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Timeline of Sounds
In Defense of Our Sins
On Kendrick Lamar, Trayvon Martin, and mercy
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I. Good Kid
I heard the news outside a rap show, which seems fitting for this story. February 26, 2012, was the night of the NBA All-Star Game — something I rarely missed, but I missed it on this day to drive several hours north of Columbus, Ohio, to attend an Atmosphere show in Minnesota. There is something special about the NBA All-Star Game. Even though the NBA isn’t nearly as rigid as the NFL or the MLB, the All-Star Game represents a similar type of freedom: players playing for themselves, despite the disapproving gazes that might be watching their every move.
In 2012, Twitter was a different place than it is now, largely because it had yet to be ravaged by the anxieties and frustrations of a polarizing political cycle. It also had yet to have to fight in order to find language for the seemingly endless frustration of racialized violence that was then met with no justice. It isn’t that this wasn’t happening in the United States — rather, that there wasn’t the one notable case that built a unified front of rage and resistance on a large scale.
I mention Twitter to say that I heard the news first because I logged into my infant Twitter account in hopes of finding a summary of the NBA All-Star Game, but instead learned that a black teenager had been murdered in Sanford, Florida. The narrative in that moment was all faint noise with few facts — just occasional clarity cutting through a wall of static. It is almost absurd to say this now, but the news in its early stages seemed frustrating but not particularly singular. It was difficult to parse anything, and Twitter hadn’t yet gotten into its phase where reporters were utilizing it as a vital reporting force — something that became more common more than two years later, during protests in Ferguson after Michael Brown’s death. I started my drive home. Kendrick Lamar’s Section.80 — by that point only a little over six months old — was still in the road-trip rotation.
It is hard to say what stood out about Trayvon Martin’s murder and how it completely shifted the…
