Sublime

here’s how you make it: Take 6 cups defrosted lima beans, 6 pears peeled and cut into slices, ½ cup molasses, ½ cup chicken stock, ½ onion chopped, put into a heavy casserole, cover and bake 12 hours at 200°. That’s the sort of food she loved to serve, something that looked like plain old baked beans and then turned out to have pears up its sleeve.

But the truth is, no matter what New York says, hip hop has always owed a debt to the South as per Kiese Laymon’s classic essay “Hip Hop Stole My Black Boy.” You cannot get to hip hop without James Brown and his funky drummer, the sonic foundation of the art. Brown, country as he wanted to be, with his greasy perm, spangly suits, and gravelly drawl

Culturally speaking, Atlanta is the bright star of the South that we steadily watch, even if with disdain. Atlanta is the cutting edge on unsteady ground. The Black queer mecca, the heart of the Black music industry, the place where McMansions are maintained, pristinely, by the descendants of domestics who now pay somebody else to clean their house