Bob Marley says one good thing about music—when it hits you, you feel no pain. So hit me with music. On the transition of Aretha Franklin, and the vitriolic trolling of her funeral and Childish Gambino 2019 Grammy award winning song and record of the year for “This is America,” this piece is using music as a conceptual frame for understanding the pain of Black people in the United States. Recently, musicians Beyoncé, Childish Gambino, Kendrick Lamar, Pink, and many others have used their music to contest inequality in America. I grew up in Jamaica on Motown, Country, and Reggae music. This is what Aretha and many other musicians have meant to me.
