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nisanatreads's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
inspiring
medium-paced
5.0
𝙏𝙝𝙚𝙮 𝙘𝙖𝙣'𝙩 𝙠𝙞𝙡𝙡 𝙪𝙨 𝙪𝙣𝙩𝙞𝙡 𝙩𝙝𝙚𝙮 𝙠𝙞𝙡𝙡 𝙪𝙨 𝙗𝙮 𝙃𝙖𝙣𝙞𝙛 𝘼𝙗𝙙𝙪𝙧𝙧𝙖𝙦𝙞𝙗 🎧
With a title like that, you can't really lower the reader's expectations. And there's no need, because this collection of essays and album/concert reviews is excellent!
Hanif Abdurraqib describes the world we live in through the lens of music, and he describes it in a way that is very vulnerable and yet reveals a worldview that has been hardened by a society that treats black people not only differently, but as a threat. Death has become an almost normal thing to be around in black America. That's why it's so astonishingly beautiful that the author manages to connect with people through music, even when the music wasn't made with someone of his colour in mind, and he regularly finds himself the only black person at concert venues. We get a good insight into his personal life and how music has accompanied him through all stages of his life. But it's also a chronicle of contemporary America and its politics, because the black body and black life has always been political.
Some of Abdurraqib's essays and reviews made me really sad, some made me angry, and some made me happy and grateful to live in this world of art. And through his writing he manages to find a parallel to what music inspires in each and every one of us. It's not just touching, it's emotionally evocative, and in a way that's incredibly cathartic. I listened to the music he mentioned throughout and the interplay between his words and the music took the reading experience to a whole other level I've never experienced before. This book is not just for music nerds, it's for everyone. It has certainly changed my perspective on what music can do for us and how to see the world through music, but also how to see music through my own experience as a PoC in a Western country.
There's a lot to think about and I still think about one aspect or another every day. I highly recommend this book to anyone and everyone because music is something we all understand and the way Abdurraqib connects music to the political and social issues of today is uniquely powerful.
Find me on Instagram @nisanatreads
With a title like that, you can't really lower the reader's expectations. And there's no need, because this collection of essays and album/concert reviews is excellent!
Hanif Abdurraqib describes the world we live in through the lens of music, and he describes it in a way that is very vulnerable and yet reveals a worldview that has been hardened by a society that treats black people not only differently, but as a threat. Death has become an almost normal thing to be around in black America. That's why it's so astonishingly beautiful that the author manages to connect with people through music, even when the music wasn't made with someone of his colour in mind, and he regularly finds himself the only black person at concert venues. We get a good insight into his personal life and how music has accompanied him through all stages of his life. But it's also a chronicle of contemporary America and its politics, because the black body and black life has always been political.
Some of Abdurraqib's essays and reviews made me really sad, some made me angry, and some made me happy and grateful to live in this world of art. And through his writing he manages to find a parallel to what music inspires in each and every one of us. It's not just touching, it's emotionally evocative, and in a way that's incredibly cathartic. I listened to the music he mentioned throughout and the interplay between his words and the music took the reading experience to a whole other level I've never experienced before. This book is not just for music nerds, it's for everyone. It has certainly changed my perspective on what music can do for us and how to see the world through music, but also how to see music through my own experience as a PoC in a Western country.
There's a lot to think about and I still think about one aspect or another every day. I highly recommend this book to anyone and everyone because music is something we all understand and the way Abdurraqib connects music to the political and social issues of today is uniquely powerful.
Find me on Instagram @nisanatreads
madalynn_owens's review against another edition
emotional
funny
hopeful
reflective
fast-paced
5.0
The most beautiful and perfect way anyone has ever talked about twenty one pilots, Allen Iverson and crushes. The audio version adds a wonderful enrichment. Would recommend without fail.
cat_grimm13's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
funny
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
5.0
this book is everything
bashsbooks's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
informative
reflective
fast-paced
4.75
Okay, I absolutely LOVE Hanif Abdurraqib, and I love They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us. I listened to the essay collection slowly, pausing to listen to all the different artists and albums and songs he touches on (Abdurraqib has many a wonderful Spotify playlist to help with this endeavor, including one called They Can't Kill Us. that is a companion to the collection.)
So the context easily gets a 5/5, full stars from me. Read the essays, read them again, read Abdurraqib's other work. Keen-eyed observers will notice, though, that I only gave this 4.75 stars. Why?
Well, I listened to the audiobook production of They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us, and it is a super interesting listen... but it's not the same text as the text versions. Firstly, Abdurraqib adds in a lot of author's notes, editoralizing in a way that I can sympathize with because he came back to this text to read it for the audiobook a few years after publishing. Secondly, one essay is not conveyable verbally - it's an erasure essay, and Abdurraqib notes that he couldn't figure out a way to speak it without compromising the piece. I grabbed a physical copy of the book from my library to read that essay ("August 9, 2014"), and I agree with his assessment that it wouldn't be an easy one to read aloud.
The fact that the audio and written version of the book are different isn't a bad thing per se, but it is a complicated one. And so I don't consider my rating a mark against it as much of a signal/acknowledgment that I read a different version of the text than people with physical or digital copies.
All that said - my favorite essays from this collection were "Under Half-Lit Fluorescents: The Wonder Years And The Great Suburban Narrative," "Death Becomes You: My Chemical Romance And Ten Years Of The Black Parade," "Nina Simone Was Very Black," "Serena Williams And The Policing Of Imagined Arrogance," and "The White Rapper Joke."
So the context easily gets a 5/5, full stars from me. Read the essays, read them again, read Abdurraqib's other work. Keen-eyed observers will notice, though, that I only gave this 4.75 stars. Why?
Well, I listened to the audiobook production of They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us, and it is a super interesting listen... but it's not the same text as the text versions. Firstly, Abdurraqib adds in a lot of author's notes, editoralizing in a way that I can sympathize with because he came back to this text to read it for the audiobook a few years after publishing. Secondly, one essay is not conveyable verbally - it's an erasure essay, and Abdurraqib notes that he couldn't figure out a way to speak it without compromising the piece. I grabbed a physical copy of the book from my library to read that essay ("August 9, 2014"), and I agree with his assessment that it wouldn't be an easy one to read aloud.
The fact that the audio and written version of the book are different isn't a bad thing per se, but it is a complicated one. And so I don't consider my rating a mark against it as much of a signal/acknowledgment that I read a different version of the text than people with physical or digital copies.
All that said - my favorite essays from this collection were "Under Half-Lit Fluorescents: The Wonder Years And The Great Suburban Narrative," "Death Becomes You: My Chemical Romance And Ten Years Of The Black Parade," "Nina Simone Was Very Black," "Serena Williams And The Policing Of Imagined Arrogance," and "The White Rapper Joke."
Content Warnings
Graphic: Racial slurs, Death of parent, Grief, Violence, Death, Police brutality, Racism, and Xenophobia
Moderate: Hate crime, Islamophobia, Misogyny, Cursing, and Suicide
Minor: Religious bigotry, Gun violence, Murder, Drug abuse, and Drug use
elensius's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
4.0
thenymphsvoice's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
funny
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
sad
fast-paced
5.0
This thing goes on in the top five books for the year.
Hanif is who music is made for. Such thoughtful and contextual breakdowns of music of a variety of genres. Is descriptions and attachments to music and emotions and events can be found at the intersection everything physical, political, anything and everything.
He turned an audiobook experience into a conversation in such a natural way that even though the material is heavy from his own personal experiences to the experiences of people all over that it doesn’t weigh down as much as it lifts you up.
This book is proof that cross cultural divides you can be capable of empathy and understanding of a situation in which you have never experienced, and also proof that we all to some degree experience the same life.
Hanif is who music is made for. Such thoughtful and contextual breakdowns of music of a variety of genres. Is descriptions and attachments to music and emotions and events can be found at the intersection everything physical, political, anything and everything.
He turned an audiobook experience into a conversation in such a natural way that even though the material is heavy from his own personal experiences to the experiences of people all over that it doesn’t weigh down as much as it lifts you up.
This book is proof that cross cultural divides you can be capable of empathy and understanding of a situation in which you have never experienced, and also proof that we all to some degree experience the same life.
3mmers's review against another edition
emotional
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
5.0
Hanif Abdurraqib makes me believe in love.
You should read this book. Rather, you should listen to the audiobook. It’s narrated by the author and includes a few incredibly charming off-script notes about Abdurraqib’s thoughts as he records his essays but to eight years after he initially wrote them.
Also, you should read this book, it’s for everyone. The idea of music criticism might seem dull or annoying for the casual music enjoyer, but this isn’t about criticism so much as it is about the love of the game. Carly Rae Jepsen, The Weeknd before he was coo, MCR’s The Black Parade, Fall Out Boy and Twenty-One Pilots before they were cool. Chance The Rapper. Nina Simone. Yes, it is about unwelcoming scenes. Yes, it is about tragedy. Yes, it is about racism. These things are also about love.
I picked this one up as a bit of an aspirational read. I like the idea of being the kind of person who listens to a lot of music and has deep and thoughtful conversations about the artistry far more than I like actually listening to albums. I caught the rot youn. Unlike Abdurraqib, I came of age in the musical purgatory of 2010-2014, the Pitbull years, the iTunes generation. Or, if we’re being honest, the Limewire generation. My music listening technique has always been to select each and every song as the previous one ended. I didn’t fuck with playlists and I definitely didn’t fuck with albums. Who has the time to rip and entire album on Youtubetomp3.com? The hidden cost of Limewire’s free music was no album art and a high chance that at least a couple songs would be straight up missing. You took what you could get. As an anxious nerd in the extremely dispersed Canadian prairies, I didn’t go to shows (there weren’t any shows) (stop touring Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver and calling it a Canadian leg jesus christ).
My project here was to listen to the albums along with the essays and finally learn how to Appreciate Music.
We started strong, with Chance The Rapper’s Colouring Book and Carly Rae Jepsen’s Emotion. These albums are great! Listening to them more intentionally led me to appreciate the background elements far more. Colouring Book’s soaring horns and Carly’s upbeat atmosphere.
One of the first things that jumps out to you about this collection is that it is extremely about live music. Almost ever essay is based around a concert or live experience and each of these is defined by Abdurraqib’s interactions with other audience members. A guy who was at a Springsteen concert the night John Lennon was shot. Teenagers making out to Carly Rae. Disrespectful boomers chewing out stadium staff. Moshers. Scandalized parents escorting their kids to The Weeknd. It’s eerie, in a post-lockdown world, to look back at a time when live music was so… normal. Tours are ramping back up but they feel enormously changed by new economic realities. The idea of live music is dominated by huge tours you can’t afford. Many of the microscopic venues of Abdurraqib’s teens and young adulthood are closed now. You can still score tickets to small shows and local acts, but you’ll be one of a couple dozen audience members awkwardly milling around a mostly empty floor. Conversely, conversation about popular acts is no longer about the experience of the concert — the visuals, the setlist, the live singing, dancing, etc — but about whether the artist is accessible enough to their fans. “I just feel like a concert should be the artist giving back to their fans, not making money,” a woman on Instagram tells her front facing camera, as if by enjoying their music we are entitled to an artist’s service. It’s cynical and financialized and a far cry from the humanity which Abdurraqib finds in the collective experience of music.
I was thinking about this when the collection came right for my heart. It started with an essay about being too sappy and in love for The Weeknd’s emotionally distant RnB persona, attending the concern because someone who no longer loves you told you not to miss it. Flying to a dozen states in as many weeks for work and hearing friends check in on how you’re doing when you lay your head down on a strange pillow. I don’t know exactly how to articulate it but despite the fact that Abdurraqib attends most of his events alone the presence of community and friendship is so strong as to be physical.
I got into emo/scene well after all its biggest acts had blown up and sold out, but Abdurraqib’s essays on seeing Folie a Deux era Fall Out Boy in a midwest hole consisting of a stage, the pit, and a one-deep crowd of others lining the wall spoke to the part of me that listened to three-quarters of From Under the Cork Tree at the bus stop as the sun rose.
Abdurraqib is a terrifically evocative writing, and a brilliantly sensitive one. His writing reminds me of Caleb Azumah Nelson in the way its lyricism stretches the boundaries of prose in a way that inspires emotion the same way music does. It feels reductive to describe it with a small word like ‘compassionate’ when what I really want to say is that this is writing that reaches into my brain and touches my limbic system directly. I say this is about love, and I want to make it clear that ‘love’ also includes sadness, it also includes pain, and loss. What I want to say is that this book makes me believe in love, but also community, but also resilience, but also family.
If you care about what words can do - and if you care about the physical sensation of sound pumped through the anonymous yet familiar crowd dark but for the corona of the stage - you owe it to yourself to read this book.
You should read this book. Rather, you should listen to the audiobook. It’s narrated by the author and includes a few incredibly charming off-script notes about Abdurraqib’s thoughts as he records his essays but to eight years after he initially wrote them.
Also, you should read this book, it’s for everyone. The idea of music criticism might seem dull or annoying for the casual music enjoyer, but this isn’t about criticism so much as it is about the love of the game. Carly Rae Jepsen, The Weeknd before he was coo, MCR’s The Black Parade, Fall Out Boy and Twenty-One Pilots before they were cool. Chance The Rapper. Nina Simone. Yes, it is about unwelcoming scenes. Yes, it is about tragedy. Yes, it is about racism. These things are also about love.
I picked this one up as a bit of an aspirational read. I like the idea of being the kind of person who listens to a lot of music and has deep and thoughtful conversations about the artistry far more than I like actually listening to albums. I caught the rot youn. Unlike Abdurraqib, I came of age in the musical purgatory of 2010-2014, the Pitbull years, the iTunes generation. Or, if we’re being honest, the Limewire generation. My music listening technique has always been to select each and every song as the previous one ended. I didn’t fuck with playlists and I definitely didn’t fuck with albums. Who has the time to rip and entire album on Youtubetomp3.com? The hidden cost of Limewire’s free music was no album art and a high chance that at least a couple songs would be straight up missing. You took what you could get. As an anxious nerd in the extremely dispersed Canadian prairies, I didn’t go to shows (there weren’t any shows) (stop touring Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver and calling it a Canadian leg jesus christ).
My project here was to listen to the albums along with the essays and finally learn how to Appreciate Music.
We started strong, with Chance The Rapper’s Colouring Book and Carly Rae Jepsen’s Emotion. These albums are great! Listening to them more intentionally led me to appreciate the background elements far more. Colouring Book’s soaring horns and Carly’s upbeat atmosphere.
One of the first things that jumps out to you about this collection is that it is extremely about live music. Almost ever essay is based around a concert or live experience and each of these is defined by Abdurraqib’s interactions with other audience members. A guy who was at a Springsteen concert the night John Lennon was shot. Teenagers making out to Carly Rae. Disrespectful boomers chewing out stadium staff. Moshers. Scandalized parents escorting their kids to The Weeknd. It’s eerie, in a post-lockdown world, to look back at a time when live music was so… normal. Tours are ramping back up but they feel enormously changed by new economic realities. The idea of live music is dominated by huge tours you can’t afford. Many of the microscopic venues of Abdurraqib’s teens and young adulthood are closed now. You can still score tickets to small shows and local acts, but you’ll be one of a couple dozen audience members awkwardly milling around a mostly empty floor. Conversely, conversation about popular acts is no longer about the experience of the concert — the visuals, the setlist, the live singing, dancing, etc — but about whether the artist is accessible enough to their fans. “I just feel like a concert should be the artist giving back to their fans, not making money,” a woman on Instagram tells her front facing camera, as if by enjoying their music we are entitled to an artist’s service. It’s cynical and financialized and a far cry from the humanity which Abdurraqib finds in the collective experience of music.
I was thinking about this when the collection came right for my heart. It started with an essay about being too sappy and in love for The Weeknd’s emotionally distant RnB persona, attending the concern because someone who no longer loves you told you not to miss it. Flying to a dozen states in as many weeks for work and hearing friends check in on how you’re doing when you lay your head down on a strange pillow. I don’t know exactly how to articulate it but despite the fact that Abdurraqib attends most of his events alone the presence of community and friendship is so strong as to be physical.
I got into emo/scene well after all its biggest acts had blown up and sold out, but Abdurraqib’s essays on seeing Folie a Deux era Fall Out Boy in a midwest hole consisting of a stage, the pit, and a one-deep crowd of others lining the wall spoke to the part of me that listened to three-quarters of From Under the Cork Tree at the bus stop as the sun rose.
Abdurraqib is a terrifically evocative writing, and a brilliantly sensitive one. His writing reminds me of Caleb Azumah Nelson in the way its lyricism stretches the boundaries of prose in a way that inspires emotion the same way music does. It feels reductive to describe it with a small word like ‘compassionate’ when what I really want to say is that this is writing that reaches into my brain and touches my limbic system directly. I say this is about love, and I want to make it clear that ‘love’ also includes sadness, it also includes pain, and loss. What I want to say is that this book makes me believe in love, but also community, but also resilience, but also family.
If you care about what words can do - and if you care about the physical sensation of sound pumped through the anonymous yet familiar crowd dark but for the corona of the stage - you owe it to yourself to read this book.
kiyamarie's review
5.0
"...as if gorwin up all kinds of black in all kinds of was doesn't carry its own unique and varied weight. As it, in the mirror, if you look hard enough, you still don't see yourself as the world sees you."
This collection of essays is one hell of an emotional ride and it was stunning. I was required to read this for my creative non-fiction workshop and I'm glad I was able to have the chance to because I learned a lot about the type of work that essays do. These essays have a way of captivating the audience to talk about real issues while also including references we can all understand. The angle at which Hanif Abdurraqib dives into these works are calculating in the ways it hits you when you least expect it. He has a way of humanizing everything and stripping away all the false pretenses of fame and stares right into the very human parts of people. He does not hesitate to get very blunt in all kinds of artful ways. The entire collection seems to be grappling with a whole bunch of topics that are similar but also distance and he ties them together well. He is definitely a voice I think most people will start paying attention to.
This collection of essays is one hell of an emotional ride and it was stunning. I was required to read this for my creative non-fiction workshop and I'm glad I was able to have the chance to because I learned a lot about the type of work that essays do. These essays have a way of captivating the audience to talk about real issues while also including references we can all understand. The angle at which Hanif Abdurraqib dives into these works are calculating in the ways it hits you when you least expect it. He has a way of humanizing everything and stripping away all the false pretenses of fame and stares right into the very human parts of people. He does not hesitate to get very blunt in all kinds of artful ways. The entire collection seems to be grappling with a whole bunch of topics that are similar but also distance and he ties them together well. He is definitely a voice I think most people will start paying attention to.
shubooks's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
informative
fast-paced
4.25
It was as if I was reading a situational sitcom where each episode there was a theme that tied back to the grander message of “music is life and life is music.” So much of what Hanif puts into this feels like a love letter to music and the most eloquent diss track.
alexanderp's review against another edition
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
5.0
A triumph in every sense of the word and certainly not the last book I will read of Abdurraquib's. Intimate, lyrical, and honest - every essay while, framed at times by music criticism or cultural criticism, hammers in on Abdurraquib's inner life.
Few writers have made me feel more "myself" despite writing about things that are not "myself." I didn't grow up in the Midwest. I didn't grow up a rough neighborhood and I am, obviously, not black.
Yet, while feeling empathy towards Abdurraqib's words - I felt a certain kinship with him and that might be a little weird and strange. I could not suppress the feeling. I'll have to find more words to put here, but for now I think it would be best to leave it at that.
Few writers have made me feel more "myself" despite writing about things that are not "myself." I didn't grow up in the Midwest. I didn't grow up a rough neighborhood and I am, obviously, not black.
Yet, while feeling empathy towards Abdurraqib's words - I felt a certain kinship with him and that might be a little weird and strange. I could not suppress the feeling. I'll have to find more words to put here, but for now I think it would be best to leave it at that.