Doppelgangbanger
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About this ebook
Dopplegangbanger, rendered as the A- and B-sides of an album of poems, re-imagines and remixes American politics of the 90s, the Obama era, and today via a hip-hop blerd's investigation of a hi/lo culture of American crime.
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Book preview
Doppelgangbanger - Cortney Lamar Charleston
I.
Hip-Hop Introspective
Starting point: South Side, Chicago. Mid-90s.
The glory days, rocking my high-top fade.
I’m mesmerized by a poster on my uncle’s wall.
The black-tinted sunglasses, Jamaican dreads:
young Stevie Wonder sitting beside the
smiling Bob Marley, looking like two sides
of a DJ’s vinyl, something to be sampled, cut,
and sold like substances I’m not wise to yet.
When records spin, I listen. This is how
children learn here, how they become,
come into everything they already are.
See, my classmates and I come from all over:
from something, from nothing, but come to
the same school, on the same bus, religiously,
as though we were actually confirmed Catholics.
Every day, our ears dialed into 107.5 WGCI.
Every ride, repeating every word, nodding our
heads like we have naps on the brain; nappy
or not, the bus speakers are blowout combs.
We are Afro-American kids: the music
more fitting for us than the collared shirts
for black boys, plaid skirts for black girls.
It sounded like us from the inside of our
mamas’ wombs, new jacks with kick. And
somehow, still, too explicit. Gritty. Aggressive.
Skins we will grow into, to be killed softly.
One girl I talk with has braids like Lauryn Hill.
Six years old, already has to let herself into her
grandmother’s empty apartment, handle keys.
Somewhere there is a guitar she will never play.
In due time, she will be the one who tells me
Tupac is dead, and a blood relation of mine
soon goes in the same way, distantly from me.
Tha Crossroads
music video begins to haunt me.
Biggie bites a few bullets. My next-door neighbors
get burglarized, not in South Side proper, though
it moves closer than it already is on our daily drive.
I move farther out when Mom gets a better job.
Dad needs a wheelchair now: a hard-knock life.
I miss hearing Boyz II Men and Blackstreet
everywhere I go. Even the name Backstreet
sounds stolen to me. Meanwhile, an album
on miseducation has only my pictures inside.
I hide my intelligence from my new peers as
an act of protection. Eminem gives all of them
an excuse for making conversation with me,
and I hate Mathers for it for at least four years.
Kids ask what FUBU means. White girls look at me
constantly. DMX never seems to be screaming.
The underground heads north on my playlists
while an old poster peels away from the wall.
I’m beside myself almost always: A-side, B-side.
A Brief History of Poetry
after Dan Albergotti
All day the boy sits behind the house
with his dog; all day the dog sits with him.
Well before then, the boy is dog