As I write this, I turn to the only thing that ever makes me feel better—well, besides food, sex, and human connection—music. Thundercat's new song, "Them Changes," speaks to me: "Nobody move, there's blood on the floor/And I can't find my heart... somebody tell me how I'm supposed to feel." I find welcome solace in Quelle Chris's soon-to-come album Innocent Country. He's quietly become one of my favorite rappers out. (From "I Asked God": "I done heard a lotta speak/But ain't seen a lotta growth/I'm sensing a whole lotta grief/But hearin' a lotta hope/What's really goin' on?") Also, I spin the rough version of Dr. Martin Lucid Dream, the great upcoming release from a frequent Quelle collaborator, Detroit MC Denmark Vessey, who sent it my way some moons back.

Vessey named himself for Denmark Vesey (one "s"), a black man who'd bought his own freedom and was a prominent member of Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church—the same church in Charleston, South Carolina, where a racist white terrorist murdered nine black people the day before I wrote this. Love and prayers go to everybody affected, to us.

Almost 200 years ago, Vesey was organizing what would've been the largest slave revolt in US history—the plan was to kill the city's slave masters, free the slaves, and then escape to Haiti. Of course, he got snitched on, rounded up with other conspirators, and sentenced to death. Mother Emanuel, one of the oldest pieces of black-owned real estate in the country, was burned to the ground and had to be rebuilt.

White America, the seat of white supremacy, is having a nervous breakdown. Black America is having the same thing it's always had—a massacre. The United States made the man who killed those nine people in Emanuel AME. So what do we make to combat this unrelenting onslaught on blackness? What bodies—official and unofficial, bound by laws and secret covenants—do we convene in our self-defense?

It's not just us in these United States, either, of course—anti-blackness is everywhere in some form or another. The Dominican Republic, for a recent example, is trying to "socially clean" more than 250,000 residents of Haitian descent. Their citizenship is about to be revoked. Haiti, for those playing at home, is the only nation in the world birthed of a successful slave revolt—and they've been paying for their transgression against the white superpowers literally ever since. It seems that the crime of freeing yourself—or rather, attempting to free yourself—from white supremacy is one that is never, ever forgiven.

I affirm that this is all the truth. Now, does this truth truly shame this devil? Or does he really just love the attention? Who cares about shaming the devil at this point—how and when can we buck that motherfucker like the Da Lench Mob said? If you see me out, please, for the love of God, let me know. recommended