An Open Letter to Thug Heaven Artists

Your paintings are monstrosities — and they’re just what I need in these ridiculous times

Tirhakah Love
LEVEL

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Image: @atomly/Twitter

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Dear Thug Heaven Artists,

I just have to thank you for your contribution to my Zoom background game. It’s been a very long nine months, and I’m completely sick of video meetings — but if there’s one thing that’s gotten me by, it’s the sheer ridiculousness of y’all’s craft.

Listen, I’ll be the last one screaming on the hilltops about the disservice 21st-century skinfolk have done to General Harriet thee Tubman. Everyone from Nicki Minaj — who compared herself to Tubman a couple of years back — to OneUnited Bank dropping its Harriet Tubman debit card with a Skeletor-lookin’ Tubman throwing up the “Wakanda forever” salute just before Covid struck. Needless to say, we’ve done that woman no favors recently. She has known no peace.

That being said, I have found few greater joys than waking up early in the mornings and, while my morning coffee percolates, mining tweets and Instagram for Thug Heaven collages. You know the ones: The cartoonish, obnoxious, sometimes disrespectful memorials featuring Tubman or other Black History…

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Tirhakah Love
LEVEL
Writer for

African from Texas• Staff Writer at LEVEL • Black politics, Celebrity interviews, TV & Film Criticism • Previously: MTV News, San Francisco Chronicle