“It is this which defeats us, which continues to defeat us, which lends to interracial cocktail parties their rattling, genteel, nervously smiling air … Wherever the Negro face appears a tension is created, the tension of a silence filled with things unutterable.” — James Baldwin, “Many Thousands Gone,” 1951 If you’ve heard of Chief Keef, a 17-year-old rapper from Chicago, it may be because he signed a $3 million dollar recording contract with Interscope Records last year, soon after spending two months under house arrest at his grandmother’s for pointing a gun at a police officer.