Kevin Young

“Forget reparations - we need to rescue aspects of black culture abandoned even by black folks, whether it is the blues or home cookin' or broader forms of not just survival but triumph.”

“It took a while for anyone to want to publish 'To Repel Ghosts.' I thought people would want to publish a three-hundred-and-fifty-page book about a dead painter, but they didn't.”

“At our peril, we ignore the fact that black vernacular, like the blues, both has a form and performs... For just as there would be no American music without black folks, there would be very...”

“Hip-hop at its zenith insists on thinking and dancing simultaneously. In fact, it sees them as synonymous.”