The Song of Killmonger
During “Fuck Your Ethnicity,” the very first song on Kendrick Lamar’s very first album, a robotic voice beamed in with this: “Reporting live from Planet Terminator X, I am Martin Luther King with an AK-47.”
That moment feels prescient after the release of Black Panther, the Marvel superhero story soundtracked by Lamar. There’s the line’s sci-fi, futuristic concept. There’s the nod to black nationalism and hip-hop history with the mention of Public Enemy’s Terminator X. And there’s the twinning of symbols of violence with nonviolence, suggesting that even a champion of compassion might still sometimes have to pick up a weapon.
Ryan Coogler’s absorbing uses the hidden high-tech African utopia of Wakanda as the setting to explore a question well familiar in the arc of history. What should people routinely exploited by racist systems do?
