“Oh my god, he is so….GHETTO.” It’s a common expression these days. I hear it all the time from white folks, black folks, even Jay-Z himself. Mr. Beyonce may be using ‘ghetto’ as a self-referential complement, but for most people the word is an unmitigated insult.

It was my first time in Mexico, and something felt off. I was sitting outside the faded colonial church in Teotitlan del Valle, a village in the beautiful, proudly indigenous state of Oaxaca in southern Mexico. I surveyed the scene, trying to decipher the source of my uneasiness. In the…

So I wrote this poem last fall called Tree Hugger. It’s about Oakland, violence, fatherhood, what it means to be man…and the first time my hippie-ass 10th grade science teacher asked me to hug a tree. Now that piece is gonna be on a mixtape over a Lil Wayne beat.

Holiday Present My mom told me she’s a lesbian and it rained for a week, not because she told me she’s a lesbian but because sometimes it just rains like that in December, when families get together around nine shining candles or one electrified tree or whatever they light

  Let it not be in vain it’s new years day in Oakland sirens blasting like shofar year 5771 by my people’s count God knows how we made it this far the first time I was pulled over by the cops, I was 19. home in DC on summer break,…