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    LL Cool J Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop. (And Why Would He?)

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    At a dusty studio space in an industrial corner of Los Angeles, LL Cool J bounced and vibed in black satin and bulging, size 13 Balenciaga boots.The actor and rap luminary was filming a video for a sexy track, “Proclivities,” from his new album — but he wasn’t in front of the cameras, or rehearsing. He was just cheerfully shooting the you-know-what, with a late night of production ahead of him. Background players in feathered dresses floated by; his security circled. He did a little dance, demonstrating the inspiration for another song. He walks with a swagger and stands with a spring, too much rhythm in his 6-foot-3 frame to keep still. “Making fantasies happen,” he said, grinning, taking all of it in.LL Cool J is 56, and has been a hip-hop eminence for 40 years: His whole life is a stretch into realizing the improbable, including a sneakily successful pivot into network television. Even before adulthood, he strode with a preternatural confidence in his abilities, and a willingness to dig into the work. His rap career is not now — and, to hear him tell it, has never been — about the money, the trappings of celebrity or the cultural prestige.“I do it because I love it,” he said. “I love a fresh beat. A new lyric, a chord, the feeling — and then sharing that. Putting that on the easel of life, so to speak, for people to walk through the sonic gallery and listen to this, these vibes. I love that. I wanted my voice to be heard, and I wanted to share.”Because he started so young, the first to sign to the then-fledgling label Def Jam, when he was just 16 — and when hip-hop itself was only a decade old — he influenced an entire pantheon of artists who followed, including contemporaries his same age. Hits like the bruising, Grammy-winning “Mama Said Knock You Out,” from 1990, and plaintive grooves from his lovelorn Lothario persona (“I Need Love”; “Around the Way Girl”), cemented his legacy as a crossover pop superstar.LL Cool J outside a concert in the late 1980s. He was the label Def Jam’s first signing, when he was just 16 years old.Michael Ochs Archives/Getty ImagesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Eminem and LL Cool J Duel in Speedy Raps, and 9 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Sophie featuring Bibi Bourelly, Kim Deal, Tommy Richman and more.Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new tracks. Listen to the Playlist on Spotify here (or find our profile: nytimes) and at Apple Music here, and sign up for The Amplifier, a twice-weekly guide to new and old songs.LL Cool J featuring Eminem, ‘Murdergram Deux’LL Cool J, 56, and Eminem, 51, show off old-school, high-speed, crisply articulated rhyme technique in “Murdergram Deux,” nominally a sequel to “Murdergram” from LL Cool J’s 1990 album “Mama Said Knock You Out.” It’s all boasts, threats, wordplay and similes — “’bout to finish you like polyurethane,” Eminem raps — set to a jaunty, changeable track produced by Eminem and none other than Q-Tip. Eminem has the slightly higher syllable count, while LL Cool J gets the last word, a cheerful callback to his commercial peak. JON PARELESSophie featuring Bibi Bourelly, ‘Exhilarate’The hyperpop visionary Sophie had mapped out a full album before she died in an accident in 2021; “Sophie,” completed by her brother and other collaborators, is due in September. “Exhilarate” takes the conventions of a big-room trance anthem — four chords, sumptuously reverberating synthesizer tones, a stately underlying beat — and warps them from the bottom up. Bibi Bourelly sings euphoric layered harmonies, proclaiming, “Got my foot on the gas/And I won’t stop for no one.” But the drumbeat leaves spaces instead of thumping four on the floor, while bass tones wriggle and melt and the midrange gets zapped with buzzy tones. The track’s entire last minute is a slow-motion collapse into entropy and silence. PARELESKim Deal, ‘Crystal Breath’We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      How Hip-Hop Conquered the World

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      How Hip-HopConqueredthe World A crowd in Harlem watching Doug E. Fresh, 1995.David Corio The Great Read How Hip-Hop Conquered the World Fifty years ago, a party in the Bronx jumpstarted an essential American artform. For decades the genre has thrived by explaining the country to itself. Aug. 10, 2023, 5:00 a.m. ET We’ve gathered here […] More

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      Mahogany L. Browne’s Love Letter to Hip-Hop

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      It was a clear black night, a clear white moon. Warren G, “Regulate” (1994)Originally appearing on the soundtrack of the Tupac Shakur film “Above the Rim,” this song is built around a sample of Michael McDonald’s “I Keep Forgettin’ (Every Time You’re Near).” I’m looking like a star when you see me make a wish. […] More

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      50 Rappers, 50 Stories: Hear the Remix

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      Ten bonus songs from our hip-hop anniversary project.Azealia Banks in 2012, the year her “212” became a breakout.Erin Baiano for The New York TimesDear listeners,Last week, the Times published a sprawling interactive package called 50 Rappers, 50 Stories, celebrating the upcoming 50th anniversary of hip-hop.* The day it ran, I set aside about 10 minutes to start browsing during lunch; the next thing I knew, more than an hour and a half had passed. It’s one of those kinds of projects.My colleagues spoke with — you guessed it — 50 different rappers about their careers and relationships with hip-hop, and the result is a mosaic of varied voices and narratives that run parallel and intersect in unexpected ways (like the Cash Money poet Lil Wayne and the New York provocateur Azealia Banks both identifying as theater kids). LL Cool J talks about meeting Paul Simon for the first time (“I’m gonna be honest with you, I didn’t even know who Paul Simon was, bro”); 50 Cent takes style inspiration from Juvenile (“Get me some baby oil!”); Cardi B cites the precise moment she traded in Barney the Dinosaur for Missy Elliott. Trust me, it’s all a delight.My fellow pop music critic Jon Caramanica and culture reporter Joe Coscarelli helmed the editorial end of this ambitious project and did many of the interviews themselves. They also created a comprehensive, roughly chronological 50-track playlist featuring all the artists they chatted with, and I can’t recommend that enough.But I thought it would be fun to have them put together a separate one for The Amplifier, featuring some deep cuts and personal favorites. The result is a playlist encompassing a variety of eras and regions, featuring plenty of marquee names (Cam’ron, Outkast) alongside entries from some of the more outré corners of hip-hop (Lil B, Trippie Redd). Consider this the remix.In his introductory essay for the project, Caramanica writes that hip-hop “is far too vast to be contained under one tent, or limited to one narrative. The genre is gargantuan, nonlinear and unruly.”“So,” he continues, “when trying to catalog hip-hop in full, it’s only reasonable to lean into the cacophony.” Which is how I’d instruct you to listen to this playlist.Listen along on Spotify as you read.1. Goodie Mob featuring Outkast: “Black Ice (Sky High)” (1998)Later alluded to in Kanye West’s “Touch the Sky,” this moody single about life’s hidden slippery spots from the second Goodie Mob album, “Still Standing,” is a showcase for Big Gipp’s hook writing and worn wisdom, with two acrobatic verses from his Dungeon Family kin — Big Boi and Andre 3000 of Outkast — that previewed the assured flamboyance of their third album, “Aquemini.” (Listen on YouTube) JOE COSCARELLI2. E-40: “Practice Lookin’ Hard” (1993)E-40 has been twisting words for well over three decades, with a dizzying approach to rhyme construction that plays with pitch and pace as much as language. This is a fairly linear storytelling rap, but his approach is frisky and surprising, with lyrics that creep up on you quickly or move at a deliberately slow pace. Also, this is likely the only hip-hop song in history to mention the card game whist. (Listen on YouTube) JON CARAMANICA3. dead prez: “Tallahassee Days” (2003)Recalling the fading of his adolescence in dead-end Florida, stic of the revolutionary-minded duo dead prez paints his artistic and outlaw provenance as one and the same — “kill or be killed” desperation, because “a job is a joke” — on this quick track from “Turn Off the Radio: The Mixtape, Vol. 2: Get Free or Die Tryin’.” “Whoever said life is beautiful lied,” he raps. (Listen on YouTube) COSCARELLI4. Cam’ron featuring UGK, Juelz Santana, Ludacris and Trina: “What Means the World to You (Remix)” (2000)This remix of a classic Cam’ron song has it all: one of the jauntiest beats in hip-hop history, Cam’ron’s dazzling interior rhyme schemes and naughty appearances from two other rappers in this package, Bun B and Trina. (Listen on YouTube) CARAMANICA5. Lil B and Soulja Boy Tell ’Em: “Cooking Dance” (2010)Pairing two early YouTube savants at the height of their anything-goes, post-CD but pre-streaming powers, this 2010 track from the “Pretty Boy Millionaires” mixtape immortalized the Based God’s signature kitchen movements via his free-associative Dada flow, in which Lil B is both “feeling like Fabio” and ad-libbing at will: “Cook! Steak! Chef! Pots! Chef! Pots! Chef! Cook!” (Listen on YouTube) COSCARELLI6. Paul Wall & Chamillionaire: “N Luv Wit My Money” (2002)One of the standout tracks from “Get Ya Mind Correct,” the 2002 collaborative album between the Houston rappers Paul Wall and Chamillionaire, “N Luv Wit My Money” is a lightly comic, utterly serious ode to flashy wealth. Wall was still rapping aggressively here, before he fully found his slow flow: “I love my car like it was my girlfriend: I like to caress the grain/Fondled the wheel and I got aroused/I swung in the ditch and I wrecked the frame.” (Listen on YouTube) CARAMANICA7. Azealia Banks: “Anna Wintour” (2018)As Banks told me, she is often derided for failing to deliver on her early hip-hop promise by pivoting to house music, “‘a.k.a white people music.’ I’m like, honey, no. House music is Black music. Everything I do is in the spirit of hip-hop.” On this 2018 one-off single, a vogue track named for the Vogue editor, Banks threads the two sounds seamlessly. (Listen on YouTube) COSCARELLI8. Trippie Redd featuring 6ix9ine: “Poles1469” (2017)Trippie Redd and 6ix9ine have been at odds for years now, but here’s an early collaboration from simpler times full of the elegiac melodies that have made Trippie Redd the stalwart veteran of the SoundCloud rap movement. This is a sweet, dreamy song about the stuff of nightmares, playful in a way that suggests no consequences lurk around the corner. (Listen on YouTube) CARAMANICA9. Roc Marciano: “Wheat 40’s” (2020)A cascade of sly punchlines, wordplay and unlikely juxtaposition (“I need therapy and a speedboat”), this song from the 2020 album “Mt. Marci” demonstrates Marciano’s economy of language and easy evocation, all while maintaining his character’s Mafioso frigidity: “Ma, I’m just a hooligan/I make this kind of rap cool again/She say I’m way cooler than Max Julian/You ain’t gotta ask who he is, we the loopiest/My character in the movie script is truly at the nucleus.” (Listen on YouTube) COSCARELLI10. Ice Spice: “No Clarity” (2021)It’s been less than two years since the Bronx rapper Ice Spice released this lite-drill revision of Zedd’s EDM anthem “Clarity.” All the elements for success were already there — the patient rapping, the raw emotional content, the as-if kiss-offs. Here, a tragedy in three acts: “You woulda thought that I missed you/But you was a thot, it’s a issue/Your bro was the one that I went to.” (Listen on YouTube) CARAMANICAWhat the world means to me,Lindsay*As Caramanica notes in his essay, “As for the 50th anniversary, well, it is a framing of convenience. The date refers to Aug. 11, 1973, when DJ Kool Herc — in the rec room of the apartment building at 1520 Sedgwick Ave. in the Bronx — reportedly first mixed two copies of the same album into one seamless breakbeat. That is, of course, one way to think about hip-hop’s big-bang moment, but by no means the only one.”The Amplifier PlaylistListen on Spotify. We update this playlist with each new newsletter.“50 Rappers, 50 Stories (Remix)” track listTrack 1: Goodie Mob featuring Outkast, “Black Ice (Sky High)”Track 2: E-40, “Practice Lookin’ Hard”Track 3: dead prez, “Tallahassee Days”Track 4: Cam’ron featuring UGK, Juelz Santana, Ludacris and Trina, “What Means the World to You (Remix)”Track 5: Lil B and Soulja Boy Tell ’Em, “Cooking Dance”Track 6: Paul Wall & Chamillionaire, “N Luv Wit My Money”Track 7: Azealia Banks, “Anna Wintour”Track 8: Trippie Redd featuring 6ix9ine, “Poles1469”Track 9: Roc Marciano, “Wheat 40’s”Track 10: Ice Spice, “No Clarity”Bonus TracksSinead O’Connor forever. “O’Connor was never quiet about her pain,” Amanda Petrusich writes, bracingly, for The New Yorker, “even when it would have been easier to swallow or evade it — in fact, being unapologetic about the crippling weight of certain sorrows was the defining characteristic of her work.”In the aftermath of O’Connor’s death, a number of beautiful tributes have been published considering many different angles of her prismatic legacy. Our own Jon Caramanica wrote about her most infamous and misunderstood act of protest (she “was daring the cameras, and the viewers, to look away; no one did”), while Una Mullally explored O’Connor’s relationship to Ireland and Vanessa Friedman considered the resonant rebellion of O’Connor’s shaved head.If a playlist is what you’re looking for, Jon Pareles has you covered with his reflection on 10 of O’Connor’s most powerful songs. More

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      Share Your Favorite Hip-Hop Lyrics

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      As The New York Times prepares to pay tribute to the genre on its 50th anniversary, we want to hear about the lines that have stuck in your heads and shaped your musical lives.It’s hard to pinpoint the exact birth date of a musical revolution. But if you ask most experts when hip-hop burst onto the scene, they’ll tell you it all started with a block party in the Bronx on Aug. 11, 1973.Since that auspicious day, hip-hop has spread from Sedgwick Avenue to every corner of the globe, becoming a multibillion-dollar industry and a cultural touchstone for generations of music lovers.As The New York Times prepares to commemorate hip-hop’s 50th anniversary, we want to hear from you. Please share with us:Lyrics that are at least a couple of lines longLess popular lyrics that mean something to youThe artist’s name for each lyricTell Us About Your Favorite Lyrics More

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      Grammys Celebrate Hip-Hop History, From Grandmaster Flash to Lil Uzi Vert

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      In what could be seen as an elaborate mea culpa to rap music after decades of friction and perceived disrespect, the Grammy Awards dedicated an extended, centerpiece performance on Sunday to the forthcoming 50th anniversary of hip-hop, going from Grandmaster Flash to Lil Uzi Vert in about 15 minutes.Featuring a taste of some two dozen songs from across decades, regions and movements, the medley — curated by Questlove of the Roots and narrated by his bandmate Black Thought, plus LL Cool J and Queen Latifah — included deep cuts, smash hits and fan favorites in a rapid-fire fashion. The performance celebrated the half-centennial of the genre, which many in the industry have dated to Aug. 11, 1973, when DJ Kool Herc threw a back-to-school party with his sister in the rec room of an apartment building at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue in the Bronx.Opening with Grandmaster Flash performing his traditional record-scratching and drum-machine techniques, the first of three segments breezed through the late 1970s and 1980s with appearances by Run-DMC, DJ Jazzy Jeff, Salt-N-Pepa, Rakim and Public Enemy’s Chuck D and Flava Flav. (Jazzy Jeff — along with the Fresh Prince, a.k.a. Will Smith — and Salt-N-Pepa were among the first-ever Grammy nominees in a rap category, though both groups boycotted the ceremony in 1989 because the award was not being televised.)Representing the next waves, including early gangster rap, Southern hip-hop and 21st-century pop crossovers, were artists like Queen Latifah, Big Boi of Outkast and Missy Elliott, who performed her 2005 hit “Lose Control,” which peaked at No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100. In a showstopping moment, Busta Rhymes transitioned from “Put Your Hands Where My Eyes Could See,” his 1997 single, to his 2011 verse on Chris Brown’s “Look at Me Now,” a feat of vocal speed, verbal dexterity and breath control.Moving toward the present day in the high-energy third act, Nelly, Too Short and the Lox made way for the current crop of rap stars, including Lil Baby and GloRilla.Concluding the set was Lil Uzi Vert, hitting viral dance moves alongside LL Cool J, to his Jersey club-influenced TikTok hit “Just Wanna Rock,” as clear an example as any of how unpredictably hip-hop has evolved.Here’s the full set list:Grandmaster Flash, “Flash to the Beat”/“The Message”Run-DMC, “King of Rock”LL Cool J and DJ Jazzy Jeff, “I Can’t Live Without My Radio”/“Rock the Bells”Salt-N-Pepa, “My Mic Sounds Nice”Rakim, “Eric B. Is President”Chuck D and Flavor Flav, “Rebel Without a Pause”Black Thought and LL Cool J interlude (“Rump Shaker”)Posdnuos of De La Soul, “Buddy”Scarface, “Mind Playing Tricks on Me”Ice-T, “New Jack Hustler (Nino’s Theme)”Queen Latifah, “U.N.I.T.Y.”Method Man, “Method Man”Big Boi of Outkast, “ATLiens”Busta Rhymes, “Put Your Hands Where My Eyes Could See”/“Look at Me Now”Missy Elliott, “Lose Control”Nelly, “Hot in Herre”Too Short, “Blow the Whistle”The Lox and Swizz Beatz, “We Gonna Make It”Lil Baby, “Freestyle”GloRilla, “F.N.F. (Let’s Go)”Lil Uzi Vert, “Just Wanna Rock” More

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      My Favorite Rap Songs Are All Fight and No Flight

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      Mitski moved to Nashville. She’s not quite sure why, because she didn’t really know anyone there, but she liked how specifically weird it was — a town with stories. A local businessman had recently died and left his substantial estate to his Border collie. Bachelorette parties were a surreal and ever-present cottage industry: “There’s always a woman crying on the street and five other women in matching T-shirts comforting her,” as Mitski put it to me. “It feels like such a good place to observe the human condition.” More

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      Jay-Z, Foo Fighters and Carole King Join the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame

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      Barack Obama (via video), Paul McCartney and Taylor Swift spoke on behalf of the inductees at a ceremony that also honored Tina Turner, the Go-Go’s and Todd Rundgren.CLEVELAND — Like many awards shows during the pandemic, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame hosted a virtual induction ceremony in 2020. On Saturday night at the Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse in Cleveland, where the organization’s museum is based, the event returned with a powerful lineup to laud its 36th annual class: a former United States president, Taylor Swift and a Beatle.A video introduction for Jay-Z that flaunted the New York City rapper’s wide reach opened with a tribute from Barack Obama. “I’ve turned to Jay-Z’s words at different points in my life, whether I was brushing dirt off my shoulder on the campaign trail, or sampling his lyrics on the Edmund Pettus Bridge on the 50th anniversary of the Selma march to Montgomery,” said Obama, who spoke in the package alongside Beyoncé, Chris Rock and LeBron James.The comedian Dave Chappelle, who delivered Jay-Z’s formal induction in the arena, opened with, “I would like to apologize …” — an apparent reference to the controversy surrounding his recent Netflix special, “The Closer” — before sticking to the subject at hand: Jay-Z’s eternal sense of calm and how he has stayed true to his community through the decades.“When he said this is Jay everyday. When he told us he’d never change. You heard this and you probably said as a white person, ‘Well, maybe this guy should focus on his development,’” Chappelle said. “But what we heard is that he’ll never forget us. He will always remember us. And we are his point of reference. That he is going to show us how far we can go if we just get hold of the opportunity.”A tuxedo-clad Jay-Z, who did not perform, followed with a charming, sometimes meandering 10-minute speech in which he referred to the mentors and peers who guided him: LL Cool J (who received a musical excellence award on Saturday after he wasn’t voted in on his sixth nomination), KRS-One, Rakim and Chuck D, among others. “Growing up, we didn’t think we could be inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame,” Jay-Z said. “We were told that hip-hop was a fad. Much like punk rock, it gave us this anti-culture, this subgenre, and there were heroes in it.” Hopefully, he added at the end of his remarks, he is showing the “next generation that anything is possible.”The actress Angela Bassett inducted the singer Tina Turner, who did not attend the event.Michael Loccisano/Getty ImagesThe actress Drew Barrymore, center, with the Go-Go’s. David Richard/Associated PressJay-Z joined one of the more diverse recent Rock Hall classes: Carole King, the singer and songwriter who was honored by the organization in 1990 with her songwriting partner and former husband Gerry Goffin; the arena rockers Foo Fighters, whose frontman, Dave Grohl, traced the band’s longevity to the familial bond developed between the musicians; the indefatigable powerhouse singer Tina Turner, finally inducted as a solo performer after gaining entry as part of Ike and Tina Turner in 1991; the 1980s power-pop band the Go-Go’s, hailed as the sound of “pure possibility” in a big-hearted introduction by Drew Barrymore; and the classic rock auteur Todd Rundgren, who recently told TMZ that he “never cared much about the Hall of Fame” and stayed true to his word, skipping the event to perform a solo set in Cincinnati. HBO will present highlights from the ceremony on Nov. 20.Jay-Z’s speech, filled with asides and memories, well demonstrated how despite the multitude of big personalities packed into one of Cleveland’s biggest venues, the event often centered on more intimate moments.Swift helped set the more personal tone, recalling in her induction speech for King how at age 7 she used to dance throughout her house in socked feet while listening to the musician’s records. “I cannot remember a time when I didn’t know Carole King’s music,” said Swift, who went on to describe the seemingly magical way that King’s songs could be introduced by an outsider — a parent, a sibling, a lover — only to become an integral part of a person’s own internal world.“I cannot remember a time when I didn’t know Carole King’s music,” said the singer Taylor Swift, left, with King.Gaelen Morse/ReutersSwift embodied this idea in her show-opening performance, gliding through “Will You Love Me Tomorrow,” which Swift reinvented as a gently pulsating synth-pop ballad that wouldn’t feel out of place in her own discography. King, who could be seen onscreen in the venue wiping away tears as Swift finished the song, thanked the pop star for “carrying the torch forward” in her own speech.“I keep hearing it, so I guess I’m going to have to try to own it, that today’s female singers and songwriters stand on my shoulders,” said King, who was quick to extend the spotlight to her own forebears. “Let it not be forgotten that they also stand on the shoulders of the first woman to be inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. May she rest in power, Miss Aretha Franklin!”In his speech for the Foo Fighters, Paul McCartney joking pointed out how Dave Grohl followed in his own footsteps. Both were swept up by music at a young age, McCartney said, landing in popular groups that came to an untimely end. Both rebounded by making albums and playing all the musical parts (Grohl with Foo Fighters’ self-titled 1995 debut; McCartney with his 1970 solo album). “Do you think this guy’s stalking me?” the Beatle cracked.Onstage, Grohl, born roughly 60 miles east of the Rock Hall in Warren, Ohio, praised the influence of the Beatles and in particular McCartney, describing him as “my music teacher.” After the Foo Fighters muscled through a trio of battle-tested rock singalongs — “The Best of You,” “My Hero” and “Everlong” — McCartney repaid the favor, joining the band for a galloping cover of the Beatles’ “Get Back.”The singer Paul McCartney, right, inducted the Foo Fighters. He joined the band for a galloping cover of the Beatles’ “Get Back.”Michael Loccisano/Getty Images H.E.R. and Keith Urban paid tribute to Turner.Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty ImagesIn other performances, H.E.R., Christina Aguilera, Mickey Guyton and Keith Urban combined to pay tribute to Tina Turner, who did not attend the event. During the in memoriam segment, Brandi Carlile joined her bandmates Phil and Tim Hanseroth for an understated take on the Everly Brothers’ “All I Have to Do Is Dream” to honor Don Everly, who died in August.The Go-Go’s captured all of the sunny, sneering urgency of their 1981 debut “Beauty and the Beat,” the first and only album from an all-woman band to score the No. 1 spot on Billboard’s chart, opening with “Vacation,” pogo-ing into “Our Lips Are Sealed” and closing with a bounding, bass-heavy “We Got the Beat.”In Janet Jackson’s 2019 induction speech, she spoke of the Rock Hall’s well-documented gender imbalance, asking voters to “please induct more women.” The Go-Go’s bassist Kathy Valentine echoed these comments during the band’s own time onstage.While Valentine credited the Rock Hall for making progress, she also prodded the organization to do more. “By honoring our historical contribution, the doors to this establishment have opened wider,” she said. “Because here is the thing, there would not be less of us if more of us were visible.” More