stony tearfully returns to her real life with her new black dress in hand. Her life from the night before with Keith will never be forever and she knew that to be true, even if he didn’t. 

Concurrently to Stony’s escape, the others realize the hidden money had disappeared. They put two and two together and come to the conclusion that Luther stole it. After consulting Black Sam, they find him at a motel with a hooker: drugs and jewelry and new car keys on the nightstand. Cleo beats Luther and demands he tell her where their money is but he plays stupid. Cleo loses her focus and Luther gets the drop on her, pulling a gun from underneath his pillow. His gun is trained on Cleo but he forgets Tisean, who shoots and kills him, to her own astonishment. Tisean is simply protecting her sister but she drops the weapon and is almost as hysterical as the prostitute, who Cleo blackmails into silence (takes her ID card with her address on it). Cleo’s picked up by Detective Stroud the following day while walking around with her girlfriend Ursula (quiet sexy shawty, played by Samantha MacLachlan) and put in a lineup of suspects for the prostitute. The hooker remembers Cleo’s threat and does not divulge any information to the police but even still, Stony is incredulous back at the apartment as they give her the rundown. “You said we weren’t going to hurt anybody Frankie!” she cries. 

When Cleo gets back to her apartment, she displays the same toughness and urgency we’ve come to expect from her. She makes it clear that the two things they need to do is rob a third bank and “get the fuck outta here.” They make plans to rob the bank Keith works for and when Stony voices hesitation, Cleo challenges her and questions her solidarity and if she’d play them “over that buppie at the bank.” Stony, once again, chooses her obligations over her personal freedom and happiness. 

In what’s possibly the funniest scene in the movie, they dine and dash before the third bank robbery, realizing that they didn’t have enough to pay the check. Why miss heaven by two inches? 

They go through the usual motions: stolen getaway car, discarded music, disguises. But Stony calls Keith to tell him to leave the bank and their timing couldn’t have been worse. Detective Stroud and Detective Waller are showing tapes of their previous robberies to the staff. Keith does leave though, suspicious of Stony but deciding to trust her. The detectives leave too but they return after the robbery is called in on the radio. They stop our heroes just as they are about to leave. They see through the disguises and call them by their names, imploring them to surrender at gunpoint. It’s a standoff and our heroes do almost surrender but when the bank security guard shoots Tisean the moment she lowers her weapon. It’s a completely jarring moment and Stony and Cleo shift into survival mode. They carry Tisean to the getaway car and try to rush to a hospital but they’re not quick enough. 

Tisean dies in Stony’s arms in the backseat while Frankie and Cleo try to secure the new car, the first of a series of heartbreaking deaths. Tisean is saying “I’m okay, I’m okay” over and over again and when she stops speaking it’s like a heavy rock gets stacked on your chest. She was the innocent one, the kind-hearted one, the shy one, the one who was about to get custody of her back. I remember crying profusely even as a child (too young to be watching the movie) during this scene. The acting from everyone involved in the scene is superb, they all convey resignation and pain to the highest degree. I can’t say enough. 

The rest of the movie is very difficult for me and probably many other Black people. It’s painful, heartfelt, and well-made but no fun at all. I feel as though “trauma porn” is an overused term but perhaps it is a correct descriptor of what we’re given in the final act. At the same time, perhaps it ends on an optimistic note, if not a tad unrealistic. 

There is a high-speed car chase and they realize they cannot make it together. They’re trapped in a tunnel and Cleo hatches a plan to split up. She promises that they’ll meet up down the road and for them to just hold onto the money. Cleo knows this to be untrue, Stony and Frankie do as well. They embrace, tears aplenty, and disperse never to see each other again. Stony and Frankie are on foot. Cleo lights a cigarette and drives her car into a police barricade. She projects macho bravado, confidence, peace, pain, and resolute focus. She knows she has no tomorrow. And then she makes the ultimate christological sacrifice. “Up Against The Wind” plays, the perfect encapsulation of everything she’d been through up until that point. She dies indignant. This is arguably the most iconic scene of the movie and for good reason. Despite the tragedy of their deaths happening in such close succession, both losses of Cleo and Tisean resonate emotionally. 

Stony finds her way onto a tourist bus on its way to Mexico but Frankie gets caught by the same cops that murdered two of her best friends and showed no remorse as she was robbed at the beginning of the film. Detective Stroud is determined to avoid any further loss of life as the “good cop” (oh brother) but Frankie doesn’t want to hear any of that shit. She chooses death over captivity and is gunned down trying to run away after pressing her gun against Detective Stroud’s neck. Her final words were a callback to Stroud’s strict insistence on her following “procedure” during a bank robbery. Stroud sees Stony on the tourist bus but remains tight-lipped. I’m uncertain if the movie thinks we’re supposed to applaud him for that, he’d just orchestrated the murder of literally everyone she cares about. 

Stony cuts her hair in a Mexican hotel and thinks about the lost times with her sisters. She cries, it’s a mixture of happy tears and pain. “Missing You” by Brandy, Tamia, Gladys Knight, and Chaka Khan plays. It is a moment of rebirth, freedom, and finally: escape. The black dress that Keith bought her lies on the bed beside the money from the final bank robbery. She calls him and says “I am.” We understand this to mean she’s free and he does too. No other words are needed. She rides off alone into the wilderness, unbound from obligation and firmly away from captivity. 

Alice Walker has four definitions of womanist in her text, In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens. Perhaps the second one is the most apt description of our Set It Off heroes: 

A woman who loves other women, sexually and/or nonsexually. Appreciates and prefers women’s culture, women’s emotional flexibility (values tears as natural counterbalance of laughter). And women’s strength. Sometimes loves individual men, sexually and/or nonsexually. Committed to survival, except periodically, for health. 

Set It Off is about a lot of things but at its core it's about the love felt between four Black women and how they navigate it together. These women are complex, emotional, strong, vulnerable, capable, and powerful together. They’re failed by everyone in their lives to an infuriating degree. Time and time again, they’re shown to be able to rely on no one but themselves. Solidarity, even from Black men, is understood to be a dangerous expectation. This depresses me greatly, mainly because it’s not inconsistent with reality. 

I often associate Set It Off with two other movies that do not appear to have much in common with it at first glance: Waiting To Exhale (1994) and Eve’s Bayou (1997). All three of these films have Black directors and all three are about the love shared by Black women. Waiting To Exhale is about the romantic strivings of four Black women while Eve’s Bayou is about love between two sisters, their mother, and their aunt (that’s four!). A lasting impression of all three films is that Black women have nothing but themselves. It’s a sobering idea, possibly an undeniable truth. I think about who failed Stony, Cleo, Frankie, and Tisean and real life examples of black femicide come to mind. They were left to fend for themselves by the black men in their community. Even still, I have to wonder if their loss was a failure or if their marginalization is by design. I know the answer. As a Black man, I feel like I owe it to the Black women to show up for them. We carry so much experience that has welded us together along with the camaraderie of common origin. I can’t fail them. 

The final questions I have pertains to the lyric intensity and epic depth present in everyday living of a people (particularly the working class [queer] Black woman) trapped under socioeconomic pressures. Once you escape as Stony did, what is being mourned? Can you truly get away? What’s free? 

“I am.”

notes on: YEAR IN REVIEW [film]

MEDIUM: Film  

MOVIES: 12

YEAR: 2022

At the beginning of 2022 I pledged to watch 365 movies. It was a formidable task and an intimidating number but at the same time I thought, a movie a day? That’s so easy. I was wrong as hell. Life got in the way, I fell in love with some TV shows, some books, with music, and writing and there all of a sudden just wasn’t enough hours in the day. It wasn’t easy at all but I made it to my goal just at the finish, with 64 movies in December, 4 of them coming on New Year’s Eve. Of the 365 different films I watched in 2022, 52 of them were released in 2022. Here are a few moments in those movies that I wanted to share with you. 

Watching movies has been a communal action since the inception of cinema so I wanted to bring in an additional voice on what movies looked and felt like in 2022. Nicky is a film aficionado and enthusiast (especially not a critic) with a strong taste palette. She runs a movie page on Instagram (@nickycinema) that seeks to express her love for film and expand her interests throughout her found community online. Nicky introduced me to one of my favorite movies, The Royal Tenenbaums (2001), nearly a decade ago so it means a lot to me that she’s sharing some of her experiences with the big screen with an audience largely curated by me. 

No further ado, here’s 2022 in film: 

-

Everything, Everywhere, All At Once by Daniel Kwan & Daniel Scheinert (2022) 

I first saw the trailer for Everything, Everywhere, All At Once when I went to go see The Coen brothers’ Tragedy of Macbeth in December 2021. It immediately became my most anticipated film of 2022 and I was not disappointed. I saw it for the first time on IMAX at Lincoln Center on opening night and after the showing, the directors emerged from the crowd and answered a few questions from the audience. I can’t remember a single word they said, my mind was still blown and elsewhere. Holy shit, this may be my favorite movie of all time. The dialogue, story, acting, plot, comedy, direction, choreography, cinematography, special effects, and action were all being executed to the highest degree. This movie, about an aging Asian mother trying to save her laundromat from the IRS and her daughter from the nihilism of everything spoke to me more than any other movie I have ever seen. I cried three different times every time I saw this movie. It’s a special moment and changed my life forever. I’ve looked at life a lot differently since I watched it for the first time. Michelle Yeoh was fantastic, Ke Huy Quan was fantastic, Stephanie Hsu was fantastic. This movie had some legs on it too, as the weeks passed I saw how the brilliance of the film was passed on through word of mouth. It touched a lot of people in a real way, something that’s uncommon in cinema today. I’m running out of superlatives but this movie felt like me in the best possible way. [Najee] 

FAVORITE LINE: So, even though you have broken my heart yet again, I wanted to say… in another life, I would have really liked doing laundry and taxes with you. 

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Banshees of Inisherin by Martin McDonagh (2022) 

Martin McDonagh, writer and director of Banshees of Inisherin, rose to prominence as a playwright and his penchant for dialogue and grounded yet groundbreaking narratives is on full display here. And even then, the film lacks no scale. It’s beautiful and takes full advantage of the beautiful backdrop that his story is told against. Two men are lifelong friends and one day, one friend wakes up and no longer wants to be friends with the other. At first the premise seems silly.  The film’s story begins immediately but as these very human characters examine their very human relationships and face even more human consequences, you’ll find yourself looking inwardly very soon. I didn’t cry but I didn’t not want to. I felt heavy after a while watching this, immobilized by something. I didn’t move for a few minutes. Amazing acting from all of the leads and the writing is beyond top notch. I promise you have no idea where this film is going from beginning to end. There’s no slowburn, just everything then nothing. Some relationships are like that, forever or flames. [Najee]

FAVORITE LINE: Or did you never used to be? Oh god, maybe you never used to be. 

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Decision to Leave by Park Chan-Wook (2022) 

Decision to Leave is a psychological thriller from Park Chan-Wook of Korea about Hae-Joon, an insomniac veteran detective who was tasked with investigating the death of a man who fell from a mountaintop. The main suspect is the man’s younger wife, Seo-rae, who admits to having married him for his wealth rather than her love for him. The death appears to be a suicidal accident but some of Hae-Joon’s coworkers are not as certain as him. By the middle of his investigation, Hae-Joon isn't sure what he thinks and leads with his heart, not good for a detective. Hae-Joon falls in love with the Seo-rae and winds up following her down a road with unforeseen consequences. [Najee] 

FAVORITE SCENE: I don’t necessarily have a favorite line but I love the scene when Seo-rae lures Hae-Joon to the top of the mountain. I don’t want to spoil anything, but it has haunted me for quite some time. 

NOPE by Jordan Peele (2022) 

NOPE was a lot of fun and it was beautiful. Peele is a master of suspense, like a modern-day Alfred Hitchcock (maybe a bit too early to say this but I don’t care). All of the performances were great but KeKe Palmer stole the show. Peele’s usual mix of sci-fi and horror elements with social commentary hits on some of the same levels as his previous two offerings but he also brings some of his points into new arenas. What are we supposed to see? What forces can we control? How far are we willing to go to capture spectacle? Can we tame nature? Shit goes absolutely bonkers in the third act in the best possible way. Come to mystery and chimpanzees, stay for KeKe Palmer doing an Akira slide. [Najee] 

FAVORITE LINE: What’s a bad miracle? 

BARDO, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths by Alejandro González Iñárritu (2022): 

The moment my little sister finished this movie she called me to tell me about it. She didn't want to provide too much context, only that it was the perfect movie for me and that I'd love it. It didn't take more than 10 minutes into the movie for me to realize she was right. The movie follows a renowned Mexican journalist and filmmaker who returns to Mexico before accepting a prestigious award in the states. Throughout the film, he has several existential crises and interpersonal battles dealing with family, death, loss, and as IMDb describes, "a folly of his memories". This movie is directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu who is also famously known for Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) and The Revenant. As we watched the movie, my friends and I wondered whether or not the film was autobiographical and representative of his own life and hardships. Alejandro was also born and raised in Mexico, where the film takes place. Regardless of whether or not it was taken from his own life, the film altogether felt very personal. It's extremely meta and intricately layered with Mexican culture and history. It kind of reminded me of "Everything Everywhere All At Once", mainly because it left me with that full "all-encompassing" feeling. The word "bardo" apparently originated from Buddhist teachings and describes an intermediate state between death and rebirth and the way they capture this in-between is so beautiful! Absolutely in my top 10 for the year and definitely deserves at least 2 watches - the first watch is enough, but 2nd for good measure. [Nicky] 

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Glass Onion by Rian Johnson (2022) 

Rian Johnson’s much-anticipated followup to Knives Out lived up to expectations and was a helluva lot of fun. Johnson has a knack for upending troupes within any genre he engages with, something that enraged a lot of fans when he tackled Star Wars: The Last Jedi, but it’s completely at home in the mystery genre. The cast of characters and archetypes are once again fully fleshed out and Daniel Craig’s performance at Benoit Blanc remains captivating. In a year of long-awaited original screenplay sequels, Avatar: The Way of The Water and Top Gun: Maverick, I think Glass Onion was the best one. [Najee] 

FAVORITE LINE: It’s a dangerous thing to mistake speaking without thought with speaking the truth.

Wakanda Forever by Ryan Coogler (2022) 

Wakanda Forever was the best superhero movie of 2022 and this was done despite all odds. After losing Chadwick Boseman, who portrayed the titular character in the Black Panther franchise, Coogler was tasked with finding where the world he built in 2018 would go next. He went with what felt real, the grief. He showed it on screen in many ways that broke me in the theater. The action was great, the story was great, and the movie has the best acting in Marvel movie history. Angela Bassett truly deserves an Oscar for her performance as Queen Ramonda. Tenoch Huerta’s portrayal of Namor is brilliant as well. Leticia Wright rose to the occasion in the most difficult circumstances. Everything in this movie felt earned. Healing isn't linear. This movie helped me find that clarity. RIP Chadwick Boseman. [Najee] 

FAVORITE LINE: I am queen of the most powerful nation in the world and my entire family is gone! Have I not given everything!? 

Pearl & X by Ti West (2022) 

2022 was a strong year for horror films: Scream, Barbarian, Bones and All, Werewolf by Night, Fresh, Smile, etc. but I think these are arguably the two best. 

A24, Mia Goth, and Ti West teamed up to put out two different sexual horror thrillers in 2022 with the third installment coming soon. X follows 70s porn stars trying to make a film on a remote farm while dealing with elderly serial killers while Pearl tells the origin of one of those serial killers. X seems to be more about the spectacle of murder and sex while Pearl is more of a character study. Mia Goth really shines in Pearl as Pearl, both in Pearl’s long monologue towards the end of the film and the painful tearful smile during the closing credits. I am most grateful that X didn’t film a sex scene between Kid Cudi and Jenna Ortega.  [Najee] 

FAVORITE LINE: No, I’m a star!

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The Menu by Mark Mylod (2022) 

I recommended this film for our family outing over Thanksgiving weekend and after we watched it, most of my family absolutely hated it. I on the other hand was completely enthralled by it. I’ve always loved narratives with elements of cooking imbued in it. The pacing is interesting and the plot structure being based on the menu shown in the film wasn’t predictable. The movie was funny and oddly terrifying at points. The drama and scale bubbled with each passing moment and it was gorgeous even in its violence. I didn’t feel like this movie was made by me but for me. [Najee] 

FAVORITE LINE: You will eat less than you desire but more than you deserve.  

Puss In Boots: The Last Wish by Joel Crawford (2022) 

I was a big fan of most of the major animation projects that came out this year: Turning Red, The Bad Guys, Entergalactic, Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio, Strange World, Lightyear, Chip N’ Dale Rescue Rangers, The Bob’s Burgers Movie, and Wendell & Wild. But I was absolutely taken by surprise with how much I loved Puss In Boots: The Last Wish. It was hilarious, nostalgic, had great animation, a great art style, interesting characters, and intense action set pieces. 

Puss In Boots coming to terms with his own mortality and overcoming fear when he had something to lose rather than nothing at all was an intensely personal story for me. All of the new characters were fun, especially Goldilocks and the Three Bears crime family. 

FAVORITE SCENE: When Puss In Boots finally faces Death rather than running away had me ready to jump out of my seat.  

Triangle of Sadness by Ruben Östlund: (2022) 

This is one of the best movies I've watched this year. It's a harsh social commentary on the wealthy, youth, social media, attention, fashion, clout, aging, etc. The acting here is phenomenal, specifically, a scene with Woody Harrelson and Zlatko going back and forth discussing communism, capitalism, and socialism while reading some of their favorite quotes drunk on a multimillion-dollar boat. This movie is filled with several plot twists and redirects quite a few times, it felt like multiple acts to a play. I absolutely love the chemistry and character interactions throughout this movie. Everything felt extremely intentional yet so casually representative of society and our lives now. In addition to all the relatable shit and content, it's also genuinely hilarious with true LOL moments from start to finish in my opinion. On another, much sadder note, one of the main characters, Charlbi Dean Kirk actually died right before the movie was released. She was a huge highlight of the film for me so it was really sad to see her pass before what would have definitely been her big break. Truly a one-of-one film and worth watching. [Nicky]

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Babylon by Damien Chazelle (2022)  

Babylon is arguably the second best film made about loving  and celebrating films released in 2022 (The Fabelmans by Steven Spielberg) but it was big as hell. And neither audiences nor critics were big fans of the film, it flopped critically and commercially. But I was a huge fan of it. The runtime is over three hours long but we are subjected to the rise and fall (and more falling) of many people as they try to adapt the integration of sound into motion pictures. The way time moves through the film is amazing and holy shit were the ~ 45 minutes of partying before the opening title card both engaging and disorienting. 

The biggest issue of Babylon is that if you give over three hours of your life to a single film trying to make a single point, you better feel as though that point changed you in some way at its end. And I’m not sure many viewers got that feeling. As far as myself, I found myself writing in my notebook, Fuck I love movies, about an hour in. And yeah I do. I love movies. [Najee] 

notes on: YEAR IN REVIEW [music]

MEDIUM: Music 

TRACKS: 30

YEAR: 2022

I often say that I could enjoy a stroll through hell if I was given the right soundtrack and that sounds like an apt description of my 2022. Even though I dealt with a steady stream of trials and tribulations, great music illuminated some shitty times and smoothed them over and over again until the memory was more music than moment. Music is an experience for me that transcends any real type of description. It always bleeds into abstractions and emotions and other stuff that I can’t quantify yet. This piece is an expression of three key ideas: I love music, I love music, I love music. 

I painstakingly raked through the thousands of songs I listened to this year with a fine tooth comb and selected 30 songs, limiting it to one per artist, that dropped in 2022 that were exceedingly important to me. Obviously I’m leaving off a ton of songs, here is a short list of honorable mentions: “Walkin” by Denzel Curry, “Blow Me” by Rico Nasty, “God Did” by Jay Z, “Dreamin Of The Past” by Pusha T, “How does it feel” by S.U.R.F. & Z6Saint, “Metro Spider'' by Metro Boomin, “Heatwave” by Raury, “Persuasive” by Doechii, “2010” by Earl Sweatshirt, “Higher” by Ravyn Lenae, “Down In Atlanta” by Pharell Williams & Travis Scott, “Danger” by Lil Baby, “Home (Remix)” by Mike Dimes featuring JID, “No Woman No Cry” by Tems, “History” by 070 Shake, and many more. 

Make sure you take the time to check out the full project of all these projects listed. With no further ado, here is the year in review. 

-

 FREE YSL: “Missing Me” by Gunna [DS4EVER] 

The fourth and final installment in Gunna’s “Drip Season” dropped at the top of the year and it completely took over my 2022 Spotify Wrapped with 3 of my top 5 songs of the year being from DS4EVER. Surprisingly though, “Missing Me,”  was not one of those 3 songs. “Missing Me” is a melodic recollection of days long gone and bonds we can’t get back. Gunna mourns a relationship that went by the wayside while celebrating the celebrity, wealth, and status that took its place. There’s an emptiness in his celebration though. He says he hopes she noticed him but he really hopes she’s missing him too. 

After the wrongful incarceration of Sergio Kitchens (not Gunna) for a large chunk of this year, it felt right that this would be the song, because music missed him. 

A Nostalgic Future: “Is There Someone Else” by The Weeknd [Dawn FM]

The Weeknd has allowed himself to be completely consumed by his personas in recent years and his newest offering, Dawn FM, was no different. The persona this time was a grizzled old man, living in the future but nostalgic of the past and sonically, the project was no different. Dawn FM is nostalgic of 80s tech synth radio while afrofuturistic at the same time. The Weeknd’s usual haunting and melancholic vocals found a home with this sound.  “Is There Someone Else” is where all those elements come together most perfectly on the album for me. To be corny, this song is like if “Who Is He (And What Is He to You)?” by Bill Withers grew up on the planet Lovetron instead of Earth. 

Floating in the Sky: “A Simpler Time” by Saba feat. Mereba [Few Good Things] 

Few Good Things is a beautiful album about coming to terms with what you have and recognizing the beauty in it. Saba and Mereba look back at their life in “A Simpler Time” and they see that the happiness they were searching for was always there, even in the little moments. There is both a dichotomy and a unity in their use of trains and planes as images. Happiness lives on both, whether you’re in the sky or earthbound. The melody is seraphic, the slow bubbling beat paired with their soft vocals feels like floating.  

I dream of Megan: “Plan B” by Megan Thee Stallion [Traumazine] 

This rambunctious ass track feels like the exact lane Megan Thee Stallion should be in. If I had a dream of a meg song, this would be it. Her flow is steady, the punchline laden bars hit hard, her cadence is cool, and the beat supports the power in her voice perfectly. “Plan B” has a 90s vibe to it, partially due to its sample of Jodeci’s “Freek ‘N You.” I just feel like she had some shit to get off her chest on this song and she’s talking that shit it to the highest degree. She’s raucous, tough, sexy, profane, confident, funny, sultry, and even vulnerable here. No bra, tight tees, slickback ponytail, feeling like I’m Ice-T. 

Long Found Love: Give You The World by Steve Lacy [Gemini Rights]

Steve Lacy blew the fuck up this year with the release of Gemini Rights and the explosion of “Bad Habit” on social media. I’ve watched Steve Lacy grow up, or I guess I should say I grew up with him over the past near-decade. He dropped a no-skipper and choosing just one song was one of the hardest things I had to do for this project but I feel like the last track was the right decision. “Give You The World” makes me smile, cry, fall, and fly every time I hear it. He slows the tempo down several notches from the rest of the project and as far as sequencing, it follows a voice saying “This, this, this is Love! I finally found it!” at the end of “Sunshine.” “Give You The World” feels like an expression of long found love. I’m not anxious, I’ll tell the truth. 

Building a world: “EAST POINT PRAYER” by Vince Staples feat. Lil Baby [Ramona Park Broke My Heart] 

Location tracks always feel like the creation of a world rather than just a song and I’m biased to anything that’s recreating Atlanta and putting it on a worldwide platform. On a project that’s largely a love letter to Vince Staples’ native Long Beach, “East Point Prayer” is one of the slower offerings. This causes an interesting dynamic with Lil Baby who usually raps over faster beats. Lil Baby rarely misses in my book but I love that he was provided an opportunity to showcase his versatility and he did it well.  

cold: “Spread Thin” by Mariah The Scientist [The Intermission] 

The first note on “Spread Thin” should raise the hair on the back of neck to the roof and send a shiver down your spine, and if it doesn’t, you need to get your pulse checked. The track features Mariah The Scientist’s usual blend of talking and singing coupled with her immaculate lyricism but it’s done perfectly here. More than anything else, it’s a complete earworm. It gets nestled in there and it can’t get out. So you just have chills all damn day. When The Intermission dropped I was pulling an all-nighter because I had an early morning flight back to Atlanta. I cried alone on the train to the airport to this song. The other three songs on the EP were almost equally strong but “Spread Thin” gets the nod for me off the strength of that alone. The song went on to achieve some virality due to a not-so-good TikTok trend. 

feeling like a winner: “PUFFIN ON ZOOTIEZ” by Future [I NEVER LIKED YOU] 

The magic of Future is that most songs feel like a victory lap and he tells you about it in such a decadent and detailed manner that you feel like you’re winning with him. I really just like how much of a winner this song makes me feel like.

Succinct and Distinct: “Do You Miss Me” by PinkPatheress [Take Me Home] 

Soft and fun but somehow painful at the same time? I feel like PinkPantheress has a strong grasp on herself, her fanbase, and her art. The music is succinct and distinct, I can’t wait to see where her sound continues to go from here. 

Maybe The Greatest Song I’ve Ever Heard?: “VIRGO’S GROOVE” by Beyoncé [Renaissance] 

When Beyoncé first dropped Renaissance, I got a few messages asking me to dissect the album and share some of my thoughts about it. While I thought the album was a complete triumph and a sonic beauty, I didn’t feel like I was informed enough on her influences on the project to do it justice in my analysis. It was so far reaching, real, and energetic in its execution that I was a bit intimidated by it. And I still don’t think I am fluent enough in the right language to correctly capture what Renaissance accomplished. But as far as feeling? Around the 4:45 mark of “VIRGO’S GROOVE,” at that moment, I always think this may be the greatest song I’ve ever heard in my entire life. That’s worth more than any technical analysis I can give. And it might not be the greatest song I’ve ever heard but that feeling can bear the weight of whatever the reality may be. 

wrong and don’t wanna fix it: “BAD FRUIT*” by Jean Dawson feat. Earl Sweatshirt [CHAOS NOW*]

Jean Dawson is a new artist to me, he hadn’t been revealed to me until earlier this year. The music though, holy shit. The different instruments on this track combined with the way he and Earl Sweatshirt surf over it gives me new life. The lyrics speak to the part of me that feels wrong that I still don’t want to change or fix. Give his whole album a listen, if you haven’t gotten an opportunity to do so yet. 

On Loss: “Gone Girl” by SZA [SOS]

Gone Girl is familiar. It’s only been released for a few weeks but I feel like I’ve been experiencing it my whole life. And believe me, I have been catching up on lost time. Gone Girl, Gone Girl has left my lips at some point in the day everyday for the past few weeks. I gravitate towards songs dealing with loss. The art of losing isn't hard to master and I feel like I can lose anything. I have lost myself more than anything. “Gone Girl” understands the feeling. Can a song understand a person? I’m not sure. But I felt seen by it. And I felt like it was speaking to me. It was a message I needed to hear, I’ve been trying to hold some things too tight and that’s a way to lose as well. SZA’s lyrics are always amazing and I feel like her vocals are at their best when paired with simpler musical elements. I need your touch, not your scrutiny. More on SOS on the way. 

Fate: “Impala” by Young Nudy [EA Monster]

The week EA Monster dropped, Young Nudy hosted a free concert in NYC and the first 200 people got in. I was literally the 200th person in line. I probably listened to “Impala” 200 times that day, call it fate. 

multiversal madness: “Cash In Cash Out” by Pharell Williams feat. Tyler, The Creator & 21 Savage [single]

“Cash In Cash Out” felt like a multiversal crossover event like Crisis On Infinite Earths or Secret Wars or some shit. 21 Savage and Tyler, The Creator are both professional beat walkers and this is a top tier beat by Pharell. Tyler, The Creator has a superhuman ability to normally have the best verse on whatever song he’s on no matter who else is on the track. In the middle of my first listen during 21 Savage’s verse, I was thinking “man, how the fuck is Tyler gonna top this?” By the middle of Tyler’s verse I was thinking, “holy fucking shit, he topped it.” This is a future classic and it was lowkey slept on. I can’t wait for hip hop heads being born right now to discover this track in 2035. 

Now & Later: “Curtains” by Smino [Luv 4 Rent] 

Smino is the closest thing to a jazz musician we have in rap today. Even when he’s speaking English, it feels like scat singing sometimes. This was on display to the highest extent on this 6-minute opus. It’s layered sonically, it jumps from sound to sound. The song breathes and he is a master of tempo.The outro after the skit pulls me from this life into the next and in that life I’m just a cloud lucky enough to be on my through the most beautiful stretch of Earth there is. I also think “shawty jawbone so strong I can give her a Now & Later she’ll blow a bubble” deserves a Pulitzer Prize. “Curtains” is the type of song I’m constantly hoping for and constantly thankful for. 

Experience: “Boy Bye” by Ari Lennox feat. Lucky Daye 

This felt like an old-school duet. “Boy Bye” is the perfect song to sit alone in a dimly lit room with some smoldering scented candles and close your eyes and bob your head to. Or have sex to it, if you’re into that sort of thing. Ari Lennox’s voice is like being in your lover’s arms. Her voice is like a hug for your ears. I never want to talk while this song is playing. I always want to experience it. Always. 

next in neo-soul: “complexities” by Kapwani [NAKÚPENDA] 

I had the pleasure to interview Kapwani earlier this year before the release of her latest project and she’s a breath of fresh air in music today. Real vocals, real lyrics, real emotional, raw feeling. On first listen, you hear an Erykah Badu-esque sound but the more you listen, you can hear that she’s in a lane completely her own that still manages to honor the groundwork of others in the neo-soul genre. She’s next up and “complexities” is the perfect track to find that truth.

 World Heavyweight Champion: “Kody Blu 31” by JID [The Forever Story]

If rap was wrestling and the title of “best rapper in the world” was passed around like a title belt, JID would’ve held the strap for 2022. He was amazing in all of his features(Home Remix by Mike Dimes blows my mind), was MVP of Dreamville’s collab album, and dropped an impeccable solo album. “Kody Blu 31” is probably the most versatile of all of JID’s work this year and possibly his best as well. The gospel-influenced track does feel like a prayer, a wish, and a rallying cry. It lifts me up. Keep on swinging champ. 

Bad fun?: Spin Bout U by Drake & 21 Savage [Her Loss] 

Her Loss was toxic as fuck and childish and corny at time and Drake has shown no emotional growth whatsoever over the past 15 years of his career but holy fuck was it fun. From the many random subliminals and sneak disses to the bizarre faux marketing scheme. I hate to say it, but I may be a Drake enabler. Most of us are, to a certain extent. Drake walked a lot of beats on this project but this track is possibly 21 Savage’s best performance of the album. “Spin Bout U”’s sample of Oobie’s “”Give Me Your Love” is hypnotic. Good work, good fun. 

Classy: “Come Outside” by Flo Milli [You Still Here, Ho?]

I love fight anthems but in usual Flo Milli fashion, “Come Outside” manages to remain classy and above the fight somehow(even as she provokes any detractors). Flo Milli makes every song feel like a moment. I got a bit more of a bop in my step when I listen to her. Flo Milli’s sound is still in its infancy and I think that’s exciting because she has so many places she could go with it. She has a great flow (lol) and her voice perhaps even better. The sky is not the limit. 

Real: “PRICE OF FAME” by Brent Faiyaz [WASTELAND]

 I was conflicted on whether or not to put “PRICE OF FAME” as Brent Faiyaz’s song (“Angel” being my second choice) because this song leaked on Soundcloud a long time ago. But I stuck to my guns, this is the best song he officially put out in a long time. It’s long, it’s layered, and it lingers but it doesn’t stick… much like the reality of fame that he’s depicting in the lyrics. I was disappointed in some ways by the direction of Wasteland, I felt as though he was writing to expectations rather than to his reality (I know his music is for the bitches and my opinion doesn't matter) but “PRICE OF FAME” was as real as it gets. 

Poetry: “My Good Ghosts” by MAVI [Laughing so Hard, it Hurts] 

I can’t be sure but MAVI’s music feels like he fell in love with poetry far before he thought to pick up the microphone and rap anything. It’s always raw and honest and rooted in something that the rest of the world could connect with. He’s intelligent and thoughtful with his words. I feel like he took his music to another level of his newest project and I have no doubt in my mind that he will continue to do so.  

empty together: “moscato” by Fana Hues [flora + fana] 

Everyone wants to find themselves but what if you find yourself in the wrong place and in the wrong place? I realized earlier this year that getting everything you want in the wrong way is a form of destruction as well. “moscato” sounds like a beautiful and painful recollection of self-destruction. Fana Hues keeps it simple and leaves enough space for us to feel empty with her, rather than just feel empty alone. Being empty together is always better. 

“Element”’s Brother: “Rich Spirit” by Kendrick Lamar [Mr.Morale & The Big Steppers] 

I wrote in-depth about Mr.Morale & The Big Steppers earlier this year and while other songs on this project may hold more artistic merit, I find myself coming back to “Rich Spirit” more than anything else. It feels like the spiritual sibling of “Element” from DAMN. When the project first dropped “Rich Spirit” was like crack in my ears. Bitch, I’m attractive is a powerful parable. 

black boys with guitars making love songs: “Come Over” by Casper Sage [Casper Sage] 

I love the trend of black boys with guitars making love songs. There wasn’t enough of this ten years ago and I wish there was because “Come Over” is a real fucking gem. I needed to grow up with this song and I wish this song was everything in the world to me when I was 16 years old. Casper Sage carries wisdom in his music but the emotions matter more than anything else, as they always do. 

the youth is in good hands: “Shoulder” by Redveil feat. Mekdelawit & Renaissance Mic [learn 2 swim]

Redveil was born in 2004 (or 2003, idk) and he’s making music this fucking good. He hails from PG County, Maryland and it seems the area has aged his taste and talent to be on par with a man twice his age. Redveil could be one of the biggest rappers on the planet in five years time. Everytime I listen to one of his songs, the phrase “the youth is in good hands” soars to the top of my mind. Can’t wait to watch this kid blow up. 

haunted: “meta angel” by FKA Twigs [CAPRISONGS] 

“meta angel” by FKA Twigs is an introspective masterpiece that poses questions about love, pain, and the power of intention. I’ve got voices in my head. The vocals are haunting, the voice inflections stuck with me for hours after I listened for the first time. I swore I started seeing her voice peeking around the corner ready to pop out and scare the shit out of me. 

Not Afraid: “Long Division” by AG Club [Impostor Syndrome]

AG Club is one of the most fun rap acts to debut over the last few years. They aren’t afraid to be delicate and soft and emotional and they aren’t afraid to party and be on some real rap shit. This song is a strong mix of both of those elements and it’s the perfect length for someone to live in a moment. And it’s such a moment. 

drowning and healing: “Lift Me Up” by Rihanna [single]

Rihanna’s return to music in the form of a power ballad in honor of the late (and great) Chadwick Boseman was not something I would have been able to predict in 2019. I enjoyed the song but after viewing Wakanda Forever for the first time, it took my experience with the song to another level. The humming at the beginning is precursor of the pain to come later on. But this wasn’t pain for pain’s sake, mainly I was healing to this song. I healed to this song. That has to be worth something. Chadwick’s death for me, in that year of 2020 has always been conflated for me with that of Kobe’s and with my Grandpa’s. I cried, many times over. I drowned. Then I kept on living and healing. 

Kerry James Marshall: “i’m fine” by Fousheé [softCore] 

I once read in the writings of the esteemed Kerry James Marshall that it is the role of the artist to force relationships between forms that seem incompatible. Isolate, recontextualize, shift scale, shift material, invert. Synthesize! Synthesize! Synthesize! “i’m fine” by Fousheé wholeheartedly captures those ideals to me. She begins with a soft folksy tune and explodes until short bursts of punk-metal expressions that share the truth of her emotions despite what she’s saying in her soft voice. The sounds shouldn’t work together as well as they do but it’s fluid and fluent in the language of the human spirit. “i’m fine” is softcore and an examination of a person trying to keep it all together despite it all.

-

So many of my favorite songs are not listed here and I am sure that’s true of all of you as well. I don’t mean to prioritize any song above another, I just wanted to express what went through my mind in my world of music this year. Music has a power over me, it can hold me together and it can break me apart. When I die, I hope God can leave me my ears just so I can hear all these tunes just one more time.

I love music. 

published December 28, 2022

notes on: Frank Ocean, FYF Fest 2017

MEDIUM: MUSIC/ PERFORMANCE 

Genre: R&B

Tracks: 18 

Runtime: 75 minutes 

Favorite Tracks: “Good Guy,” “Poolside Convo/Self Control,” “Close To You,” “Thinkin Bout You,” “Nikes,” “Pink + White” 

Least Favorite Tracks: N/A 

Features: N/A but shoutout to the whole team that helped him put the show together, from the bottom of my heart. 

Ritual 

[rit·u·al  /ˈriCH(o͞o)əl/]

a series of actions or type of behavior regularly and invariably followed by someone.

On July 22, 2017; Frank Ocean performed at the FYF Festival in Los Angeles at Exposition Park only 337 days after he dropped his second studio album, Endless, and only 336 days since he dropped his third studio album, Blonde. I was not there, in fact I have no idea what I was doing while the performance was happening. This is my favorite live performance of all time. 

I graduated from college with my undergraduate degree in May 2019. In truth, it was a difficult time for me. My “girlfriend” broke up with me just a few months earlier, citing incompatibility. I was graduating without any job prospects and no direction in my career. I was suffering from post-grad depression and simply unaware of anything I was supposed to do. I felt like I went to school and failed, although I came back with a degree. I was dirt broke and moved back into my mother’s house. I got 700 dollars when I graduated: 300 dollars from my grandparents, 300 from my father and stepmother, and 100 from my auntie. I spent 300 dollars on a Google chromebook and the rest was gone after a few weeks. By the middle of June, I had less than 10 dollars in my account and no job in sight. I had just become the first of my mother’s children to graduate from college and I had never felt further from where I wanted to be. 

I spent most of those summer nights scheming for the future, scouring the internet for inspiration on my 300 dollar chromebook. One of those nights, while spiraling down the YouTube wormhole, I happened upon a video titled “Frank Ocean Full Concert FYF Fest July 22, 2017 (Front Row)” posted by Tyler Pugmire. I clicked on it, watched it. And I cried, multiple times, alone in my momma’s lamplit basement. The next morning, I woke up refreshed and a bit more equipped to take on the world. And thus, the ritual began. 

I watch this performance whenever my life is in shambles, which has happened far more times than I care to admit. I often wonder where Frank Ocean was in his life on July 22, 2017; if he felt like he was losing Christopher Breaux or if he was free and his whole life had just come together and everything was perfect for the first time ever. It was likely somewhere in the middle. Regardless of whatever the reality was on the inside, on the outside; Frank Ocean hid just below the stage behind a cloud of smoke, on the cusp of performing a set that would change my life forever. 

✰ song one: “Pretty Sweet” 

“Pretty Sweet,” albeit short, is a chilling declaration of determination and faith. Frank Ocean sings of resilience and strength with more of a warning energy than the bravado generally associated with feelings of triumph. 

Said you want to hurt me now, you can’t hurt me now. That might be what you need. 

His warnings build to a choir of children singing a melancholy melody of sugar and sweets, perhaps in direct reference to either Frank Ocean’s sexuality or a simple taunt towards his enemies. Frank Ocean does not perform this song, it plays as a preamble for the concert. While “Pretty Sweet” is the 11th track of Blonde, it is his first track on the second half of the album, which begins after the beat switch on “Nights.” He emerges from the smoke, shrouded in darkness. As he advances closer and closer to the edge of the stage, we can make out more of his figure. He’s wearing a white Nike “Instant Karma” tee, blue cargo pants, sneakers, and large headphones on his head for isolating his vocals. He jumps into the second song. 

✰ song two: “Solo”  

“Solo” is perfect as an energizer. The opening instrumental theme to the song is more restrained in the live performance. The vocals begin immediately in the studio version but Frank lets the music go alone for a while on stage. The humming beat feels similar to the ones used for the skits in Blonde serves as a lobby for Frank Ocean to orient himself before the crowd. This makes sense because the skit, “Be Yourself,” precedes “Solo” on the album and works as the lobby. The mix of talking, singing, and soulful intonations is beautiful. The beat always makes me want to close my eyes and skate on the clouds but the desire is intensified here. 

✰ song three: “Chanel” 

“Chanel” is another upbeat jam with an essence in line with “Solo.” The braggadocious vibe of the song touches on the beauty of his sexual partners and the luxurious nature of his clothes. “Chanel” is a single and it was a newer track at the time, it was released in March of that year. It feels really good to sing along to. 

✰ song four: “Lens” 

Frank slows it down considerably with “Lens,” which he prefaces as new shit. “Lens” is also a single and premiered on Blonded Radio in April 2017. I am not sure anyone embodies longing and nostalgia in their lyrics as well as Frank Ocean does so it is no surprise that this song makes me yearn for moments long gone. 

Despite our history

Somewhere in your nights you're stuck when you think of me

✰ song five: “Biking (Solo)” 

The show picks back up with “Biking,” a song about being steady and on the go and grabbing life by what it gives you. “Biking” also premiered on Blonded Radio earlier that year and is the third and final single Frank performs in this set. The sanguine lyrics and cherubic melody bubbles to a crescendo and the crowd reaches mass hysteria as the Frank screams: 

Got, got me fucked up

Got a million dollar bike

Got a million dollar bike

Got, got me fucked up

Got me fucked up, up

✰ song six: “Hublots” 

A small portion of “Hublots” plays as a transition between songs and gives Frank Ocean a chance to catch his breath after the vocally demanding screaming at the end of “Biking.” He does not sing along. “Hublots” is the first of three songs from Endless to make an appearance in this performance. 

✰ song seven: “Comme Des Garcons” 

“Comme Des Garcons” is a luxury fashion brand and the phrase translates to meaning “like boys.” It is a nice nod to both his opulent lifestyle and his sexuality. The song is fun and more rap than Frank Ocean’s usual R&B. I always feel cool when I listen to “Comme Des Garcons” and it is definitely one of his catchier songs.  

Feelings come, feelings go

Feelings come, feelings go

✰ song eight: “Good Guy” 

The album version of “Good Guy” is 1 minute and five seconds long (only 52 seconds without the skit). Frank Ocean’s performance of “Good Guy” at the 2017 FYF Fest takes over ten minutes and it is a glorious display of revision, dedication, improvement, and emotional verbosity. Blonde samples Buddy Ross’s piano on “Running Around” for skits and an extended version of the sample murmurs while Frank Ocean gathers his emotional bearings for the song. He wails over the beat, adding flourishes where he feels they should be. But he fails to meet his standards, vocally. The first time was beautiful to me but I can feel the charge of energy he pulls into the second version. His voice hits my ear like a tsunami, drowning in pain. His timing is better and his notes are clearer. He didn’t rob himself of an emotional release by being afraid to correct himself in front of thousands of people. The biggest lyrical departure from the studio version is the final line, where he says: 

I know you don’t need me right now, 

And to you, it's just a late night out 

In this live version, he says: 

And to you it’s just, and to you it’s just, 

And to you it’s just a late night out, 

And to you it’s just, oh, to you it’s just, 

yeah to you it’s just a… yeah to you it’s just a…

This is my favorite moment of the entire show. I have often carried the burden of caring more about the moment than whoever I’m with and the realization that a memory would take up more space in your heart than it ever could in someone else’s hurts. To me it’s everything, to them it’s just a late night out. This is the curse of a lover. I cry, pretty much every time.

Frank says, “I think that was better” as the music ends. Yeah Frank, me too. 

✰ song nine: “Poolside Convo/ Self Control” 

“Poolside Convo” is a rap song and a recollection of advice he got from his grandmother growing up. Frank Ocean never released it to any streaming platforms but direct references are made to it throughout Blonde. “Poolside Convo” is the intro to “Self Control” and the rap leads directly into the opening lyrics. “Self Control” is one of the more wistful songs on the album and it completely shines through here. The song is very childish and I mean that in the best way. The love that Frank Ocean describes is innocent and naive and it’s hard because it doesn’t know enough to be soft. This is heartbreaking in a way because “Self Control” acknowledges a death of that soft love. The bridge on the album version of the song is an imperceptible yet gorgeous melody of distorted vocals made to sound like a guitar. But we can hear Frank Ocean loud and clear here as he says: 

Sometimes you'll miss it

And the sound will make you cry

And some nights, you're dancing

With tears in your eyes

“Self Control”’s outro is among the best in music history and it feels like a goodbye to the love you knew as a child, in this live rendition even moreso. There is a hidden message in the lyrics. 

I (3x) know you gotta leave (3x), 

take down some summertime, 

give up, just tonight, night, night. 

I (3x) know you got someone coming, 

spitting game, know you got it. 

If you select the words he says three times, you get: “I leave tonight.” He is saying goodbye to his lover and love. Absolutely stunning. 

✰ song ten: “Wither” 

“Wither” is the final song Frank Ocean performs from Endless on this set and it’s my favorite song on the album. He gives this song a bit more attention than the other songs from Endless so I’m guessing it’s his favorite as well. “Wither” reads like a prayer for a love that can stand the test of time. It’s a hopeful tune but the hope doesn’t feel tied to optimism, it feels tethered to anxiety. The lumbering piano beat paired with haunting vocals and pastoral yet elegiac lyrics leave a hollow feeling in your soul. Frank’s vocal performance is divine here. He calls it “this thing off Endless” when he finishes. 

And both our hands are filthy

Pointing up at the moon

All tonight, I’ll hold you close, close enough to bruise

Hope a garden grows where we dance this afternoon

Hope our children walk by spring, when flowers bloom

Hope they’ll get to see my color

Know that I’ve enjoyed sunshine

Pray they’ll get to see me, me wither (When I was young)

See me wither (When I was young)

✰ song eleven: “Close To You” 

Frank gives a small anecdote before singing about how his favorite song used to be “When You Were Mine” by Prince from his 1980 album, Dirty Mind. However, one late night he was going down the YouTube wormhole in one of the many hotels he lived in between Channel Orange and Blonde; and he came across Stevie Wonder’s electric rendition of “Close To You/Never Can Say Goodbye” by the Carpenters and The Jackson Five on The David Frost show. Stevie Wonder’s version of the song became his new favorite song and felt compelled to record his own cover of the song in Stevie Wonder’s style. I think the album version of this song is beautiful, especially after multiple listens, but Frank Ocean improves considerably upon it in this performance. 

His performance is accompanied by a big screen broadcast of Brad Pitt sitting near the stage on the phone, with a somber expression. Brad Pitt is shot by director Spike Jonze in his portrayal of a man at the end of love. Brad Pitt previously made it known that Blonde helped him through his divorce with Angelina Jolie and that “Close To You” is his favorite song from the album. Frank Ocean’s version performed at FYF Fest is sadder and obviously post-breakup. It paints the picture of a man in denial. It’s worth noting that The Carpenters original version of “Close To You” is a happy song of celebratory love and attraction. When paired with the Jackson 5’s desperation to hold onto love in “Never Can Say Goodbye,” it takes a completely different turn into something truly magnificent. Stevie Wonder was a genius to combine these dissonant tracks. The song maintains its magnetic and robotic feeling even as celestial waves of emotion crash from Frank Ocean and onto the LA crowd. 

✰ song twelve: “Ivy” 

I don’t have much to say about “Ivy.” Not because it doesn’t evoke the same maudlin feelings as the rest of the songs, because it does, even more so in a lot of cases. But “Ivy” feels like too much of a moment to spend any time doing anything other than experiencing it. Frank sings of dreams and that’s the best word I can come up with… dreamy. It’s beautiful on the album and it’s beautiful here. The crowd sings along but the louder noises from the other songs have seemed to chilled to a collective cooing. His vocals are fractured and heightened near the end of the song on the album but we can hear him clear as day as here: 

I been dreaming. 

The big screen broadcast has VHS effects during the performance of this “Ivy,” further suggesting that “Ivy” is a vision of a love from the past. 

✰ song thirteen: “Only You” by Steve Monite 

Frank sings a cover of “Only You” by Steve Monite for fun. It’s beautiful, fun, and funky. You can dance to it. It’s a good lift after the heavier emotional tracks. “Only You” was featured on the following episode of Blonded Radio. 

✰ song fourteen: “Thinkin Bout You” 

“Thinkin Bout You” is the only song Frank Ocean performs from his 2012 album, Channel Orange. “Thinkin Bout You” was the biggest commercial hit from the album and probably still his biggest commercial success to this day. The rendition he performed at the FYF Fest has vocals and beats interwoven throughout from the Jackson 5’s “All I Do Is Think Of You.” It almost feels like a different song. While the original is a painful reflection on the end of a connection, the sample makes “Thinkin Bout You” feel like a call to action to save what they had. I love how much confidence Frank Ocean sings this song with. It feels like he sings it knowing he can’t be fucked with. It’s so metal. 

A slowed down version of “All I Do Is Think Of You”’s chorus plays as the outro then Frank Ocean recites a poem: 

When you said your wedding vows, 

it turned out to be lies, 

shouldn’t be lies, I saw you in the 

forest weeping, you were weeping 

blowing like the dust balls in a drawer.     

✰ song fifteen: “Nights”

“Nights” is perhaps the most popular song from Blonde and also possibly the most important thematically. The famous beat switch happens exactly in the middle of the 60-minute album and cleaves it in two: the jubilant, nostalgic first half and the introspective, mournful second half. This isn't only true of the album but of the song as well. The first half of “Nights” is rap heavy and has lyrics that evoke anger, freedom, and dissociative thoughts. He’s reticent. Then comes the bridge. 

All my night, been ready for you all my night

Been waitin' on you all my night

I'll buzz you in, just let me know when you're outside

All my night, you been missin' all my night

Still got some good nights memorized

And the look back's gettin' me right

A hypnotic beat switch gives way to a slower pace. The beat switch is partnered with a chaotic light slow followed by rapid tranquility. The second half of “Nights” happens exactly one hour into his set and Frank is more open and honest about his feelings about the love he’s been missing. 

✰ song sixteen: “Pink + White” 

“Pink + White” is one of Frank Ocean’s more poetic songs. He co-produced it with Pharrell Williams and it has backup vocals from Beyonce, although she goes uncredited. Listening to “Pink + White” feels like being a lone cloud on a sunny day. It’s perfect to listen to in the car at sunset, that’s when I imagine the song came to Frank. 

You showed me love

Glory from above

Regard, my dear

It's all downhill from here

✰ song seventeen: “Futura Free” 

“Futura Free” is the final track of Blonde, Frank’s celebration of defeating both poverty and his demons. He has won at life and now he’s free. He paints a picture of the life he’s curated from the beauty and pain of his youth. He has a brand new set of fears: not being built for celebrity life, rabid fan culture, and failure to meet the expectations he’s placed on himself… amidst other fears. Still, despite it all he has given himself the space to do what he loves for a living and recognizes that he’s come a long way and he’s blessed. His last line of the album is: 

Shit went 180 on me, please run that back, though

He says it twice in his live performance at the FYF Fest then “Nikes,” the first track of Blonde begins to play. 

✰ song eighteen: “Nikes” 

“Nikes” is the opening track of Blonde and spiritual sister to “Futura Free,” the final track. The last lyrics of “Futura Free” lead directly into “Nikes” and the final key signature of “Futura Free” is in harmony with the beginning of “Nikes” which suggests that Blonde is a loop. The lyrics play on the screen as Frank sings “Nikes” like a karaoke but after the entire crowd joined him on the first verse, it kinda fell silent for a while besides Frank. Everyone just surrenders to the moment and shuts the fuck up. It was hypnotic. The final verse of “Nikes” always hits me hard. 

I may be younger, but I'll look after you

We're not in love, but I'll make love to you

When you're not here, I'll save some for you

I'm not him, but I'll mean something to you

I'll mean something to you

I'll mean something to you

Blonde is a loop that goes on forever. The feelings, somehow, last even longer than that. 

-

The final setlist breakdown of Frank Ocean’s performance at the 2017 FYF Fest: 3 singles, 3 songs from Endless, 1 song from Channel Orange, 1 Cover, and 10 songs from Blonde. Obviously a lot of favorites would be missed when your discography is as strong as Frank Ocean’s, but I wish he performed “Godspeed,” “White Ferrari,” “Lost,” “Sierra Leone,” “Pilot Jones,” and “At Your Best” although I suppose a two-hour set at a music festival would’ve been nonsensical. 

Blonde is nostalgic, a word that barely manages to capture the feeling Frank has been evoking in his fans since he first came onto the scene with Nostalgia Ultra. Blonde is a celebration of youth, vitality, and growth. When the world has defeated me, this performance forces me to feel the pain I need to stand back up. Pain is healing. As Khalil Gibran says (first introduced to me as a child as words in the mouth of Huey from The Boondocks), “Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding. It is the bitter potion by which the physician within you heals your sick self. Therefore, trust the physician and drink his remedy in silence and tranquility." 

Frank Ocean wrote he is “finally free” in an essay in the NY Times in an essay following the release of Blonde and Endless, perhaps the sensation I’m chasing when I watch him exorcize his pain on stage. Freedom. I have always had an idea of who I wanted to be and the more I grow up, the further away it seems at times. And at other times I feel like I can feel my “true self” breathing down my neck. Maybe I shouldn’t subscribe to a life first dreamed by a child who didn’t know anything. But that innocence and naivety is what keeps me going. I’ll never know everything and the further away I get from everything I thought I knew, the less I’m able to tell the difference between what I wanted to know and what I know now. Christopher Breaux wrote, “in my rear view mirror it’s getting small enough to convince myself it was all good. And really though, it’s still all good.” I actually find myself mainly remembering the good times from the summer of 2019, those are nights my whole life came together. 

Thank You Frank Ocean. It’s all good. 

Healing 

[heal·ing /ˈhēliNG/]

the process of making or becoming sound or healthy again.

 

5 APPLES OF 5 APPLES 

notes on: THOR: God of Thunder, "THE GOD BUTCHER" and "GODBOMB"

MEDIUM: Comic Book

Genre: Superhero 

Issues: #1-#11 

Favorite Issues: “THE LAST GOD IN ASGARD” “DREAM OF A GODLESS AGE” “GODBOMB PART THREE: THUNDER IN THE BLOOD” “GODBOMB PART FOUR: TO THE LAST GOD” “GODBOMB PART FIVE: THE LAST PRAYER”

Least Favorite Issues: N/A

Creators: Jason Aaron (writer), Esad Ribic (artist), Dean White (colorist), Ive Svorcina (colorist)

Publisher: Marvel Comics 

Release Year: 2012-2013

“Human beings in a mob. What's a mob to a king? What's a king to a God? What's a God to a non-believer? Who don't believe in anything?”

        - Jay Z & Kanye West ft. Frank Ocean, “No Church In The Wild”, Watch The Throne (2011) 

Before Taika Wakiki and Marvel Studios’ 2022 film, Thor: Love and Thunder, there was the 11-issue comic book arc that introduced Gorr, “THE GOD BUTCHER” and “GODBOMB.”  Thor: Love and Thunder is primarily inspired by these stories but it also pulls inspiration from Jason Aaron’s run on The Mighty Thor. 

“THE GOD BUTCHER” story arc marks the beginning of the Thor: God of Thunder series. The series follows three iterations of Thor at different times of his life. The first version of Thor is young, at least comparatively. He is filled with vice. He’s impulsive, he’s brash, he’s arrogant. Angry. He’s unworthy. Young Thor drifts from world to world, seeking war and sex. He cannot use Mjolnir yet, so his weapon of choice is a battle axe, named Jarnbjorn.  

The second version of Thor is the one we are most familiar with, Avenger Thor. Avenger Thor lives in modern times. He has a sense of duty and responsibility. He’s seen war and is no longer excited by it. Mjolnir has been at his disposal for many years and he’s eager to change the universe, not yet jaded by its ugly nature. 

The final version of Thor is Old King Thor. Old King Thor is the ruler of Asgard and the All-Father, a position he’s held longer than Odin ever did. He is completely jaded by his reality, defeated  and cast aside. A king to no one, he lost his people and is a prisoner of his throne rather than a master of it. Old King Thor is frank and wise and much like his father, in ways that he does not like. He lost an arm and he’s lost an eye. Time has not been kind to him. 

However, the entire crux of the story rests on the shoulders of Gorr The God Butcher. Gorr was a suffering everyman from an unnamed planet, that is until he was infected by “the all-black necrosword” and pledged to kill all gods. Gorr is calculated and ruthless and vindictive and even animalistic at times. He was a good man that was left behind by the inaction of his gods and became something different altogether. Gorr thinks it is the responsibility of the strong to protect the weak and that’s a message worth rallying around. Great power, great responsibility. When he gains power himself, he decides to use it to enact revenge on the strong rather than help the weak. There is a religious saying: walk by faith, not by sight. Gorr is a nonbeliever of the gods by sight, not by faith. Gorr saw the eye, the actions, the intentions, and the consequences of the will of the gods and he decided that he was apt to judge it.  

“THE GOD BUTCHER” and “GODBOMB” asks a few questions about apathy, fear, corruption, divinity, excess, hunger, faith, and ignorance. How does time change a man versus a god? How can you kill a god? What does it say when you can kill a god? How does one ascend to godhood? Can you destroy your oppressors without becoming them? Can a god be a victim? What is a world without gods? What do we do in the face of fear? How far can a man go when he’s lost his faith? When does a god fear a nonbeliever? 

-

ISSUE #1: “A WORLD WITHOUT GODS” 

Written by Jason Aaron, Art by Esad Ribic 

893 AD, EARTH, THE WESTERN COAST OF IRELAND 

Young Thor and his cabal of Viking worshippers and believers celebrate. He led a mob of men in an assault against a frost giant. They wield the frost giant’s head on a stick. This is the fourth day of their celebration. Young Thor has enjoyed his share of women and alcohol. He remarks “I love my life.” 

The festivities are interrupted when they hear a bloodcurdling scream. Someone found a beheaded Native American warrior/god. Panic ensues as Young Thor recognizes the horror in the strange god’s eyes. They all wonder, “what in all the nine worlds… can butcher a god?” Young Thor calms the crowd and an old woman begins to pray. 

“To which gods do you pray, old woman?” Young Thor asks. 

“All of them,” she replies. 

PRESENT DAY, DEEP SPACE, THE PLANET INDIGAR 

A little alien girl prays to Thor. It has not rained on her planet, Indigar, for years. Everything has died and soon they will too. Their civilization is on its last legs. “Save us,” she prays. 

Avenger Thor answers her prayers. He hears her and arrives on Indigar and brings rain with him, saving their entire people. Just as he’s about to leave, they convince him to stay for ale made from cave slime. As he regales them with tales from his adventures, he finds out the startling reality of how their planet had gotten in such bad shape: Indigar has no gods. Avenger Thor is angered by this and sets out to find them and return them to their responsibilities. 

He finds the Indigar pantheon’s temple but it’s empty. He roams the deserted temple until he happens upon a room with its doors chained shut. Avenger Thor breaks the chains and enters the room to find a tomb filled with butchered gods; Hoggscarr the Harsh, Krawskin the Cruel, Lady Vyle the Goddess of Atrocities, Lord All-Blud the Inexorable and his thirteen sons by thirteen brides. They’ve been dead for hundreds of years. Avenger Thor reflects on who could be powerful enough to have killed them all as he’s attacked by one of Gorr’s guard dogs. He quickly deduces that his attacker was planted there to protect the decaying, long dead corpses but wasn’t smart enough to be their killer. No skill, only fury. He knows this could only be the work of Gorr The God Butcher. 

MANY MILLENNIA FROM NOW, THE GREAT HALL OF ASGARD  

Old King Thor sits on his throne. He hates the silence, recalling memories of the lively nights that used to inhabit the Great Hall of Asgard. But now he’s all alone, as the last living god in Asgard. He hopes to see Valhalla (he hopes to die). He fights off an endless horde of guard dogs all by himself. He’s cursed to be the King of a Broken Asgard. He vaguely remembers his life as Young Thor and Avenger Thor but those are only compatriots and they’re only in his mind. He wars alone. 

The primary function of Issue #1 was to introduce the starting point of our titular hero, Thor. All 3 versions of him are in completely different spaces in their respective lives but they’re all engaging with Gorr’s legacy in one way or another. Young Thor begins as a hero of earth, a god to his people but lost to himself. He lives on vice, not fulfillment. Avenger Thor begins as a hero to many worlds and he wears his title as a god as more of a responsibility than a nobility. He’s a god living from mission to mission and because of Gorr, he’s found a big one. The final man he’s destined to become, Old King Thor, begins a prisoner. More of a ceaseless gladiator than a king, he awaits a death that will never come. 

ISSUE #2: “BLOOD IN THE CLOUDS” 

Written by Jason Aaron, Art by Esad Ribic 

Young Thor wants Mjolnir by his side as he embarks on his journey to find the God Butcher, but he is unworthy. He warns of the threat he’d become with Mjolnir by his side, but he settles for jarnbjorn. He guides his viking followers through the Baltic sea in an effort to find Gorr. He thinks he’s hunting Gorr when Gorr is truly hunting him. Three days pass and eventually they dock on the banks of the Neva River. 

Perun’s pegasus appears from the sky, bloody. Perun is a recently slain god. Young Thor mounts the pegasus and chases what he believes to be Gorr but it’s simply another of his victims, Chernobog The Black. Chernobog is a slavic god and he’s headless. 

Gorr beheads Perun’s pegasus as Young Thor rides it and they begin to fall from the sky. Gorr appears and begins his attack. Gorr says gods often die like frightened children. As they battle in the clouds, falling all the while, Young Thor recalls an Asgardian god named Dagr. Dagr killed hundreds and while Thor’s father, Odin, killed thousands and was sung in greatness… Dagr killed for fun. There was a difference between war and murder. Losing yourself to bloodlust turns you into a monster. Thor visited Dagr after his capture, in the pits of Asgard. In his youth, he fell in. He recalls Dagr’s frighteningly severe eyes. Thor said Dagr’s eyes made you feel dead and his voice was delicate but still filled with passion and conviction. Thor still did not feel or understand Dagr’s motives but that suddenly felt like more of his failing than Dagr’s. When Dagr was executed beneath Odin's blade, he did not beg for mercy. Not once. They called him crazy but he wasn’t crazy at all and Thor knew that was much more horrifying. Young Thor remembers prayers to never see eyes like Dagr’s again, prayers that went unheard because he sees them in Gorr, right now, as they battle.

Gorr gets the upper hand in the fight and just before Young Thor resigns himself to defeat, he calls a giant bolt of lightning and strikes them both from the sky. 

THE PRESENT DAY, DEEP SPACE, A WORLD OF DEAD GODS 

Avenger Thor finally defeats Gorr’s guard dog after hours of fighting but realizes he has a lot more work to do. He rushes off and states that more gods will suffer the longer he takes, as we see a panel of Old King Thor battling a horde of Gorr’s guard dogs followed by a panel of Young Thor crumpled in the snow. 

Issue #2 introduces Gorr The God Butcher as a legitimate threat to not just all gods, but to the Mighty Thor throughout every stage of his life. We see that Thor has both a history and future with the character. Much of the character of Gorr is explained through Young Thor’s anecdote about Dagr. Like Dagr, Gorr does mad things but with calculated precision. Gorr knows exactly what he is doing and he isn't driven to bloodlust by insanity but instead by his vivid and cogent rationale.  He does not know fear because he is fear. 

ISSUE #3: “THE HALL OF THE LOST” 

Written by Jason Aaron, Art by Esad Ribic 

Avenger Thor travels to Omnipotence City for answers about the fallen gods and about Gorr The God Butcher. Omnipotence City was built 12 billion years ago by the Lords of Dawn and is a place of divine fellowship, the nexus of all the gods. The librarian leads Avenger Thor to the Hall of The Lost, a section of the archives dedicated to chronicling Gods who simply disappeared. Avenger Thor is startled at the size of the section. The gods in charge of Omnipotence City have simply ignored their disappearance. 

It does not take much time for Avenger Thor to come to the conclusion that every name in the deep halls of the lost are victims of Gorr. Avenger Thor investigates each last known locale of each god and finds Gorr’s guard dogs at each place. 

• The Oaken King and Sequoia Queen of Glenglavenglade, dead 2000 years 

• The War Faeries of Wendigorge, the Guardians of the Hornworld, dead 1200 years 

  • The Coral immortals of Cataract, the Walkers of the Outer Void, the Last of the Lava Colossi

  • Voord Bloodeye, the Badoon God of Beheadings, Zorr’Kiri the Skrull Goddess of Love, Yug-Sluggoth the Unseeable, Baron of The Elder Hell

  • ALL DEAD 500 YEARS OR LONGER 

• Fallgar The Behemoth, dead for 5 years 

Everywhere Avenger Thor goes, there is no god butcher, only the remnants of his handiwork. Avenger Thor pledges to destroy Gorr and end his conflict early, this pledge is not upheld. 

893 AD, ALONG THE BANKS OF THE NEVA RIVER 

Young Thor awakes from his sleep after 7 days. He asks his believers if he killed the God Butcher. He did not. Young Thor immediately goes out to look for him. He finds the dying body of the Siberian God of The Hunt, Hinkon. He warns Young Thor of Gorr’s power, Young Thor does not heed his warning. 

PRESENT DAY, LAKE LAGODA, RUSSIA 

Iron Man helps Avenger Thor find a cave he remembers from his past. He tells Iron Man he has to handle this problem alone, that it’s god business. He sends Tony off to warn the gods of Earth. 

Avenger Thor explains how god memory works. The lifetime of an immortal is exponentially longer than that of a human and their memory is less reliable over time as a result. He only remembers in fragments, never the full picture. But he remembers this cave. This is where the God Butcher taught him fear. 

At the same time, over 1000 years ago, Young Thor found Gorr in the cave. He challenges him but Gorr promises to save him for last for hurting him. He will not kill him now. 

We know this to be true because over a millenia later, Old King Thor is fighting off the endless masses of Gorr’s power. 

Avenger Thor finds someone in the same cave, hiding. It’s not Gorr. The mystery being says he’s hiding from Gorr in the last place he’d care to look and that he’s doing everything he’s doing because of Thor. Thor will be the last god. 

Issue #3 serves as the introduction of apathy as a theme of the narrative, especially from those with the responsibility to protect. Thousands of gods have been missing for hundreds or thousands of years and none of the gods in charge of their safekeeping have moved to investigate at all. The consequences of their inaction could lead to the downfall of them all. 

Another interesting development is the idea that Gorr is personally invested in defeating Thor. He has a personal vendetta against him, he does not only want to succeed. He must see Thor fail. Thor has to be part of his failure. This wrinkle adds a lot of texture to their dynamic and makes Gorr a more interesting character and villain overall. 

ISSUE #4: “THE LAST GOD IN ASGARD” 

Written by Jason Aaron, Art by Esad Ribic 

ASGARD, THOUSANDS OF YEARS FROM NOW 

Old King Thor is defeated by the guard dogs. He celebrates finally dying and going to Hel. But they do not kill him, they place him back on his throne. He remains saved for last. 

“Come back here and kill me!” 

EARTH, NOW 

Shadrak tells Avenger Thor that he’s met Gorr and lived. He says he is the god of wine and waterfalls. Shadrak talks about Chronux but Avenger Thor does not know what that is. Avenger Thor takes them to Omnipotence City to learn about Chronux. Gorr’s guard dogs are at the library when he arrives. The librarian is incapacitated. 

893 AD, THE CAVE OF THE GOD BUTCHER 

Young Thor is suspended in the air, being tortured by Gorr. Gorr wants information about the gods of Earth. Young Thor refuses to say anything. Torture continues. 

Meanwhile, in the future, Avenger Thor battles the guard dogs. The librarian tells Avenger Thor that Chronux is a hidden world of time gods, not a god. 

Meanwhile, even further in the future, Old King Thor crawls from his throne and calls Mjolnir to his side; set on dying in battle. Gorr’s guard dogs are helplessly thrown aside as they fail to be worthy of its might. 

“for asgard.” 

Avenger Thor retrieves the needed information about Chronux just as it burns in his hands. Shadrak tells the librarian that he’s the god of songs and somersaults, a different answer than he provided Avenger Thor in the cave. Thor flies off to Chronux, the Palace of Infinity, alone “to claim the head of Gorr.” 

The berserker guard dogs slaughter the gods of Chronux and fill a pool with their blood. The time gods use small amounts of their blood to travel time. Gorr has used all of their blood because he needs to execute a big mission. 

The last remaining time god calls his people, “peaceable beings” who take care of time and do nothing more. Gorr says there are two kinds of gods: gods who do harm and gods who do nothing at all. 

“I have yet to decide which I find more worthy of my wrath.”  

Either way, Gorr predicts all gods will be dead regardless of their intentions or actions. 

Old King Thor is impaled by a guard dog and pleads for Gorr to finish the job. But just as he prays for death, a flash of light comes and Avenger Thor arrives in the future, looking for Gorr. The timelines have converged. 

Thematically, apathy and fear are once again at the forefront of the ideas Jason Aaron is engaging with. However, this time Gorr states plainly that his main issue with gods in general is that there is no much pain and suffering in the world and they move to do nothing at all. Their inaction does just as much harm as their evil. 

ISSUE #5: “DREAM OF A GODLESS AGE” 

Written by Jason Aaron, Art by Esad Ribic 

Gorr uses the pool of time god blood to travel 19 billion years into the past and kill the first god in the void of existence. He claims the heart of the first god and then tells the time gods he needs a moon or two, centuries of time, and slaves. A lot of slaves. 

Avenger Thor arrives on the scene and hits Gorr with a lightning bolt. 

893 AD, CAVE OF THE GOD BUTCHER 

Gorr has tortured Young Thor for 17 days, double the time it took for him to break the torture God. Young Thor has relinquished nothing. As Gorr continues his torture, Thor’s viking believers find them in the cave. They fight Gorr for him. Gorr does not wish to fight them. 

The next few pages contain two mirrored battles of Thor vs Gorr at two different times, 893 AD and the present. The textures of these fights are very different and they’re both told through interspersed panels. The spoken text all comes from present day Gorr, looking back at the battle from the cave. 

Gorr says the vikings' zeal or wicked glee to sacrifice their lives for him taught him two things: mortals’ fear of a godless world would always outweigh their fear of death and he could no longer do his job alone. 

Gorr defeats Avenger Thor as Young Thor escapes bondage and punctures Gorr while he taunts the vikings. Gorr explains to Avenger Thor that he’s saving him for last because he showed him what he truly had to do to achieve his goal.

Gorr kills the final time god after he programs the time pool for the future. Avenger Thor breaks free and follows Gorr into the pool and emerges in Asgard… thousands of years of years later. We have now arrived at the final panel of Issue #4. 

Avenger Thor mistakes his older self for Odin, his father. 

The vikings celebrate their victory over Gorr and exclaim that songs will be sung about their triumph. Young Thor tells them not to speak of this day for as long as they shall live. 

Avenger Thor and Old King Thor drive back the hordes of Gorr’s endless army. Avenger Thor is looking for Gorr but Old King Thor reveals to him that he’s arrived 900 years after him.The siege has ended but Gorr is still the victor. Gorr, who has been in the future for 900 years, says the time to kill Thor has finally arrived. 

With two of the timelines officially converged, it finally feels like the story is in full swing. Gorr further lays out his motivations. We know that he thinks the world will be better without gods and he has enough conviction to continue to move in that direction regardless of the resistance he gets from man. He thinks their attachment to the gods is rooted in fear and that fear is given back to them as apathy and inaction. It’s a nonsensical conundrum. But what will man do when you’re forced to make the decisions that mold your life and foster life and care for life on your own? Are we human enough to live without gods? Gorr thinks so. 

ISSUE #6: “WHAT THE GODS HAVE WROUGHT” 

Written by Jason Aaron, Art by Butch Guice, Colors by Tom Palmer 

3000 YEARS AGO, A PLANET WITH NO NAME 

This issue recounts the origin of Gorr and his development into a nonbeliever by faith. Gorr is on a dying planet with his mother. His mother tells him to always honor the gods just before dying, fighting for her life, as Gorr fled from danger. Many years later, when he’s an adult, Gorr and his pregnant wife, Arra, live in a cave. They eat worms and are near death by the hands of starvation. She says to honor the gods just before the cave collapses and she falls to her death as Gorr looks on. Months later, Gorr carries his son in the blistering sun with the rest of his tribe. His son dies of dehydration in his arms. He buries his son in the ground. The others tell him he cannot do so and he must hang him for the gods to see. They say he’ll be damned to die like a worm. Gorr says they’re already damned. He speaks out publicly against the gods and his tribe stones him nearly to death. They leave him to die from his wounds in the heat.

As Gorr crawls to certain death, dying gods entrenched in battle crash onto the planet. One is covered in golden armor, the other in black armor. The golden clad one faintly says, “help me.” Gorr angrily screams at the god, incredulous that he’d ask for help. Black matter hitches on him in his anger and he uses it to kill both of them. 

“I wonder if there are more.” 

Many millennia into the future, a starved and skinny, Volstagg the Voluminous is being beaten by Gorr, who fails to see the irony. Volstagg tells Gorr that he cannot kill all of the gods because he has become one. 

“When was the last time you hungered?” 

Gorr angrily crucifies Volstagg on a cross for his comment. He tells his son, who watched the entire encounter, that the time for the gods is coming to an end very soon. 

Issue #6 chronicles Gorr’s growth from boy to man to God Butcher to god. Gorr isn't hip to the final development of his life cycle yet. But as Volstagg stated, he no longer hungers. He can create life. He does not need sleep. He is powerful enough to kill a god, any god. He is worshiped. He does not age. He does not bow to anyone. He is a god. In the Marvel Universe, being a god is often more of a circumstance than mandation. Gorr had the opportunity to take his power and be the god who takes action and helps mankind, but he chose hate instead. 

The art in this issue is different because it was done by Butch Guice rather than Esad Ribic and that’s a little disorienting but it does give Gorr’s origin story its own flavor.

ISSUE #7: “GODBOMB PART ONE: WHERE DO GODS GO TO DIE” 

Written by Jason Aaron, Art by Esad Ribic 

ICELAND, 893 AD

Young Thor awakes in a tremor and looks to head out into the night to catch Gorr. He’s panicked, he had a nightmare. The woman that was resting by his side convinces him to stay inside and continue having sex. However,  the berserker guard dogs have come to retrieve Young Thor from the past. 

ASGARD, MANY MILLENNIA FROM NOW 

Avenger Thor has a lot of questions. Old King Thor is only interested in answering one: “where is the god butcher?” Old King Thor discloses Thor is the all-father now and that he has been so longer than Odin ever was. 

The 900-year siege of Asgard at the hands of the berserkers has ended. Old King Thor tells him to prepare for battle. Avenger Thor isn't the biggest fan of his older self and laments becoming his father. He comes upon a cellar of wine… “one drink wouldn’t hurt.” 

ICELAND, 893 AD 

Young Thor fights the berserker guard dogs. One of them breaks a crystal and summons him to the future, to face Gorr in his most mature form. All 3 Thors are now in the future. 

Old King Thor explains to Avenger Thor that Gorr has enslaved most of Asgard’s gods and that he’s been spawning berserkers for 900 years. Everyone fell but him. Avenger Thor’s presence has revitalized him and given him hope as well as re-initiated his bond with the Thorforce. They embark on “THE LAST RIDE OF THE GODS OF THUNDER.” 

Gorr throws Young Thor amongst his slaves and says that he wants to Young Thor to drive home the last nail of the weapon he has been creating for the past 900 years. 

PRESENT DAY, OMNIPOTENCE CITY 

The librarian is trying to patch things up following the attack on the archives. He’s worried. He presses Shadrak for answers, who switches his identity again. “Bubbles and Ballerinas.” “Pancakes and Tambourines.” “Kittens and Coconuts.” The librarian threatens him one final time and Shadrak divulges his true identity. Shadrak is the “god of bombs” and he designed a godbomb for Gorr that will kill all gods throughout all time. 

Issue #7 is the start of the second story arc. All 3 versions of Thor have been moved into the future and this is where the majority of the remaining narrative will take place. Two of them are on the way and one of the Thors is already there. Gorr’s vendetta against Thor for defeating him is even further dramatized by him actively seeking out the version of Thor that beat him. 

ISSUE #8: “GODBOMB PART TWO: GOD IN CHAINS”   

Written by Jason Aaron, Art by Esad Ribic

THE FAR FUTURE, THE BLACK OCEAN OF DEEP SPACE 

Avenger Thor and Old King Thor travel the starways. Still a few billion lightyears away. 

THE UNHOLY WORLD OF GORR, CITY OF GOD SLAVES, MOUNT OF THE GODBOMB 

Young Thor gets whipped and decides to stop working. He curses Gorr and his guard dogs but 3 women come and beat him and tell him to relax himself because Gorr will sacrifice weaker gods if he doesn’t. Their names are Atli, Ellisiv, and Frigg. The Goddesses of Thunder. Young Thor’s future grandchildren. 

Young Thor gets back to building the Godbomb at their request. Gorr’s son tells him that it’s a bomb and the world would be better off without gods. Young Thor promises that Gorr will die at his hands and that he is no longer a man at all. 

On the seventh day, they can rest, Gorr’s idea of a joke. Playing off the biblical idea that God rested on the seventh day after he created the heavens and the earth. There are three more days until the bomb is finished and they all die. They want to take action but they need someone to take charge. Young Thor volunteers. They object, say he isn't really Thor. The goddesses of Thunder cannot summon a storm on Gorr’s planet and they say that the real Thor would be able to do so. And Young Thor cannot. They have assembled a a bomb constructed of stolen unstable matter. While they’re deliberating over who should go on the mission, Thor steals the mound of unstable matter and goes to destroy the godbomb. 

“It’s suicide, a sacrifice.”   

Young Thor sprints into a sea of berserkers and summons lightning. They all realize he really is Thor. As Young Thor runs along to his certain death, his only regret is that he was never able to pick up Mjolnir. He throws the bomb of unstable matter at the godbomb. There’s a massive explosion but it doesn’t destroy it. 

Avenger Thor and Old King Thor hear the explosion, they’re close. Starsharks swim around the planet for the remains of dead enslaved gods. Young Thor boards their ship and slaps Avenger Thor with a starstark. They don’t attack him. They explain the situation. Young Thor eyes Mjolnir but he’s still unworthy. He arms himself with a battle hammer. 

“The time for words has passed. Now we let the hammers talk.” 

Issue #8 united the three Thors. Gorr’s enslavement style feels inspired by American chattel slavery. He uses his berserker guard dogs as overseers. He uses whips. He strips them of their power and nobility and forces them to work on his behalf. He lives with him slaves, in some capacity. The starsharks changing their hunting patterns to eat the dead bodies of castaway gods definitely mirrors the horrors of the transatlantic slave trade or the middle passage. When you’ve been enslaved as long as they have, it’s easy to forget who you are and fall into the role of what you have been forced to become. If you have the power to turn gods into slaves, what does this say about you? If the circumstances of being a god does not exist for them, what inaction are they being punished for?    

ISSUE #9: “GODBOMB PART THREE: THUNDER IN BLOOD” 

Written by Jason Aaron, Art by Esad Ribic

Gorr watches his wife sleep. When she awakes, he tells her that the bomb is almost finished and after all of the gods are dead, he will finally be able to live. 

He emerges from his conversation with his wife to battle all three of the thors. The God Butcher gets blasted from outer space back down to his planet by Old King Thor’s might. 

Gorr throws the moon at them. Gorr begins to use his dark matter to sacrifice god slaves to give him more power. The godblood fuels him. He captures the two senior Thors in the mouth of a dark serpent of his own construction. Young Thor, who cannot fly, comes along riding a starshark which is pure comic book hysteria and I love it. Gorr hits Young Thor down to the other moon. Old King Thor uses his power to free Avenger Thor from the mouth of the dark serpent. 

Avenger Thor fights Gorr but leaves to help a planet in turmoil from their rumblings. He quickly saves them for certain doom. Gorr says he can’t figure out Avenger Thor or put a finger on his motivations, especially in comparison to the two other versions of him on different ends of the timeline. Gorr says that Avenger Thor is his favorite. Calls him, “the god who doubts.” 

All three Thors converge on Gorr and drive him into the sun. The sun turns black and we are given a beautiful page of poetry and art. 

Somewhere in the cosmos, 

starwhales beached 

themselves on an asteroid

and died, hundreds of them, 

for seemingly no reason 

at all. 

A dog was born with 

the face of a child, 

screaming in terror. 

It did not live 

For long. 

A saintly woman died and 

found no one waiting for 

her on the other side. 

No white light to guide

her, nothing.

The sacred waters 

of the well of mimir 

turned red and 

bitter.  

The world tree bled 

bled at the 

roots. 

In Asgard, the statues 

of kings began 

weeping. 

And on a backwoods world, 

an alien boy looked up at 

the morning sky… 

And saw the sun 

turn black. 

It rains blood, godblood. Then it rains hammers and Thors. Gorr stands supreme and exclaims, “make ready the bomb!” 

The fighting and art in Issue #9 is brilliant and the poetry on the last few pages is amazing as well. I feel as though the poetry eloquently explained the spiritual core of their plight very well. There is so much desolation and dread among the many worlds and no one is doing anything about it. The worst are filled with passion and the best are moved towards nothing at all. There is no comfort, no white light, and it's easy to fall into melancholia about the state of it all. Gorr has seen the sun. Not only has he seen it, he was driven into it and there was no heat or comfort there for him. And for that, everything has to burn. Everything must go black. 

ISSUE #10: “GODBOMB PART FOUR: TO THE LAST GOD” 

Written by Jason Aaron, Art by Esad Ribic 

Old King Thor is nailed to a comet, sailing through space. Avenger Thor has fallen into a fissure on Gorr’s planet. Young Thor is in the clutches of Gorr, being dragged along the ground by his long hair. 

Gorr’s wife approaches him, worried about the fighting. Gorr re-assures her and says that it is finally time to arm the godbomb. Gorr’s wife rejoices and says that Gorr is her God. 

*pause* “... what did you say?” 

Gorr murders his wife when she begins to repeat herself. Gorr’s son comes to his side, excited to finally kill all of the gods. He asks where his mother is and Gorr lies and says that he does not know then walks away. Gorr’s son notices the remnants of her hand strewn to the side. 

The Goddesses of Thunder are stuck in a web of Gorr’s black mass. Frigga reaches for Mjolnir. Ellisiv has given up. Atli wants to bite her tongue off and choke on it rather than letting Gorr kill her. 

Gorr explains the godbomb to Young Thor. Designed by Shadrak. Runs on godblood. Will kill all gods throughout all time. 

Miles below the surface, Gorr’s son approaches Avenger Thor. He abhors his father for killing his mother. He says his father used to be a good man but now he’s a god. Gorr’s son says he does not know how to pray but he prays that Thor kills his father and then helps him escape his predicament.    

The Goddesses of Thunder are released from the black mass once Gorr activates the bomb. They try to grab Mjolnir but fail. The hammers are headed back to their masters. 

Gorr needs a god heart to baptize the machine. He wants the heart of Young Thor but Young Thor bites Gorr’s eye out and Gorr throws him away from the godbomb in retaliation. Young Thor spits the eye out and retrieves his battle axe, jarnbjorn. Avenger Thor and Old King Thor arrive, Mjolnir in hand. Gorr kills a different god and baptizes the godbomb with their heart. 

“Too late, Thors! Behold your doom!” 

The bomb is triggered. Old king Thor tackles Gorr, tells Avenger Thor to hit it with his hammer. Thor, the god who doubts, wonders if Gorr is right as he repeatedly wallops the godbomb and prays it does not detonate. 

At this point in the narrative, it appears as though Gorr is not really moved towards his cause out of care but out of spite. He goaded Avenger Thor for not being entirely certain that gods did more good than harm and even jeopardized his mission by dragging Young Thor to the center of his godbomb instead of going the easier route. To Gorr’s credit, he does not seem to have any doubt in his lack of faith towards the will of the gods but doubt is likely what keeps us human. Gorr has lost all flexibility and is absolute in his power, his resolve, his hubris, and his hate. 

ISSUE #11: “GODBOMB PART FIVE, THE LAST PRAYER” 

Written by Jason Aaron, Art by Esad Ribic  

PRESENT DAY, OMNIPOTENCE CITY 

The librarian tries to warn the gods but it’s too late. The explosion that knows neither time nor space has begun and it hurts. 

THE WORLD OF THE GODBOMB 

Gorr gloats to Old King Thor. “You’re dying,” he says. Avenger Thor refuses to lose and raises his hammer to the bomb. 

“What… is he doing?” Gorr wonders, incredulously.  

“Dying. Like a God.” 

All the gods throughout all time pray to Thor as he absorbs the blast into twin Mjolnirs. The prayers are giving him power. Even Odin himself prays to his son. 

“Be the God of the gods.” 

The explosion stops. Gorr lost his weapon. Thor fucking took it and he looks fucking sick. 

All-black necrosword, slicer of worlds, the annihilablade, meant to be wielded by a god. 

Thor blasts the bejesus out of Gorr in the sickest fucking splash page of all time. 

Gorr in his weakened and depowered state, manages a few more words. He says that godkind will eventually come to mean the end of mankind. His son confronts him about killing his mother. “It wasn’t a god who betrayed you, it was only ever yourself.” Gorr’s son dissolves and those are his last words. He was always just a product of Gorr’s black mass. Young Thor tires of Gorr and beheads him at last with jarnbjorn. Avenger Thor vomits then dies for the ninth time, poisoned by the annihilablade. 

Three days later, he rose again. Old King Thor brings Avenger Thor back from the dead with the thorforce. He left the all-black necrosword where it was and destroyed Gorr’s planet. Asgard has become a safe haven for lost gods and they will eventually be farmed out to worlds in need of gods. 

Old King Thor tells Young Thor that Odin will never accept him. Young Thor is miffed by that. They say their goodbyes and wonder if Gorr was right about them. Old King Thor sends them back to their rightful times. The memories of what they did together will fade due to the nature of time travel. 

Avenger Thor returns to Indigarr, where they have water. He tells the little girl that summoned him with her prayers and set in motion his journey that “you need never pray again.” 

Issue #11 wraps up the story in a beautiful bow, this issue has some of my favorite Esad Ribic panels of all time. Avenger Thor uses belief, hope, and prayer to will himself to victory… three weapons generally attributed to mankind, not godkind. He defeated the god butcher by being more mortal than him and in essence, by dying. He sacrificed himself just as Christ did in the bible and he rose three days later. He took the blast onto himself with no promise of return. Avenger Thor was able to become the God of gods by being selfless and walking with faith in a direction he was not entirely sure about. Man schemes, God plans. 

-

In Kurt Vonnegut’s 1959 novel, Sirens of Titan, the character of Winston Niles Rumfoord came from the future with a message for the people of Earth from Revered C. Horner Redwine. Rumfoord surmised that God’s apathy is freedom. We are Earth wondering who’s gay or straight or drinking or fucking or speaking blessings onto God’s name and Rumfoord tells the people of Earth that God simply does not care. God is indifferent. And that’s the best thing that could have ever happened to us. At least according to Rumfoord. God is all-knowing, all-seeing, and all-powerful. God can take care of themself, it is up to the people to take care of the people. 

Winston Niles Rumfoord’s ethos correctly summed up the nub of Gorr’s beliefs, in my estimation. Gorr wants a focus on life and humanity living for themselves. The corruption of this ideal comes from his hate. By choosing to focus on killing gods rather than helping people, he became a god himself. A fate he both ran from and cluelessly sprinted into. He ascended to godhood by playing into his lowest self. 

Perhaps the most popular character code in all of comic books is that of Spider-Man’s. With great power comes great responsibility. When bad things happen and you can do something about it and you choose to do nothing, those bad things are your fault! In a universe where gods have human motives, emotions, and sensibilities; it makes sense that they would also possess the human ability of empathy. But many of them do not. They watch the world go by and do nothing.   

Lady Eboshi from Hayao Miyazaki’s 1997 masterpiece, Princess Mononoke, said the way to kill a god is to have no fear of it. Gorr takes that to another level. He does not fear the gods and he puts the fear in them. This is a role reversal. Even in Islam, one of the primary virtues we have in place as being attractive to God is taqwa. Taqwa is the fear of God. Fear in a way that promotes consciousness, piety, cognizance, and remembrance. Gorr’s fear is more of self. He wants them to hate themselves. This is just another of many ways that Gorr became more of a god than the gods he sought to butcher. 

Thor on the other hand, in all three iterations of the character, seemed to remember the primary lesson of Sirens of Titan, the lesson that Gorr forgot. Yes, we should focus on the people and the living and finding the space to provide for our responsibilities. But Vonnegut also prompted the idea that the point of life was to love whoever was around us to be loved. Thor never forgets this. Not in his youth when he’s drinking more than enough for 100 men and shagging enough women for 200 men. Not when he’s a hero; flying from planet to planet, trying to save those who have been forgotten, both mortals and immortals alike. Not when he’s a king, isolated and destined to die alone. Thor knows he has to love. Gorr let his quest for revenge obscure that truth from him. For all of its failings and triumphs, I think Thor: Love and Thunder did not forget this truth. Love is for whoever is around. 

God is love. 

4.5 APPLES OF 5 APPLES

published July 15, 2022

notes on: Atlanta S3 [part three]

MEDIUM: Television 

GENRE: Comedy/Drama 

STUDIO: FX 

EPISODES: 10 

FAVORITE EPISODES: “The Big Payback” “Old Man And The Tree” “Cancer Attack” “New Jazz”  

LEAST FAVORITE EPISODES: n/a

Release Year: 2022

[part three] 

EPISODE VIII: “New Jazz” 

Directed by Hiro Murai, Written by Donald Glover  

Darius and Paper Boi sit in a coffee house in Amsterdam. Paper Boi is wearing a very loud, extravagant, and eccentric hat. Darius compliments his hat.   

“Nice Hat.” 

Paper Boi pays for everything, begrudgingly, but he knew he was going to do so and that it was his responsibility now. Earn comes into the coffee house and asks  if they were still doing the thing he shouldn’t know about for “insurance purposes” and they said yes. Earn gives them spa passes and suggests that it should enhance their experience. Paper Boi and Darius leave the coffee house to embark on their thing, leaving Earn alone to work. 

They’re on their way to do drugs or as Darius calls them, “spiritual expanding apparatuses.” Paper Boi maintains that they are drugs. They aren’t doing just any drug though. They’re eating Nepalese spacecakes, an edible harvested from monks in Denmark, a synthesis of weed and Nepalese hallucinogenic honey. But no one knows for sure what is in it. Darius says they’re banned in the US and they’ll always be flawed in some way on the black market but he has found a shop in Amsterdam that sells them from internet forums. 

As they’re walking to the shop there’s a man in a Goofy hat having a bad trip, cramped into the corner, rocking back and forth. 

“Al, don’t be like him,” Darius warns. 

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Darius goes to the counter and orders a hot chocolate and a Nepalese spacecake. He doesn’t have enough money. He says he’ll wait for the universe(Paper Boi) to bring him the money. Paper Boi, annoyed, orders a hot chocolate and a Nepalese spacecake then pays for them both. The barista has a warning for Paper Boi, who seems uptight in the moment. 

Your friend seems like he has seen the other side before, but are you certain you want to do this? 

Paper Boi shrugs off his warning, irritated by the question and the assertion that he can’t handle his high. They sit down. As Paper Boi begins to dig in, Darius tells him to wait and place his Nepalese spacecake atop the mug of hot chocolate so the steam can melt the center. They wait, they eat, and the journey begins. 

Darius gives Paper Boi an iPod with pre-downloaded playlists curated to guide their highs the moment they leave the coffee house to go to the spa. Darius says he is starting to feel his high already while Paper Boi says he can’t feel any difference. They both start playing music and drift away from each other, breaking away into different worlds. 

song 33: “The Flower Called Nowhere” by Stereolab 

They both walk in an un-symbiotic trance through the streets of Amsterdam that’s broken by a dying rat. Darius tells Paper Boi he knows a shortcut after they get lost and wander through the red light district. Paper Boi is worried that he’s too famous to be caught in such a detestable and deplorable place. He runs away from Darius after a sex worker takes a picture of him. Some rowdy locals, a gang of young white guys, notice him and begin to chase him. After he evades them, the locals steal a baby from a woman in a bizarre and hilarious moment of anarchism. Paper Boi recedes into a dark room where there is a lone sobbing woman amidst a spotlight. She’s screaming for help. 

Help! Help! 

Paper Boi tries to help her but she ignores him. He notices there is a man only a few feet in front of her eating popcorn. It’s a stage performance. She does not want or need his help. Paper Boi awkwardly retreats from the dark performance and enters a well-lit art gallery. 

Damn, your hat looks dumb!

A younger black woman comments on Paper Boi’s hat. Paper Boi walks away, trying to avoid and ignore her but she begins to follow him around. The young woman introduces herself as Lorraine. She says she hates art and Paper Boi asks why she’s at an art gallery and she says to read people. She’s kinda a hater but she frames it as being honest. She’s annoying and the type of woman who thinks she’s making everyone feel alive but she’s really killing them. I don’t like her character very much but I can’t say that I don’t recognize her from real life. 

Do you need a friend? 

Lorraine repeatedly insists on helping Paper Boi but he does not want her help. He holds that he already has friends and she suggests that his friends aren’t good ones for letting him wear the hat. She unilaterally decides that he has surrounded himself with yes men and dishonest crooks who look to take advantage of him. 

Are you somebody to other people? 

Lorraine swears she has no idea who Paper Boi is but she has taken a big interest in him, almost immediately, and seems to know a lot about his current situation. We are left to believe that this may possibly be the result of her being good at reading people but I think she’s lying to maintain some level of superiority over him and give comfort to some of the anxieties that belabor him concerning the motives of everyone around him. He thinks they all want something, even Earn and Darius. She immediately surmises that he’s a rapper.  And of course, she’s correct. She says she hates rappers without Paper Boi even answering her. He sits, exasperated. 

The thing about rappers is that y’all don’t know anything about yourselves… Where is your money? Who owns your masters? 

To own your masters means you own the recording from which all later copies of your music are made. It’s arguably the most lucrative part of making music, but Paper Boi didn’t know this at all. Lorraine says that everyone around him has a vested interest in him not learning the truth. He can’t answer Lorraine’s question, which makes him put his guard down just a bit and accept her help. 

Lorraine gives Paper Boi a Goofy hat to help him blend in. They leave the art gallery and it is night, very suddenly. They head to meet some of her friends. They all go to a lounge but the bouncer does not want to let Paper Boi in until Lorraine tells the bouncer that he’s “New Jazz.” 

Lorraine disappears quickly and her friends make Paper Boi feel insecure. They ask him if he knows Dababy or Dua Lipa but he’s not paying them much attention. They tell him that he’s not Lorraine’s first rapper and declare that Lorraine and Paper Boi are fucking. After Paper Boi vehemently and continuously denies, they still do not believe him. They say her apartment is nicknamed “106&Park.”

106&Park is a long-running BET show where black musicians would go and perform their songs as well as debut and rank the hottest music videos. 106&Park had some of the biggest music stars in history on their show and they ran for 3,710 episodes with the final episode airing in 2014. The claim by Lorraine’s friends that her apartment is akin to the show only strengthens my hypothesis that she has been pretending to not know who Paper Boi is. Paper Boi is annoyed with Lorraine’s friends and heads over to the bar. 

At the bar, he meets Liam Neeson. I know, what the fuck right? Paper Boi is temporarily starstruck and confused but mostly starstruck. Liam Neeson asks Paper Boi what he did to get in the lounge and Paper Boi doesn’t understand. Liam Neeson presses Paper Boi to confess his public mishap to him but eventually backs off. Paper Boi is bewildered but he understands when Liam Neeson raises his glass off his napkin and it reads, “Cancel Club” in emboldened type. The Cancel Club is a hangout for people who are victims of cancel culture. 

Cancel culture is the derogatory connotation for a movement of accountability against public figures and their negative actions. To cancel someone is an attempt to strip them of their fame and status as a result of them being a bad person or at least suffering from the perception of being a bad person. As the general level of activism on social media rose, there has also been a stark rise in opposition against Cancel Culture in recent years, especially amidst the #metoo movement that targeted sexual predators in the entertainment industry. Comedians such as Dave Chapelle have been very loud in this opposition and he is not lacking compatriots for his cause amongst common folk. In my estimation, Cancel Culture is not real. All attempts to hold famous people accountable for their actions have failed. As time passes, people either care less or forget to care or forget what the hell they were even mad about. Cancellations cannot come from common folk. They have to be blackballed out of their respective industries and with the notable exception of maybe ex-President and current dick, Donald Trump, this has not happened as a result of objectively poor behavior. 

In the case of Liam Neeson, he faced widespread backlash after he revealed that he roamed the streets for days in predominantly black neighborhoods hoping one would incite violence against him so he could kill them. He was angry at the time because his friend had been raped by a black man, so Liam Neeson was ready to kill any black man. This was admitted by Liam Neeson at his own will while he was promoting his 2019 film, Cold Pursuit. Of course Liam Neeson was immediately scolded for his actions but in the long run, it was only a minor setback and a trivial blemish on his career. He kept acting as the leading man in a number of roles in films such as 

The Marksman, Memory, The Ice Road, and Honest Thief, None of these movies are particularly good but he has not seen any dropoff in his workload or exposure as a result of his racist confession. 

This is made evident in his conversation with Paper Boi. Paper Boi is among those who never felt the need to hold Liam Neeson accountable for what he said. Paper Boi is a polarizing figure himself and he has shown that most of his interests and sensitivities are directly related to himself rather than a community. Still, Liam Neeson feels the need to explain his actions. 

I thought people knowing who I once was would make it clear who I am, who I’ve become. 

One of the biggest critiques of cancel culture, and perhaps a valid one, is that it does not leave much room for growth, forgiveness, or error. Even admitting your error could have you judged for your actions rather than your intent. An unforgiving world where we are all expected to be perfect and where we eat each other if we are not is a cold one. 

After Paper Boi expresses forgiveness, sympathy, and understanding towards Liam Neeson on the behalf of the black community but Liam Neeson isn't very receptive to this at all. He says that he’s not racist but he can’t stand black people now because they tried to ruin his career. 

Didn’t you learn that you shouldn’t say shit like that?   

Aye. But I also learned that the best and worst part about being white is that we don’t have to learn anything if we don’t want to. 

Liam Neeson finishes his drink and walks away. Paper Boi is completely astonished. So astonished that he doesn’t notice the emcee on stage in the lounge is about to call him to the front in order to perform as “New Jazz.” Lorraine pulls him to the side and helps him escape before he has to do so. 

It is suddenly morning time. Paper Boi is now annoyed with Lorraine Again, especially after she tries to touch him. He’s on guard and distrustful of her because of what her friends had said to him in the Cancel Club. She lashes out at him saying she’s all he got. She has been telling him what he needed to hear rather than what he wanted to hear. Lorraine surmises that if you don’t have anyone around you telling you the truth, you’re white. She says was honest about the hat being ugly, she admonished him for taking care of Darius financially, for letting Earn handle all of his business, and for having a general lack of control over the decisions that will guide the rest of his life. 

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Paper Boi disagrees. He says he knows himself and Lorraine angrily, aggressively says he does not. She says he doesn’t feel shit. That he can’t even feel his legs. As she advances closer to him, she immobilizes him. She covers him with a blanket and walks away as he shakes feverishly on the ground. Darius and Paper Boi from the beginning of the episode walk by him. He has become the tripping man that Darius warned him not to be. 

Paper Boi awakes in a hotel bed with Earn by his side. Earn said he passed out and that he found him on the street. Earn says Paper Boi was asleep for 16 hours. Earn carried him to his room and changed his vomit-riddled clothes while Paper Boi was unconscious. Paper Boi asks him about Lorraine’s whereabouts and when Earn is confused and wonders if Paper Boi’s asking about his dead mother, Paper Boi disregards his own question. As Earn prepares to leave, Paper Boi asks Earn who owns the masters to his music. Earn does not hear him at first and anxiety settles in. So Paper Boi asks again. And Earn replies that Paper Boi owns his own masters. Paper Boi says thanks. Earn leaves. Paper Boi is alone again. 

song thirty-four: “Stormy” by The Meters

I have come to realize that episodes that concentrate on Paper Boi’s state of being always turn out to be among my favorites in the whole series and “New Jazz” is no different. The three most important elements in the episode, at least thematically, come towards the conclusion. 

Liam Neeson’s conclusion to his cancellation is key to the season-long definition of the curse of whiteness. If whiteness is where and when you are, if you are somewhere where you do not have to learn anything, you are white. This is not a foreign argument in the black community. Many times, black people claim black celebrities who are “victims” of cancel culture would have gotten a pass if they were white. Bill Cosby and R. Kelly goes to jail, Donald Trump becomes president. That sort of thing. Obviously, black people have less room for mistakes than white people, but I believe that black abusers should be punished just the same as white perpetrators. White men simply get off too often. The main idea though, is that Paper Boi is entering a circumstance in which he does not have to learn anything. He is becoming white and he can’t stop himself.  

First, there is the hat, which is a physical manifestation of the ways that Paper Boi is changing. He has lost some of his edge as a result of his money and he isn't completely comfortable or confident with what he’s becoming. He wears this hat and he isn't sure about it at all but no one will tell him if they hate it, that is except Lorraine. It isn't made clear if Earn and Darius actually like the hat or if they’re just saying they like it to appease Paper Boi. My guess is that they either like the hat or they’re indifferent to it. They have been real and loyal throughout the series. The important part however is that Paper Boi is scared no one around him will tell him the truth, despite their purported authenticity. 

His situation is reminiscent of the old “Emperor New Clothes” fable in which a crooked salesman comes into a city and claims to be selling extravagant clothes made of magical fabric that only the righteous can see and because the emperor pretends he can see the clothes out of fear that his subjects wouldn’t think he was righteous, everyone else pretends to see the fabric as well. The Emperor walks around completely naked and no one has the heart to tell him that he’s being fooled until the crooked salesman is long gone with all of his money. The crooked salesman sold him a lie and everyone bought it because they feared what the truth meant for them. Paper Boi thinks he’s the emperor and he thinks he’s naked and he fears no one will ever tell him so. 

This is precisely the reason that Paper Boi’s Nepalese spacecake-influenced mind invented the character of Lorraine. She’s a physical manifestation of his conscience or his inner dialogue, telling him all the evil shit that he’s afraid to say. I am of the school that she was never real, hence her having the same name as Paper Boi’s deceased mother. The death of Paper Boi’s mother and the grief stricken ways in which he coped with that was a big storyline in Season 2. Lorraine tells Paper Boi what no one else will and what Paper Boi thinks he needs to hear. 

This is important because it ties into whiteness and what Paper Boi is becoming. She is the truth in his ear, the voice that forces him to continue to learn from his mistakes and be aware of them. Lorraine is an annoying and very bitchy Jiminy Cricket. Her voice leads him to interrogate his relationship with the people he has surrounded himself with. He asked Earn about his future and I felt my heart drop, because I was unsure that he moved in Paper Boi’s best interest. When it was revealed that Earn did the right and best thing, it was a triumphant moment because it just further affirmation that Earn cares about Paper Boi and is not just using him to advance his own life. I wish we got the same confirmation with Darius but I know that to be true of him as well. 

Final postscript thoughts on the episode: There is something mildly problematic about Donald Glover putting words of apology and regret in the mouth of a self-admitted racist. I am not sure how I felt about it but I mainly found myself in awe at the cameo and laughing at his further admissions of racism. I guess the laugh is truly always the most important part. 

EPISODE IX: “rich wigga, poor wigga” 

Written and Directed by Donald Glover 

song thirty-five: “ESCAPE PLAN” by Travis Scott 

Aaron, a teenage boy, plays COD in his bedroom. We pan over his room a few times. He has “white” interests like baseball, lacrosse, Post Malone, and Logan Paul. The people on the microphone on the game are talking a lot of shit to him but Aaron is silent. He is plotting an attack on them and he succeeds, winning the match after roasting them with a flamethrower. Right after he secured the win, he got a text from his girlfriend, Katie, that she got into college. They’re planning on going to Arizona State College together. This infuriates him for some unknown reason and he chides the online gamers with racist remarks before turning the game off. This is very discomforting because Aaron is a white presenting kid, all the way through. But it’s uncertain how light his skin is because the picture has been color graded to b&w, an homage to Rebecca Hall’s 2021 film, Passing. Passing is based on Neila Larsen’s 1929 Novel of the same name. 

Passing is the story of a 1920s NYC black woman whose life is turned upside down when her life becomes entangled with a former black childhood friend who’s passing at being white. This is important because it is revealed in the next scene that Aaron is a white passing mixed kid who’s doing the same thing in 2022. His father is black and his black father is driving him to school because he missed the bus the following day, after Katie got into their dream school. 

Aaron’s father recounts a the story of a teenage black boy who was murdered by the police, shot at Lenox mall and died at Grady Memorial Hospital. Aaron has no sympathy for this boy at all, taking the side of the police. His father is disenchanted with this but he also cites anti-black sentiments, saying trouble with the police is why he won’t let him hang out in Dekalb County. Aaron’s father says he hopes that Aaron would get pulled over by the police to experience racism.  That his nose is a dead giveaway that he’s actually black. Aaron says he’d have to let him drive in order for him to get pulled over. 

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Aaron and his dad are having money problems. This is why he isn't going to Arizona State College. His dad refuses to fill out any FAFSA forms and he’s only been able to save up 4000 dollars. His dad isn't sympathetic to his struggle and promises Aaron that he’ll have to pay rent post-high school graduation. They arrive at Stonewall Jackson High School, named for the Confederate General. His father tells him he loves him in embarrassing fashion, possibly an Into The Spiderverse homage. 

When Aaron goes into school, he greets his white girlfriend with his white friends. They all celebrate getting into their colleges while Aaron anxiously jostles, pretending he’s just as excited as they are. There is an assembly for all graduating seniors and they’re all called to the auditorium. The principal introduces Robert Shea Lee, heir to the Pink oil hair moisturizer fortune. Robert Shea Lee’s name is eerily similar to Robert E. Lee’s name, the most famous Confederate general who defected from the Union. It’s a pretty funny joke. Even eerier, Robert Shea Lee is played by Kevin Samuels, an internet dating consultant who has been maligned for his misogynistic takes. This is a surprise cameo, especially since Kevin Samuels is not even an actor. But it’s a bigger surprise because Kevin Samuels died on May 5, 2022 and this episode was released a week later on May 12, 2022. 

Robert Shea Lee is an alumnus of Stonewall Jackson High School and he’s now a billionaire. They’re renaming the school after him. But most importantly, he pledges to pay for college for every graduating student… if they’re black. Robert Shea Lee is likely based off of real life billionaire, Robert F. Smith, who announced he was paying the student loan debt of all the Morehouse College graduates in Winter 2020. Aaron thought his prayers had been answered and perhaps they are. But if he wanted to gain access to the newfound rewards of blackness, he’d have to affirm his blackness in front of his friends who think he’s white. This is a dilemma because he is not eager to do so. 

song thirty-six: “Hanging On A String” by Loose Ends 

Aaron’s white friends complain. They say it’s discrimination. They say it’s super easy to get in. They say it’s tokenism. They say they already have affirmative action. Katie says her friend dated a guy who got a full ride and only stayed one year named Zion Wilson (Williamson haha). They agree with her that it’s ridiculous. They say a lot but Aaron is silent while black students celebrate all around him. He excuses himself to go speak to the counselor about financing options for school but he is really sneaking off to inquire about the payment opportunity with Robert Shea Lee.  

song thirty-seven: “If I Ever Fall in Love” by Shai 

There are a plethora of nonblack POC practicing, imitating, and performing blackness for their “black audition.” They’re singing R&B, putting on durags, cripwalking, getting cornrows, and playing basketball. Here, Atlanta, introduces a new definition of blackness to go hand-in-hand with their season-long whiteness definition. Robert Shea Lee doesn’t think ADOS (American Descendants of Slavery) necessitates blackness. He thinks blackness is a culture rather than a genealogy. 

Aaron is called into the dark gymnasium for his black audition. The gym is dark aside from a single spotlight on Aaron and a slight shining down on the tribunal seated on the stage. The tribunal is Robert Shea Lee, Greg, and Jay. They’re all smoking stogies. They ask him a number of questions and Aaron gets most of them wrong or he doesn’t answer them in a knowing manner. 

Name six things that mix with hennessy. 

What happened to that boy at Lenox Mall? 

How long can oil sit on the stove? 

Bobby & Whitney or Will and Jada? 

Where is the first place you take your cousin fresh outta jail? 

Why did the five heartbeats break up? 

Your momma or your mother? 

What color are Wendy’s napkins? 

Holy spirit or holy ghost? 

Mustard or mayonnaise? 

Make a beat with this mechanical pencil! 

Orange or grape kool-aid? 

Spell Dante! 

DQ or Popeyes? 

What soda is good for you? 

If Ne-Yo’s hat got any lower, it’d be on his “blank”? 

When the tribunal tires of testing Aaron, they tell him it was fun and he entertained them but he fails. Aaron gets mad because his dad is black, which means he is black even if he turned his back on that part of himself. Greg gets mad and yells at him. “YOU ARE WHITE!” After Greg’s outburst, Robert Shea Lee explains his stance. He asks Aaron how long he has been coasting on his whiteness. He says Aaron deserves what he got and that he’s just got his. By attempting to pass rather than being what he is, Aaron has invalidated his blood. 

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Aaron goes home and complains to his dad but his dad is simply humoring his anger. While his Dad clowns him, he notices a black kid named D’Andre that’s going to attend Arizona State College is in Katie’s comment section on Instagram. D’Andre is an incoming football player they met at a college visit. While Aaron is cursing Katie out, she says that she knows he’s not going to Arizona State College because he can’t afford it. Then she breaks up with him. Aaron sits in his room and stirs. 

He decides to make a flamethrower, in real life, and burn down his school. He googles it then puts one together with scraps from his garage. He walks a few miles to his school with the homemade flamethrower strapped to his back. When he arrives, the sign for his school has been changed from Stonewall Jackson High School to Robert S. Lee High School. But there’s also another kid, Felix, there with a real flamethrower. Felix is a Nigerian kid from Lithonia but the tribunal decided he wasn’t black either. Aaron agrees with them though. Aaron and Felix have a philosophical conversation about who’s black between the two; mentioning heritage, tradition, and lineage. Aaron thinks Felix has a discernable path to his ancestors and because he turned his back on that, he’s not black. Felix disagrees. Aaron doesn’t really care and wants to burn down the school but Felix wants to do it first. Aaron makes a bad colorist joke that Felix was already burnt. Felix shoots a gush of flames at Aaron and Aaron runs away. Felix puts fire to the sign then chases after Aaron. 

It turns into a real life Call of Duty map for a while. They’re both evading and chasing each other, but it quickly morphs from a flamethrower fight to a mulatto hunt. Aaron is the victim and the scene has a horror feeling, theme, and score. As soon as Aaron thinks he has escaped, Felix pours gas on the floor and lights it, burning Aaron’s feet. Aaron ditches his shoes and runs away. Felix catches up to him but as soon as he has Aaron in his clutches, the police arrive. The police shoot Felix and then say, “Freeze!” to Aaron. 

song thirty-eight: “L’ucello dulle piume di Cristallo (dal film)” by Orchestra di Bruno Nicolai & Orchestra Di Ennio Morricone 

Robert S. Lee comes to the school in the aftermath; as the police are arresting Aaron, the firefighters are putting out the fire, and the paramedics are taking Felix to the hospital. Robert S. Lee pledges to pay Felix’s medical bill and for his college because “getting shot by the police is the blackest thing he could do.” Robert S. Lee tells the paramedics to take Felix to “White Grady” (Emory Hospital) and that was a pretty funny joke. Aaron ends up with nothing. 

A year passes and Aaron has “embraced” his blackness. He works at Best Buy. He has a low cut fade now, so we can’t see his hair texture. He speaks in an exaggerated Atlanta accent and uses AAVE. He dresses black. He brushes his waves between sentences and flirts with black customers. He has decided to adopt a black personality rather than coast on his whiteness. He never went to college. But Katie did and Katie is at Best Buy. She comes over and speaks to him but Aaron doesn’t seem very interested or enamored with her. As she walks away, Aaron stops her and tells her he’s never been more attracted to her in his life. He says it real “urban” like. Katie blushes. Aaron smiles at the camera as it freeze frames. 

I didn’t dislike any of the episodes this season but if I were forced to pick a weakest entry, “rich wigga, poor wigga” would be it. The story is good enough but Donald Glover’s history of “too white for the blacks and too black for the whites” still reeks in my opinion. This feels like an extension of that same anxiety, as if he is still a bit sore from being called an oreo for his interests and personality when he was younger. 

can whoever called donald glover an oreo in high school just apologize so everyone can move on?

— ashley ray (@theeashleyray) May 14, 2022

But this episode was also very tied into the “curse of whiteness” motif. Aaron was white enough to pass physically but he had none of the privilege because of the circumstances of where and when he was. Aaron chose whiteness and whiteness ate him and spat him out. It rejected him. In the end he chose blackness because he had nothing else left. When attaching blackness to culture rather than ADOS, a comedic point I don’t believe, Aaron is able to retrieve what had never been lost. At the same time, I do think the tribunal was right to deny Aaron on the basis of him not being black. If you look white, act white, talk white, have white opinions, white experiences, and white feelings then you are white. Quack like a duck, walk like a duck, you are a duck. 

Everything bad that happened to Aaron happened as a direct result of his whiteness and his economic status. Robert Shea Lee gave the black students at Stonewall Jackson High School the tools to flip the circumstances, much like in “the big payback.” 

Postscript thought: I feel as though Atlanta went out of their way to employ the worst people in the world. I think they were actively trying to find people who aren’t very popular amongst the liberal crowd on the internet. Chet Hanks, Liam Neeson, and Kevin Samuels are quite the trio of cameos. Especially since Kevin Samuels is not an actor and I don’t think he necessarily had a good performance. He wasn’t believable to me but there were still some funny lines he was able to deliver. It was most enjoyable when Felix was chasing Aaron and the tension was dialed up to 11. Solid episode, but not great. 

EPISODE X: “Tarrare” 

Directed by Donald Glover, Written by Stefani Robinson 

Three black girls have brunch at a Parisian cafe. Two dark skin girls, Xosha and Shanice; and their influencer friend, Candice. Candice has been flown out from Atlanta to Paris to pee on a rich French man. She brought Xosha and Shanice along for the experience. They’re looking for a move but they think they need to be familiar with some locals in order to find something really fun to do. While they’re talking, Candice abruptly rises from her seat and walks from the cafe to a neighboring butcher shop. Candice is friends with Van and that's who she sees. When Candice greets Van, Van is speaking French in a heavy French accent and pretending she doesn’t know Candice with her little “Amelie” bob. She eventually relents and admits to herself that Candice is someone she knows. She’s carrying a large French baguette. Van has gone insane. 

Candice, Xosha, and Shanice go with Van to her French apartment that Van lives in with her chef boyfriend, Marcel. She appears to be a completely different person. It’s unclear how long she has been in Paris but she seems very infused into the lifestyle and decor of the apartment. Pictures of her marcel adorn tabletops. She is featured on the cover of Chic Paris magazine. Candice gets a peek at Van’s phone and people from her real life (Earn, her parents, old friends, etc) are blowing up her phone. Van is not responding to any of them. 

Van and the crew leave on vespas to run Van’s errands, bread in her bag. Candice is worried about Van because of her erratic and dissociative behavior but Xosha and Shanice are wholly entertained by her performance. They go to a luxury hotel. 

song thirty-nine: “Rock Wit U (Aww Baby” by Ashanti 

They go to a hotel room and Alexander Skarsgård is in there dancing to Ashanti. It’s another cameo and he appears to be gone off some drugs. Van kisses Alexander Skarsgård in a very familiar way, which further confuses Candice because she said he was in a relationship with Marcel. Van’s fucking Alexander Skarsgård and tells Candice to not be so “American” about her relationship sensibilities. Van goes into the bedroom of the hotel room while Alexander Skarsgård dedicates himself to entertaining Xosha and Shanice. He says everyone should take off their clothes. They say okay but he’s the only one who starts stripping. 

song forty: No Letting Go” by Wayne Wonder 

Candice follows Van into the bedroom in an attempt to talk some sense into Van but Van is non-receptive. Van plants crack, meth, and cocaine throughout his bedroom then leaves. She scoops Xosha and Shanice on the way out, Alexander Skarsgård is in his animal print underwear. They leave in a hurry but before doing so, Van lies to the concierge and tells them that Alexander Skarsgård is going berserk off of drugs in a hysterical manner. She tells Candice that this is simply a prank, their “devil dance.” 

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They arrive incognito at an apartment complex. Van is frantically looking for a mystery package that is supposed to be around. It’s a scary scene, locals are shouting things at them from their windows. Van goes into the trunk of an abandoned car and goes into the cooler for her package but it’s empty.Van curses a mystery man named Emilio for not holding up his end of the bargain.  Candice, Xosha, and Shanice are asking a lot of questions and getting no answers but they’re very curious at this point. The shouts from the tenants are discernable at this point. They’re yelling “Tarrare.” Tarrare was an 18th century French showman and soldier who was famed for his unusual eating patterns and insatiable appetite. He famously ate a baby or at least was suspected of doing so. He died at the age of 26, he suspected that he was poisoned by his failure to digest a golden fork he ate a few years prior. It’s unclear why they’re calling Van, “Tarrare.” 

Van is pissed that the cooler is empty but she knows she has to get out of the apartment complex in a hurry. The tenants are beginning to converge on them. She’s not welcome. They run back to their vespas and there’s a knife in the tires. A group of men impose on them before their friends start another altercation and divert their attention. Van, who had accepted their fate, begins to run away on foot and the rest follow her. They get on public transit to their next location.    

She tracks Emilio down to a private museum. She coaxes the doorman into letting her in the museum with niceties. It’s clear that she is familiar with and knows both of them. When she goes in, Emilio is immediately frightful. She leans into his fear too, giving a frightening breakdown into why she’s been carrying around the enormous baguette all day. The bread has hardened due to her leaving it out for months. She uses it as a battering stick and beats him down with it. The majority of the violence happens off screen, the camera cuts to different marble statues in the gallery before she finally yields. She asks Emilio where her package is and he maintains that he does not have it but he could get her a new one the following day. She offers to put the baguette in his mouth and take his teeth out. He finally admits that the package is housed in a nearby vase. Van tells Xosha to get it and breaks the vase. The vase was empty but it was the wrong vase. Then she goes into the other vase and retrieves it. The baguette is washed in splattered blood. 

They all leave, Candice is disgusted with Van. Van invites them to the party she’s working with Marcel that night. Candice declines the invitation but Xosha and Shanice accept and decide to stay, despite her. They don’t know Van and are not worried about her poor behavior, especially with no basis for knowing how strange she’s truly acting. 

“I don’t know her but I like whoever this is.” 

Alexander Skarsgård is at the party and he confronts Van about her “devil dance.” He tells her that it was a good one. Van spits in his face and walks down to the kitchen, where Marcel is waiting on her. Alexander Skarsgård goes to the bathroom and masturbates to the idea of Van spitting in his. When Van gets to the kitchen, she gives Marcel a long passionate kiss. Van gives Marcel the package from Emilio, a human hand. That’s what they’re cooking as the main course of the meal for the party. We now know why the tenants at the apartment complex were calling her “Tarrare.” 

Candice followed her and is once again confronting her about this new life that she has manufactured for herself. Van says that Candice is just jealous because she’s finally more interesting than her. She mocks Candice for being in Paris to pee on someone. As Marcel fries hands, Van rushes them out to the dinner table, trying to ignore Candice. 

The host of the party addresses her guests. She instructs them to put their napkins over their heads and shroud themselves. She elucidates how they do not shroud themselves out of shame but instead to have a private and sensuous meal. Xosha and Shanice are unaware of the main course but everyone else seems to be in the know. Xosha and Shanice even happily throw the shroud over their heads and whisper that it’s some “fancy shit.” 

At the same time, Candice continues to grill Vanessa. She asks her how she plans on integrating her old life into this new fugazi one. What will happen when her visa runs out? What does she tell her parents? What will she do for money? What about her daughter, Lottie? Van had an answer and solution for all of her questions until she was asked about Lottie. She stumbled and stuttered and then finally broke down. She starts breaking dishes and screaming. Candice consoles her friend as Van’s voice returns to normal. 

Xosha and Shanice realize they’re eating a human hand and jump from their seats after screaming. Alexander Skarsgård arrives late to the table and exclaims that hands are his favorite.

Later that night, Candice and Van sit on a bench overlooking a river and catch up, as two real people. No French persona, no influencer bullshit. Van admits to feeling like a lost failure during her last days in Atlanta and having wanted to commit suicide. She said she closed her eyes while driving. She says she felt as Lottie knew about her moment of weakness and was judging her later that day when she picked her up from school later that day. As a result of that, she dropped Lottie off with her parents and went to Europe, finally delivering the truth on the question Darius asked her all the way back in Episode 2 of Season 3: Why are you here? As for her persona, she said she was watching the 2001 film, Amelie, and decided she wanted to be Amelie. Van says she does not know who she is. Candice says she is somebody. I say that’s probably enough. Van realizes she needs to go back to Atlanta and confront her problems head on. 

Candice sent Xosha in her place to pee on the rich man rather than her, so she could be there for her friend. The man lies down on the tarp, almost nude. Xosha looks out the window, to the Parisian skyline while peeing on his face. 

song forty-one: “Splash Waterfalls” by Ludacris 

There’s a post credit scene. Or an epilogue to the season, to put it more genuinely. A delivery man for lost luggage brings a bag tagged for Earnest Marks into a hotel lobby. The lobby looks very American but it’s not explicitly said if that’s the case. The delivery man has an Atlanta accent. He meets Earn in the lobby, but Earn maintains that he didn’t lose any luggage. The delivery man does not really care, he tells Earn to sign because his name fits. Earn takes the bag. He sits in his room and opens it. There are pills, a picture, a deftones tee, amongst other things.  The bag belongs to white Earnest Marks. The demented white fisherman from the prologue who let the shit water swallow his friend. The same white Earnest Marks who shot himself in the head after giving advice to Marshall Johnson while on the run from reparations in the “the big payback” episode. Earn doesn’t know this though. So he absentmindedly places those objects to the side and goes about with his night. 

song forty-two: “Above Below” by Eddie Chacon ft. Nick Hakim 

Zazie Beetz stated in multiple interviews that she saw Van and Earn’s storyline as completely detached from the rest of the show and what goes on with Paper Boi or Earn. As far as her performance, she is negotiating with completely different tonalities and emotions than the rest of the cast. I think that shows a lot in this episode, even in one mainly bereft of Earn. 

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This is not the first time Van has had episodes with her at the center of the narrative, look back to “Value” in Season 1 and “Champagne Papi” in Season 2 for examples, but this one is far stranger than the earlier offerings. This episode feels closer to the Paper Boi centered episodes. Van is completely lost and as a result of that, she has constructed a new life for herself that’s completely out of touch with reality. She was only brought back down to Earth at the mention of her daughter. While the escalating insanity was very entertaining, I think the emotional core of the story would have benefitted from more time being spent with Van as her true self. But I guess we’ll see her find herself in Season 4. 

The “Tarrare” element of the story was interesting. A secret society of rich cannibals is very in line with the type of horror elements I expect from Atlanta. The idea of Van becoming an outcasted myth was super cool, I really enjoyed the story. Her dynamic with her rotating cast of seemingly distant friends have always been interesting. Van always seems to feel lesser around them. She was the one with the broke baby daddy and a shitty teaching job. But now that Earn ain’t broke, she doesn’t seem any better off. Van doesn’t have the life she thinks she deserves and as long as there is friction there, she’ll never be happy. I could relate to that. 

Aside from the episode, the epilogue allowed the “curse of whiteness” elements to come full circle. We have known that white Earn had the same name as our Earn since episode 5. And we could suspect that the family that he was expected to pay reparations to may have Earn’s own. But Earn has elevated himself. At the end of Season 1, Earn was sleeping in a storage unit. At the end of Season 2, Earn was hanging onto his job by a string. But here, at the end of Season 3, Earn is comfortable and well paid. Due to the circumstances of where and when he is, you could say that he’s… almost white? 

The epilogue was a physical manifestation of that feeling. Earn inherited whiteness from the white man of his nightmares and moving forward, he will be comfortable. Even in Atlanta. In Season 4, we don’t expect to see the same struggle from earlier seasons. Earn has “ascended” to whiteness, the same as Paper Boi. Not exactly obvious, because as we saw throughout the season, he will still face racism in a number of ways but he’s secure now. He’s not struggling anymore. He has usurped the demons of his past and leveled the playing field. All of those demons…the curse… is the problem of white people now, not his. Earn is returning to Atlanta a new man and his Atlanta will be a new Atlanta. I can’t wait for Season 4. 

 -

The two primary things I was looking for throughout the season was evaluating Atlanta as a lens and the curse of whiteness. I feel as if the curse of whiteness has been continuously defined and refined throughout my notes. Almost all of the episodes touched on this in some way, but it was at the forefront of “three slaps,” “the big payback,” “white fashion,” “trini 2 de bone,” and “rich wigga, poor wigga.” 

The curse of whiteness, to put it succinctly, is a direct result of a culture that orients itself around circumstance rather than heritage, truth, or accountability. If you’re white, you’re treated like what you’re going through but if you’re black, you’re treated like what you are. No matter what else is going on, you are white. In the world of Atlanta, that has finally been criminalized in ways that black people have been criminalized in real life for the past 400 years. White people throughout the season are victims of their own decisions simply because no one has the heart to tell them the truth. Amber and Gayle, the suicidal foster parents. Will, the uneasy investor. Fernando, the ghost-fucking billionaire. Marshall Johnson, reparations dodger and cookie thief. Marcello and the rest of the design team at Esco Esco. Sharon, the jollof gentrifier. Miles and Bronwyn, the absent parents. Aaron, the broke almost white teen. White Earnest Marks, the demon himself. Their pain didn’t stop with them though, mainly because they couldn’t see who it belonged to. They were bleeding and hungry so they ate others and when they were finished, they ate themselves too. Whiteness, as a culture; eats, colonizes, and corrupts. 

The way the curse of whiteness ties directly into the main story with Paper Boi and Earn is very interesting. The main point is that the circumstances of where and when they are has changed. They are at an elevated point in life and because their proximity to whiteness is new, they can sense the shift in how they are being treated. There is an immense amount of anxiety about how they’re handling their relationships and where the truth in their life is coming from, especially in the case of Paper Boi. He’s a superstar now. Paper Boi’s everything we ever wanted him to be but he doesn’t even think he’s himself anymore. He seems different too. Has he traded authenticity for whiteness? What’s he being authentic to? I don’t think I have the answer.

As far as answering what Atlanta means as a lens or a way of looking at the world, I think the answer was more infused in the overall creative direction of the season rather than the narratives.  The team behind Atlanta wanted to make a maximalist season and be contrarian at the same time. They simply wanted to do what others cannot do. Atlanta is a dedication to relentless eccentricity. The best of the city all have their own identities and perspectives while maintaining a strong sense of community. This dedication to relentless eccentricity gives what could have been a very disjointed season, a layer of cohesion. 

On Hulu, in the episode descriptions, Atlanta provides further insight into the abrasive mindset they had when releasing the season. It reads as if they anticipated what people would say and hoped that they would dislike it. 

EPISODE I, “Three Slaps”: Wow it’s been a minute. I mean, I like this episode about the troubled kid but we waited 50 years for this? 

EPISODE II, “Sinterklaas Is Coming to Town”: I think everybody knows blackface ain’t cool anymore, we get it. They be trying too hard to go viral. 

EPISODE III, “The Old Man and the Tree”: This one was cool. Going to rich parties and meeting weirdos. Season 1 was better. 

EPISODE IV, “The Big Payback”: I was legit scared watching this. 

EPISODE V, “Cancer Attack”: Sometimes shows just be over my head acting fake deep. Where’s the poop jokes? 

EPISODE VI, “White Fashion”: I’ve definitely seen this before on a better show. They’re always stealing ideas. But the fashion industry gotta be exposed #streetwear

EPISODE VII, “Trini 2 De Bone”: White people watching this be like… Pain. 

EPISODE VIII, “New Jazz”: Al and Darius walk around Amsterdam. Psssh, I could make a way better TV show than this. 

EPISODE IX, “Rich Wigga, Poor Wigga”: Black and White episode? Yawn. Emmy Bait. Why do they hate black women so much? 

EPISODE X, “Tarrare”: Tarrare was a real person. Wild. They gotta stop biting these better shows tho. 

Every episode description reads like a twitter recap of the episode and they’re pretty accurate. These are the reactions they’re hoping we are having and in reaction to some of the noise that took over during their hiatus. This is the lens. Atlanta is a world in conversation with both reality and the fictional. Atlanta is the mythical place that inspired that. 

Final notes: I wish the season gave Darius more to do. Maybe in Season 4. The season was funny as hell and visually stunning. I love how they managed to subvert my expectations and still live up to them. Van and Earn’s love story needs more time. Brian Tyree Henry is a star and I hope to see him as a leading man for years to come. I hope to leave these characters in a hopeful place. I know the creators of the show don’t give a fuck what I have to say. Season 4 really needs to be in Atlanta, for my sanity. 

Atlanta is Mordor. Atlanta is Asgard. Atlanta is Westeros. Atlanta is Wakanda. Atlanta is Olympus. Atlanta is a black fairy tale. 

5 APPLES OF 5 APPLES

notes on: Atlanta S3 [part two]

MEDIUM: Television 

GENRE: Comedy/Drama 

STUDIO: FX 

EPISODES: 10 

FAVORITE EPISODES: “The Big Payback” “Old Man And The Tree” “Cancer Attack” “New Jazz”  

LEAST FAVORITE EPISODES: n/a

Release Year: 2022

[part two] 

EPISODE IV: “the big payback” 

Directed by Hiro Murai, Written by Francesca Sloane 

A white everyman stands in line at a cafe. He’s listening to a NPR podcast. The black man ahead of him in line is having an animated conversation with the white barista. It appears that they’re familiar, possibly dating. But we can’t hear them, we are in the world with the white man listening to a podcast about wildlife. The white everyman, our man, is eyeing a packet of cookies but he doesn’t purchase them. The black man ahead of him in line retreats, the white everyman buys a large coffee and goes about his day in his bubble with his coffee and stolen cookies. He doesn’t even realize he’s being followed by a blue car. 

song eighteen: “Jay” by Plastic Girls 

The white everyman is Marshall Johnson. He’s recently separated from his wife and on the brink of divorce from the mother of his daughter. He’s picking up his daughter, Katie, from his wife’s home to take her to school. They’re amicable and it appears they can still work out whatever is ailing their marriage. Marshall asks his wife for a tall standing lamp for his new apartment; she appears to agree that he can have it. 

On the way to school, the radio is talking about a court case in which a black man sues Josh Beckford, an early Tesla investor, because his family used to own the black man’s family. The black man won the lawsuit and set a precedent for individualized reparations. The people on the radio speak of heightening racial tensions and what this means for anyone else looking to find the descendants of the white people who owned their family. While listening, Marshall receives a phone call from an UNKNOWN number and declines it. He drops Katie off at school and promises to try to work things out with her mother before heading off to work. The same blue car that followed him from the cafe earlier in the episode is waiting outside of his workplace. 

Marshall Johnson works for Superior Shrimp Co. A white co-worker asks him about the Josh Beckford case and Marshall isn't very worried about it. He writes it off as rich people's problems. There is a meeting at work. They’re having layoffs because the owners of Superior Shrimp Co. have anxiety about personal litigation and are worried about being sued for their family owning slaves. All of his white co-workers get increasingly worried that their lawsuits are coming next but Marshall maintains that he has nothing to worry about, neglecting the offers to look down his family tree. 

Later that night, at home in his apartment, Katie asks him if they’re racist. Marshall says they aren’t and that they were enslaved thousands of years ago by the Byzantine empire because they’re Austro-Hungarian. Before he can get into it even further, he declines another call from UNKNOWN. And then there’s a knock on his door. He answers. There’s a white man and behind him, a middle-aged black woman. The white man gives him a paper and walks away. The middle-aged black woman pulls out her phone and begins recording. He has been served by Sheniqua Johnson. 

Sheniqua Johnson is a middle-aged black woman. Marshall’s family used to own her family. She is claiming his house and a shouting match ensues. Marshall kicks her out but she leaves, as confident as ever. She tells him not to bother calling the police because she already called them. Marshall is embarrassed and asks Katie not to tell her mother about this. Hilariously, Sheniqua tells Marshall “don’t slam her door!” as she leaves. 

The following day, Marshall sneaks into work. No black people showed up for work, except Willy and Lester. One of his white co-workers, Tim from accounting, wears an “I OWNED SLAVES” shirt but it’s inverted in a way that it only reads correctly in the mirror. This was the only stipulation from his lawsuit, the family that he owned only demanded he wore the shirt once a week as acknowledgment of their past transgressions. I think this is the core precept of the entire episode, as funny and ridiculous as it is. White people have a tendency to write off slavery and the ways in which they benefitted from it, as Marshall has been doing the entire episode. For many, acknowledgement and an honest dedication towards righteous retribution would be enough to begin to heal. 

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Marshall is resistant to both acknowledgement and retribution, so Sheniqua begins to demonstrate outside of his workplace, repeatedly confessing the sins of his family to anyone within earshot of her bullhorn. Marshall implores her to stop but he also does not budge nor begin to try and see where she is coming from. Sheniqua continues her protest. 

Marshall asks his black co-worker, Lester, for advice. Lester tells him that Sheniqua likely won’t stop until he apologizes and compromises himself in some capacity, likely financially. Marshall rejects Lester’s advice and consults his white coworkers who tell him to fight back. She has left the parking lot of his workplace before his shift is over but Marshall has bigger problems now. 

His ex-wife, Natalie, texts him and says they have to talk. Her emojis went from yellow to black in the thread and that’s one of those sneaky, funny as hell jokes that Atlanta excels at. Natalie had spoken to Sheniqua and decided to finalize the divorce because she can’t afford to be tied up with Marshall financially. Marshall maintains he didn’t do anything wrong and that his situation could happen to anyone but Natalie disagrees. 

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“I’m Peruvian.” 

“You were white yesterday!” 

Natalie tells Marshall he has to leave and he does. The lamp he asked for is crumpled on the curb, in the trash. The divorce has been made official. Sheniqua cost Marshall his wife and a chance at a complete family life. 

song nineteen: “Make It Last Forever” by Keith Sweat ft. Jacci McBride 

Marshall rounds the corner into his apartment complex and Sheniqua’s family is staked out in front of his apartment door, having a cookout. Sheniqua alerts the men in her family that he’s the culprit and they begin to advance towards his car. Marshall begins to panic as one of the older kids, Jason, begins to chase after him on foot. Nigga runs like a T-1000. This is underscored diegetically by “Make it Last Forever” by Keith Sweat and Jacci McBride. The juxtaposition of the smooth angelic vocals and the complete panic of Marshall’s movements along with the efficiency of Jason’s strides makes for comedy gold. Marshall eventually gets away. Sheniqua has seized his work life, his family life, and his home life. 

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After being exiled from his own home, Marshall checks into an extended stay hotel. He cries while eating a cookie in bed. After a while, he goes into the lobby and sits down. Across from him is the white fisherman from the prologue of the first episode, “three slaps,” having a drink. His name is Earnest and his friends call him E. They lost his luggage. He’s running from reparations and he suspects Marshall is in the same boat as he is. 

song twenty: “The First Time I Ever Saw Your Face” by Roberta Flack 

Marshall continues to complain about his situation and malign the connection between him and the sins of his fathers. He doesn’t feel like he deserves this, but White Earnest isn't as sure of that. He continually casts doubts onto the validity of their victimhood by saying, “I don’t know” while Marshall laments himself. His grandfather and his bootstraps weren’t earned through merit and hard work but blood and tears; and they were hardly bootstraps at all but instead they were black hands connected to black dreams growing within black people. After Marshall says “we don’t deserve this,” White Earnest asks an important question: “what do they deserve?” 

White Earnest goes into a speech about how white people treat slavery like a great mystery of the past, as if the ramifications of it suddenly ended the moment it was outlawed. They don’t want to talk about it or hear about it or even right the wrongs that sprouted from it. American chattel slavery is a burden that white people do no wish to bear. But White Earnest also says that “confession is not absolution” and something must be done to wipe away the sins of their fathers or else they'll be cursed with this burden forever. 

Slavery is not a mystery, but a ghost that haunts black people in ways white people can’t see. But as White Earnest screeched in Locquareeous’s dream, “we’re cursed too.” Slavery isn't black people’s burden to carry and it shouldn’t be. The weight should be on the oppressor, not the oppressed. And this is an opportunity to balance those scales, forever. 

White Earnest draws comparisons to white people did to black people all across the world for hundreds of years and the conditions in which Sheniqua is forcing Marshall into right now. They’re similar. A complete destruction of family, wealth, legacy, heritage, and tradition. But in the end, White Earnest tells Marshall that they will be okay with this new status quo and overall, it’s better for the future of their people. Even for Katie. 

“The curse has been lifted from her, all of us. We were running from it but now we are free.” 

song twenty-one: “It Never Entered My Mind” by Miles Davis 

White Earnest excuses himself and walks outside to stand by the pool, leaving Marshall with his thoughts. We can imagine that he is contemplating just paying Sheniqua as he scrolls through her Instagram profile. Just as he is making a decision, White Earnest shoots himself in the head and plops into the pool. Everyone around them descends into disarray, except for the black waiter who says “there is more where that came from.” White Earnest’s lifeless body and bleeding head floats in the pool, arms spread in Christ-like imitation. 

The episode ends with us following a late arriving Latino waiter to work. It’s apparent that there has been a time jump. The manager of the restaurant is addressing the team, a team that accounts for Marshall. Marshall has been pushed down into a lower place but he does seem happier. Or least as though he has accepted it. Marshall pays restitution taxes, 15% of his paycheck, which is higher than his other slave-owning coworkers. Most of the patrons of the high end restaurant appear to be black. The tables have been turned or at least the playing field has been leveled. Equity is on the way. Or at least that’s the idea. 

song twenty-two: “Les Fleurs” by Minnie Ripperton. 

I think applying Atlanta’s definition of whiteness is important when considering the projected consequences of reparations. If being white is a social circumstance of where and when you are, changing the space around whiteness is more important than changing whiteness itself if white supremacy is to be defeated. The reparations are expected to do that. Most of the negative outcomes that displace Marshall are social rather than financial. If Marshall is being pushed to a “lower” place financially, socially, and economically then he has the same living conditions as much of the black community does and is no longer white, at least not white in equivalence to the current status quo. 

The idea that an even playing field for the future would provide absolution for the sins of white people is an interesting one, but I think it even falls short of what is truly required for equity. But it’s a step in the right direction. It’s a big payback for sure, though I don’t think we are even. 400 years can’t disappear overnight. I’m not sure there is anything white people can do to be free. Bringing black people into the same social circumstances as white people would certainly bring equity and improve the quality of life for a race that has been disenfranchised for far too long but forgiveness would have to be there for absolution to be complete. And the crux of forgiveness is always on the victim. I don’t think that’s fair. Some things deserve to be held onto. Payback’s a bitch.  

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EPISODE V: “Cancer Attack” 

Directed by Hiro Murai, Written by Jamal Olori 

We are at a Paper Boi concert in Budapest, Hungary. Earn is instructing a runner to bring him ginger beer rather than ginger ale for Paper Boi’s dressing room. Earn looks tired and generally unhappy as he has through much of the season so far, he’s managing a very big production. Darius has found a blueprint of the venue and wants to explore it, he thinks the venue is haunted and exploration holds an enlightening adventure. Darius and Paper Boi laugh and joke around, they’re having fun sans Earn. Socks is still around. It’s good vibes. He’s busy worrying about Van’s whereabouts and busy being angry with her for not letting him in. It’s been 6 days. Paper Boi senses this and he’s trying to talk to him about it but Earn isn't really hearing him. Earn has a job to do and Paper Boi.. Alfred has become that job rather than his cousin.  We spend a lot of time with Alfred in this episode. 

twenty-three: “Doja Cat” by $NOT 

But for now, we stick with Paper Boi. Paper Boi is doing a meet and greet with a kid dying of cancer and his parents. The kid is a big fan of Paper Boi. The meet and greet ends, Paper Boi gets hyped up by Darius to get on stage. While he’s getting hyped up, a strange skinny white man comes on stage and gets the crowd riled up. Earn, already irritated, is not amused. 

“Get the fuck off of the stage!” 

Paper Boi has a great set and he’s feeling good, good vibes persist. That is, until he realizes his phone is missing. Darius, Paper Boi, and Earn frantically scour the dressing room but come up empty. Socks says he’s going to help them look for it and suggests that the make-a-wish kid, Marvy, may have stolen it before the set. Earn makes a call and it turns out the kid is being rushed off the premises due to a “cancer attack.” Earn deduces that Marvy was guilty and raced out to catch him before he was able to leave. 

Turns out, Marvy is on a stretcher on his way to the ambulance. In a hilarious moment, he requests Marvy’s assistance then pats him down as the crowd boos him before Marvy’s father pushes Earn away. Marvy did not steal Paper Boi’s phone and cancer attacks are apparently real. 

The reason Paper Boi is so bothered about losing his phone is because Darius forbade them from having an iCloud because of his conspiracies. There is information on the phone that cannot be retrieved. Socks suggests that maybe the fan that had crashed the stage had the phone. This is the second time Socks has offered a suspect.  Folk, the venue manager, tells them about Wiley, the fan that was onstage. Wiley is Folk’s nephew through marriage and he was backstage getting interviewed about a job. He tells them to get his number from the rigger and they do. 

Earn calls him and tries to coax him into coming back to the venue by promising a meet-and-greet with Paper Boi. Wiley is dubious about the whole situation and the whole procedure starts to feel like pulling teeth. Socks comes and grabs the phone and threatens to kill Wiley. He’s aggressive and animated and angry. He’s “the white Liam Neeson bruv.” 

Paper Boi snatches the phone from Socks to alleviate the situation and calm Wiley’s nerves to get him to return to the venue with the phone. Wiley hangs up before telling Paper Boi whether or not he’s coming back. But he does come back. Folk tells them to come and speak with him. The room is set up interrogation style. Before going in, they tell Socks he can’t enter because he’s too hot. 

Wiley says he does not have the phone and he just came back to meet Paper Boi and to be honest, he’s weird as hell. When Earn attempts to put him at ease, he immediately inverts energy and puts everyone on edge even more than they already are. The contentious environment is further cloaked in anxiety with every word that spills out of Wiley’s mouth. 

“Nobody is gonna die.” 

“We are all gonna die someday. Maybe my end should come at the hands of Paper Boi.” 

It becomes clear pretty soon that Wiley is a big fan of Paper Boi. He says he feels like he’s dreaming and a frustrated Paper Boi asserts that nobody is dreaming this. Then Wiley says something that startles Paper Boi. He asks him if he dreams of box-top Chevys or kissing a thorn on a rose. Something sweet, but it hurts. It’ll make you never trust anything too beautiful again. Paper Boi rounds up Earn and Darius and goes back out to the hallway to re-group. Folk walks by and reminds them that he’s just “19” (lol). Darius notes that Wiley is blinking every five seconds on the dot. Socks is still angry as hell and eager to enact violence on Wiley, settling for slamming his fists against the wall. They write this off as white boy intensity. Earn wonders what the hell Wiley was getting at about the dream stuff. 

Paper Boi says his boy from high school, Pookie, fucked his high school girlfriend who was named Rose and that a box-top Chevy was his dream car in high school. He says he only rapped about this information on some early tracks that he never released. Those tracks are on his phone. Earn and Paper Boi are now convinced that Wiley has the phone and plan a “good cop, bad cop” routine. 

When Earn, the good cop, approaches Wiley with a can of coke and begins his line of questioning; Wiley immediately upends him by asking him about his accent or lack of it. Earn doesn’t have the stereotypical Atlanta southern dialect. Wiley asks him if he was told that he talked white growing up and if it made him feel separate. 

“I think it’s interesting when people aren’t allowed in the universal group.” 

Donald Glover has expressed feelings of being othered by black people more aligned with traditional African-American culture through his music as Childish Gambino, so this feels like a bit of that coming through onto the screen. Notably, in a season with a heavy concentration on race, this is the only time race or racial dynamics are explicitly brought to the forefront of the conversation. Paper Boi fumes on the side as Wiley continues to derail their investigation. 

Wiley asks for a cigarette and Folk obliges. Wiley takes one tote before coughing his lungs out and inquiring why anyone smokes, further infuriating Paper Boi who is on the brink of attacking Wiley. He charges him but Folk and Earn get him to calm down. Wiley requests one phone call and maintains that he left his phone at home, but when he says the number, it’s a 404 number. It’s Paper Boi’s number. Paper Boi charges Wiley and roughs him up by his sweater. Wiley nervously farts amongst the scrum. Wiley apologizes with tears in his eyes. Folk excuses Wiley’s actions by noting his age and reiterates that he’s 19. Wiley tells them that he’s 32. 

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They leave the room again to catch their whims, the “good cop, bad cop” routine didn’t work. Socks emerges again and tries to attack Folk before they drive him away. He almost says nigga. Earn and Paper Boi go back into the room alone with a new plan to record the conversation and get Wiley to incriminate himself. Wiley made a crane while they were in the hallway. 

As soon as Paper Boi sits down, he tells Earn to excuse himself. Alfred comes out and gives a beautiful, magnificent monologue where he reveals the primary reason he is so pressed about getting his phone back. 

“I haven’t written anything in seven months.” 

“I can’t find the words.” 

“Bah, nothing.” 

“I don’t know what’s bad or good anymore.” 

“I was never into rapping. And now it’s what I do. It’s all I do. Too late for me to anything else. “ 

This new information and peek inside of Alfred’s head reveals that earlier that day on the docks, Alfred had a breakthrough. 

“I heard him, my voice, loud and clear.” 

He found a melody and his voice was singing. He was singing with it. Like a kid on the bus. 

“I’m afraid imma lose it forever if I don’t get it back now. I NEED that phone.” 

Wiley does not directly respond to anything Alfred had to say. He seizes this moment of emotional vulnerability and anger and sadness and honesty to plug in a few emotions and memories of his own. He reveals to Alfred that they have the same birthday, April 28th and that they’re Tauruses. Bull-headed. He takes off his coat and Folk comes in with a guitar for Wiley. Wiley requested it while Alfred was talking. Wiley discloses that once upon a time he got his heart broken and he was lonely and lost and he heard The Postal mixtape and it inspired him.  Alfred’s music brought him out of that dark place. 

“I felt the same. I didn’t sympathize. I didn’t empathize. I felt the same.” 

song twenty-four: “Cancer Attack” by Samuel Blenkin 

Wiley dives into an emotional acoustic song, an original song. The lyrics are haunting and bewitching and enchanting and melancholy and oh so sad. 

“There’s a fire on the mountainside, I can see the smoke rising.” 

“I swear I seen the other side and I never wanted less…” 

“I never needed less…” 

“I don’t need more of you, I don’t want more of you.” 

Once Wiley finishes his song, he rises from his seat and thanks Alfred for meeting him. He wishes him good luck on finding his phone. He honestly did not steal it. They were chasing a red herring, Wiley is innocent. Darius, Earn, and Alfred head back to the tour bus as their failure sinks in.  Socks apologizes for his angry outbursts and they forgive him. Van finally texts back Earn but it’s only a lone “thumbs up” emoji. 

song twenty-five: “Dedicated To The One I Love” by The Temprees 

It’s revealed that Socks had the phone the entire time. Socks finishes his cigarette and throws the phone into the trash. Everyone boards the tour bus. In probably the best use of music in the whole series, “Dedicated To The One I Love” underscores the emotional weight of the scene. Alfred seems to be measuring the viability of his own happiness as he sits down and his team sits around him. The bus has an overhead mirror on the ceiling and everyone rescinds from sight in the reflection as they sit down, except for Alfred. It’s a poignant shot. Alfred is all alone in a room full of people. 

I cried on three different occasions on three different viewings while watching this episode. The first time I cried was on my first viewing, when Alfred was explaining to Wiley about how he lost his voice and how he fears that he’ll never find it again. I understood this, maybe more than I wish to. I’ve been in and out of many funks in my life and recently, all my funks feel deeper than the ones before. But he found a melody and he sang with it. Brian Tyree Henry is awe-inspiring and his performance as Alfred in this episode is the highlight of the entire season, especially during his monologue. The pacing of his speech hums like a slow murmuring saxophone on a blues record. His voice trembles, but it's strong. He acts so much with his face but it still feels restrained and cool. He doesn't make eye contact, not until he needs to. The way he communicated pain, loss, devastation, desperation, hope, anger, and perseverance resonated with me in ways past empathy or sympathy. I felt the same. That’s probably what brought me to tears. I rewatched this scene the day after the episode premiered a few times, just to see if it hit me the same way and it did. A voice is a hard thing to find, in the sense that it normally comes to you without you having anything to do with it. A voice is a hard thing to lose, in the sense that you will be lost without it. A voice is a hard thing to recover, in the sense that our ears have the tendency to go deaf to our own voices.  Silence is a death in a way. Alfred has died without his voice and Paper Boi is what’s left.  

I finally cried during Wiley’s performance of “Cancer Attack” on my fifth viewing. I’m not entirely sure why it broke me when it did. I was going through a time. I am going through a tough time. I am welling up with tears, even as I listen to the song and write these words. There is a lightness and confidence in Wiley’s singing voice that wasn’t there when he spoke. And as lugubrious as the lyrics were, his voice was even more desolate and hollow. I feel a chill, like a ghost has clutched my shoulder and whispered in my ear and said, “it won’t be okay and sometimes that’s okay.” 

The solo conversation between Alfred and Wiley felt like a cloud. Words and ideas just floated around. Whatever weighed too much rained down on both of them. They couldn’t be any more different yet they managed to find the same emotions. That’s human. 

The final time I cried was the final scene, when “Dedicated To The One I Love” by The Temprees began to play. I cried on my sixth viewing. The song is beautiful and I felt an instant attachment to it even on first viewing. The tears however… I think I was just swept up in my feelings of isolation and loneliness, even amongst people. Even amongst people I love. I went back to Georgia recently and I didn’t feel at home, at least not totally and that scared me a bit. I’m terrified of the idea that maybe I’ve lost my home there and I don’t have a home here (New York). Alfred has become Paper Boi and now he’s completely alone. 

I think “Cancer Attack” is the strongest episode of the season and arguably the best episode in the history of Atlanta. The idea of someone who stole your phone helping you look for it is SO Atlanta. The ability to imbue such a familiar story with heavy emotional touchstones is special. I feel better for having experienced it. This episode is probably the most isolated from the “curse of whiteness” storyline for the season. I am not sure that it’s a coincidence that this one also happens to be the best. 

EPISODE VI: “White Fashion” 

Written & Directed BY Ibra Ake 

Marcello is a French fashion designer for fictional high fashion house, Esco-Esco. He is explaining to his boss the genesis of a new design. It’s a hockey jersey. The jersey is the number 5 for the fifth anniversary of the brand. It says Central Park because it was inspired by Central Park. The mascot is an anthropomorphized raccoon with gold teeth named “Mr. Spagooti,” by a manga from Tel Aviv. It only takes a few moments for a trained eye to realize what’s wrong with this picture. 

The Central Park 5 is a nickname for the five black teenage boys who were wrongfully convicted of a rape that occured in Central Park on April 19, 1989. Kevin Richardson, Raymond Santana, Korey Wise, Yusef Salaam, and Antron McCray. Their case re-entered the spotlight due to Netflix and Ava Duvernay’s 2019 mini-series, When They See Us. All five were eventually exonerated but their case survives as a profound example of racism within the American judicial system. 

The sweater is insensitive and the design is a direct reference to the racial failings from Gucci and their blackface sweater from 2019 or Moncler and their sambo collection from 2016. A lot of times these things could be avoided if they had a single black person in the room. It’s hard to believe that these offensive images weren’t purposely perpetrated as part of an outrage marketing scheme. But I guess white people don’t hear the truth all that often, especially when they need it. That’s part of the curse. 

song twenty-six: “Fake Jersey” by Teni 

Earn, Paper Boi, and Darius meet with the heads of Esco Esco. They want Paper Boi to be part of an anti-racist intiative. They are extremely hospitable. They ask them what they want to eat. Earn declines. Paper Boi wants ribs with a simple mac and cheese. Darius wants Naija jollof rice. They’re confused about what “jollof rice” is. He tells them it’s as if your “taste buds have been scammed by a Nigerian prince at a Burna Boy concert.” 

This isn't the first time an ethnic food that holds a special meaning to a certain subculture of blackness has been moved into a folkloric space by Atlanta. Lemon pepper wings, specifically lemon pepper wet, were infamously used to depict luxury and taste during season 1 in the “streets on lock” episode. 

Paper Boi agrees to be part of Esco Esco’s diversity board in exchange for 3 exclusive tailored suits and free clothes whenever he wants. Darius wants the Central Park 5 jersey but they decline his request. Earn wonders why Paper Boi is agreeing to an “uncle tom” photo op. Paper Boi doesn’t care what the streets think, “I shot niggas,” he notes. Earn tells him that if he’s going to be part of this, he should at least take it seriously. Start a “re-invest in your hood campaign” and learn the infrastructure to really make a change. Paper Boi shrugs him off and says the nigga organizing the people always gets shot. 

Sharon, the head of hospitality at Esco Esco, fails to find jollof rice for Darius. She asks if it’s Ghanaian and it was funny as hell to see Darius’s response to the question. She enlists Darius’s help and he gives her a spot in the city. This is the start of storyline B. 

At the presser for the diversity board, Paper Boi meets Khalil. Khalil is a social justice activist (for hire). He is inspired by famed black lives matter activist, DeRay McKesson. DeRay is known for walking around with a blue bubble vest on, Khalil wears a life jacket with “BLM” written on it in sharpie. There is Demarco, a racially ambiguous pro-black activist, likely inspired by Shaun King. And there is Rose, a disabled social justice activist. They’re all there to apologize for white people and tell other white people the things they need to hear. 

“Is racism over?” 

“Fuck no.” - Paper Boi 

“With our initiative, we believe racism will be over by 2024!” - Khalil 

Applause. 

Darius takes Sharon to a Nigerian cuisine restaurant, Eko Chops. He explains Naija, Nollywood, Igbo, jollof, and okra soup Sharon looks around at the restaurant and says it has “growth potential.” Darius doesn’t seem to understand what she’s getting at. 

Paper Boi is not enjoying his time on the diversity board. The social justice activists are all asking for material things; Black Panther 2 tickets, plane tickets, 1000 book purchases, or signed off-white sneakers, rather than trying to enact real change. Paper Boi asks an important question, how does any of that help black people? 

Meanwhile, Earn is trying to fix his apple watch and enlists the concierge service at a nearby hotel to help him. While there, he spots Van and abandons his initial mission. He’s angry with her and she doesn’t seem to understand why, or at least she pretends she doesn’t. She’s completely nonchalant about the entire situation. A white woman comes into the hotel lobby, hysterical, and accuses Van of stealing a wig. Earn and Van play the race card and Earn pretends she’s his fiance to parlay their inconvenience into a free night’s stay at the hotel. The hysterical white woman is escorted off of the premises. Storyline C has emerged. 

Esco Esco actually hired a competent black woman, Eniola, to run the diversity board and she secured 60k in discretionary funds to use towards a movement of their choice. Paper Boi proposes a “re-invest in yo hood campaign” that mirrors what Earn had brought up earlier. They all get on board with it. Khalil and Demarco each have charities and each want to run the campaign through their charities. Paper Boi chooses Khalil because he doesn’t like the way Demarco says nigga. They tell Paper Boi to record a promotional video for the cause and he does it. 

Darius goes back to Eko Chops but the door won’t open. They’ve closed. Across the street is a food truck, called “Naija Bowl.” Sharon quit her job as head of hospitality and bought Eko Chops then gentrified the food into African fusion cuisine. Her replacement lacks all authenticity. White people do this everywhere. She offers Darius a bowl with jollof rice with a peach barbecue reduction and “chunks.” The meal is named “The Darius”  because he is from Georgia. Darius is shaken by this information and throws the bowl away without trying it. 

The same way Eko Chops was gentrified, so was the “re-invest in yo hood campaign.” They “all lives matter” the movement by whitewashing it, decentralizing it, and over-diversifying his message in a black and white ad. A social crime committed against black people has now been used to apologize to all people. Paper Boi sees this and he’s mad but Khalil calms him down with the truth. Truth that he has been hiding from his white cohorts. Khalil asks Paper Boi a crucial question: why would they fund their own demise? 

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song twenty-seven: “Red Room” by Hiatus Kaiyote 

Van and Earn are enjoying a romantic evening in their free hotel room, even though they’re not together. Van tells Earn he worries about everything too much after Earn apologizes for being angry with her for going AWOL. 

song twenty-eight: “In Your Eyes” by BADBADNOTGOOD ft. Charlotte Day Wilson 

Van slow dances with Earn to the music. They breathe on each other. Earn’s mind is elsewhere and he almost ruins the moment. 

“Did you steal that wig?” 

Van kisses Earn instead of responding and they have sex. In the morning, she’s gone and Earn once again left to wonder where she is and worry about where she’s headed. 

song twenty-nine: “Next Time/ Humble Pie” by The Internet 

This episode felt formulaic but it was good to see our main characters again, in a lighter setting. I feel as though it provided supplemental examples of the curse of whiteness and how they often manifest it against themselves in self-destructive ways that frequently go on to consume others as well. Whiteness does not assimilate or fuse into anything, it eats. It ate Paper Boi’s campaign and it ate Eko Chops. Whiteness and culture is like water and oil, it simply does not mix. 

Darius and Paper Boi had funnier storylines but Earn and Van’s storyline was interesting to me. We haven’t gotten a very good peek at what Van has actually been up and we could only assume she has been destroying herself. Seeing Earn make the effort to connect with her and seeing her continue to pull away is disconcerting. In the first two seasons, you would think that everything Earn is now is everything Van ever wanted for her and for their daughter, Lottie. But it’s not enough, probably because this isn't the same Van from seasons 1 and 2. 

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Last postscript thought, when Earn asked Van if she stole the wig amidst their romantic moment, it reminded me of Larry David asking Cheryl if she “respected wood” in the last scene of Season 7 of Curb Your Enthusiasm and I mean that in the best way. 

EPISODE VII: “trini 2 de bone” 

Directed by Donald Glover, Written by Jordan Temple 

song thirty: “Black Harlow” by Sada Baby 

We follow a middle-aged white man’s jog home in Manhattan, NY.  This man is Miles. His son, Bash or Sebastian, is watching The Proud Family but he isn't even supposed to be home. Normally the nanny, Sylvia, has taken him to school by this point but she is nowhere to be found. Bash’s mother and Miles’s wife, Bronwyn, has to cover Sylvia’s slack and she’s annoyed because it has made her miss morning yoga. They’re a fairly wealthy family. 

Bash won’t eat the eggs benedict that Bronwyn bought for him because he says that they’re bland. When asked what they can do to remedy that, Bash suggests they top it with “spicy curry mango.” Surprisingly, they have some in the fridge marked “slight pepper.” Miles tries some and it’s too spicy for him but Bash loves it. Miles gets a phone call and receives the news that Sylvia has died. As Bronwyn and Miles assess the news, there is a loud knock at the door. When they answer, there is a mysterious package addressed to Sylvia with no apparent messenger. They bring the package inside with intentions to return it to the doorman. 

song thirty-one: “Into The Shore” by Micheal Palmer and Samuel Dubois 

Bronwyn takes Bash to school. She’s flustered and Bash does not know why. He asks her if she needs an “ocean breath.” 

The doorman has no idea who the messenger of the package was. Bronwyn and Miles debate over telling Bash about Sylvia’s death. I get the feeling that they use Sylvia to be absent parents, a luxury only afforded to upper class people. They even complain about the teacher’s at Bash’s school pressing them for not being there on family picture day. They finally settle on telling Bash about Sylvia’s death because she meant a lot to him. But they don’t know how. Dinosaurs? Old dogs? Wooly mammoths? They settle on the truth. 

“Sylvia died.” 

“Can she come back and say goodbye?” 

They decide on taking Bash to the funeral so he can give Sylvia a proper goodbye. Later that night, the mysterious messenger drops off the mysterious package again. They bring it back into the house and vouch to return it in the morning. Sylvia left a lot of things at their apartment, a sign that she spent a lot of time there. Bronwyn doesn’t seem very concerned about Sylvia or very sad about her death. She selfishly laments her for being too old and pines for a younger, more metropolitan, Asian nanny that can teach Mandarin to Bash. Miles does not seem fazed by Bronwyn’s lack of compassion, he only notes that her vision sounds expensive. 

Bronwyn struggles to do everything that Sylvia used to do for them, like put Bash to sleep or comfort him in his bed. Bash has to teach his mother how to care for him, he asks her to sing the “sweet and T” song to him how Sylvia used to. 

Miles, Bronwyn, and Bash all go to Sylvia’s funeral. Some of the black people at the funeral are confused. They call them cockroaches which Bash explains to mean, “cockroach has no place at fowl party.” Khadija, one of Sylvia’s daughters, greets the family and shows Miles where to park after she and Bash bond over Sylvia’s memory and odd sayings she used to teach them. Khadija forces them to stay for the wake. 

It’s an open casket funeral, Sylvia’s loved ones cry hysterically. As Miles, Bronwyn, and Bash sit down, the family offers their condolences and tries to make them feel at home. In what is perhaps the funniest moment in the whole episode; Curtis, played by Chet Hanks, introduces himself to Bash’s family with a thick and very bad Trinidadian accent. Chet Hanks seized internet infamy when he posted videos of him speaking patois and warning us of a “white boy summer.” The videos garnered a lot of criticism due to the fact that he has a history of violence against black women and he is a white man appropriating Caribbean cultures for comedy (seemingly). Atlanta completely leans into this to add a layer to a pretty funny joke, albeit problematic. When Miles asks him if he’s from Trinidad or Jamaica, Curtis corrects him and says it’s “Trinidad and TOBAGO. And no, I’m from Tribeca.” 

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Curtis used to be cared for by Sylvia as a child and now as an adult man, he has completely wrapped himself in a culture that is not his own. Culture is an inheritance and their high class values have caused them to be completely disconnected from passing that along. Curtis could be a warning of what Bash could be in the future. 

Sylvia has three children of her own: Khadija, Princess, and Steven Jr. She also has a nephew, Oswald James, who is a wide receiver in the NFL. Princess looks angry while her siblings look somber and grateful. A phone by the name of “gooch lickman” airdrops Miles a photo of his booty hole. I spent a lot of time researching this and extensively looking for clues about what it may be in reference to but I’ve come to the conclusion that it was just supposed to be an absurd moment in an absurd series of events. It comes and passes very quickly. 

She believed in tradition but is not at all traditional. Bronwyn and Miles learn a lot about Sylvia and her passions outside of taking care of their child. It’s easy to imagine that this is their first time really registering that she is a human being. 

song thirty-two: “Trini 2 De Bone” by David Rudder 

Due to Sylvia’s passion for dancing and her history as a dancer for various dance companies, a group of Trinidadian dancers perform at the ceremony. Princess is still angry and lets the resentment she harbored towards her mother drive her to interrupt the ceremony. She complains of being left behind while Sylvia raised white people’s kids. She laments being one of her mother’s many sacrifices. 

“Who do you think she sacrificed? …Where was she?” 

“She was providing for us.” 

“She should’ve been taking care of her own.” 

Princess begins to bash the coffin out of anger which causes a riotous reaction from everyone else. A fight breaks out between the family and they war and Sylvia’s sister, Nancy, tries to climb into the coffin. Curtis yells out “world star” as he starts recording, a dated reference for sure but it fits for a white culture vulture and it’s a possible reference to Childish Gambino’s Because The Internet. The fight finally subsides when the Pastor exclaims that they’re “scaring the white people” while Miles tries to lead his family out of the service. 

There is a moment of awkwardness and confusion and even dishonesty, but Bash pushes that away when he admits that he was scared. The pastor says that they’re just sad. 

“This is how we sad.” 

Miles mutters “Trini 2 De Bone” to himself on the way home. They tuck Bash in for bed and he says goodnight to Sylvia’s empty seat in his bedroom. In their bedroom, Bronwyn tells Miles that she never wants Bash to feel the way Princess feels about Sylvia, about her. This seems to be a possible path for their relationship because she has been pushing her parental duties off to other people for Bash’s entire life. When she asked what Bash wanted to be when he grew up, he said he wanted to “play steelpan like Uncle Samuel.” She has no idea what that means and neither does Miles. They don’t know their son at all. 

The knocking comes back in the middle of the night and this time it is rampant and droning. knock knock knock knock knock knock knock knock knock knock knock knock knock knock. Miles answers the door and the package addressed to Sylvia is back, marked “final notice.” It’s a school family picture with Sylvia and Bash. A melancholic rendition of “Trini 2 De Bone” starts playing as Miles looks down the hallway to see who left the package. Who’s watching? 

I feel like this is the most self-contained Atlanta episode. Aside from Paper Boi street posters in the background in the funeral parking lot, there are no main characters. In addition to that, the other anthology style episodes of Atlanta take place in Atlanta so the story maintains the same texture. This story takes place in Manhattan so it feels pretty different. It’s a good story though. A restrained horror exercise, I would say. 

The axis on which the story spins is that of distortion. Miles and Bronwyn have given their child to Sylvia and haven’t seemed to give much thought to what that really means. Culturally, Bash has much more Trinadadian sensibilities than white ones. Curtis could be a look into the future for what Bash will be. Bash watches black cartoons, says black sayings, has black tastes, and even carries the cadence of someone much older than him. Bronwyn seems to think of cultures as different hats for Bash to try on. But it’s deeper than that, it’s in his bones now. She has taken him and not with anything sinister, only with love and attention and adoration. 

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[end of part two] 

notes on: Atlanta S3 [part one]

MEDIUM: Television 

GENRE: Comedy/Drama 

STUDIO: FX 

EPISODES: 10 

FAVORITE EPISODES: “The Big Payback” “Old Man And The Tree” “Cancer Attack” “New Jazz”  

LEAST FAVORITE EPISODES: n/a

Release Year: 2022

[part one] 

Season 2 of Atlanta ended in May 2018. At the end, Earn (played by Donald Glover aka Childish Gambino), Paper Boi (played by Brian Tyree Henry), and Darius (played by Lakeith Stanfield) board a flight to Europe to open up for Clark County on tour. The main characters have clarity and defined purpose moving forward because all of the anxieties that persisted throughout the second season had been resolved. The primary tension of season 2 was the viability of Earn as Paper Boi’s long term manager and Paper Boi coming to terms with his rising star while trying to retain his authenticity that propelled him into fame in the first place. Both conflicts coalesced into Earn attempting to frame Clark County with a gun charge. Paper Boi appreciated Earn’s grit and decided to keep his cousin on as his manager, cementing his foundation as a family-oriented operation. Season 3 of Atlanta picks up nowhere near any of this. 

Four years have passed in real life between season 2 and season 3 and it was made clear season 2 occurred very shortly after season 1, so it would have been a big ask to expect Atlanta to remain in the same cultural space that the world was in nearly 7 years ago when the show debuted on FX. The main characters still spend the season in Europe but this is Paper Boi’s second European tour, not his first one. And he’s the headliner this time. Earn is good at his job now. No more selling drugs. There is no more anxiety about money. There has been a glow-up in every sense and as a result, most of the antagonism is found internally and the majority of the external strife has been washed in a zanier light, at least in regards to the main characters. 

At SXSW’s 2022 Atlanta Q&A, Donald Glover said, “we just wanted to make a black fairy tale.” And it definitely feels that way. The afro-surrealist nature of the show exhibited in the first two seasons remains an anchor of their storytelling dynamic. The magical realism is subdued, the real life pastiches and eccentric characters are believable. I think it is an important note that even as the world they built got crazier and crazier, the people in that world stayed as bound as ever to human emotions, motives, and expectations. 

The primary motif explored in season 3 is the “curse of whiteness.” Donald Glover said he and his team of writers heard someone complain about the burden of being white and their team really dedicated themselves to finding out exactly what that means and I think by the end of the season they added many worthwhile ideas to the conversation. A lot of the imagery behind these ideas were grounded in horror, with fear and comedy being closely related. A lot of words could be used to describe this season. Gothic, futuristic, evangelical, poststructuralist, folkloric, ghetto, postmodern, fantastical, romantic… Atlanta is somehow all of this.  

The final and most interesting idea I kept an eye on throughout the duration of season 3 of Atlanta is the value of Atlanta as a point of view rather than a place. I am of the school that any place is really a people and a culture and that Atlanta would be Atlanta literally anywhere in the world. But Donald Glover said he and his brother, Stephen, simply wanted to showcase their viewpoint of the world and how the way they grew up influenced that. I think this approach is how Atlanta remained Atlanta while taking the primary characters away from the titular city for the entirety of the season. What is Atlanta, as a lens? 

Season 3 is 10 episodes, split in two parts: 4 anthology style episodes with world building stories and 6 episodes centered on the core four characters (Earn, Paper Boi, Darius, and Van). The team behind Atlanta began the season away from the core four after already spending four years away from us. This contrarian mindset informed the entirety of the season. 

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EPISODE I: “three slaps” 

Directed by Hiro Murai, Written by Stephen Glover 

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song one: “Midnight” by Porter Wagoner   

At rise, Atlanta is a dark expanse with a white man and a black man sitting on a dinghy fishing boat. A single light emanates from the base of their boat. The darkness of the sky is mirrored by the black of the water. A bridge is overhead. The white fisherman and the black fisherman toss back beers. The black fisherman suggests they should go home as “Midnight” by Porter Wagoner plays faintly on the radio. The black fisherman says the river always gave him the “heebie-jeebies,” that it’s murky, and he recalls a time he almost died in it. The black fisherman thinks back to the near-drowning and says that it felt as though hands were dragging him to the base of the river. His cousin had to save him. The white fisherman does not think this is an accident. 

The white fisherman answers that it’s “shit water” due to a drowned self-governed black town being buried beneath the river. This folk tale is reminiscent of, and likely inspired by, the fables surrounding Georgia’s famed Lake Lanier where people often die in the water (over 200 people have died at Lake Lanier since 1994). The white fisherman says the town was intentionally flooded by white people in a racist attack against the black people for nearly achieving independent sustainability and equity. The white fisherman suggests that the river is haunted and that they were almost “white.” This is where Atlanta first re-defines an already widely known term. 

For the most part, whiteness is seen as the state of being caucasian, having European heritage, or a close proximity to it. Due to many sociological and historical factors, whiteness is closely tied to privilege and prestige. “Whiteness” is not something we are supposed to be able to achieve, we either are or we aren’t. But Atlanta argues otherwise. The white fisherman says that white is not a real thing but a social circumstance paid for by blood and money. He says that white is where and when you are. And that whiteness is a blinding, chilling, hypothermia-inducing curse. He says that a white person is incapable of differentiating between their own blood and the blood of a black person. As the white fisherman drones on about whiteness and the spatial ignorance that comes along with it, his voice begins to fade away along with the music. The lights dim and the white fisherman loses his eyes. He screeches, “we’re cursed too!” at the black fisherman as oodles of black hands swarm the black fisherman and drag him into the shit water. Screen goes to black, we jump to a sleeping black teenage boy. 

The white fisherman is an important character for the overall story arc of season 3 and his monologue to the black fisherman can serve as the hypothesis for the entire season. The scene is not just a prologue for episode one, but a clear and concise explanation for the overall argument Atlanta is working towards. What does it mean to become white? How does one ascertain the cause of whiteness? Who has the benefit of choosing whiteness? What do you lose when you choose it? Who are you without your whiteness? How do you break the curse? 

The sleeping black teenage boy is Locquareeous Reed. His name is emphatic and dramatic and it does feel like a name from a black fairy tale. He wakes up in class and begins to dance after the teacher announces to the class that they’re taking a field trip to watch “the new Black Panther 2.” Locquareeous’s dance moves reference a viral video from 2018 when students from Ron Clark Academy in Atlanta, GA broke into celebratory dance after hearing about a field trip to the initial Black Panther release. This is the first direct reference to viral content in the season. 

Locquareeous gets in trouble for dancing his mother and grandpa have to come up to the school and get him from the principal’s office. In an all too familiar way, Locquareeous’s mother and grandpa are not receptive to the message from the principal or guidance counselor and decide to punish him in their own way, via public humiliation which comes in the form two other viral internet videos: slapping him three times in a single motion and forcing him to dance with tears in his eyes. Both videos were well circulated on the internet. Following the three slaps from his grandpa, the school advisor promises to take him away from his family and put him into a safer living environment. Locquareeous seems confused by her shock, the abuse is commonplace and hardly registers on his psyche. 

song two: “Precious Memories” by Rosetta Thorpe 

We follow Locquareeous to his home and we see a single parent-single child living situation. His mother runs everything on the basis of fear and controls him with the threat of her own omnipotence and violence. She is honest and aggressive and takes all resistance to be a show of ingratitude or disrespect. There is a familiarity to her. She is the worst of all of our mothers. I imagine her life is hard and Locquareeous, with his small issues, makes it harder. I want to hate her, but I have empathy for her. Locquareeous eats his mother’s spaghetti, a black American staple, while watching American Dad before a social case worker shows up. Locquareeous does not want to leave but the sight of the social case worker enrages his mother and she pushes him out of her house and into the arms of the system. 

Locquareeous has been given to two lesbian white women. They’re progressive and notably “anti-racist.” They’re the gentrifiers, the type of white plague Jordan Peele warned against in 2018’s smash-hit Get Out. The first white woman is Amber, she says to call her mom. The second white woman is Gayle, she says to call her Gayle. They already have adopted three black kids by the time Locquareeous is brought to the house: Lanre, Yves, and Fatima. They have a small annoying dog named Cornpop. 

The other children are quiet and seem sick and numb to the ways that Amber and Gayle are inadequate, at least in respect to their reactions. The house stinks, they’re broke, they microwave the fried chicken, they feed the dog human food, they don’t own any wash cloths, they’re living in a bando, and Locquareeous has slave-like chores where they want him sing hymns (he sings “Make No Sense” by Youngboy Never Broke Again). Locquareeous is very unhappy and that is constantly communicated both to the audience and to his caregivers, who write him off as ungrateful just as his real mother did. It feels different from the lesbian moms because they are pose real danger to him and write off his unhappiness as ignorance rather than spite. Locquareeous cannot eat the food they try to feed him. They make no effort to understand him. Gayle even renames Locquareeous as “Larry.” 

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I realize the additional layer to Locquareeous and the single story in a scene where Locquareeous has to wear a “free hugs” sign and a fedora to the co-op. The image is a direct reference to Devonte Hart, a black boy who went viral for shedding tears while hugging a police officer in 2014. The inspiration becomes crystal clear when Locquareeous hugs a police officer with tears in his eyes, begging him to take him away from his new white women mothers. Of course, the police officer does nothing. 

The story takes a dark turn into a dramatic irony from this point forward. Devonte Hart and his adopted siblings were murdered when his white women mothers drove them off a California cliff in a misguided group suicide attempt that the children obviously did not consent to. All signs point to this being Locquareeous’s fate as well. The episode starts to feel like a ticking clock, marching towards tragedy. Ain’t shit funny for real. 

Time goes on and Locquareeous starts having nightmares that meld the terrors from his new life with the ones from his old life (Cornpop-grandpa lol). A new black social case worker comes and notices the bad living situation for the children. She pledges to get them out of there after Locquareeous expresses his hunger to her. Gayle takes the new black social case worker to the side and it is insinutated that Gayle murders her before the whole family goes on the run. Her clipboard is strewn about the trash. They drive off, the Hart family fate awaits Locquareeous. 

song three: “The Dream is Still Alive” by Wilson Phillips 

The funniest bit in a rather heavy episode comes when Locquareeous, Yves, Fatima, and Lanre partake in a bit of black telepathy amidst their fear and anxiety about the final destination of Amber and Gayle’s journey. 

These white women are gonna kill us. 

Yeah nigga, we know!

Sweet release. 

My hair hurts. 

Amber and Gayle are not privy to this silent conversation but they stop at a rest stop and express doubts over their decision to end all of their lives. They decide they are doing the right thing but will spare Cornpop’s life. The most important moment here is when Amber asks, “why didn’t anyone stop us?” I feel as though this is Donald Glover asking the audience and America on the behalf of Devonte Hart and his siblings. The answer is white privilege, but more specifically the curse of whiteness inflicted upon them as explained by the white fisherman. Amber and Gayle collect themselves and get back in the van to kill their whole household. 

song four: “Back Baby” by Jessica Pratt 

As they near their final destination (the bridge over the shit water river from the beginning of the episode), Amber and Gayle lock hands and accept their fate. It’s a dark moment and I don’t feel an ounce of sympathy for them. They turn around and expect to see their four black children in the back, thrust into death untimely, but they see Cornpop’s face instead. Locquareeous rolls from the trunk and safely onto the street just as van goes over the cliff and into the river at the base of the ravine. 

There is an air of triumph and relief as Locquareeous rolls in the opposite direction of the evils he was subjected to throughout the episode. A lot of this relief comes from the anticipation of his story ending in the same way as Devonte Hart, but Atlanta used its powers to create a new reality in which his life and his story could continue. This is akin to how Quentin Tarantino re-imagined new endings to historical events in Inglourious Basterds (World War II) and Once Upon A Time In Hollywood (the murder of Sharon Tate). The ability to remake the world as we want it to be is among the most important things a storyteller can do. Locquareeous is Devonte Hart but he is also thousands of other black boys, he is a single story but he’s not the single story. Amber asked why no one stopped them and someone should have. I wish someone stopped Jennifer and Sarah Hart. 

The way they take real “minor” events in black culture and re-create them on screen definitely resembles the satirical brilliance of Aaron McGruder’s The Boondocks, one of the highest compliments I can give. 

song five: “When It’s Time To Go” by Buddy Fo and His Group 

Locquareeous walked all the way back home. He grabs the key from under the mat and lets himself in. He washes the dishes she told him to wash before he was taken away. He slides back into his old life as if nothing happened. His real mother only says, “so you finally decided to come home, huh?” when she catches him in the kitchen. She scoffs. No hug. No grand re-entry or apology. Nothing is said. A lot has been learned. Locquareeous asks, “some spaghetti in there?” but he means I love you. And his mother responds, “yeah, it’s spaghetti in there” but she means I love you too. 

Lanre, Yves, and Fatima were found on the side of the road according to the news before Locquareeous turned the TV to American Dad. He sits and eats the leftover spaghetti as the camera creeps over his shoulder, slowly moving in. Then the camera just stops and watches him. It’s time to go… It’s time to go… It’s time to go.. It’s time…

Locquareeous turns and we awaken on Earn’s face, for the first time this season. At first you can’t see anything except part of his face in an extreme close-up shot, but it cuts out and we can see Earn is waking up in a nice hotel room with some white woman. The blinds are shut all the way down but light is swimming into the room. There are open champagne glasses on the table. The white woman is still asleep. Earn doesn’t seem to know her. He sighs and drops his head.

song six: “Brown Rice” by Don Cherry 

It is unclear if Locquareeous is supposed to be from a dream of Earn’s or not. The Inception-like effect of a dream inside of a dream works, especially given what transpires later on in the season. The white fisherman and black fisherman are buried deep within Earn’s subconscious and we know he easily could have been Locquareeous given a different set of circumstances. The single story has been brought home to the main storyline. The biggest question these “dreams” arise in my mind is this: what do the dreams  communicate about Earn’s current mindset, desires, and anxieties?    

EPISODE II: “sinterklass is coming to town” 

Directed by Hiro Murai, Written by Janine Nabers 

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Episode 2 picks up exactly where episode 1 left off. Earn awakes in a hotel bed with the strange white woman after a night of sex. He goes to the bathroom to take a piss and his phone is blowing up. Swiss Air texts him that he’s late for his flight to Amsterdam. Alfred (Paper Boi) needs 20k. Van needs pickup from the airport. Darius is telling him about a persimmon that tasted like an avocado. He’s in Copenhagen, Denmark. 

In under a minute of screen time, we understand where Earn is in life. He’s still engaging in frivolous and unfulfilling activities while his responsibilities continue to stack up as well. There is a sense of routine and unexceptionalism to the way Alfred asks for 20k. Money is no longer a big hurdle for them. He is still involved with Van in some way. He’s still running late for everything. And Darius is still eccentric. 

song seven: “Shakara” by Fela Kuti 

Earn leaves the hotel room in a rush after failing to communicate with the white girl because she doesn't even speak english. He leaves without his underwear or belt. Even in his elevated state (comparatively to Seasons 1 and 2) we see that he still finds ways to destroy himself. His responsibilities, his baby momma and the artist he manages, both need his help and he is not in a position to help either. Van has no ride from the airport. Alfred is in jail and does not have the money for bail.

 Before dropping his pants at the airport security checkpoint, Earn asks Darius to pick up Van from the airport. From this point forward there are dual storylines for the episode. The first is centered on Earn and Alfred while the second centers on Darius and Van. We’ll call Earn and Alfred “storyline A” and Darius and Van “storyline B.”  

song eight: “Maiysha” by Miles Davis 

It’s awkward when Darius first picks up Van. The airline lost Van’s luggage and she needs a coat. It’s winter in Europe. Darius offers his coat but she declines and they decide to go buy one. They have a driver, Darius attributes it to “tour clout.” Darius is a naturally unconventional conversationalist and Van is often reserved so it was interesting to see them interact without Earn as a buffer. Earn is the only reason they have any type of relationship and aside from the “Champagne Papi” episode in Season 2, I don’t recall having seen them connect. It reminds me of the classic episode of Seinfeld when George and Elaine realize that they can’t hang out without Jerry unless Jerry was centered in their conversation. Darius even asks Van about Earn, in which Van replies that she has a boyfriend. Van seems uncomfortable talking about Earn at all but distracted more than anything else. 

Darius and Van finally have a breakthrough in their conversation when Van tells Darius to ask her something real and he inquires why she abandoned Atlanta to visit her baby daddy on a European tour when they aren’t even together. She admits to being in a rut and trying to figure herself out and Darius appears to dedicate himself to helping her get out of it. 

song nine: “Oceanic Feeling” by Molly Lewis 

Concurrently, Earn lands in Amsterdam. He races over to the venue of the concert that is slated to be later that night. It is immediately clear that he is now pretty good at his job. He looks clean. His face doesn’t have the same starved desperation as the prior seasons, but he looks tired and he’s sick. He meets the host, Dirk, at the venue and gets a 20k advance for the show and forces Dirk to pay for his taxi from the airport as well as his taxi to the jail. He tells Dirk that this is their second European tour and at least one year has passed since their tour with Clark County. He doesn’t even blink when he asks for the money and also does not panic when he realizes he left the music for the show in Copenhagen. Earn puts in an order to get his laptop delivered via organ transport. 

In storyline B, they go to a consignment store and Van buys a used coat. The coat has a note in its pocket with an address on it. Darius insists that the note is a sign and she needs to pursue whatever journey is at the end of that address in order to break free from her rut. 

When we are introduced to Paper Boi for the first time in Season 3, he is lying in a prison bed, but he does not look uncomfortable. The prison guard is super kind and subservient to Paper Boi’s will. He orders a bean soup and decides to take a nap in prison before his meal even after his bail is posted. His imprisonment is played for jokes and it’s funny as hell. There is a small mob cheering behind a flimsy barricade. The whole punishment seems optional rather than carceral. On first watch, the situation seems to mirror the Swiss imprisonment of ASAP Rocky from 2019 but Atlanta contributor, Ibra Ake, insisted on Instagram that they wrote and imagined that scene before ASAP Rocky was infamously jailed. 

Earn sits in the police station and waits for Paper Boi to finish his nap and his lunch. He gives Paper Boi the leftover money from bail and Paper Boi tosses it to his crowd of supporters outside of the station. Money is truly no longer an obstacle. No more selling drugs. No more pandering to studio executives. Paper Boi is Europe wearing designer clothes. 

song ten: “Jansport” by Steve G. Lover III (Stephen Glover) 

Van and Darius arrive at the house from the address on the pocket and they’re immediately hounded back into the car and scolded for being late by a group of anonymous white people. They continue to go along with the journey, eager to find a sense of completion, especially for the sake of Van. 

As Earn and Paper Boi encounter a little white Swiss baby in blackface on their way to their driver. When they ask the driver, he is bewildered at their shock and maintains that it’s not racist and they aren’t supposed to be black people. He says they’re dressed as a Swiss sinterklaas character named “Zwarte Piet” which means Black Peter. They’re black from soot from falling down the chimney while helping Santa Claus. Neither Earn nor Paper Boi buy his story but say that they respect the rebrand. Cosplaying as Zwarte Piet is a Dutch real blackface tradition. The character was first introduced in 1850. The character is often shown with big red lips, an afro wig, and gold jewelry. 

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Darius and Van arrive at their second location and receive white shawls. There is some type of party going on and there is a dying body at the center of it. The dying man is black but most of the guests are white and dressed in white. He’s wrapped in white garb and laid out across a bed. There’s a cult-like exhibitionism to the formality of the event. The vibe of the party is reminiscent of the bingo scene of Get Out and the “Juneteenth” episode towards the end of Season 1. Darius identifies the dying body as Tupac and says that “he felt the thug spirit” when they entered. Everyone speaks in hushed tones around the dying man. There is a death doula who is tasked with helping the dying man navigate a clear path to the afterlife. 

Back in storyline A, Earn and Paper Boi come back to a completely trashed hotel room and we learn the reason why he was in jail in the first place. He was trying to have a threesome with a black woman and a white woman and the white woman said something in celebration of sinterklaas which escalated to a fight between the two. The white woman notably called Rihanna a “niggabitch” multiple times. Their ensuing fight swallowed the room and they destroyed everything. Neither Paper Boi or Earn are worried about the financial ramifications, moreso annoyed about the inconvenience of having to switch rooms and get out of jail, yet another sign that the status quo has changed. 

The climax of storyline B comes after the death doula explains to Van that she’s exactly where she needs to be. The death doula asks Van to say a few words to the dying man (Tupac). Van tells him, “It’s okay.” It is a sincere and tender moment but because this is Atlanta, it does not last long. A contraption releases a latex sheet from overhead the bed and suffocates the dying man (Tupac). It is hard to watch, the death looks painful. The understanding is that this was an act of kindness, a demented euthanasia. Everyone cries as Darius and Van look on in complete and utter shock, the only guests who did not know what was coming. 

song eleven: “Hail Mary” by Tupac 

Darius joins Earn and Paper at the concert venue later that evening. The music gets to the show on time but Paper Boi refuses to perform because the entire crowd is dressed like Zwarte Piet. 

song twelve: “Jingle Bells” by Smokey Robinson and The Miracles 

Earn does not argue with him and goes to tell Dirk the bad news. He cops out of the truth and asserts that Paper Boi is sick. Earn has been sick all episode, people have been saying “gesundheit” to him as a running gag. Earn tells Dirk that Paper Boi caught whatever he’s got. Dirk gets angry and begins to chase Earn through the theater. In what’s the funniest moment of the episode to me, Dirk is unable to differentiate between Earn and a concertgoer dressed as Zwarte Piet. Dirk beats the shit out of a random guy while Earn watches on. It was a hysterical comment on “colorblindness” and racist dehumanization. 

Van runs into Earn in the hallway when Earn, Darius, and Paper Boi get back to the hotel that night. They have a brief yet awkward exchange. I can tell that Earn is worried about Van but I can also tell that Van does not care very much. Earn’s care is not Van’s burden. But maybe it should be. You good? No. She’s not. Earn goes to bed, exhausted from the day where a lot was done for nothing to happen. I guess that’s the job. Earn’s phone goes off one final time, Paper Boi is hungry. I guess the job never ends. 

song thirteen: “At The Hotel” by Eunice Collins 

The primary function of this episode was to establish the new status quo amongst the central four characters. We have been away from the characters for quite some time, even in-universe. The character who has undergone the most radical transformation is definitely Earn. He was broke, inconsistent, panicky, and unreliable throughout the first two seasons but he has his shit together now. Even when he fucks up, he keeps his cool and finds a logical course of action. Paper Boi seems a lot less stressed. He isn't as angry and even seems a bit more cultured, less street. He isn't as prone to violence and seems to understand and accept his star much better than he did initially.  Darius appears to be exactly the same. Happy-go-lucky and loyal. We left Van in a confused state and she got even worse in our absence. She is directionless and over the course of the season, we can tell that she will move in ways to reinvent and redefine herself. The stage is set for the remainder of the season. 

EPISODE III: “old man and the tree” 

Directed by Hiro Murai, Written by Taofik Kolade 

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The four core characters walk down a residential London street on the way to a party. It’s Fernando’s party. He’s a billionaire and a friend of Will’s, who’s an acquaintance of Earn’s. Earn tells Paper Boi that it’s good to get to know people in high places now so they can take advantage of their resources. Fernando is not just a billionaire, but he’s old money. Fernando’s family gave out the first loan. Paper Boi isn't really taking any of this seriously. He and Darius jokingly pitch their “Bud of The Month” idea to prospective billionaire investors in splendiferous white voices. Earn tries to join in on the fun but they say he always sounds like he’s talking white. This is a consistent othering that happens to Earn throughout the series, he often struggles with performing blackness or just does not come to as naturally as it comes to others. This is likely inspired by Donald Glover’s real life; his lack of affinity to cultural blackness compared to other black people is a constant theme in the music he releases as Childish Gambino. Van is quiet for most of their banter but she inserts herself and half-heartedly sticks up for Earn. It’s pretty funny. 

song fourteen: “Tension” by Central Cee 

They pull up to a shity crackhouse and a woman with a thick British accent answers the door. No one understands anything she’s saying and they’re unsure if they’re at the right place initially. Will comes to the door and leads them through the crackhouse and there’s a funny bit where he asks them if they know any UK rappers before giving 21 Savage that distinction and humming “Runnin” to himself. It was infamously revealed in 2019 that 21 Savage was born in the UK and not East Atlanta when ICE arrested and detained him. 

The shitty crackhouse is a cover up and there’s a secret door on the top floor that leads to a sprawling opulent home. It’s palatial and classy and well lit and a lot of high end looking people are sprinkled throughout. Fernando’s home has a Nando’s, a fast food restaurant chain that specializes in peri-peri style chicken. Will explains to Earn that he has a rising young artist from Tooting that he wants him to meet. Will rents a studio space in Fernando’s home for the artist. Van and Earn go to meet Will’s artist while Paper Boi and Darius go to get some Nando’s. 

While they’re eating the free Nando’s, Fernando, the billionaire walks up to them and strikes up a conversation. Darius slips away from the conversation to find something to drink and “the bathroom he doesn’t want him to use,” leaving Paper Boi alone with Fernando. Fernando is the old man from the title of the episode. He asks Paper Boi if he likes trees and Paper Boi excitedly says yes because he thinks he’s asking him about weed but he was being literal. He shows Paper Boi a tree, the oldest tree in London. He built the compound around the tree. It appears to be Fernando’s prized possession. Paper Boi is bored and unimpressed by the tree. Fernando invites him to go smoke weed and play poker with his friends and Paper Boi accepts because those activities are more his speed. Paper Boi sits down and they tell him the buy-in for the poker game is 20k. I paused when they told him that number because that wasn’t the type of money he had in the first two seasons but he pulled it out with little hesitation. It’s a new day and 20k is now nothing at all.  

Meanwhile, Darius is getting a drink. He asks MK, an Asian woman standing next to the table with the alcohol, to pass him the gin but she mistakenly thinks he is hitting on her because he is black and black men love Asian women (in her experience from living in LA). She declines Darius and reveals that she is engaged before Darius could explain his intentions. Darius laughs it off as a “good cultural exchange” and she passes him the gin before walking away. After MK walks away, a white guy named Socks comes and is appalled, having overheard the conversation. He wears a beanie and has an “intense” hairline. Darius isn't necessarily offended by what MK had to say but Socks is carrying the torch for him. 

At this same time, Earn and Van are meeting the artist from Tooting, a young black guy named TJ. TJ is a pretentious hack with shitty, non-engaging and uninspired art that has enough references and subversions on more popular art to trick Will into patronage. He rides around his studio on rollerskates. He rips off different artists from Jackon Pollock to Jean-Michel Basquiat. I feel as though most of us know artists like him, with some type of talent but absolutely no vision and no discernible creative imprint to really put on the world. His primary artistic contribution he showed Earn was a photograph of an old white man wearing Supreme and holding his dick. 

Will wants Earn to give him a second opinion on TJ and it’s pretty apparent that Earn is not a fan of TJ’s work. Will has already poured 500k into TJ’s career. TJ wants to make an “influencer incubator” on Will’s dime and Will is considering the investment. It isn't clear how Will would get the money back but TJ is making content rather than art and I think that’s the best distinction I could give his work. Earn initially begins to shoot down the idea as expensive before TJ (who was eavesdropping) interjects and implicitly tells Earn, “nigga come on” with further nonspecific details about his plan. Earn says he has to make sure Doja Cat is not doing something similar and declines to give an answer at that moment. Will says okay and decides to give him time. What is Earn’s responsibility to TJ as a black person? 

At this point, the episode has splintered into three different storylines. One is of Paper Boi and Fernando and their poker game. One is of Darius, Socks, and MK and Darius’s brush with racism. And the final is of Earn, Van, Will, and TJ and the legitimacy of TJ’s burgeoning art career. 

Paper Boi is having a good time at the poker game. Most of the banter is brash locker room talk but Fernando elevates it to something more metaphysical when he begins to opine about spirits and ghosts. Fernando tells the story of a wet, ashy, naked, skinny black man who broke into his house. He says this man was a ghost. Paper Boi clowns him and does not believe him. When Paper Boi asks him what he did, Fernando says he did what any man in his position would do. “He fucked it,” his friend inserts before laughing. Everyone at the table makes fun of him but Fernando holds his perspective. He says the connection was more than physical and that by the end, he awoke covered in ectoplasm and the spirit was gone. At that point, I think Paper Boi said the funniest joke of the episode. 

The spirit came on you, my nigga! That’s a bust-and-run where I’m from.

Paper Boi does not believe Fernando’s story, not one bit. Fernando deepens the conversation even more by extending it to the Devil and God, equating them to good and evil spirits. He says the Devil is just as powerful as God and the reason why there’s so much killing in the world and the reason why he has so much money. He calls the tension between the Devil and God as a call from balance. Paper Boi ain’t hearing none of that shit. Paper Boi wins at poker and Fernando gets up and leaves without settling his debt. The vibe shifts into something awkward and Paper Boi is left in the room alone and unpaid. Paper Boi looks powerless. 

Darius is downstairs drinking on the coach and surviving a conversation with Socks who plugs himself in as a famous adjacent groupie type. He tells everyone who will listen about Darius’s bout with racism and they are all angrier than Darius is. The story begins to draw a crowd and every time Socks tells the story, it gets more and more dramatic. 

Van disappeared from TJ’s studio while they were explaining his “influencer incubator” plan. Earn is walking around looking for her while thinking about his dilemma with Will and TJ. He runs into Paper Boi who just got his hat stolen by a random white girl. He’s sitting down and fuming mad because Fernando did not pay him. He feels like he can’t act within his character and do what he would normally do in Atlanta when he gets tried. He’s out of his element and as a result, he’s powerless in this new arena. 

Earn and Paper Boi vent to each other about their problems. Earn thinks that if he helps TJ, he will end up hurting real artists with something to say in the long run. Paper Boi tells Earn to help TJ be a successful mediocre artist because white people get away with mediocrity all the time. He says that TikTok is just white people scamming. TJ comes around and thanks Earn for clearing the way for him and his future endeavors. 

“If this fool wants to pay for the culture, let him.” 

After Paper Boi tells TJ about the Fernando-Poker situation, TJ tells him that he’s not getting his money. Paper Boi storms away and TJ skates away, leaving Earn alone with his thoughts. He sees Van standing by the pool, washed in cerulean light. Earn and Van lock eyes and he seems like he’s locked into a trance. 

song fifteen: “A Certain Sadness” by Astrud Gilberto & Walter Wanderley 

Van pushes a waiter into the water. Earn expresses worry about her. She tells him that’s all he does and that he’s not her manager. He says okay and accepts that she has to find herself, by herself. She gets up and pushes someone else into the water while Earn goes to find Will and give him his decision on TJ. 

The climax of the Darius and Socks storyline comes to a head when the crowd around Darius has grown exponentially in size. Their story of the racism Darius endured continues to get uglier and more abrasive with each re-telling. MK walks over to the group to introduce Darius to her fiance, unaware they were angry at her. They mob her and attack her. Darius watches on helplessly. 

Indian-English musician, Jai Paul, sits down next to Darius. He attributes their overreaction to MK’s words as white guilt. Darius says he didn’t know racism was out of America and that he thought most of their discrimination was class based, which is strange to me because the British damn near invented racism. Jai Paul explains how racism, capitalism, and classism all go hand-in-hand. He finishes by saying that there’s racism anywhere you can buy a coke, which is damn near another way of saying everywhere. 

Paper Boi goes up to Fernando’s bedroom and demands his money, but Fernando lies in bed with his back to Paper Boi and pretends to be asleep. 

When Earn is on his way back to Will, he sees a picture of Fernando’s ancestors giving away the first loan hanging up on the wall. In the background, he sees an African slave. He decides to help TJ scam Will and even inserts his fingers into the pot to make some money for himself as TJ’s manager as well. Will is pleased with Earn’s decision. 

Just before they get the opportunity to celebrate, Alfred begins to chainsaw Fernando’s tree in an effort to get his decision. This is the middle ground between acting as who was and who he currently is. Earn gathers Paper Boi and Darius as Paper Boi steals shit and goes on a profanity-laced tirade. In all of the madness, Will walks up to Darius and reveals that he is MK’s fiance and that he was calling off the marriage because she’s racist. They race out of the sumptuous house through the shitty house and into the sprinter. And then they all start laughing, the four of them: Earn, Darius, Paper Boi… and Socks? Van is gone. Nowhere to be found and Socks has attached himself to them like a leech. They spot MK crying on the curb before they leave. 

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song sixteen: “Tire Loma de Nighbein” by Monomono & Joni Haastrup 

Van sits alone at an Indian cuisine restaurant, drinking an orange Fanta. Earn calls her, she ignores his call. She’s on her own path now. 

song seventeen: “The World Might Fall Over” by Monomono 

Episode III, “the old man and the tree,” continues Atlanta’s desire to explore whiteness and the ways in which they reconcile their actions. The first storyline with Fernando and Paper Boi was representative of old money vs new money and how they are two completely different power dynamics. Fernando paid for his money with blood and in a sense, his family is rooted to those demons. No matter how much money Paper Boi makes, he can’t hold the power over Fernando because Fernando controls the source (the tree). Fernando thinks his excess brings balance to the world while Paper Boi is just beginning to navigate what excess really is. He’s out of his depth. 

The second storyline with Darius, Socks, and MK is mainly about white guilt and the ways in which their curse of whiteness makes them over-extend their performances against racism. They know they did wrong but they don’t know what to do about it, so every small thing becomes the end of the world so they don’t have to get to the real source of racial problems, which is often inequity as Jai Paul points out. 

The third storyline asks us to consider white mediocrity vs black excellence. TJ is a hack but it doesn't really matter. A byproduct of the curse of whiteness is that no one really ever tells you the truth or what you need to hear. And this is a curse they’ve earned through not being able to handle the truth whenever it is given to them. Earn lies to Will because that’s what a black person has to do with white people. He’s earned those lies and it’s high time that TJ was allowed the space to be mediocre rather than excellent as well. Call it reparations. 

The biggest question “the old man and the tree” asks us to examine is this: how do we bring balance to evils presented by whiteness while maintaining the sincerity and authenticity of blackness? How do we level the playing field without becoming white ourselves? 

Atlanta, Season 3 - every episode a jewel. Screenplay, structure, acting, staging. Just watch it.

— Guillermo del Toro (@RealGDT) April 23, 2022

[end of part one]

notes on: Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers

MEDIUM: Music GENRE: Rap TRACKS: 18 RUNTIME: 73 minutes 

FAVORITE TRACKS: N95, Father Time, Rich Spirit, Count Me Out, Crown, Mother I Sober, Mirror 

LEAST FAVORITE TRACKS: Worldwide Steppers, Rich (interlude), Auntie Diaries   

FEATURES: Blxst, Amanda Reifer, Sampha, Taylour Paige, Kadhja Bonet, Summer Walker, Ghostface Killah, Kodak Black, Baby Keem, Sam Dew, Tanna Leone, Beth Gibbons 

Release Year: 2022 

“Tell them the truth.” 

Kendrick Lamar has returned from his five-year hiatus with Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers, a double LP release that picked up exactly where his Pulitzer Prize winning album, DAMN, had left off. Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers seems to hit on the same motifs as his previous albums, spirits and heritage and demons and genetic memory and a cursed people, but it comes to a drastically different conclusion than his prior offerings. DAMN concluded with Kendrick Lamar recognizing and accepting his role in America as a modern day prophet. Kendrick Lamar realized that in order to be the best prophet for his people, he needed to look at his past and exorcize the demons placed on his lineage by both himself and his ancestors in order to save his future. This was the penultimate destination of his journey towards God and his true self started way back in 2013 on Good Kid, Maad City and further realized through To Pimp A Butterfly. 

However, we know it did not exactly turn out that way. Kendrick Lamar receded into his bubble, away both creatively and from the public eye. While his music remained a rallying point in the fight against police brutality and for improved race relations, Kendrick Lamar didn’t say or do much of anything as the world turned to shit around him. In his time away, Kendrick Lamar looked into the mirror and realized that he was in no position to be the prophet he ordained himself to be. He was dealing with his own vices, curses, and demons that needed to be addressed. He was no longer himself, he was “oklama.”  

Oklama originates from the Chahta Anumpa tribe. “Okla” means people and “ma” means my. The phrase “oklah ma” is often used in the Choctaw translation of the Bible when a prophet is addressing a community on God’s behalf. If Kendrick Lamar is oklama then he is his people. But who are his people? Black people? Compton? Humanity? I think the answer lies on the cover of the album. Shot by Renell Medrano, Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers’s album cover has Kendrick Lamar on the cover with his fiance and two children. Kendrick Lamar wears a thorny crown, invoking the image of Jesus Christ (the savior). He also has a pistol in his waistband. He looks out the door into the world, ready to protect what he has, his people. Kendrick Lamar had two young children since the release of DAMN and he has realized that he is now more than just himself and what he carries with him will be inherited by his children. It is up to him to break the generational curse and make a new clean world for his wife and kids, even if it is at the expense of his prophethood. 

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The double album tells that story. The first album, Mr. Morale, covers tracks 1-9. It begins with “United In Grief,” where Kendrick Lamar chronicles the mental and spiritual hole he fell into following his last album. The first words are “I hope you find some peace of mind, in this lifetime” and the voice of his woman, Whitney, urges him to “tell them the truth.” Kendrick expresses his grief and how he felt trapped. He’s been going through it himself, too much to save the world. He follows that up with the quick paced “N95” where he spits quick lines, telling us to shed the fake and the superfluous vices of the flesh and see what we still have left to offer. We need to shed the fugazi for purification and practice authenticity and honesty no matter how ugly it makes us look. He follows this with “Worldwide Steppers” where he raps about fucking white women (lol) and possible anxiety that he is not living up to his ancestor’s dreams of him and that his actions are hurting his people.

The album finally pivots towards full repentance on the fourth track, “Die Hard.” He recognizes his demons and hopes that it isn't too late to atone for his sins and save his bloodline. Kendrick says, “I have some regrets but my past won’t keep me from my best.” After this he looks at his past on the fifth track, “Father Time.” He raps about his daddy issues, specifically a basketball game he played against his father when he was an adolescent. His father was rough with him and let him know the world would be rough as well. His father was a hard man who didn’t think he had the luxury of emotion. Kendrick Lamar thinks he inherited this from his father along with a plethora of other hyper masculine traits. But at the end, Kendrick Lamar still loves his father and was grateful for having him in his life, something a lot of young black men did not experience. He follows this with some Kodak Black spoken word poetry and the 7th track, “Rich Spirit.” 

“Rich Spirit” brings Kendrick Lamar back to the present and back into braggadocio rather than the reflective nature of the previous tracks. He further explores the idea that being rich in spirit is more rewarding and real than having material wealth. Lasting memory and eternal salvation are all we have. The song reads as a warning of sorts, as if he’s striving towards the Buddha or Christ figure, but opposition keeps pulling him back towards the flesh.  The next track, “We Cry Together” is an argument song where Kendrick Lamar uses two personas, one voiced by him and the other by Zola actor, Taylour Paige. He uses these two characters to reveal a world at war and in the end, he comes to the conclusion that we should shut the fuck up and let love talk. On the final song of the first album, “Purple Hearts,” Kendrick Lamar along with Ghostface Killah and Summer Walker lets us know that love conquers all and that we should lead our lives with love in mind. Kendrick Lamar seems to surmise that this love shouldn’t come from just anywhere, but should be born from God’s love of his people.  

The second album, The Big Steppers, leads us with God’s love lighting the path towards salvation. The road is dark but he has a starting point now. It begins with “Count Me Out.” Kendrick Lamar forgives himself for his demons and he realizes that nothing can complete him but him. He finishes his internal struggle and gathers that he can’t be anyone but himself. Kendrick Lamar says  “this is me and I’m blessed.” Kendrick is his people but is not our savior and he can’t please everybody, let alone himself. This radical path of self-recognition is first explored on  “Crown.” Kendrick once again invokes the image of the Messiah’s thorny crown but this time, as an idea he cannot live up to. 

Baby Keem channels this idea on “Savior-Interlude” and Kendrick Lamar reiterates this again on “Savior.” He lets us know that he cannot save us despite what he has done for us. And neither can J.Cole, Future, or LeBron James. Kendrick Lamar draws attention to celebrity culture as well as his own impostor syndrome. He questions the labels that have been placed on him due to the conscious nature of his music. He maligns the expectations of the celebrity-activist. He argues those expectations were never his intentions. Kendrick Lamar aligns his personality closer to being like Kodak Black than being woke or pro-black. He tells us “Tupac’s dead, gotta think for yourself.” He protects himself in his valley of silence. He declines to speak on the world. 

The next track, “Auntie Diaries,” tells the story of two transgender family members of Kendrick Lamar who were ostracized by his community. He (somewhat clumsily) preaches love and acceptance of the LGBT community. He expresses his desire to unlearn hate. He chooses humanity over religion. On the seventh track of the second album, Kendrick Lamar speaks directly to his children. He wonders how his actions would affect them and how past life transgressions have affected him. He uses R.Kelly’s molestation victim to rapist story as an example of how negative actions can completely change the direction of someone’s life. Kendrick Lamar argues that actions in the now are a direct result of the vices and traumas of our ancestors. 

We are either building atop of one another or burying our bloodline even further. Kendrick pledges to step out of the hole. Kendrick Lamar watched his cousin struggle with addiction then helped her son, Baby Keem, make a million dollars. Kendrick has raised his family out of poverty but he still needs to finish healing himself in order to heal his people. He sacrifices himself to start the healing. The next track is “Mother I Sober.” This is where Kendrick loses all of the walls he put up to protect himself.  He reveals that an older family member was once suspected of molesting him, and although Kendrick wasn’t touched, no one believed him. His mother tells him years later that she was touched and that was why she projected that trauma onto him. He forgives his mother for abusing him. He forgives himself for cheating on his woman. He grabs his chance at transformation. Kendrick Lamar frees himself from his guilt and expels the demons from his people, healing everyone. He breaks the generational curse that haunted his family for the past few hundred years and healed the trauma within himself. Kendrick Lamar has built a clean and unfettered foundation for his children to build upon. 

“You broke a generational curse.”

The final track, “Mirror,” is about self-preservation. In the face of the world and with the burden of his family placed upon his shoulders, Kendrick Lamar chose himself. Being oklama, himself includes his family and his responsibilities. He rejected the pressure. In response to the first track when Whitney implored him to “tell them the truth,” he replies “I choose me, I’m sorry.” Kendrick Lamar turns his back on prophethood, societal expectations, celebrity life, TDE, and the world. He couldn’t handle the pressure and excused himself from the spotlight for family and generational wellbeing. He says he has more to live for now and he shouldn’t be responsible for the world’s misplaced faith in him. 

“I’m sorry I couldn’t save the world my friend, I was too busy building mine again.” 

I didn’t come into Kendrick Lamar’s seventh LP with any particular expectations about the thematic content and I think that served my listening experience well. Following Kendrick’s release of “The Heart Pt. V” a few days before the release of Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers, I had a friend text me and say that she didn’t care what Kendrick Lamar had to say next unless it addressed the evils of capitalism. She surmised that was the next logical step in his conscious evolution and that it was his responsibility as a “woke” rapper. It struck me as odd that he is viewed this way. His music was never educational in my estimation. He didn’t rap about police brutality statistics or redlining or gerrymandering or try to explain how congress turned a bill into law like some south central LA schoolhouse rock. He spoke his truth and his pain and tied it to a history, a history of a people that have been disenfranchised and left behind. His albums have acted as spiritual journeys to inspire change more than anything else, and in that respect, Kendrick’s latest album is a conceptual success.  

I don’t have too much to say about the intentionality behind Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers. I think some of the woke elements worked but much of it didn’t. Kodak Black being a muse and feature for the album despite his numerous rape allegations was disheartening. The messaging behind songs like “Worldwide Steppers” and “Auntie Diaries” were elementary and didn’t offer any perspective that absolutely needed to be heard, despite the positive intentions. The use of homophobic slurs was odd as well, even if the context wasn’t pushing towards a negative point against the LGBT community. To be completely honest, I think I would have preferred a completely personal album rather than the more ambitious and encompassing projects from the past. Even if Kendrick had a responsibility to be woke, now that he was branded a woke rapper, I think he conquered the racial mountain that Langston Hughes wrote about long ago. Artists and creatives should have the independence to move in any direction they desire. 

Even saying that, Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers is Kendrick’s most personal project yet. There are hardly any songs where he takes the camera off of himself. It sounds off like we are overhearing a therapy session between himself and Whitney as he lays himself bare and commits the ultimate sacrifice, honesty. Despite how freeing the expression must be, it has to suck to have to be honest about such complex emotional topics as Kendrick Lamar is doing across this album. As he muttered to himself on “Mother I Sober,” I felt a heaviness and a chill in my heart. The pain from his experience magnified by the melancholic chords of the piano pushed me into Kendrick and I became him, in a way that I have become very artists before. 

As of writing, I have listened to the album 8 times over (obviously I’ve replayed my favorites a few times by themselves). The highlight of my listening experience was probably the first time I heard “Father Time.” Kendrick Lamar rapped about a basketball game and made it sound like war and love and longing and murder. There was a grit, tenacity, and tenderness to the way he said his words on the song and helped deliver his message just the right way. The track samples a reversed loop of “You’re not there” by Hoskins ‘N Crowd and it hits my ear like tears throughout the song. Sampha’s softness on the chorus is a strong antithesis to Kendrick’s rigid voice. 

I really love how “Rich Spirit” makes me feel. The lyrics feel fun and soft. I can see myself walking through the park on a sunny day just bobbing my head and having a good time. I love music that has the power to take me somewhere else. His flow and cadence has the bounce of classic Cali rap but the voice is smooth. I feel like he channeled Snoop Dogg in some way for the song. Shoutout to music that makes you feel cool. 

I feel like The Big Steppers was more successful than Mr. Morale in executing Kendrick’s concept. A big part of that was “Count Me Out” and “Crown.” My mind has somehow conflated both tracks into a single song. I relate to being unsatisfied despite myself and my successes. Because Kendrick found his way out his hole, it gives me a bit of hope for myself. I feel like I have a lot I need to forgive myself for. The questions he asked himself on these tracks seemed to be addressed directly to me. Questions that probably still need to be answered. 

In Oscar Wilde’s Critic As Artist, Wilde theorized that an artist must concede a piece of reality to ascend the art. He said that we are allured to art by mystery and that it becomes complete in its beauty through incompleteness. Music is special in a way that it never reveals its secret. Every performance is different and every emotional feeling is different. We’ve never felt the same thing twice. Wilde suggests that the worst thing we can do for art is to realize its ideal too absolutely. And I think Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers is an absolute success in that department. Kendrick Lamar sits at the axis of the whole project, seeking to scrub away his public perception. He wants us to know that we never knew him. And in a way, he keeps that mystery alive, both about himself and about his music… in defiance of his honesty. 

Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers is an honest album that tells us that we know nothing and that he’s going to leave us on our own to figure it out. I feel abandoned by Kendrick Lamar by the end of this album. I never saw him as my savior but “Mirror” felt like a swan song, not only to TDE but to music as a whole. This is probably not it, I’m certain that I’m overreacting. But Kendrick’s latest offering was a blast to listen to. And if this is it, I’m satisfied. The album is beautiful even if Kendrick failed at saving the world. Kendrick Lamar has a real connection with millions of fans like me. Our connection was built out of music, 

And so not built at all, 

And therefore built for ever.   

4.5 APPLES OF 5 APPLES

published May 16, 2022