Our Silent Boycott

Mario told me I needed to listen to some Tupac. “Alright,” I said. “Let me hear his best stuff.” I didn’t tell Mario that, where I grew up, people who were saved didn’t listen to rap music. I’d been saved since before I knew how to turn a radio dial. Not listening to 102 JAMZ wasn’t something anyone ever explained to me.

It was a given—like locking our doors when we drove through East Winston or scoffing at anything that smacked of big government. Our silent boycott of a whole genre of music couldn’t have had anything to do with the fact that rap was “black music.” We weren’t like…