The Barnes & Noble Review
I don't want to go overboard here. Hanif Abdurraqib is a less masterful stylist than Dave Hickey or Jonathan Lethem, whose finest collections bear down on music, or straight-up rockcrits Greil Marcus or Ellen Willis. Nor is he as deft as Touré or as dazzling as Greg Tate or as original as his acknowledged inspiration Lester Bangs. And yes, there are other notable youngbloods out there, most of them women. But as someone who'd as soon read a good essay collection as a good novel, I don't want to understate either. They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us establishes Abdurraqib as a major rock critic -- polished and deft and original in a searchingly unpolished way and, if you'll grant that the word need be no more race-specific than "rock critic" itself, more soulful than any of the above except Bangs. Yes, he's less funny than Bangs -- we all are. But in Abdurraqib's case that comes with the concept.
Abdurraqib is a thirty-two-year-old African American from a struggling lower-middle-class family in Columbus, Ohio, who owes his Arabic name to parents who converted to Islam in the '70s. Although never devout and no longer observant, he was the only Muslim at the local college he attended on a soccer scholarship. A third of the 60 poems his website links to reference music, which is also the subject of half the 20 essays there. He's got a gig at MTV News, where a dozen of these selections first appeared; others surfaced in Pitchfork and the New York Times. But whatever their provenance, Abdurraqib has worked hard to make this book their natural home.
An opening section sequenced Chance the Rapper-Springsteen-Carly Rae Jepsen-Prince-ScHoolboy Q-Weeknd establishes his cross-racial orientation and his black identity simultaneously, only not quite as you might expect. Yes, the ScHoolboy Q piece unpacks the rapper's insistence that the white fans who buy his ever-pricier tickets get over it and utter the word "nigger." But Abdurraqib's thoughts on Springsteen, whose delvings into mortality, work, and the American Dream he admires avidly, are just as race-conscious -- only a day before the show, he'd put mortality in perspective by visiting Ferguson, and he can't help but notice that, speaking of work, he's the only black person at the Meadowlands who's there for the concert rather than a j-o-b. Yet arrayed around Springsteen are the explicitly happy beginning of a candy-colored, gospel-soaked Chance the Rapper event and, happier still, a Carly Rae concert -- which does, he mentions, attract some black couples -- where fans are kissing, truly kissing, in Manhattan's brutally industrial Terminal 5.
If you're expecting more of the eclectic same, though, Abdurraqib then pulls a switch, because it turns out he was an emo kid, a follower of the punky, hooky, hyperemotional pop-rock subgenre typified by Dashboard Confessional and Fall Out Boy that dominates Section II. I was always too old for emo, with its built-in male narcissism rendered even ranker by its trademark self-pity, but Abdurraqib's report from the front is something to treasure. Emo is such a white scene that he was often the only black kid at shows where moshers thrashed in full- fledged clubs and sweaty basements alike, and so he begins by outlining his eventual progress to the Afropunk movement. But that clarified, he turns his sympathies to the lost white suburban Midwesterners who were his brothers in pain, in particular his friend Tyler, who surfaces by name in the jumbled eight-part tour de force "Fall Out Boy Forever." In the beginning, tall Tyler strides into the pit to rescue short Hanif, sprawled below the leaping throng. In the end, troubled Tyler commits suicide. The lesson being that the unlistenable emotions emo indulges are literally too much for many who hear their own anguish there.
Although almost every black American lives closer to death than almost every white American, Abdurraqib is probably more blessed than Tyler was. But not by much. Several other emo deaths haunt him; he lost his mother overnight when her bipolar meds killed her in her sleep; his 2015 "My Demons and My Dog and This Anxiety and That Noise" -- not included here, perhaps because he didn't dare expose himself so nakedly -- is an excruciating account of his own anxiety disorders. And so the bulk of the book culminates with a long final section -- most of it previously unpublished -- that hews close to music as it lays out a piecemeal autobiography. Most of it takes place post−Trayvon Martin, who was murdered the night Abdurraqib drove to Minnesota with a companion I take to be his future wife, to witness a typically stirring show by white alt-rap lifers Atmosphere. I don't agree with all his analyses or feel all his tastes, but every one gains not just poignancy but heft from personal particulars that are also, inevitably, political. Abdurraqib always remains a critic who deals in textual interpretation and aesthetic judgment. But the urgency that infuses music for him, often captured in a few articulated details, is what criticism ought to be for and too often isn't.
Thus the "shiny suit" rap of the Notorious B.I.G.'s "Mo' Money Mo' Problems" moves him because he knows his just-deceased mom would fall for its Diana Ross sample. Thus the Bataclan massacre evokes first Muslim teens seeking in live music "an escape from whatever particular evil was suffocating them" and then Muslim rapper Lupe Fiasco. Thus man in black Johnny Cash, who never shot a man in Reno, parallels suburban trap-rappers Migos, who never dealt crack. Thus the interlude when Atmosphere pauses his nonstop set for a brief "I need y'all to know that we're gonna be all right" foreshadows both "The White Rapper Joke," which surveys seven of the ungainly beasts and reserves special praise for Macklemore's "weaponization" of his excess fame, and "They Will Speak Loudest About You When You're Gone," which juxtaposes white outrage about racist police killings against white failure to see living African Americans, like the New Havenite who peremptorily dumped her bags in his lap and then got on her cell to gab about Freddie Gray -- an image Abdurraqib says he recalls often, as will I.
They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us, which takes its title from a sign Abdurraqib spotted in Ferguson, is on balance a rather dark book. His anxieties can't be much fun, his marriage falls apart as his story ends, and he's seen too much death without becoming inured to it like a gangsta sporting a teardrop tattoo. But let's not kid around. The era of African-American good feeling that began with the election of Barack Obama -- which generated what "The Obama White House, a Brief Home for Rappers" calls an "optics of equality" -- was radically disrupted by George Zimmerman and demolished by white supremacist Donald Trump. Abdurraqib assigns himself a mission of celebrating music's "love and joy" -- his Columbus elders with their Sunday soul parties, his emo brethren discharging pent-up torment, the Baton Rouge rapper Foxx igniting his only hit with a profligate "I pull up at the club VIP / Gas tank on E / But all drinks on me," those provisionally carefree Chance and Carly fans. He ends with a meditation on the wheelies gleeful kids are practicing in the parking lot behind his apartment. But it isn't just his anxiety disorders that compel him to dwell as well on all the injustices that surround and subtend the same music. It's a sense of the moment all too few can figure out how to put into words.
Abdurraqib doesn't write zingers. His power is cumulative, preacherly even, though his Muslim upbringing renders him the rare African American who's an outsider in the black church. I've told you how he ends, with those innocents and their wheelies. So let me end with how he begins. Goes like this: "This, more than anything, is about everything and everyone that didn't get swallowed by the vicious and yawning maw of 2016, and all that it consumed upon its violent rattling which echoed into the year after it and will surely echo into the year after that one. This, more than anything, is about how there is sometimes only one single clear and clean surface on which to dance, and sometimes it only fits you and no one else. This is about hope, sure, but not in that way that it is often packaged as an antithesis to that which is burning."
Robert Christgau is a critic at All Things Considered, writes for the National Arts Journalism Program's ARTicles blog, teaches in NYU's Clive Davis Department of Recorded Music, and has published five books.
Reviewer: Robert Christgau
From the Publisher
* 2018 "12 best books to give this holiday season" —TODAY (Elizabeth Acevedo)
* Best Books of 2017 —Rolling Stone (2018), NPR, Buzzfeed, Paste Magazine, Esquire, Chicago Tribune, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, CBC, Stereogum, National Post, Entropy, Heavy, Book Riot, Chicago Review of Books, The Los Angeles Review, Michigan Daily
* American Booksellers Association (ABA) 'December 2017 Indie Next List Great Reads'
* Midwest Indie Bestseller
"I loved, like beyond all measure, Hanif Abdurraqib’s They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us. It’s a collection of essays about music and culture that are written with such insight and tenderness that I read it in a day and immediately read the whole thing again... It’s spectacular."
—Samantha Irby, in The New York Times (May 10, 2018)
"Abdurraqib is just phenomenal. I don’t know what else to tell you. These sentences make me feel how I feel watching Simone Biles on a vault, or Shoma Uno on the ice, or anyone who is just impossibly fucking stellar at whatever they’re doing."
—Bryan Washington on They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us in The A.V. Club
"Bryan Washington’s 10 favorite books of the decade"
"I am always so moved by Abdurraqib's lyrical writing, which to me seems to occupy a genre of celebratory elegy that only he is capable of inhabiting. He weaves cultural criticism and personal memoir in such a beautiful way, making the two modes feel inevitably and inextricably bound."
—Jonny Sun, on They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us in The Week
"Jonny Sun recommends 6 emotionally powerful books"
"[Abdurraqib's] ode to 'Trap Queen' as the new 'I Will Always Love You' first caught my attention. I was instantly hooked."
—Questlove on They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us in Vulture
"Questlove’s 10 Favorite Books"
"'Brief Notes on Staying,' an essay in Hanif Abdurraqib’s 2017 book, inspired 'PLEASE STAY' (Phoebe Bridgers and Julien Baker lend vocals on the track). It’s about losing people and being exhausted, but needing to find a way to get through life."
—Lucy Dacus on They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us in Vanity Fair
"With They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us, I felt like [Hanif Abdurraqib] encouraged more compassion out of me with every essay."
—Lucy Dacus, The Creative Independent
"Songwriter Lucy Dacus on the continued evolution of her creative practice, understanding your parents, navigating online spaces, and what it means to write with intention."
"Rhythmic repetition makes for roaring passages that beg to be read aloud, but for all his poetic muscularity, Abdurraqib understands the value of linguistic economy."
—Pete Tosiello, The Washington Post
"One of the most vital books on music I read this year was the critic and poet Hanif Abdurraqib’s essay collection They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us, which spoke so eloquently to the importance of making space for dreaming, laughing, and, of course, listening to joyful music in troubled times."
—Lindsay Zoladz, Slate
"The Ohio poet/critic digs deep into what it means to be American in our moment — and how much music has to do with it."
—Rolling Stone, The Best Music Books of 2018, (by Jon Dolan & Kory Grow & Rob Sheffield & Andy Greene & Will Hermes)
"Abdurraqib writes about the music he holds dear, and the experiences which have embedded this music in his life, with such lyricism that the writing nears music itself—and his love of the subject is palpable."
—Arianna Rebolini, Buzzfeed, Best Nonfiction Books Of 2017
"Abdurraqib explores America through its popular culture."
—Jason Diamond, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, 2017 Favorites
"Excellent collection of essays on music, mortality and being black in America... magnetic and poignant, and tinged with heartache."
—Nikesh Shukla, The Guardian
"[Abdurraqib] invites us to acknowledge the unbridgeable gaps formed by centuries of history, to observe with respect the moments that don’t include us all, and to cherish all the more the opportunities we have for empathy, which bring us as close as we can get to harmony."
—Aida Amoako, Prospect
"With a voice that rings clear off the page, Abdurraqib is an accomplished wordsmith, whose reflections on pop culture are intensely personal, political and utterly compelling."
—CBC (Canada)
"Abdurraqib will make you think critically about music and the culture it influences, and his thoughts will stay with you long after you’ve tunneled through... his wonderful book."
—Gabriela Tully Claymore, Stereogum, Recommended Reading 2017
"Poignant and important. Abdurraqib offers a perspective that connects music, art, and memory, with the political realities of our time."
—Angela Ledgerwood, Esquire, Best Books of 2017
“Establishes Abdurraqib as a major rock critic—polished and deft and original in a searchingly unpolished way."
—Robert Christgau, Barnes and Noble Review
"Funny, painful, precise, desperate, and loving throughout. Not a day has sounded the same since I read him."
—Greil Marcus, Village Voice
"Essential, gripping reading."
—Tobias Carroll, Pitchfork
"A much-needed collection for our time. [Abdurraqib] has proven to be one of the most essential voices of his generation.”
—Juan Vidal, NPR
"A collection of death-defying protest songs for the Black Lives Matter era."
—Walton Muyumba, Chicago Tribune, Best books of 2017
"Challenging and lyrical, his writing delivers compelling observations in bite-sized pieces, allowing you to digest the deeper ramifications of his insights."
—Frannie Jackson, Paste, The 20 Best Nonfiction Books of 2017
"It’s a little bit of comfort when you think about it, that... Abdurraqib has provided us with an essay collection that might help make some small sense of what’s going on."
—Vol. 1 Brooklyn, 'Hanif Abdurraqib’s Great American Essay Collection'
"Abdurraqib's poetic sentence makes me see fireworks in a new way. It ingeniously reverses their motion: Instead of tendrils of light exploding outward, overwriting the darkness, these fireworks gather the darkness into themselves. They are like teenagers stuffing their pockets with candy, ravenous for the night. Violent illuminations arriving, out of nowhere, to hoard the darkness. That would be something worth staring at."
—Sam Anderson, New York Times Magazine
"Abdurraqib unites familiar sounds with fresh observations about music and the state of contemporary America... essential, gripping reading."
—Tobias Carroll, Pitchfork, 16 Favorite Music Books of 2017
"Abdurraqib places the reader in front of the performer and commands them to see beyond the music, to glimpse the societal impact of popular performers and indie heroes alike, and how they reflect the culture that bears them."
—Paul Haney, Pleiades Magazine
"Abdurraqib’s essay collection on the convergence of identity politics, music, sports and culture feels important."
—National Post, The Best Books of the Year (2017)
"This tome stands as a bold statement for a great writer and a complete breath of life from a rare thinker."
—Erick Mertz, New Noise Magazine
"One of the stand-out essay collections of 2017."
—Alyse Bensel, The Los Angeles Review
"Abdurraqib writes facing his people... and draws the rest of us to the circle’s edge with his discerning eye."
—Julia Oller, Columbus Dispatch
"As powerful and touching as anything I’ve read this year, and Abdurraqib has emerged as the Ta-Nehisi Coates of popular culture."
—James Mann, The Big Takeover
"In his first essay collection, Abdurraqib... writes about America through the prism of its music."
—Jenny Shank, The Dallas Morning News, "5 enticing fall books we're eager to read"
"A penetrating and profoundly timely collection of essays. It is music writing at its sharpest, most perceptive, and most urgent... Most remarkable, perhaps, is Abdurraqib’s ability to perceive and define connections between his subjects, himself, and the fractured, complicated culture in which we live."
—Foreword Reviews (starred)
"Abdurraqib’s essay collection is mesmerizing and deeply perceptive... filled with honesty, providing the reader with the sensation of seeing the world through fresh eyes."
—Publishers Weekly (starred)
"Highly recommended."
—Library Journal (starred)
"Abdurraqib writes with uninhibited curiosity and insight about music and its ties to culture and memory, life and death, on levels personal, political, and universal."
—Booklist (starred)
"In a year that’s felt like a century, hope is hard to come by. Hanif Abdurraqib doesn’t promise us anything beyond brilliant flashes of light in a dark and complicated world, but he does it with such generosity, such grace that we might not deserve it."
—Jaime Fountaine, Fanzine, READ THE INTERVIEW HERE
"A towering work full of insightful observations about everything from the legacy of Nina Simone to the music of Bruce Springsteen... a powerful work about art, society, and the perspective through which its author regards both."
—Tobias Carroll, Electric Literature, READ THE INTERVIEW HERE
"A joyful requiem—emphasis on joyful. Abdurraqib has written a guide for the living as well as a memorial for those we have lost."
—David Breithaupt, Los Angeles Review of Books, "My Small America: An Interview with Hanif Abdurraqib"
"Moving seamlessly from Fall Out Boy to Nina Simone, from Bruce Springsteen to the death of Mike Brown, Abdurraqib centers this masterful collection of essays not only around music and the way it’s shaped and carried him through life, but the tiny sparks that help us survive."
—Jaime Fountaine, Fanzine, More Than Love & Joy: A Conversation with Hanif Abdurraqib
"Some of the most dynamic writing about music I’ve ever read. The way Abdurraqib ties the artists, concerts, and music culture he is covering into current events can make you care about music you have never even heard."
—Robert Sindelar, Board President, American Booksellers Association (ABA)
"These are essays about music, but also about culture, race, and life in America today."
—Rebecca Hussey, Book Riot, 20 Great Essay Collections from 2017
"Read this, then listen back—you’re sure to hear something new."
—Jinnie Lee and Maura M. Lynch, W Magazine
"Erudite writing from an author struggling to find meaning through music."
—Kirkus
"Certain writers can take a pop song or musician as their subject and turn what they write into a stunning evocation of some aspect of society. That’s very much the case with Hanif Abdurraqib, and in this new collection he covers everything from the Columbus punk scene to Chance the Rapper, coming up with stunning observations along the way."
—Vol. 1 Brooklyn
"Uses [seemingly random moments] to try and explore some of the most difficult questions about race, violence, and prejudice facing Americans, specifically Americans of color, today."
—Sadie Trombetta, Bustle
"Hanif Abdurraqib's music writing possesses a singular, impossible magic—he cracks open the very personal nature of fandom with empathy and skepticism in equal measure."
—Jessica Hopper, author of The First Collection of Criticism By A Living Female Rock Critic and Night Moves
"Abdurraqib bridges the bravado and bling of praise with the blood and tears of elegy."
—Terrance Hayes, author of American Sonnets for My Past And Future Assassin and To Float In The Space Between
