Good Kids, Mad Cities

The author draws from the works of Kevin Quashie and Kendrick Lamar to analyze the ways in which Black bodies in Hip Hop culture can represent resistance while being quiet, still, or building on existential consciousness from their interior. As many youth of color are good kids in mad cities, the article focuses on the question, “What does it mean for a generation of youth who are coming of age under the loud publicness of Hip Hop, racism, state violence, and domestic terrorism to know that resistance also can be found in the act of stillness?”