Midwest Regionalism of Hanif Abdurraqib

In late May of 2016, Hanif Abdurraqib traveled from his home in Columbus, Ohio to the   beacon of Midwestern modernism: Chicago. He arrived at an address where a large group had gathered. They were all loaded onto school buses and then driven to an undisclosed location. Arriving at a brick warehouse, the inside burst with fans of Chance the Rapper and the sounds of the Chicago rapper’s new album, Coloring Book. The curious event is an early scene in Abdurraqib’s book They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us, recently re-released in a five-year anniversary hardcover edition by the Columbus publisher Two Dollar Radio.