Sublime

I knew what I was against, but I couldn’t imagine what stood on the other side.

He conducts an ongoing interrogation about what it all means. What’s black culture? What’s hip-hop? What are the responsibilities of a society and the people in it? And his inquiry isn’t bloodlessly academic, either; there’s something very consequential about his approach.

He has a kind, round face and the relaxed, easygoing manner of someone who’s spent most of his life in California.

I was quickly coming to the realization that my creative anxieties about whether there was anything original or new left to say about the world were quite generic.

was responsible for my friends’ safety, and for their enrichment, too.

I even felt protective of him in that moment, surprised, and slightly awed, by the fact that he held on to such grand visions of what life could offer.

What I prized was seriousness. I wanted to apply it to some small world, hidden in this larger one.

To make myself, and by proxy other Asian Americans, more human and a little more relevant to American culture.