The Ringer - The South Week2017-08-30T08:30:29-04:00http://www.theringer.com/rss/stream/159418012017-08-30T08:30:29-04:002017-08-30T08:30:29-04:00A Gatekeeper at the Intersection of Faith and Football
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<p>Texas Tech chaplain Bobby Dagnel is the local gatekeeper<strong> </strong>between two of the institutions that define life in Lubbock. As scrutiny over the role of chaplaincies at public universities has intensified nationwide in recent years, the Red Raiders’ volunteer has identified the stereotypes—and worked to combat them.<strong> </strong></p> <p id="KXbuFN"><em>Welcome to </em><a href="https://www.theringer.com/2017/8/21/16177760/the-south-week"><em>The South Week</em></a><em> at </em>The Ringer<em>. We’re celebrating — and reporting on — the richness of the region. You’ll find stories from all over the map, exploring topics such as the enduring legacy of Confederate monuments in Richmond and Montgomery, the evolution of Charleston barbecue, and the intersection of faith and football in Lubbock. We’re also ranking the best Southern rap albums, imagining the André 3000 mixtape we all deserve, and arguing about what even constitutes the South anymore. In the words of two great Southerners, nothin’ is for sure, nothin’ is for certain, nothin’ lasts forever.</em></p>
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<p class="p--has-dropcap" id="pMWziO">Nine sets of eyes lock onto Bobby Dagnel. A few of the men wedged around the wooden conference table in the Texas Tech football facility shuffle pages in their notebooks. A few sit perfectly still in their chairs, almost appearing to sleep. The coaches are all waiting for Bible study to start. </p>
<p id="kL8Hgq">Dagnel dresses like a coach: For practices, he’s hat-to-shoe in team-sponsored Under Armour gear. Tech’s actual staffers treat him like a coach: He walks unfettered through the facility, and head coach Kliff Kingsbury sometimes calls him “Coach.” Dagnel also acts like a coach: At practice, when a referee tells the offensive sideline to step behind the two-foot-wide band of red grass bordering the field, only Dagnel and one defensive line coach stay put.</p>
<p id="FfH4zr">But Dagnel is not a coach. He is the Texas Tech football team chaplain, a Red Raiders volunteer who pastors full-time a few blocks away at First Baptist Church Lubbock. He is the local gatekeeper at the intersection of two of the South’s most prevalent and entangled traditions: faith and football.</p>
<p id="Rlq8F3">Most of the men gathered around this table, and most of their coworkers throughout the football facility, played college football. Nearly all grew up in the South. They are older iterations of the players they now coach: To a man, they say that as children, football and religion were life’s first and second priority, in some order, much like they were for many other Southerners outside of this building. Many of them grew up saying the Lord’s Prayer before youth sporting events and hearing their pastors make tongue-in-cheek jokes about <em>them Cowboys</em> or the local high school team. That, Tech’s coaches say with a shrug, is how it is down here, as normal as going from first grade to second grade. Asked how real life compares to stereotypes regarding the importance of football and church in the South, strength and conditioning graduate assistant Lance Pace says, “The movies do a good job.”</p>
<p id="Pb9keg">This will be Dagnel’s seventh season as the Texas Tech football team chaplain, which even he laughs at considering he didn’t go to church as a kid because his family was “a Southern anomaly” and felt indifferent about church. Years later, this Bible study is the only offseason structure for Dagnel to preach to anyone in the Red Raiders football family. It’s voluntary and once every week. He surveys the room, grins, and says, “All right, I thought we would look at a passage from 2 Corinthians, chapter four, verses eight and nine.”</p>
<blockquote><p id="yreOVB"><em>We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed.</em></p></blockquote>
<p id="otNHtz">He crafts his messages around what he calls “the paralysis of ideals”: how so often people disregard present opportunities in anticipation of a perfect situation that may never come. Don’t wait to do whatever it is you want to do, he tells the coaches. Do it now. In this case, he emphasizes continuing to work hard during a tiring first week of camp. The assembled scratch notes into their notebooks or in the margins of a paper schedule. </p>
<p id="LsG8XG">As much as anything else, several coaches say, the team chaplain helps refocus their faith, because they can sometimes slip into using it as a “rabbit’s foot”: <em>I’ll go to church on Sunday, and hopefully we win next Saturday. And hopefully no one in my family gets sick. And hopefully our finances are fine. </em></p>
<p id="LBArpx">Losing sight of the purpose of faith is Dagnel’s biggest worry: what he calls the gap between religion and faith. “Religion, I think, is a man-made construct. You can go through religion and have it not inform your life. Faith is something that is deep, profound, and personal and informs your life.” He thinks about this when he sees the many players who pray before and after games, who run onto the field and toward the end zone to kneel, who score touchdowns, and tackle opponents, and point to the sky.</p>
<div class="c-float-right"><aside id="mUDhX2"><q>“You just see the dichotomy between the religious expression and lives that are lived.”<br>—Bobby Dagnel, Texas Tech football team chaplain</q></aside></div>
<p id="vrav9I">“There's a lot of religion in athletics,” Dagnel says. “There's a lot of praying that goes on, but I'm not sure how much that informs [players’] lives. … You just see the dichotomy between the religious expression and lives that are lived.”</p>
<p id="JXi1t3">The treatment of faith as a symbol, as a Jesus piece, rather than a relationship with God, Dagnel says, manifests uniquely on football fields in the South because the two institutions are so intertwined.</p>
<p id="uNp2Uv">“The whole thing about ‘the Bible Belt’ is misleading,” Dagnel says. He sees church affiliation (according to the Association of Religious Data Archives, 57.6 percent of people in Lubbock are affiliated with some religion), but doesn’t always see action. “... What do you consider of a population [like Lubbock] of 300,000 when less than 6 percent are in church [on Sunday]?” He pauses. “It's a post-church culture that we live in. Most people in the South don't know that yet, they're still running off the old tapes that we're the Bible Belt. But we're really not.”</p>
<p id="DOg4A4">And that is exactly why Dagnel is here.</p>
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<img alt="Bobby Dagnel on the Texas Tech sideline" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/Eo-ny7CjDTnIM-8_YG8MfI6rNKU=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/9139633/rrfb_v_latech_160917_081.jpg">
<cite>Texas Tech Athletics</cite>
<figcaption>Bobby Dagnel on the Texas Tech sideline</figcaption>
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<p class="p--has-dropcap" id="YQTtu1">Five days before that Bible study, at what he calls “my paying gig,” Dagnel tells FBC Lubbock’s congregation a story about two women. There’s Martha, an energetic woman who <em>externalizes </em>her faith by sharing His word with everyone she knows, and Mary, a reserved woman who <em>internalizes </em>her faith by sitting and listening. “If you asked the Lord, ‘Should I be a Martha or a Mary?’” Dagnel says to his parishioners, “He would say, ‘Yes.’”</p>
<p id="oBBlle">Though God calls him to be a Martha, spreading His word as much as possible, Dagnel finds no conflict between that role and the subtler one he’s chosen to also occupy at the university. He stresses, as many team chaplains do, the importance of being a “voluntary resource” for “student-athletes of any religion.” He wants to be there for the kids, but he doesn’t want to preach to them. He withholds his beliefs until they ask him. He knows the line he must toe at a public school. </p>
<p id="D1uAuG">“I'm very much aware of the Establishment Clause,” Dagnel says, referencing the portion of the First Amendment that forbids school-sponsored prayer and other religious activity.</p>
<p id="UEcMNS">Though faith and football play an important role at numerous colleges across the South and across the nation alike, many chaplaincies are far more opaque than Texas Tech’s. Dagnel knows this; he also knows that chaplaincies at public institutions have begun to receive intensified scrutiny in recent seasons, and that negative image is part of what Dagnel wants to combat: Bad publicity for the union of faith and football hinders his larger goal of getting people to stop thinking about religion as an institution and start embracing real faith.</p>
<p id="zSit0L">Critics say chaplains are cozying up to football programs, sometimes receiving offices at team facilities and other school-funded perks, introducing an inappropriate peddling of Christianity upon often impressionable young men. A 2013<em> Chronicle of Higher Education </em>story <a href="http://www.chronicle.com/article/With-God-on-Our-Side/143231">detailed</a> Clemson star DeAndre Hopkins’s baptism on a practice field at the public school. A 2015 Freedom From Religion Foundation report <a href="https://ffrf.org/images/PraytoPlayReport.pdf">pressured</a> public-university football teams to drop their chaplaincies. While the report has likely yet to impact public-school chaplaincies’ staffing, teams and schools are now more guarded with what they reveal about these practices, says FFRF staff attorney Patrick Elliott. </p>
<p id="VgB3gW">The Fellowship of Christian Athletes employs many team chaplains in the South and beyond, including at least two public-school football team chaplains in the Big 12, five in the SEC, and six in the ACC. </p>
<p id="PMMzp1">While schools elsewhere in the country have team chaplains as well, Texas Tech director of speed and power Scott Salwasser was surprised by the attendance at and impact of team chapel at Southern schools. Before moving to Tech in 2016, he worked primarily on the West Coast with a short stint in Louisiana. “On the West Coast, we had charismatic men of God,” Salwasser says, “but … [at TTU] when that many people showed up [at team chapel], that blew me away when I came here. I was like, ‘Man, this is almost everybody on the team,’ which had not been my experience.”</p>
<p id="pNO7I3">I emailed the FCA, and the public relations firm that represents the organization eventually said that no employees would be available for an interview. In lieu of interviews, the FCA said in an email: “There are no repercussions for students who decline to participate [in FCA programs]. FCA maintains that every student-athlete has the right to participate in activities according to their religious convictions.”</p>
<p id="rShd69">Before the FCA’s refusal, Randy Price, the FCA-employed team chaplain at Northwestern State University in Louisiana, and I had independently agreed to do an interview. When we spoke on the phone to set up a time, he said, “I have a great story for you,” about his journey to becoming a team chaplain. After the FCA sent me its statement, Price canceled, texting, “Any further question need [<em>sic</em>] to be referred to [FCA public relations].”</p>
<p id="JZ105a">In April 2016, the University of South Carolina <a href="http://www.thestate.com/sports/college/university-of-south-carolina/usc-football/article72011252.html">parted with</a> its team chaplain, Adrian Despres, and today the team says it no longer has a team chaplain. Four months later, though, the Gamecocks made Charles Jackson Jr., a local Baptist pastor not affiliated with FCA, their “director of player development.” <a href="http://texassports.com/sports/2013/7/29/GEN_0729135557.aspx?path=general">Texas</a> (this year), <a href="http://www.12thman.com/staff.aspx?staff=402">Texas A&M</a> (in 2014), <a href="http://www.goduke.com/ViewArticle.dbml?ATCLID=3647975">Duke</a> (in 2009), and others have hired former FCA employees in roles with the same or similar titles. Georgia Tech’s FCA chapter calls its employee, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7ovAbtGXpU">Derrick Moore</a>, “<a href="http://georgiatechfca.com/">football chaplain</a>,” but the Georgia Tech Athletic Association says football does not have a team chaplain; it refers to Moore as a “Student-Athlete Adviser & Mentor.” At Clemson, a “<a href="http://clemsonfca.org/team/reggie-pleasant/">life coach</a>.” At TCU, a “<a href="http://tcufca.org/team/chauncey-franks/">character coach</a>.” Hands without fingerprints.</p>
<div class="c-float-right"><aside id="0z0ghW"><q>“I want to break that stereotype.”<br>—Bobby Dagnel, of caricatures of chaplains</q></aside></div>
<p id="RhptKR">A former SEC player, who spoke with me on condition of anonymity for fear of backlash from his school’s fan base, described his team’s chaplain as “very preachy. He'd tell players that evolution wasn't real. … [His approach] went past the whole, ‘Hey, I'm here to help with the whole spiritual side.’ It went way too far past that.”</p>
<p id="asoDPL">Dagnel fears incidents like these will perpetuate a stereotype, the caricatures of team chaplains as Bible-brandishing zealots, like Bubba Davis, the scripture-spouting “spiritual adviser” from the latest season of <em>Last Chance U</em>, the Netflix documentary series. In a world of team chaplains behaving like Marthas, Dagnel wants to be Mary when he’s with the Red Raiders.</p>
<p id="D9VkZB">“I want to break that stereotype,” Dagnel says. Not because he believes he’s less self-righteous than Martha, or because he fears scrutiny for preaching too loudly, but because he’s found Mary’s approach—what he calls the “ministry of presence”—a more effective path for solving the greater problem, often magnified on football fields, between lives professed and practiced.</p>
<p id="05Vx9d"></p>
<p class="p--has-dropcap" id="w1tKA5">Dagnel drops by the team facility early one morning carrying a copy of the <em>Lubbock Avalanche-Journal</em>. He was on his way to FBC Lubbock when he spotted a headline in the sports section: “Texas Tech’s Barnes trying to finish up strong,” referring to defensive lineman Zach Barnes. Dagnel detoured from his morning commute because, if there’s ever a positive story in the <em>A-J </em>about a player, he leaves it in the player’s locker. When they see the paper, they know who put it there.</p>
<p id="Fa2ZR0">“Bobby lives the right way,” says defensive lineman Talor Nunez. “[He] shows us what it takes to be a godly man all around. We see that in him. … It [also] works, because football is biblical teachings without scripture. It legit always go hand in hand.”</p>
<div class="c-float-right"><aside id="1jNCFG"><q>“Football is biblical teachings without scripture. It legit always go hand in hand.”<br>—Talor Nunez, Texas Tech defensive lineman</q></aside></div>
<p id="utc0nx">After dropping off the paper, Dagnel passes by the front desk. He says to the receptionist, laughing his laugh, “I’m on my way to my paying gig.” But on the way out, he runs into a group of players. Even if he hasn’t met each individual player, he knows them by sight, because before every season, Dagnel prints out the roster and tests himself on how many faces and names he can match on each page until he breezes through the entire packet. The players and Dagnel are suddenly deep in conversation about offseason muscle gains, the Texas Rangers, and the grind of camp.</p>
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<cite>Texas Tech Athletics</cite>
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<p id="DDgR3A">This moment encapsulates why coaches think Dagnel adds value to the program. They appreciate his religious background, but he is also what the staff calls “good people,” providing another trusted voice in the locker room. This, coaches say, helps the nine assistant coaches manage Tech’s more than 100 players. Players think he’s valuable because he can offer guidance as many of them live away from home for the first time. When it comes to football matters, he keeps their frustrations confidential; they can vent to him because Dagnel has no control over playing time. </p>
<p id="AmAxRr">In 2012, after former head coach Tommy Tuberville’s second season, he let go of the then-team chaplain, who had an office in the building. Sensing the need for a new chaplain, a former TTU assistant who also attended FBC Lubbock told Dagnel to swing by. He never stopped showing up. </p>
<p id="8szsVL">Current head coach Kingsbury, hired in December 2012, observed a few pre–bowl game practices after he was hired but before he took over, and saw Dagnel’s interactions with players and coaches. He decided that Dagnel should keep coming around. Now, in the offseason, Dagnel schedules his day around the team’s three morning lift sessions and, during the season, he attends practice every day for at least 15 minutes, roams the sidelines at home games, travels to road games with the team, and delivers a seven- to eight-minute sermon at the voluntary team chapel hosted at the hotel the night before the game. </p>
<p id="YGtBtE">“It’s a little different because he’s here every day,” says running backs coach Jabbar Juluke. “I've never had a guy available at your leisure.”</p>
<div class="c-float-right"><aside id="mr4Mwo"><q>“It's definitely big for a parent to see [a team chaplain], a man of that character and religious background, that their child can lean on.”<br>—Kliff Kingsbury, Texas Tech head coach</q></aside></div>
<p id="rOtISU">His consistent presence builds trust, players say. They seek advice about struggles with school, football, relationships, or, sometimes, their own beliefs. Dagnel sometimes meets with prospective Red Raiders when they visit campus. Jesus, among other things, effectively recruits the South. When a recruiter promises a parent to not only make his or her son a great student, football player, and citizen of the world, but also a better Christian, Dagnel’s presence helps legitimize that claim.</p>
<p id="MGgBG2">“The players we recruit are from the South and, most of the time, pretty heavy religious backgrounds,” Kingsbury says. “I’d say even similar churches. … It's definitely big for a parent to see [a team chaplain], a man of that character and religious background, that their child can lean on.”</p>
<p id="hiiGzn">Holy questions rarely arise in the public, group conversations like Dagnel is having now in the middle of the facility entryway. They occur in more private settings. But the team chaplain believes these conversations lay the foundation for those other moments, and that’s invaluable to Dagnel, crucial to his mission.</p>
<p id="JR7uOg"></p>
<p class="p--has-dropcap" id="Ui9Kr3">The spotlight cuts through the dais’s blue ambient lighting and finds Dagnel, dressed in white robes, standing waist-deep in a clear tub of water. It’s Sunday and everyone in First Baptist Church is silent. In front of Dagnel, a young man sits on a stool. Dagnel dunks him. The crowd, dotted with more than a few TTU polos, erupts in applause. </p>
<p id="7x9Uoj">“Father,” Dagnel says, “we do remember at a time like this, what it was to be without Christ, without hope in the world.”</p>
<p id="JDk80u">Dagnel remembers well.</p>
<p id="vOztoa">It is 1977. The teenage Dagnel drives his date to a Tyler, Texas, high school dance home early so he can spend Saturday night sitting by the lake, drinking in a car under the moon with a couple of buddies he played baseball with. Around 2 a.m., his friends in the front seat suddenly scramble. They have to get back to town for church the next morning. He does not go to church, because his parents are indifferent. One friend wheels around. “Really? Bobby, you better get straight with the Lord. He’s coming someday.” He doesn’t know a lot about Christians, but he knows these guys weren’t living what they were now preaching. </p>
<p id="fRRIJF">It is 1981. The young man, who used to play college baseball but says he was suspended after two semesters at the University of Oklahoma because of poor grades, is working at a shop. One day, his older supervisor asks, “Are you a Christian?” The younger man is so surprised, he lies. “I am,” he says. The expression of relief on the older man’s face is so powerful that the younger man decides he can’t live without whatever the older man has in his life. </p>
<p id="MR8IJq">“I decided right then that by the time I go to bed tonight,” Dagnel says, “I’m going to have in my life what that guy has in his life.”</p>
<p id="VAA8Dq">That night, he visits a high school friend’s father, who<strong> </strong>is a pastor. Inspired, he attends night school while working 60-hour weeks in the shop until he earns his undergraduate degree. Then, he enters seminary.</p>
<div class="c-wide-block"> <figure class="e-image">
<img alt="First Baptist Church of Lubbock" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/oF1MFu9i8kBAuVo81irH2jgfHkE=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/9139605/IMG_3412.JPG">
<cite>Sam Fortier</cite>
<figcaption>First Baptist Church of Lubbock</figcaption>
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<p id="JXVKVy">It is 2009. Dagnel, now middle-aged and the pastor of his own church, tells his story to his parishioners. How, after finishing seminary, he worked in churches in Alabama and Texas and became a pastor before eventually, in 2002, he ended up in Lubbock; how an assistant coach approached him after one service and asked him to get involved with the football team. (One parishioner approaches after the service and asks if he ever told the older man from the shop that story. He hadn’t, so he tracks down the older man and calls him. The older man answers. The younger man tells him about the moment that changed his life forever. The older man cries. He tells the younger man he does not remember him.) </p>
<p id="bs7F2W">Now, the pastor stares out at his congregation. He looks different here than on the football field. Here, he wears glasses, not Ray-Bans. He tucks a Bible into his right arm, not a football. He is Martha, not Mary. </p>
<p id="jJOINI">Even after more than 30 years of working in churches, he says, it still haunts him to think his congregation hasn’t fully grasped the difference between religion and faith. That the people he calls “church family” perform as much as anyone else. </p>
<p id="cKtsFM">“There's still all these kinds of institutional thoughts out there,” Dagnel says, “even in a post-church, post-institutional culture in which we find ourselves. This is something that is highly personal and intimate.”</p>
<p id="UdZLdQ">He surveys his church family. Faces peer back, expectantly, from three sides and two floors. You are not a Christian, he tells his congregants, because you were born in the United States, or your family goes to church, or you served in the military, or you voted Republican, or you joined a congregation, filled out a membership card, got baptized. </p>
<p id="HQpTYv">The same performative divide between words and actions can be present in a pew or on a football field. </p>
<p id="hV2NE3"></p>
<p class="p--has-dropcap" id="E2jh6J">One afternoon, Dagnel stands in a group of five in the grass between Texas Tech’s two practice fields, watching coaches pinwheel their arms toward the team’s second-string offense and defense. One of the five men is a strength-and-training intern whose stint with the team ends the next day. After a few minutes of the other four asking questions about the experience, everyone falls quiet. Tupac’s “Picture Me Rollin’” thunders from two large speakers at the end of the field. </p>
<blockquote><p id="SRjSLn"><em>Can you picture us rolling?</em><br><em>Can you see me, hoe?</em><br><em>Is y'all ready for me?</em><br><em>We up out this bitch</em></p></blockquote>
<p id="RFnGT5">Hearing “cussin’” in the music played at practice and in the locker room bothered fullback Mason Reed in the first few days after he arrived at college in 2014, but not any more than he expected. However, his teammates’ sexually explicit discussions surprised him. At high school in Cisco, a small, central Texas town, Reed didn’t have a team chaplain, but he and his friends sometimes met up before school for Bible study. “We held each other pretty accountable,” Reed says. “We're deep in the faith together.”</p>
<p id="4gDqO9">Without that support system, in an unfamiliar environment, the sexual play-by-plays made Reed uncomfortable. When he learned the occupation of the man always spinning the football on the sideline, he felt relieved. He asked Dagnel that first summer if they could talk. Dagnel mostly listened as Reed vented, and ultimately the conversations led Reed to the conclusion he “had to trust God’s plan.” After those conversations and time praying, Reed decided he’d do what he could to surround himself with “good music,” so he pre-set the radio in his car to 90.9 FM. Even now, when he turns on his car, it blares Christian radio station K-Love.</p>
<p id="aT9RKK">Dagnel turns to the group watching practice. It’s moments like these that other coaches reference when explaining why Dagnel is so approachable, why the facility-wide scouting report on the chaplain simply goes: “One of the guys.” In perfect sync with Tupac, Dagnel drawls to the intern, “Any time y'all wanna see me again, rewind this track right here, close your eyes, and picture me rollin'.”</p>
<p id="QFxBZn"></p>
<p class="p--has-dropcap" id="kFUbZf">Offensive quality control coach and former TTU player Jared Kaster snares the 40-yard toss in stride just as it turns over and Dagnel raises his arms above his head. <em>Touchdown. </em>The pair plays catch together every day during the preseason as players stretch before practice. Dagnel plays catch throughout the afternoons with every coach willing, as part of what Dagnel calls “the fellowship of the ball.” It’s what helped eventually fill the void in Kaster’s life that he once described as “a big, empty hole.” </p>
<p id="2WNjf1">In 2016, the then–Red Raiders center graduated and, though he stayed at Texas Tech as an offensive assistant, he felt a deep emptiness in his life without playing. He’d gone to church with his family as a kid, but grew away from it in college, even though Dagnel was there in his playing days. He’d still go, but just to go. </p>
<p id="0olbsP">As a coach, he interacted with Dagnel more often and came to appreciate when he would drop by a room and crack a joke in the midst of long, tense days. Kaster related to Dagnel and found him to be not at all like he thought a pastor would be. Dagnel shared his story with Kaster, of being a former college baseball player, the first in his family to go to college, only to bungle the opportunity. Kaster grew to trust Dagnel as he saw Dagnel consistently in the facility and on the field. He was always there, spinning a football on his finger and socializing. They started playing catch.</p>
<p id="kZxT2N">Over the months, while they threw and talked about anything but faith, Kaster found himself increasingly curious about Dagnel and how a pastor related so well to players and coaches alike. Kaster couldn’t ignore the hole anymore. One day, after growing comfortable with Dagnel, Kaster found himself asking about church.</p>
<p id="5YNxSf">“You can just come Sunday and check it out, if you want,” Dagnel said, and Kaster did. </p>
<p id="oTg7r6">One person at a time, Dagnel tried to close the gap. He chose to be Mary until someone asked him to be Martha.</p>
<p id="vwZoSB"></p>
<p class="p--has-dropcap" id="dl6UuA">At Bible study, Dagnel tells the coaches: You don’t need the “niceties” to do your job, really. You can dream about a bigger school with more resources, but once you get there, all those things that you once considered niceties become necessities. </p>
<p id="b6Bn9p">“At the end of the day,” Dagnel says, “who's going to control the line of scrimmage? I don't need all the amenities. All the nice surroundings we have, the nutrition bar, that's real nice, but at the end of the day, [those things are] not necessary to line up and control the line of scrimmage.” A few coaches nod. A few eyes drop to the floor. Texas Tech, as much as any other team, glitzes up the facility to attract top-tier talent. </p>
<p id="Nltjj5">“In Jesus’s name, I pray,” Dagnel says, “amen.”Notebooks thud shut and chairs scrape unevenly against the carpet. Hands rub at eyes. “I’ll send y’all this if y’all don't have it,” Dagnel says, motioning at the scripture. Feet shuffle around the table and toward the door. One coach stays seated, hands still clasped upon the table.Dagnel pushes his chair back to leave. “Bobby,” the remaining coach says, and Dagnel looks up, smiling. “The conundrum in what we're saying about having stuff ...” the coach says. “The kids in recruiting, they're so used to seeing, everywhere they go, all these excesses. We—”“Well,” Dagnel interjects, “even with the showcases, we need to put it in their mind, this is what’s necessary.”</p>
<p id="PvJcOc">By “this,” Dagnel means having faith. Here he is Martha, calling on the coach to focus not on the growing mass of amenities, but on the people and the program that he’s helping to guide. </p>
<p id="KwTbVn">“But I've never seen anything like [these facilities],” the coach says. He lowers his voice. “You can tell overall. ... We're just switching things around, putting in some LED lights ...” He trails off. </p>
<p class="c-end-para" id="djIQrf">Within about 100 yards of this room, there’s a recently remodeled locker room, a state-of-the-art indoor practice facility under construction, and a newly renovated weight room. Football coaches need lavish facilities to recruit dynamic players, to field a competitive team, to win, to please fans and boosters, to make money, to keep their jobs, to recruit more dynamic players. “Yeah,” Dagnel says, softly.The coach laughs shortly and scratches his head.“Right,” Dagnel says, brow furrowed. “It just looks nice. But I mean, at the end of the day, everybody in this room understands …” He pauses. “It’s about the line of scrimmage.”</p>
https://www.theringer.com/2017/8/30/16222990/south-week-faith-and-college-football-texas-tech-bobby-dagnel-chaplainSam Fortier2017-08-29T08:45:50-04:002017-08-29T08:45:50-04:00Joe McKnight Was the Future of Football in Louisiana
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<figcaption>Getty Images/Ringer illustration</figcaption>
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<p>The former running back once carried South Louisiana's hopes and dreams. Just years later, he was shot dead miles from home. The people around him still reflect on what was—and what could have been.</p> <p id="QLxxvF"><em>Welcome to </em><a href="https://www.theringer.com/2017/8/21/16177760/the-south-week"><em>The South Week</em></a><em> at </em>The Ringer<em>. We’re celebrating — and reporting on — the richness of the region. You’ll find stories from all over the map, exploring topics such as the enduring legacy of Confederate monuments in Richmond and Montgomery, the evolution of Charleston barbecue, and the intersection of faith and football in Lubbock. We’re also ranking the best Southern rap albums, imagining the André 3000 mixtape we all deserve, and arguing about what even constitutes the South anymore. In the words of two great Southerners, nothin’ is for sure, nothin’ is for certain, nothin’ lasts forever.</em></p>
<hr class="p-entry-hr" id="Pxnupl">
<p class="p--has-dropcap" id="Rri8U9">The traffic in New Orleans is dreadful. Drivers don’t ruin your day on purpose; they just fight losing battles against their instinct to get over without signaling, or so you tell yourself to keep calm. But when it rains — and it rains often and heavily in New Orleans — forget it. Thankfully, that’s not today. <a href="http://www.theadvocate.com/new_orleans/news/environment/article_53f362f6-7aba-11e7-92f1-574dc11582bd.html">That was on a Saturday</a>.</p>
<p id="4lBEOs">On the Crescent City Connection, which carries U.S. 90 from the East Bank of the Mississippi River to the west, the weather is as clear as can be expected on a late summer afternoon. Still, as skyscraper-sized storm clouds loom above the barges tugging along downstream make plain, you can’t expect much. A little ways off the General De Gaulle exit, on the stretch of Behrman Highway leading up to Holmes Boulevard, a costly game of cat and mouse happened in the afternoon hours of December 1, 2016. This intersection, next to a Shell station, is where Joe McKnight, the Joe McKnight, was shot dead during a traffic dispute. A man named Ronald Gasser admitted the shooting to police; in November, he will be tried on a second-degree murder charge.</p>
<div class="c-float-right"><aside id="cYUPvz"><q>He represented us—everyone, really, whether you went to John Curtis or not.</q></aside></div>
<p id="DT5UsO">The distinction between “shot dead” and “murdered” is a thin one of outsize importance, and <a href="http://www.nola.com/crime/index.ssf/2017/08/joe_mcknight_trial_date_gasser.html">a court date has been set</a> to determine whether it was the latter or just the former. <em>Just</em>. Either way, save for the dampened sound of cars whizzing by, it’s quiet on this part of Behrman Highway, and there are no flowers. No roadside memorial for the man whom <a href="https://twitter.com/Mathieu_Era/status/804460371029336064">Tyrann Mathieu</a>, at least one pedicab driver, two bellhops, I, and several of my old friends from South Louisiana who moved on to make lives elsewhere would describe as <em>our</em> Reggie Bush. <a href="http://www.theadvocate.com/new_orleans/news/courts/article_a7c6a57c-bcd9-11e6-a515-4f722a3a6886.html">Not anymore</a>. “We think a black man was lynched yesterday,” New Orleans NAACP president Morris Reed said, as his and the West Jefferson chapters took to the streets and made themselves heard the day after McKnight’s death.</p>
<p id="FwF68N">Everyone knew about Joe McKnight. It was close to impossible not to. Coming out of South Louisiana’s John Curtis Christian High School in 2007, he was the best running back in the state, the <a href="http://www.espn.com/college-sports/football/recruiting/playerrankings/_/class/2007/order/true">top-ranked prospect</a> in the nation, and possibly the best player in the world, though you could clear the delusional leap between the last two only if you were from anywhere south of Interstate 20. He represented us — everyone, really, whether you went to John Curtis or not. We wanted him to succeed.</p>
<p id="RJFlCd">And the way he died was so painfully ordinary.</p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/5oK_FllfkXUtYxtaTiC34cCpCss=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/9133115/IMG_2468.jpeg">
<cite>Micah Peters</cite>
</figure>
<p id="iIyRkf"></p>
<p class="p--has-dropcap" id="pJEMrX">“That next day we were going out of town, basically a few hours up north to play a game,” Jonathan English tells me of the day he and his friend Joe McKnight first heard Kanye West’s <em>Late Registration</em>. English, nicknamed “Tank,” can’t remember which playoff game it was, but he’s reasonably certain it was a championship, and in his defense they’d won a few. This was when Tank played for the John Curtis Christian Patriots, a team that was manifestly too much for everyone else in their prospective class. The Patriots won the chip every year Tank was in high school.</p>
<p id="3qt4eI">Tank is a social worker now. But he remembers borrowing Coach’s Suburban — coach J.T. Curtis, he means, who’s entering his 49th year as the head coach at JCC — and driving it a few miles west to a Circuit City in Kenner that’s since closed. He and Joe bought a copy of <em>Late Registration</em>, and then the two sat right there in the parking lot, listening from start to finish. This was December 2005, when they were juniors. It’s one of the easier things to say about someone, that they loved music; it’s what you reach for when you can’t think of much else while trying to ground the memory of a person, to recall what made them most themselves. But rare is the enthusiasm and dedication it takes to sit through an album in the parking lot of the store where you bought it, so it’s hard not to assume Joe really did. Or at the very least, he really loved Tank.</p>
<p id="cVAyjm">Tank and Joe met in John Curtis’s lower school, in the fourth grade. They played in the same Kenner recreational parks, and they rode the same bus route to school in River Ridge. John Curtis is a small private school, and there weren’t many black kids, “so we had no choice but to get to know each other,” Tank says. They found that they shared a sense of humor — Tank was the goofy one — but more often than not they’d comfortably share silence. “Me and Joe could be in a room together, and we might say 10 words, but we had a good time.”</p>
<p id="mCQHSh">Hurricane Katrina ripped out normalcy root and stem in August 2005. By the time the playoffs rolled around, some 400,000 residents of New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast were living somewhere other than home. Driving back into the city from the I-10, you could see flattened cypresses, rooftops checkered with blue tarps, and FEMA trailers sitting just off of the interstate. Seventy percent of New Orleans’s occupied housing — 134,000 units — was damaged in the storm. But John Curtis was still going to have its football season.</p>
<p id="4F3ylK">Tank and Joe stayed with Coach after the hurricane, which explains the Suburban they drove to Circuit City. Two years later after their silent parking lot listening session, <em>The Orange County Register</em> ran a <a href="http://www.ocregister.com/2007/11/20/trojan-and-sun-devil-remain-friends/">piece</a> with an anecdote about Lydia Curtis, Coach’s wife. Fed up with the pair of boys never saying much of anything during those days under her roof, Lydia made a rule: At least once a day Tank and Joe had to speak, even if it was to just say, “Good morning.”</p>
<p id="CfajJu">“Miss Lydia, she’s a talkative person, so at the dinner table or something we can’t just sit down and eat,” Tank says. “It was like pulling teeth for her, I guess, because me and Joe are like mutes.”</p>
<p id="ujoa2u"><em>Are</em>. It’s possible that Tank just misspoke, but it’s been only eight months. Joe’s passing, both the senselessness and the cruel finality of it, is still difficult to process. Wondering whether justice will be done is one thing; but what about the posts that no longer pop up on Instagram, or that weekly phone call that no longer comes? The nickname “Tank” itself feels obscurantist. A persona protected, shuttered so tightly that emotion rarely escapes. But remembering how he and Joe could say nothing and understand each other narrows Tank’s eyes with a wide smile. Then he turns wistful. Joe had been doing a lot of growing up in those final months.</p>
<p id="C2S3X8">“You could see a change was coming,” Tank says. “That’s why it’s so sad what happened.”</p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/GLTnWGnJTbKyszxilgHsWBWHuD8=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/9133135/IMG_2477.jpeg">
<cite>Micah Peters</cite>
</figure>
<p id="3x8NzS"></p>
<p class="p--has-dropcap" id="OV5rgO">The September 29, 2006, game between John Curtis and Hoover High was an event. A nationally televised event, on ESPNU. <a href="http://www.espn.com/college-sports/recruiting/news/story?id=2606018">The 11th-ranked</a> team in the country against the first. Curtis laid claim to 20 state championships at the time; Hoover had won five of Alabama’s last six in the state’s Class 6A. The Patriots would face a real test against the big boys, as it were, and it looked like Curtis would fail when it went down 14–0 in the first quarter.</p>
<p id="Ps0irn">“I remember there was a lot of curse words,” Tank, a defensive tackle, says about a defense that would allow no more points in that game. “And I punched a few people in the chest. But that was about it, that was all that was needed.”</p>
<p id="1T8snz">John Curtis won, 28–14. The Patriots announced themselves on the national stage, and Joe, who scored two touchdowns, cemented his status as a superstar.</p>
<div class="c-float-right"><aside id="TbM6E9"><q>"He was the next Reggie Bush, New Orleans Reggie Bush.”<br>—Lamont Simmons</q></aside></div>
<p id="szlZpX">Bodies aren’t made to play football, or even to withstand it, but it’s hard to imagine that Joe was made for anything else. At 6 feet and 190 pounds, he could be a running back, receiver, and cornerback; he was just as fast running backward as he was going forward. John Curtis won the 2005 championship game handily, beating St. Charles Catholic High School, 31–6. Joe scored three touchdowns in that game — four if you count the one that was called back for a penalty.</p>
<p id="0EQaJD">As Joe’s national profile rose, he began to carry more than just his own hopes and dreams. He was making it for everybody.</p>
<p id="EcVpDR">“He was the next Reggie Bush, New Orleans Reggie Bush,” recalls Lamont Simmons, who shared a trainer with McKnight. “His name’s good, you know what I’m saying?”</p>
<p id="gHsQop">Jonas English, Tank’s older brother, called Joe “Primetime” because on the football field Joe looked like Deion Sanders. He still has a photo of Primetime set as the background on his phone. Joe could be arrogant, Jonas says — he knew how good he was. “But the thing about [Joe],” says Jonas, who now works in courts security for the sheriff’s department in Orleans Parish, was that “he was selfless.”</p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/_q_9ST_9bHP1XnATngB3a9rGKRg=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/9133137/IMG_2489.jpeg">
<cite>Micah Peters</cite>
</figure>
<p id="UiDuzT">Scouts had been high on Joe since he was a freshman. He would get a full ride somewhere, that much was clear, but he wanted to ensure that his teammates would get scholarships, too. So he set about cutting together highlight tapes for each player in his senior class, and asked Jonas to write the letters that would go out along with the reels. Jacob Dufrene, an outside linebacker, landed at Kentucky. Andrew Nierman, a center, played at Tulane. Colby Arceneaux went to Ole Miss, Preston Numa to Purdue, and so on and so forth. Tank himself got several scholarship offers. “That came from Joe,” Jonas says.</p>
<div class="c-float-right"><aside id="PyQJRu"><q> “We all send Facebook quotes, Instagram pictures or whatever. … You hate to talk [about Joe] in the past tense.”<br>—Jonas English</q></aside></div>
<p id="exwMsc">Joe’s dad was a professional boxer, but he’d been out of the picture since Joe was in diapers. His mother had three kids to provide for, and eventually lost the family’s apartment to debt. So Joe found himself at Jonas’s house often, and “family friend” soon became “family.” It hurts Jonas to know that his little brother — the one he’s not related to; he has to clarify this more than once — is gone. But Jonas suspects it hurts Tank more. “He hasn’t let it out yet,” Jonas says. “We all send Facebook quotes, Instagram pictures or whatever. … You hate to talk [about Joe] in the past tense.”</p>
<p id="VAPXhi"></p>
<p class="p--has-dropcap" id="gytBbd">Since the mid-’90s, New Orleans has had partial claim to an awful mantle: “murder capital” of the United States. This was especially true in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. In 2006, New Orleans had a per-capita murder rate of at least 63.5 homicides per 100,000 residents, according to FBI statistics. That was more than 30 percent higher than the next-closest American city, Gary, Indiana, at 48.3 per 100,000.</p>
<p id="0lOxH7">A decade later, not much has changed. In 2015, Louisiana had the highest per-capita murder rate in the nation. <a href="http://www.nola.com/crime/index.ssf/2017/01/new_orleans_finishes_2016_with.html"><em>The Times-Picayune</em> tallied</a> New Orleans’s 2016 murders at 176, though the police department’s official count is 174. One death was ruled a justifiable homicide; one woman was nine months pregnant when she was shot and run over multiple times in November.</p>
<p id="DStsEG">The racial disparities and tensions in policing are no less harrowing. Take for instance, Gretna, which sits just south of New Orleans. Both Gretna and Terrytown (where the shooting happened) are in Jefferson Parish, where Gasser was held in custody and then released in the wee hours of Friday morning. An excerpt from a June 2016 <a href="http://fusion.net/story/256788/gretna-louisiana-arrest-capital-america/"><em>Fusion </em>analysis</a> of FBI data:</p>
<blockquote><p id="UUjFb3">In 2013, the Gretna police department made 6,566 adult arrests, or a little more than one for every three of Gretna’s roughly 18,000 residents (although arrests include non-residents). That’s about 14 times the arrest rate in the typical American town, according to a Fusion analysis of FBI data. And in a city that is about a third African-American, two-thirds of those arrested in Gretna are black — an overall rate of roughly eight arrests for every nine black adults. Think about that for a second; if you happen to work in an office, try to visualize eight out of nine of your colleagues getting pulled away in handcuffs.</p></blockquote>
<p id="LQ0URy">“A policeman is what we call a Body Snatcher,” says Simmons, who drove to the intersection as soon as he heard the news come over the radio, seeking a firsthand account of the events.</p>
<p id="shUOMi">There were plenty. It was early afternoon on a mostly sunny day, the broadest of daylight, at a busy intersection. But virtually no one agrees on what happened. A road rage dispute between Joe McKnight and Ronald Gasser came to a bloody conclusion, which, aside from Gasser being the only one of the two men who was armed, is all that can be said for certain. Either McKnight was the aggressor, <a href="http://www.nola.com/crime/index.ssf/2016/12/joe_mcknight_cut_off_shooter_o.html">or Gasser was</a>. They argued, or didn’t, then multiple shots rang out, and Joe lay flat on the pavement. Either Gasser stood over him, or he didn’t. Gasser may or may not have said, “I told you don’t fuck with me.” But the facts remain: McKnight’s autopsy indicated he was shot three times. The paramedics couldn’t save him. The police did not recover a weapon on him.</p>
<p id="Wyu7T8">“My brother unarmed,” Simmons says, recounting the afternoon’s events. “I’m pretty sure he doing decent, he’s not worried about whether he’s gotta eat tonight. Joe got a lotta people that love him.</p>
<p id="gN2C9j">“You living like that, you ain’t looking for no fights.”</p>
<p id="E25XN5"></p>
<p class="p--has-dropcap" id="0ERBFV">The day Joe died, linebacker Duke Riley — a John Curtis and LSU alum — wrote a long message on Facebook, thanking him for leading by example, for showing Riley “another way out.”</p>
<p id="H2bIow">“P.S. I still want to be you, that will never change,” Riley wrote. He ended the message with “heroes get remembered, legends never die,” and punctuated it with a clenched-fist emoji.</p>
<div class="c-float-right"><aside id="pc1wY2"><q>"He loved LSU, but he wasn't a Tiger."<br>—Jonas English</q></aside></div>
<p id="a2v3kJ">Riley, whom the Atlanta Falcons selected with the 75th overall pick in the 2017 NFL draft, was one of the many local stars to describe Joe’s significance to Louisiana, among them Eric Reid, Delvin Breaux, and Jeremy Hill. Joe ascended to folk hero status long before Leonard Fournette, now with the Jaguars and formerly the state’s most sought-after prospect since McKnight. But whereas Leonard stayed home and enrolled at LSU, Joe went west for college; he grew up infatuated with USC, and dreamed of being like O.J. Simpson (the football player, not … everything else) and Reggie Bush. “He loved LSU, but he wasn’t a Tiger,” Jonas says.</p>
<p id="8A22Fv">Joe got a lot of recruiting calls, and they all came to Jonas’s phone. Names like Nick Saban, Ken Norton Jr., and Ed Orgeron, all asking for Primetime. One day, Jonas remembers a voice on the other end: “‘I’m Coach Carroll, I’m calling to speak to Joe McKnight.’”</p>
<p id="6NfbVB">Joe committed to the Trojans more than 10 years ago. His time at USC was occasionally dazzling but frustratingly uneven. There was no doubt about his talent, but his gifts sometimes betrayed him. After a shaky freshman year, a 206 all-purpose-yard performance in the 2008 Rose Bowl renewed his promise. But Joe’s sophomore season, which started with a peculiarly aggressive case of “jock itch,” saw him suffer a number of other strange and unfortunate injuries. He also buried his grandmother that year. His junior season, he was <a href="http://www.espn.com/college-football/news/story?id=4755867">spotted</a> whipping around Santa Monica in a car he shouldn’t have been able to afford. The school scratched the late-model Land Rover SUV and found suspected improper benefits beneath. So USC launched an investigation, and then held Joe from the 2009 Emerald Bowl, which would have been his final game as a Trojan. He finished his college career with 2,213 rushing yards, despite sharing touches with four other running backs. McKnight declared for the draft soon after.</p>
<p id="b7RGWX">He was selected in the fourth round of the 2010 NFL draft by the New York Jets. A prep with gleaming potential who had somewhat underdelivered in college, Joe didn’t get off to the most auspicious start as a pro. A 2010 headline, from Fox Sports: “<a href="http://www.foxsports.com/nfl/story/new-york-jets-rookie-rb-joe-mcknight-vomits-cramps-up-on-first-day-043010">Jets rookie McKnight drops passes, vomits, cramps up</a>.”</p>
<p id="lBLCa8">Even with context, it’s easy to make assumptions about commitment, discipline, and all the other qualities that factor into a player’s worth to a team. Joe threw up in his inaugural NFL practice, and while it wasn’t the end of the world, it was also not ideal.</p>
<p id="dNrIzE">“He just got all hyped up,” J.T. Curtis said of his former player and house guest, chalking the mishap up to anxious energy. “He was never a guy that tested well on the first day because of nerves.” Rex Ryan thought McKnight looked good that day when he wasn’t throwing up, and the Jets head coach used McKnight on special teams. You might recall McKnight’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MgEqsCoZjj8">107-yard return</a> against the Baltimore Ravens in 2011, or <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsh3LZeFKDQ">the 100-yarder</a> against the Houston Texans the following year. He struggled to find consistency, but Joe was special; anyone could see that.</p>
<p id="SBKi1l">There were lowlights, too. <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/nfl/jets/2013/08/12/jets-rb-joe-mcknight-collapses/2643677/">He sparred with critics on Twitter</a>. During training camp in 2012, D’Anton Lynn — son of then–running backs coach Anthony Lynn — shoved Joe out of bounds. Joe threw the ball at him, and they got to it right there on the sideline. Jonas remembers hearing about <a href="http://www.nfl.com/news/story/0ap1000000046511/article/joe-mcknight-danton-lynn-fight-spills-into-jets-media">the fight</a> all over ESPN Radio on his way home from work. Joe called Jonas before Jonas had the chance to call him.</p>
<p id="YJADS7">“Big brother, he had it coming to him!”</p>
<p id="5jrdPm">“Dude, that’s the coach’s son, dude! <em>You</em> can lose playing time!”</p>
<p id="78LYCw">“Man, look, I couldn’t let it happen to me like that. He flipped me out of the blue.”</p>
<p id="8FWN5q"></p>
<p class="p--has-dropcap" id="9Hg0hh">Wyatt Harris runs a training facility called Sonic Boom. The space is a warehouse in Jefferson, about 10 miles outside Kenner, and is full of tires, ladders, medicine balls, drum fans, and artificial turf. On the front door there’s a sign that says, in large impact lettering, “At BOOM, we bully bullies.”</p>
<p id="zFYXDW">Tank trained here first, in his senior year of high school. Even back then, Wyatt had tried to get his hands on Joe. He was a challenge, a natural talent, and Wyatt could do so many things with him. “I always said, ‘Man, when you get tired of doing that P.E. stuff with them other trainers, you come let me know,’” Wyatt recalls.</p>
<div class="c-float-left c-float-hang"> <figure class="e-image">
<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/fLTmTpfC0glA9led33mkfLLL_C4=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/9133149/IMG_2458.jpeg">
<cite>Micah Peters</cite>
<figcaption>Wyatt Harris, right, with a trainee.</figcaption>
</figure>
</div>
<p id="ICF1rO">Joe came to Wyatt in the summer before his sophomore year at USC, looking to rid himself of bad habits he couldn’t get away with on the field anymore. They were mainly corrections that people not maniacal about football wouldn’t notice: making subtle readjustments to his first step, keeping his head steady, maintaining his explosiveness. “We’re not working out, we’re training,’’ Wyatt says, getting amped up just thinking about it. “I’m trying to fix problems — I’m looking for anything you do wrong, the smallest, minute thing.”</p>
<p id="NSKOhc">There are only so many ways to describe Wyatt before you get to “drill sergeant.” He’s brawny and earnest and animated<em>. </em>If you needed someone to drag you kicking and screaming out of a state of complacency, you could do worse. He’s trained the likes of Early Doucet, Robert Meachem, and Devery Henderson. As Tank remembers it, when Joe reported to Wyatt for offseason training before his final season with the Jets, he threw up every day for nearly two weeks. “[Wyatt] crazy, I’m not going back,” Joe would say. But he always went back. Wyatt thinks that if he’d committed to being a cornerback, Joe might’ve been a Hall of Famer. “If he played DB, man — I’m talking Heisman Trophy–type stuff.”</p>
<p id="NRXHuI">It was also around Joe’s freshman year at USC that he met Michelle Beltran; together, the two of them made Jaiden McKnight<strong>.</strong> He has a face the word “no” rebounds off of, with pinchable cheeks, a round nose, and a forehead he’ll grow into. Tank visited Joe and Michelle in New Jersey once, when Joe was with the Jets and Jaiden was 3 or 4. Jaiden didn’t know much, but he did know Toys R Us, and each time Joe drove past one with Jaiden in the car, they’d have to stop. But they were getting only <em>one thing.</em></p>
<p id="nmj493">One thing would always turn into three things, somehow. “He wanted Jaiden to have everything and more,” Tank says. “Everybody, even if you’re rich, you want your kid to have more than you had.”</p>
<div class="c-float-right"><aside id="4XH7ep"><q>“I’m 37 years old and I learned fatherhood from him.”<br>—Jonas English</q></aside></div>
<p id="4VeynC">Joe and Michelle had split by the time he returned to New Orleans for the final time, after his second spell in the Canadian Football League in 2016. He was working a regular day job as an assistant at Choices Behavioral Health and Wellness, a mental health care facility, mentoring a group of troubled youth on the West Bank. He helped train kids with Wyatt. He still made time to FaceTime Jaiden every night — sometimes to help with his homework, sometimes just to catch up with his best friend. When Jaiden would come to visit, he’d occasionally feature in Joe’s workout videos. “He’s a great father,” Jonas says. “I’m 37 years old and I learned fatherhood from him.”</p>
<p id="aeEINT">At 28, he hadn’t given up on football, but for the first time he was conceiving of a life after it. How it could be different, what it might look like. After years of traveling for this team and that team, he was thinking of putting down roots, of buying a house he and Jaiden could return to.</p>
<p id="dDcQl1">Jaiden still has those workout videos on his iPad. But his best friend is gone.</p>
<p id="P0qiET"></p>
<p class="p--has-dropcap" id="cWoJ19">Joe posted a screenshot to Instagram on December 1, 2016, not knowing it’d be his last. He was listening to Al Green, “Tired of Being Alone.” Jonas commented, “Boy what you know about that?”</p>
<p id="Gtx6cb">Both were estranged from the mothers of their children at this point, but trying to do the right thing. They were talking and texting as regularly as ever. Earlier that year, in April, Will Smith, who’d helped bring the Lombardi Trophy to New Orleans as a defensive end for the Saints, had been splayed out on Felicity Street and Sophie Wright Place in the Lower Garden District, <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2016/04/28/us/new-orleans-will-smith-cardell-hayes-hearing/">over nothing</a>. It had been weighing on Joe, Smith’s unceremonious death. Smith deserved more.</p>
<div class="c-float-right c-float-hang"> <figure class="e-image">
<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/KCODeD1_CYYkC1PePmpXIlEgK7o=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/9133153/Screen_Shot_2017_08_24_at_4.44.21_PM.png">
<cite>Courtesy of Jonas English</cite>
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</div>
<p id="FVeU3O">Joe felt he deserved more, too. He had been waived by the Jets in 2013, and after a year out of the league was picked up by the Kansas City Chiefs. A torn Achilles and two years later, he was in the CFL, playing for the Edmonton Eskimos. His faith was low. “God let me down,” he told Jonas one night. “All I want to do is be great. I’ve been great my whole life and now I’m fighting for everything and I’m not getting my just due.” And so Jonas ministered to him, and gave him a prayer to pray.</p>
<p id="PgsKfr">So Joe prayed that prayer, and God began to bless him. Not right away, nor in the ways that he expected, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ol-TC9ZCr9Q">like the gospel song goes</a>. Joe was released from the Eskimos, but found a new team that same season, the Saskatchewan Roughriders.</p>
<p id="aRpqhc">That mild December Thursday, Jonas’s phone rang. It was Joe, who had news he wouldn’t share yet, though Jonas would later find out from Joe’s agent: He’d been asked to go in for a physical with the Minnesota Vikings.</p>
<p id="Jxzx6D"></p>
<p class="p--has-dropcap" id="5m2ZHb"><a href="http://www.nola.com/crime/index.ssf/2016/12/ronald_gasser_suspect_in_joe_m.html">Ronald Gasser was released from custody less than 24 hours after</a> McKnight’s death. Gasser wasn’t immediately charged.</p>
<p id="M0llhR">“Killed that man,” Lamont Simmons says of Gasser. “Killed that man, then went home the same night.”</p>
<p id="sPWKDr">It wasn’t the first time Gasser had <a href="http://www.wdsu.com/article/victim-in-alleged-2006-incident-with-mcknight-shooter-ronald-gasser-im-lucky-to-be-alive/8506003">been accused of being involved in a violent incident on the road.</a> In 2006 he allegedly got into a road-rage confrontation in the gas station parking lot mere yards from his fatal encounter with Joe McKnight, who was unarmed, 10 years later.</p>
<p id="3mW9Ok">“There were two people at that red light, man. There were no cars in front of either one of them. Why not drive off?” Jonas wonders. “[Gasser] had a history of doing that. He had a history of doing those things to people.”</p>
<p id="kvNcze">How many incidents do there need to be until they’re no longer considered isolated? At what point do those isolated incidents become a trend? And when does that trend begin to define what you are?</p>
<p id="0VwMJ4">These aren’t questions solely for Gasser. The “Stand Your Ground” law, which removes the “duty to retreat” before claiming self-defense as a justification for leveling force against a perceived threat, is quintessentially, distinctly, stupidly American. The doctrine fashions a gun into the morally superior last word in an argument, one that a nonwhite person is <a href="https://broadly.vice.com/en_us/article/nz8pek/stand-your-ground-laws-are-racist-new-study-reveals">disproportionately</a> likely to be on the losing side of. <em>I’m in the right, and you are dead.</em> It’s a terrible confluence of factors: civilians registered to carry and authorized to use lethal force against any threat — real or imagined. McKnight was just talking with his hands. He did not move closer to the vehicle, <a href="http://www.espn.com/espn/otl/story/_/id/18601043/mcknight-shooter-charged-second-degree-murder">according to eyewitness Andrew Bailey</a>, who also said he saw Gasser swing the gun at everyone who approached to check on Joe afterward.</p>
<p id="POP24m">Gasser’s attorneys claimed that Joe had steroids and marijuana in his system, which contributed to “erratic behavior” at the time of the shooting. But they <a href="http://www.nola.com/crime/index.ssf/2017/04/joe_mcknight_drugs_ronald_gass.html">waited until April</a>, more than <a href="http://www.nola.com/crime/index.ssf/2017/04/joe_mcknight_drugs_ronald_gass.html">four months after the shooting</a>, to identify this “threat” that they suggested justified Gasser’s use of force. Only two people really know the truth about what happened, and one of them isn’t around to defend himself.</p>
<p id="Q7ihHF">Within 12 hours of Will Smith’s death, Cardell Hayes, the shooter, was arrested on a second-degree murder charge. But Gasser wasn’t charged in McKnight’s death until the following Monday, and the initial charge was manslaughter. Nearly two months later, the charge was upgraded to second-degree murder.</p>
<p id="xnq3TP">“I don’t know why they wouldn’t arrest [Gasser],” Ben LaBranche, a defense attorney in Baton Rouge, <a href="http://www.nola.com/crime/index.ssf/2016/12/joe_mcknight_arrest_race.html">told <em>The Times-Picayune</em></a> in December. “It’s a very similar case to Cardell Hayes and they booked him immediately.”</p>
<p id="OgFBAh">Tank isn’t so confused: “I definitely know the system is set up for people like Ronald Gasser.”</p>
<p id="pkwnE8">“I ain’t gonna get into all that, man,” Wyatt adds. “Just more of the same.”</p>
<p id="1ao5bx">Jonas thinks the charge would have been elevated sooner than February had the shooting happened just a few miles farther east. “If that case was in Orleans Parish, it would have been tried and whatever happened, would have happened already,” he says. “[Jefferson Parish] is playing games.”</p>
<p id="LzekCL">Jefferson Parish officials argue otherwise. “Everybody wants to make this about race. This isn’t about race,” Jefferson Parish Sheriff Newell Normand said in <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/joe-mcknight-shooting-suspect-ronald-gasser-in-car-when-he-fired-sheriff-newell-normand-says/">one</a> of <a href="https://www.thewrap.com/joe-mcknight-shooting-sheriff-racial-homophobic-slurs-press-conference-msnbc/">two</a> tone-deaf press conferences in the wake of the shooting. Normand <a href="http://www.nola.com/crime/index.ssf/2017/07/newell_normand_jefferson_paris.html">announced his retirement</a> in July. He’s <a href="http://www.nola.com/crime/index.ssf/2017/07/jefferson_parish_sheriff_newel_4.html">considering a future in talk radio</a>.</p>
<p id="YhSstY"></p>
<p class="p--has-dropcap" id="ILgvgV">Nearly 400 people showed for Joe’s funeral. Family, friends, fans, old rivals, and teammates alike. Mark Sanchez, Bart Scott, and Antonio Cromartie were among the pallbearers. Michelle and Jaiden were there, and J.T., too. <a href="http://www.theadvocate.com/new_orleans/news/crime_police/article_010dee54-c092-11e6-844d-0b1c15da62fa.html">The Free Spirit Brass Band played “I’ll Fly Away.”</a></p>
<p id="rCgh1c">Wyatt just couldn’t be at his former trainee’s service. “I was tore up from that one, dude,” he says. “I was really tore up, not like I wouldn’t be tore up from anybody else I trained, but everybody I trained don’t … don’t love me.”</p>
<p id="iC4rGv">Joe respected Wyatt. Joe loved<em> </em>him. Joe was honest with him. Joe wouldn’t hurt a fly. And now Joe is gone.</p>
<p id="LJJwL8">Sometimes, Jonas goes out to that light at Behrman and Holmes. There’s a gas station with boarded windows across the intersection from the Shell station. The weeds have overtaken the cracked, baked pavement, but the station is still there, quiet. It’s a good spot from which one can watch traffic pass, think, and cry, if need be.</p>
<p id="zdlyn2">Gasser’s trial is scheduled to start November 7, but Jonas questions whether the date will hold firm. Come what may, he’s organizing a celebration of Joe’s life for December 2 — a fundraiser, where all the proceeds will go to Kenner’s recreational parks and programs, like Joe would’ve wanted. He remembers his little brother, the phenom, the beacon, the legend, the father, in ways big and small.</p>
<p id="eyGJWd">“I live in LaPlace, Louisiana,” he says. “When I cross over to Kenner, when I’m driving my car, I can kind of see his mom’s house off the interstate and I just put the number four up in the air.”</p>
<p class="c-end-para" id="paULgQ">Four. That was Joe’s number.</p>
https://www.theringer.com/features/2017/8/29/16218752/joe-mcknight-new-orleans-killed-usc-nflMicah Peters2017-08-25T13:10:26-04:002017-08-25T13:10:26-04:00Sam Hunt Is the Future of Country Music
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<img alt="" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/N7TW6VNqw4tqVsi0Z1G-nkZMv1E=/0x0:2667x2000/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/56364805/download.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>Getty Images/Ringer illustration</figcaption>
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<p>The Nashville superstar has managed to cultivate bro-country success and “Real Country” respect. The question is: Can he have both at the same time?</p> <p id="QLxxvF"><em>Welcome to </em><a href="https://www.theringer.com/2017/8/21/16177760/the-south-week"><em>The South Week</em></a><em> at </em>The Ringer<em>. For the next several days, we’re celebrating — and reporting on — the richness of the region. You’ll find stories from all over the map, exploring topics such as the enduring legacy of Confederate monuments in Richmond and Montgomery, the evolution of Charleston barbecue, and the intersection of faith and football in Lubbock. We’re also ranking the best Southern rap albums, imagining the André 3000 mixtape we all deserve, and arguing about what even constitutes the South anymore. In the words of two great Southerners, nothin’ is for sure, nothin’ is for certain, nothin’ lasts forever.</em></p>
<hr class="p-entry-hr" id="ruEcGN">
<p class="p--has-dropcap" id="QDy6VM">I’d like to start by congratulating ludicrously suave bro-country superstar Sam Hunt, whose new single, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mdh2p03cRfw">“Body Like a Back Road,”</a> has <a href="http://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/chart-beat/7882215/sam-hunt-breaks-record-hot-country-songs-chart-body-like-a-back-road">broken the record</a> for most weeks atop <em>Billboard</em>’s Hot Country Songs chart. The previous record, held by <a href="https://www.theringer.com/2016/9/1/16040842/florida-georgia-line-dig-your-roots-bro-country-f96762a3137d">markedly less suave</a> bro-country superstars Florida Georgia Line and their breakout hit “Cruise,” was 24 weeks; as of Friday, Hunt’s up to 29. Congratulations, Sam.</p>
<p id="lx0ce0">I’d like to continue by drawing your attention to this “dizzy bat race” between two fans at a Quad Cities River Bandits game. This video has no sound; “Body Like a Back Road” would make a fine soundtrack. Not a compliment. </p>
<div id="nDbooE"><div style="left: 0; width: 100%; height: 0; position: relative; padding-bottom: 75.0019%;"><iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/hVOjByhZFuE?rel=0&amp;start=15" style="border: 0; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; position: absolute;" allowfullscreen="" scrolling="no"></iframe></div></div>
<p id="uxgRw8">That’s Florida Georgia Line in blue on the left, and Sam Hunt in red on the right. (Metaphorically.) The Quad Cities River Bandits are the Class A affiliate of the Houston Astros, based in Davenport, Iowa; a “dizzy bat race,” as you may have gathered, is when you put your forehead on a bat and spin around a bunch of times and then try to run in a straight line. </p>
<p id="xalKgl">Which is to say, the fact Sam Hunt has topped the <em>Billboard </em>Hot Country Songs chart for a solid half-year with a C+ trifle is less a coronation than an indictment of Hunt’s wan competition. </p>
<p id="ghXP0s">The mainstream country conveyor belt requires artists to run a silly race that demeans the runners to the great amusement, but not so much the enrichment, of the spectators. Hunt is a promising young superstar, a cocky and nervy and thrillingly polarizing synthesis of rap and pop and Actual Country and What Passes for Actual Country Nowadays. He’ll be fine. The state of the kingdom he has inherited is another matter entirely.</p>
<p id="mLrkfE">Bottom line: good artist finds great success with bad song. “Body Like a Back Road” is an expert bit of shameless pandering, giving the people exactly what they want and none of what they need. It’s engineered to top as many vapid Spotify playlists as possible, especially those with “Chillin’” somewhere in the title. He’s way better than this. Here’s proof. </p>
<div id="2iv3YC"><div style="left: 0; width: 100%; height: 0; position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.2493%;"><iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/YOb4VUgRqo0?rel=0&" style="border: 0; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; position: absolute;" allowfullscreen="" scrolling="no"></iframe></div></div>
<p id="8Ydo8r">Sam Hunt was born in Cedartown, Georgia; he first rose to prominence as a minor college football star, playing quarterback for Middle Tennessee State and then UAB. He worked out for the <a href="http://www.al.com/sports/index.ssf/2012/06/former_uab_quarterback_sam_hun.html">Kansas City Chiefs</a>, but nothing came of it; he moved to Nashville instead, and soon <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1GfEl8XUc4">Kenny Chesney</a> and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJAe5miXN_Y">Keith Urban</a> were singing songs he’d cowritten. </p>
<p id="9VHY90">His solo debut, 2014’s <em>Montevallo</em>, was an unqualified smash that unveiled a fully formed and irresistible persona: half nimble talk-rapper, half syrupy crooner, all rogue-ish charmer. His football career, however modest, makes a huge difference: As a pop star, he has the priceless macho-affable charm of a benevolent jock shocking everyone by grabbing an acoustic guitar and hijacking the high school talent show. <em>Channing Tatum buys you a drink</em>, is the gist. But everyone immediately pointed out a more apt comparison; in fact, on the sublime “Break Up in a Small Town,” Hunt made it himself:</p>
<blockquote><p id="9MRZBu"><em>She’s so far gone, but she didn’t go far</em><br><em>She was over me before the grass grew back where she used to park her car</em><br><em>She’s leaving those same marks in someone else’s yard</em><br><em>In someone else’s arms, right down the road</em></p></blockquote>
<p id="QKU0mN">The grass marks are the Actual Country part, for the record: That is a legitimately striking, and classic, and weirdly beautiful image. But “so far gone” is, yes, <a href="http://images.complex.com/complex/image/upload/t_in_content_image/drake-so-far-gona-art-ep-darkie-made_o6ek1a.jpg">the Drake part</a>. Comparing Sam Hunt and Aubrey Graham is <a href="http://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/country/7677943/sam-hunt-country-drake-eight-reasons-why-body-like-back-road">a</a> <a href="http://themuse.jezebel.com/is-sam-hunt-truly-the-drake-of-country-music-1710851147">very</a> <a href="http://www.cosmopolitan.com/entertainment/news/a43360/sam-hunt-bad-boy/">popular</a> <a href="http://kfrog.cbslocal.com/2017/02/09/heres-6-reasons-why-sam-hunt-is-obviously-the-country-version-of-drake/">pastime</a>, and was long before Hunt <a href="http://www.thefader.com/2015/03/18/watch-country-star-sam-hunt-cover-drake-at-the-fader-fort-presented-by-converse">covered Drake’s “Marvin’s Room”</a> <em>while onstage at the Fader Fort</em>. Both men have helped revolutionize their genres by broadening, and hybridizing, and above all <em>sensitizing </em>them. Stylistically, “Break Up in a Small Town” almost qualifies as a mashup: Setting aside the talk-rap aspect, the very mild EDM drop on the chorus can be read as a chewing-tobacco antecedent to the Chainsmokers. But it’s the Sad, Vulnerable Hunk aura that puts the song over, and the rest of Hunt’s songs, too.</p>
<div id="tiKSdz"><iframe src="https://open.spotify.com/embed/track/7LJOfS8evyKfP8Fl5rdZXw" style="border: 0; width: 100%; height: 380px;" allowfullscreen=""></iframe></div>
<p id="i7XTVQ"><em>Montevallo </em>had multiple smash hits: driving songs (<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BuMiMBjcvWU">“Leave the Night On”</a>), bar-pickup songs (<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXi6IHFHeIA">“Take Your Time”</a>), house-party songs (<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FhRhzAWzLA">“House Party,”</a> with its dopey turntable squiggles). But “Cop Car” is the record’s other Actual Country peak—that’s the one <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJAe5miXN_Y">Keith Urban cut in 2013</a>. But Hunt’s version is a little quieter, sparer, and sweeter, and the storytelling zeal in its detail—“I fell in love in the back of a cop car,” ends the chorus—mixes perfectly with Hunt’s plainspoken delivery:</p>
<blockquote><p id="3YS4hU"><em>Side by side and locked in tight</em><br><em>They were taking their time, but we didn’t mind</em><br><em>We talked</em><br><em>And we laughed</em><br><em>We sat real close</em><br><em>By the time they let us go</em><br><em>I was already gone</em></p></blockquote>
<p id="nZE3u8">Perfect. That’s a song worthy of <a href="https://www.theringer.com/2017/7/14/16078046/jason-isbell-the-nashville-sound-album-cbffed1e3c61">Jason Isbell</a>, or <a href="https://www.theringer.com/2016/6/13/16036710/country-music-new-champions-9299388f7bda">Sturgill Simpson</a>, or any of the other Real Country Music saviors country radio steadfastly ignores. If bro-country is truly unkillable, and only a precious few prestige artists like <a href="https://www.theringer.com/2017/5/11/16042526/chris-stapleton-zac-brown-old-school-country-stars-cd8fde192c18">Chris Stapleton</a> stumble into Nashville’s embrace, then Sam Hunt seemed to be the best-case scenario for the genre’s biggest hitmaker. Shallow enough for fame, but deep enough to transcend it.</p>
<div id="lTJJTr"><div style="left: 0; width: 100%; height: 0; position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.2493%;"><iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Mdh2p03cRfw?rel=0&" style="border: 0; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; position: absolute;" allowfullscreen="" scrolling="no"></iframe></div></div>
<p id="zkiXSw">“Body Like a Back Road” is a huge step backward, unimaginative from the listless back-porch riff to the avalanche of lyrical clichés unleashed by the title alone. Effort-wise, think the Cavs playing the Bucks, not the Cavs playing the Warriors. Hunt’s coasting. He wrote and recorded the whole song while flat on his back. You could mistake him for 15 other anonymous country-radio strivers; if you let YouTube autoplay other videos after this song, you’ll hear dozens of guileless tunes just like it from dozens of deeply, justifiably unfamous bros. Hunt is not, traditionally, a “lowest common denominator” guy, but no good can come from the revelation that he can dominate country music even if he acts like one. He needs a worthy adversary, an archenemy. But he won’t find one on <a href="http://www.billboard.com/charts/country-songs">the <em>Billboard </em>Hot Country Songs chart</a>, which at present is one great Miranda Lambert song and a 49-way tie for last. </p>
<p id="llwraw">Lambasting mainstream country for its shopworn “pickup truck on a back road” clichés long ago calcified into a cliché itself, but goodness gracious, this list is a turkey shoot. You have your soft-rock crossover artists vying for an <em>Ellen </em>invite (<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THfc1R09Te8">Thomas Rhett</a>), your witless George Strait throwbacks (<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7f6HiQ2LuU">Midland</a>), your harmless Lumineers-esque gymnasium-folk saps (<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHl0tlUYDBI">Lanco</a>). Rowdy newcomer Luke Combs shows a little spark and does what he can with a song literally titled <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXQNv_jkOQc">“When It Rains It Pours.”</a> But otherwise you’re left clinging to a bouncy but cloying goof like “No Such Thing As a Broken Heart” by the band Old Dominion, who have a cheesy “Barenaked Ladies of Country” vibe and a <a href="http://www.soundslikenashville.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Old-Dominion1-e1441983257850.jpg">terrible</a> <a href="http://www.soundslikenashville.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/Old-Dominion-1499457453.jpg">design</a> <a href="http://tasteofcountry.com/files/2017/03/old-dominion-no-such-thing-as-a-broken-heart-artwork.jpg?w=630&h=630&zc=1&s=0&a=t&q=89">aesthetic</a>. </p>
<div id="2hJ0ef"><div style="left: 0; width: 100%; height: 0; position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.2493%;"><iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/77WhNsxLyk8?rel=0&" style="border: 0; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; position: absolute;" allowfullscreen="" scrolling="no"></iframe></div></div>
<p id="apkN0T">Moreover, the chart’s first solo female entry rings in at no. 17 (Carly Pearce’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pm6DHCpmIWg">“Every Little Thing”</a>); the first and possibly only unambiguously great song on the whole chart—Miranda Lambert’s skeletal and haunting <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12cUm2OwnPs">“Tin Man”</a>—is stranded at no. 27. Lambert is an especially worrisome case. She’s an industry-beloved, award-lavished veteran superstar, and her stoic and sleek 2016 double album, <em>The Weight of These Wings</em>, was <a href="https://www.theringer.com/2016/11/16/16045204/miranda-lambert-the-weight-of-these-wings-review-1eb5ec7db8cc">worthy of the legend</a>. But despite going platinum, it yielded no big singles, which <em>Rolling Stone </em>flagged as further proof of <a href="http://www.rollingstone.com/country/news/what-miranda-lamberts-sales-say-about-sexism-at-radio-w492857">country radio’s inherent sexism</a>.</p>
<p id="g3awDD">It’s the same disease that compelled some industry dope to belittle female artists as <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/21/arts/music/kacey-musgraves-and-other-tomatoes-give-country-its-bite.html?mcubz=1">“the tomatoes of our salad”</a> back in 2015. “Saladgate” constituted <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2015/05/29/women-country-radio/28162177/">a major industry scandal</a>, but secretly, the sickest burn of all in that image is the notion that if the women are the tomatoes, the men are merely … lettuce. Roughage. Tasteless in the culinary sense. Lambert’s <em>Weight of These Wings </em><a href="http://www.nashvillescene.com/music/cover-story/article/20850016/17th-annual-country-music-critics-poll-the-results">dominated the 2016 version of alt-weekly <em>Nashville Scene</em>’s annual critics poll</a>, as well it should’ve. But that rapture, coupled with country radio’s relative indifference, suggested a disturbing shift in her target audience. The utopian ideal is that a critical darling finally reaches heights so transcendent that the bland old Nashville machine has no choice but to take notice. But it’s now more common that a radio superstar gets so prestigious, so innovative, so sublimely singular that she crosses over the other way, from mainstream adulation to something intensified but more niche. </p>
<p id="PGXTOi">Sam Hunt, at his best, might help solve this conundrum, might make prestige-quality work a mass-market affair again. But “Body LIke a Back Road” is far from his his best work: The whole of <em>Montevallo</em> shows more spark, more innovation, more dissatisfaction with the status quo. And as far back as April, the song’s massive success had <a href="http://www.billboard.com/articles/news/7759609/sam-hunt-embraces-singles-approach-sophomore-album">helped convince Hunt to be more of a “singles guy,”</a> with no release date for a full-length <em>Montevallo </em>follow-up yet in sight. "I try to make music that's relevant to my life and relatable to the culture I live in," Hunt told <em>Billboard</em>. "Putting out music as it's made, versus holding it until an album's finished, allows me to be more timely and maintain balance." More importantly, not only does this coup suggest he doesn’t have to put out anything better, it suggests he <em>doesn’t have to put out anything else at all</em>.</p>
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<p id="FRG3V5">In January, Hunt released a song called “Drinkin’ Too Much,” a painfully intimate post-breakup acoustic sketch that <a href="http://www.stereogum.com/1919182/country-star-sam-hunt-is-basically-a-drake-tribute-act-now/franchises/the-week-in-pop/">sounds more like Drake’s “Marvin’s Room”</a> than Hunt’s actual cover of “Marvin’s Room.” Delivered in that now-familiar confessional lilt, the lyrics immediately felt <em>wrong</em>, in an overly personal and morally invasive sort of way: “I know you want your privacy / And you’ve got nothing to say to me / But I wish you’d let me pay off your student loans / With these songs you gave to me.” Outro:</p>
<blockquote><p id="HCUycm"><em>Hannah Lee, I’m on my way to you</em><br><em>I don’t know what I’ma say to you</em><br><em>But I know there ain’t no way we’re through </em></p></blockquote>
<p class="c-end-para" id="JqToC4"><a href="http://people.com/country/sam-hunt-marries-hannah-lee-fowler/">Hannah Lee Fowler is now Sam Hunt’s wife</a>. This ripped-from-my-own-headlines approach to songwriting is not sustainable, or even advisable at all. He of all people can find ways to break molds without turning total civilians into unwilling celebrities, a la <a href="https://www.theringer.com/2016/10/24/16040870/taylor-swift-10-years-later-99e4729b8c19">another country trailblazer we know</a>. But at least “Drinkin’ Too Much” is a choice, and a bold one, far bolder than the song that just handed Hunt a record-breaking <em>Billboard</em> coup. Hunt is on tour right now, and has taken to closing his set with <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFLNBWtau_E&list=RDjFLNBWtau_E">a “Break Up in a Small Town”–“Drinkin’ Too Much” mashup</a>. He’s got range. He’s got options. LIke it or not, he’s probably the future of country music. Which means he’ll decide how retrograde the future of country music turns out to be. </p>
https://www.theringer.com/pop-culture/2017/8/25/16202990/sam-hunt-future-of-country-musicRob Harvilla2017-08-25T09:24:11-04:002017-08-25T09:24:11-04:00The 20 Best Southern Rap Albums Ever, According to You
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<p>We argued, voted, voted again—and then asked you to tell us what we missed</p> <p id="hElZgC"><em>Welcome to </em><a href="https://www.theringer.com/2017/8/21/16177760/the-south-week"><em>The South Week</em></a><em> at </em>The Ringer<em>. We’re celebrating — and reporting on — the richness of the region. You’ll find stories from all over the map, exploring topics such as the enduring legacy of Confederate monuments in Richmond and Montgomery, the evolution of Charleston barbecue, and the intersection of faith and football in Lubbock. We’re also ranking the best Southern rap albums, imagining the André 3000 mixtape we all deserve, and arguing about what even constitutes the South anymore. In the words of two great Southerners, nothin’ is for sure, nothin’ is for certain, nothin’ lasts forever.</em></p>
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<p id="RZJkKM">We here at <em>The Ringer </em>really, really love Outkast (<a href="https://www.theringer.com/2017/8/25/16200044/andre-3000-album-south-week">so much so that we imagined what a <em>Love Below 2</em> might look like</a>). So when we assembled our list of the 20 best Southern rap albums, it pained us greatly to adhere to silly, made-up conventions like “not obviously favoring one group over all the other artists from the region by dedicating 20 percent of our entire ranking to them.” The only correct course of action would have been to put both <em>ATLiens </em>and <em>Stankonia</em> on our list, even if it would have meant four out of 20 albums would have been Outkast records.</p>
<aside id="MNOh17"><div data-anthem-component="readmore" data-anthem-component-data='{"stories":[{"title":"The 20 Best Southern Rap Albums Ever","url":"https://www.theringer.com/2017/8/21/16170892/southern-rap-album-ranking-south-week"}]}'></div></aside><p id="EtpYUs">But we’re human, and human beings make questionable choices sometimes. So we rounded up your nominations for the most influential Southern rap albums. Submitted via Google Form, email, and carrier pigeon, these are the records y’all said our list was incomplete without:</p>
<h3 id="YmOcLX">1. <em>ATLiens</em>, Outkast</h3>
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<p id="pPDZ5s">Cooler than a polar bear’s toenails and tight like nuts and bolts, <em>ATLiens</em> marked the moment when Outkast started to reach their potential as genre-bending world conquerors. In just two years, they came a long way (like those slim-ass cigarettes from Virginia) from chicken-fried, playful funk to a darker, more cerebral take on life in Atlanta and the struggles of a young artist in the music industry. But underneath it all, the main attraction is the two dope boyz themselves, wise as sages but still with something to prove behind the mic. Classics like “Elevators (Me & You),” “Two Dope Boyz (in a Cadillac),” and the title track stand up to anything in their oeuvre, and underheralded tracks like “Mainstream,” “Wheelz of Steel,” and “Decatur Psalm” round out the biggest omission from <em>The Ringer</em>’s Southern rap list.<br><em><strong> — Dan C.</strong></em></p>
<h3 id="k1hKG6">2. <em>Stankonia</em>, Outkast</h3>
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<p id="SjNw5W">When designs for the Falcons’ new stadium were being submitted, the winning submission was called the “Pantheon” for its futuristic features and amenities. In local Falcons blogs, it was referred to as the Stankonia Dome. It’s been nearly 20 years, and <em>Stankonia </em>is still in every Southerner’s lexicon.</p>
<p id="Kxjdzh"><em><strong> — Alex</strong></em></p>
<h3 id="IKqdzz">3. <em>The Fix</em>, Scarface</h3>
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<p id="TMLotq">Not only is this one of the 20 best Southern rap albums ever, it’s one of the best 20 rap albums ever. Scarface is as earnest as ever as he delivers his spooky soliloquies straight from the heart of the south side of Houston. Face invites the two best NYC rappers alive to guest, and more than holds his own. Still in the making-a-name-for-himself phase of his career, a young Kanye West contributes what remains one of his best efforts behind the boards with “Guess Who’s Back.”<br><em><strong> — Mark B.</strong></em></p>
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<strong>4. </strong><em><strong>King</strong></em>, T.I.</h3>
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<p id="B3WKfn">While <em>Trap Muzik</em> is wonderful, it is the Shawn Kemp and Gary Payton SuperSonics of albums — fun, loud, and shows promise, but ultimately falls short of the crown. <em>King</em>, on the other hand, is the anthemic coronation of a new day. It is what winning sounds like. It is the Houston Rockets’ back-to-back titles. He stepped up and stepped out. The first four tracks, “King Back,” “Front Back,” “What You Know,” and “I’m Talkin’ to You” are unrivaled in their straight braggadociousness. They let any listener know that Atlanta was the new home of rap royalty.<br><em><strong> — Conor D.</strong></em></p>
<h3 id="p2LnmW">5. <em>Watermelon, Chicken & Gritz</em>, Nappy Roots</h3>
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<p id="yLq8Rx">Aw naw! Hell naw! You guys may have decided that <a href="https://www.theringer.com/pop-culture/2017/8/21/16169944/sorry-your-state-is-not-southern-south-package">Kentucky isn’t a Southern state</a>, but this album and this group are banner Southern rap. “Po’ Folks” and “Country Boyz” highlight the vibe, and the organ intro leading into the above-mentioned lyrics is the iconic prelude to a true anthem.</p>
<p id="yMXgbJ"><em><strong> — Matt J.</strong></em></p>
<h3 id="8ywYED">6. <em>Back for the First Time</em>, Ludacris</h3>
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<p id="tKkC00">Southern rap has three musts: bangers, skits, and more bangers! That’s all this is! Luda’s growl and those fucking beats are insane. Jermaine Dupri was at his peak. I wasn’t worried this didn’t make the list until I finished it because even when I was at no. 2 I thought, “I don’t know if it’s no. 1, but it kind of makes sense to put it there.”</p>
<p id="HQQfSd"><em><strong> — Tim</strong></em></p>
<h3 id="kWKNvF">7. <em>The Minstrel Show</em>, Little Brother</h3>
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<p id="iKo3IY">LB resurrected the boom bap era with 9th Wonder’s soul samples, he is one half of what is arguably the last great rap duo to record an album, and let’s not forget that Phonte’s Everyman rap has clear descendants in more commercially successful rappers like Drake (who credits him for this sing rap style), Wale, J. Cole, and Kanye.<br><em><strong> — Jay</strong></em></p>
<h3 id="BWOIEG">8. <em>A Piece of Strange</em>, CunninLynguists</h3>
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<p id="ElKU8a">This is a Southern rap album quite literally about the American South. Through a loose narrative structure, as well as some fantastic features (Tonedeff, Immortal Technique, CeeLo), we get a story told from many points of view, all struggling to reconcile Christian tradition and the wisdom of the dead with the poverty and racial hatred they see in front of them. This would probably all get too heavy if it weren’t set to a smooth instrumental that connects each track and makes for an exceptional full listen. <em>A Piece of Strange</em> is a work of art made by people who simultaneously recognize the South for all its flaws and love it unconditionally.<br><em><strong> — Matt D.</strong></em></p>
<h3 id="3kwJCX">9. <em>Word of Mouf</em>, Ludacris</h3>
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<p id="3zzQvf">We don’t typically put Ludacris in the pantheon of Southern rap trailblazers, and that’s fair. But the Geto Boys sat so that No Limit could walk; No Limit walked so that Outkast could fly; Outkast flew so that Luda could have a song on the soundtrack of every movie released in 2001. You could make a case for five songs on <em>Word of Mouf</em> as the Best Post-DMX, Pre–50 Cent Rap Single (“Move Bitch,” “Area Codes,” “Rollout (My Business),” “Welcome to Atlanta,” “Saturday (Oooh! Oooh!)”). </p>
<p id="cvAcxv">The album opens with a fake “Coming 2 America” sample, which is followed by Luda boasting that he packs “more nuts than Delta Airlines,” before a young Tity Boi delivers a spoken interlude. The rest of the album is equally fun. Everything changed the day Luda cut his cornrows and put out that ridiculous song with Mary J. Blige, but he was once the funniest rapper alive, and this album was his peak.<br><em><strong> — Alexus S.</strong></em></p>
<h3 id="SrzPIB">10. <em>R.A.P. Music</em>, Killer Mike</h3>
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<p id="shEh0U">Southern rap is at its best when it speaks truth to power, and no one does that better than Killer Mike. He indicts our political leaders, eviscerates our criminal justice system, and showcases the reality of life in Atlanta, all while telling stories that Slick Rick would be proud of. Few rappers would be bold enough to feature two Southern legends (Bun B and T.I.) on their album’s opening track, “Big Beast,” and even fewer are gifted enough to out-rap them both with a rare combination of ferocity and wordplay. But Mike is, and he does so without a reduction in listenability-while-driving-around-aimlessly-on-back-roads. And before anyone starts complaining that El-P’s production disqualifies <em>R.A.P. Music</em> as a Southern album, I’ll let Mike speak for himself: “I keep a blunt and a Bible and a gun on me / Why? Cause I’m country-bred.”<br><em><strong> — Sidd M.</strong></em></p>
<h3 id="h2CC7y">11. <em>As Nasty As They Wanna Be</em>, 2 Live Crew</h3>
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<p id="X35CHC">Either you decided that Florida isn’t part of the South, or this is another case of someone born in the ’70s saying that you damn millennials don’t respect anything before the ’90s. My junior high halls rocked with the sounds of <em>Straight Outta Compton</em>, <em>It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back</em>, <em>By All Means Necessary</em>, <em>Paul’s Boutique</em>, and<em> As Nasty As They Wanna Be</em>. New York, L.A., and Miami. My junior high was in rural Vermont. If that doesn’t tell you how deeply 2 Live Crew penetrated pop culture in a pre-internet era, when they were too obscene for TV and radio, I don’t know what could. <br><em><strong> — Chris</strong></em></p>
<h3 id="l99avm">12. <em>Crime Mob</em>, Crime Mob </h3>
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<p id="HShwUW">Knuck If You Buck. That’s it.<br><em><strong> — Mat G.</strong></em></p>
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<h3 id="VN4Zly">13. <em>Just Tryin’ Ta Live</em>, Devin The Dude</h3>
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<p id="6oLhkP">Devin was the soul behind Rap-A-Lot records for years. Legends such as Scarface, Dr. Dre, Nas, Snoop Dogg, Pimp C, and André 3000 count him as one the most original artists to come out of Houston. His second album came at the height of his scene-stealing appearance on Dr. Dre’s <em>2001</em> track “Fuck You.” You can still hear his influence today in artists like Wiz Khalifa, Kendrick Lamar, and Curren$y.<br><em><strong> — @betrott</strong></em></p>
<h3 id="dYIHPw">14. <em>Who Is Mike Jones?</em> Mike Jones</h3>
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<p id="myRe8h">It’s a travesty that the Houston rap boom of the early ’00s isn’t represented here. This album has its flagship song, “Still Tippin.’” It’s also just a damn good album. More hits — “Back Then” — and gems like “What Ya Know About.” You’re going to tell me [the best example is] Chamillionaire’s <em>Ridin’ Dirty</em>. You’re going to say “Swishahouse”? I know, I get it, it’s not Rap-A-Lot or Jive, but this is the real deal. A Swishahouse record featuring Paul Wall, Slim Thug, and Bun B.<br><em><strong> — Nick F.</strong></em></p>
<h3 id="7oPtsx">15.<em> Teflon Don</em>, Rick Ross</h3>
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<p id="aezoMS">Not a single album on this list has a production credit by Lex Luger. Sure, Wayne and André successfully eroded the idea of what a star rapper could sound like, look like, or rap about. But Lex Luger obliterated any vestiges of East Coast influence in Southern rap production. You can’t nod your head to a Luger beat; you can only lose your fucking mind when you hear that signature ascending run of notes. “B.M.F. (Blowin’ Money Fast)” is one of Luger’s highest-reaching credits on the rap charts and it’s the lizard-brain core of the greatest rap album that the state of Florida has ever produced: Rick Ross’s <em>Teflon Don</em>. If a Clipse album is Southern, a Miami album is Southern. Miami is 500 miles closer to the equator than Atlanta. Ross has rendered himself underrated after years of oversaturation and inconsistency, so it falls upon me to remind you all of the man’s capacity for greatness. Ross’s greatest superpower is his ability to warp reality. On “Free Mason,” Jay-Z is a man who never left his prime and John Legend is an egotistical asshole. On “B.M.F.,” Styles P issuing threats becomes pop music. This is an album of inspiring delusion by a rapper who was refusing to let rap’s early-2000s marriage to opulence fall apart. This is a bailout bank giving a bonus to a CEO during the recession, and it sounds amazing. By <em>Teflon Don</em>, Ross’s fourth album, he had perfected the physical act of rapping. Nothing sounds forced; everything flows flawlessly over beats that sound like a billion dollars. When you combine this with his unparalleled understanding of the power of words and the importance of staying on brand (rap game Don Draper), you get lines like “James Bond coupe pop clutch 100” — an action movie scene in six words.<br><em><strong> — Chris R.</strong></em></p>
<h3 id="hhWbIx">16. <em>Bad Azz</em>, Boosie Badazz</h3>
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<p id="6iJ3e6">This album came out and suddenly no party was complete without “Set It Off,” “Zoom,” or “I’m Mad” being turned up to hazardous levels. Also if you were into a more mellow vibe, “Smoking on Purple” was played in my car so often that I’m pretty sure my Pontiac knew the lyrics by heart. Just know that for a few years in Louisiana this album made Boosie vs. Wayne a thing.<br><em><strong> — Scott G.</strong></em></p>
<h3 id="7O541s">17. <em>Cadillactica</em>, Big K.R.I.T.</h3>
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<p id="w3kR1L">During the compilation of “best of” lists, albums that served as innovators for their genre are often given greater status at the expense of newer music that draws from those sources to produce a more refined craft. <em>Cadillactica</em> falls into the latter category, as it sees an artist channeling great Southern rap originators from Outkast to T.I. to create a sprawling magnum opus. Throughout the album, K.R.I.T. is able to maintain a precarious balance by rapping with aggression while waxing philosophically, slotting songs about stealing your bitch because he drives a Cadillac (“Cadillactica”) directly alongside an exploration of how different generations define love (“Soul Food”). Perhaps this is simply the sort of ambition that is to be expected of an album inspired by a drawing of a Cadillac crash-landing to Earth and whose first single was an incendiary response to Kendrick Lamar’s epic dis verse on “Control.” <br><em><strong> — Quinn M.</strong></em></p>
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<h3 id="lJARMc">18. <em>Book of Thugs: Chapter AK Verse 47</em>, Trick Daddy</h3>
<p id="S34wLi">This album put Miami on the map post-Luke and pre-Ross. All the staples of the South loud are here: horns, crazy bass, and thug raps. Trick was at his peak and “Shut Up” is an underrated anthem.</p>
<p id="rjdXwQ"><em><strong> — Ian S.</strong></em></p>
<h3 id="HeJfAv">19. <em>Da REAList</em>, Plies</h3>
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<p id="SmJUI5">It didn’t have the biggest hit, or the cover with Plies serenely emerging from the Holy Bible, but the final installment of the Real trilogy had everything else. Jacksonville’s finest slurred a universal language on <em>Da REAList</em> — equal parts hedonistic triumph and street tough wisecracking — that had my friends and me dreaming of going to the mall and buying everything we wanted. <br><em><strong> — Nathan F.</strong></em></p>
<h3 id="yDaWkI">20. <em>Hard to Kill</em>, Gucci Mane</h3>
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<p class="c-end-para" id="zLDG5C">Your inclusion of Jeezy (while having no Gucci) is an affront of the highest level to Mr. Zone 6. He literally pioneered the genre known as trap music, influencing a countless number of artists today. <em>Hard to Kill </em>is predominantly produced by Zaytoven, one of the South’s most seminal producers, who deserves more than a mention when talking about Southern rap standards.<br><em><strong> — Travis</strong></em></p>
<p id="0e3WyB"><em>These submissions have been edited for clarity and accuracy.</em></p>
https://www.theringer.com/2017/8/25/16200240/reader-responses-southern-rap-rankingThe Ringer Staff2017-08-25T09:23:58-04:002017-08-25T09:23:58-04:00Touching Death: The Turbulent Life of One of America’s Last Snake-Handling Preachers
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<p>Three years after his father was killed during a service, Cody Coots carries on as pastor of the South’s most famous signs-following church. In a town rife with drugs and poverty, Coots leads a group of congregants who live and worship in extremes — and who, by engaging with death, show their faith in a God they believe delivers life.</p> <p id="1LRX0v"><em>Welcome to </em><a href="https://www.theringer.com/2017/8/21/16177760/the-south-week"><em>The South Week</em></a><em> at </em>The Ringer<em>. We’re celebrating — and reporting on — the richness of the region. You’ll find stories from all over the map, exploring topics such as the enduring legacy of Confederate monuments in Richmond and Montgomery, the evolution of Charleston barbecue, and the intersection of faith and football in Lubbock. We’re also ranking the best Southern rap albums, imagining the André 3000 mixtape we all deserve, and arguing about what even constitutes the South anymore. In the words of two great Southerners, nothin’ is for sure, nothin’ is for certain, nothin’ lasts forever.</em></p>
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<p class="p--has-dropcap" id="xj6hTr">Cody Coots looks comfortable, standing in the spot where his father was killed. Behind him sits a guitar, before him a glass of strychnine poison. To his right there’s a drum set, to his left a few venomous snakes. He’s at a lectern in a large room in an old house on a back street in Middlesboro, Kentucky, deep in rural Appalachia. This is his pulpit. Before that it was his father’s, and before that his father’s father’s, and before that his father’s father’s father’s, all of them pastors here at Full Gospel Tabernacle in Jesus Name, a church that promises salvation but sometimes delivers death.</p>
<p id="CiWlLY">Cody is short and plump, his hair buzzed and his brown eyes big. He wears a white button-down and oversized khakis, and as he peers out at the group of about 20 worshipers, he leans into the microphone and begins. “Time to get the service started,” Cody says, his voice a rhythmic twang. “I ’preciate the Lord for being here. I ’preciate all he done for me and mine.” He asks for prayer requests. A few congregants speak up from the pews.</p>
<p id="vh4y8l">“Remember Mamaw Bobby. She been in the hospital, you know.”</p>
<p id="GpvFB1">“I’m having problems with my bowels. Going to see the doctor on Tuesday. Bring your prayers for me.”</p>
<p id="c6EQmh">“Pray for my daughter. She ain’t living right. She tried to attack a prison guard the other day. Pray the Lord help her turn her life around.”</p>
<p id="S7kwvW">Now the congregants kneel, and together they pray, all out loud, a cacophony of voices filling the room. When they finish, the music starts — Cody on guitar, his mother, Linda, on the drums, voices rising and feet stomping all across the room. They sing and they shout, songs about Jesus and about the Devil, about living right and doing good, about strychnine and serpents and heaven’s streets of gold. Soon a few start jumping, hopping up and down across the room with their eyes closed. A few more start speaking in tongues, a practice common in Pentecostal churches throughout the United States and much of the rest of the world, wherein worshipers utter a prayer language, often unintelligible to most listeners, that they believe emerges only when the Holy Spirit descends.</p>
<p id="yuBefb">And when the time comes, when they sense that the Spirit has led them to do so, a few kneel down toward the collection of boxes congregants brought with them for the service. They unlock the hinges and reach inside, and when they emerge, they hold poisonous snakes. A cottonmouth. A copperhead. A rattlesnake. They hold them as they worship, lift them to the sky as they dance, crying out to Jesus and touching death while they sing his name.</p>
<p id="Yb1Pmc"></p>
<p class="p--has-dropcap" id="dlJAFh">They handle snakes because it’s dangerous. Serpent venom is meant to paralyze prey, attacking the nervous system. Vision blurs. Nausea builds. Pain spreads. As the venom courses through the veins, blood cells are destroyed. Victims hemorrhage. Occasionally, they die.</p>
<p id="AY2oIO">They handle snakes because it’s safe. It says so right there in the King James Version of the Bible, Gospel of Mark, chapter 16, verses 17 and 18. “And these signs shall follow them that believe; in my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; they shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.” They call themselves “signs-following” churches, those whose belief is proved through their tongues speaking, poison drinking, snake handling, and faith healing. By engaging with death, they show their faith in a God they believe delivers life. “It’s just a feeling that’ll come over you, unlike anything you ever felt before,” says Shelby Nolan, a 21-year-old member of the church and one of Cody’s closest friends. “Just the fact that God instructed you to handle something that can kill you. You can hold something deadly in your hands and trust that God will protect you.”</p>
<div class="c-float-left c-float-hang"><aside id="cfmc9V"><q>“It’s completely peaceful. I’m just blissed out. I never feel so close to God.”<br>—Cody Coots</q></aside></div>
<p id="xM9zLW">Their church sits nestled among the Appalachians, just a few miles from the Cumberland Gap, in the region where Kentucky and Tennessee and Virginia all meet. On the way into town from Tennessee, you wind through the mountains, soft and rolling and giving way to valleys that stretch as far as you can see. After passing through the Cumberland Gap Tunnel, Highway 25 spits you out right there in downtown Middlesboro, where you’re greeted by fast food chains and strip malls and streets filled with long-neglected homes. Here in Bell County, the population is mostly white, undereducated, and poor. Only 10 percent of residents have graduated college (compared to 33 percent nationwide), and only 66 percent have graduated high school (88 percent nationwide, including GED recipients). Forty-five percent of the population lives in poverty; 60 percent of the working-age population has no job. Opioids are rampant. So is meth.</p>
<p id="roR0nZ">Much of the population is evangelical Christian, but even in a sea of conservative Christianity, the snake handlers stand out. “The world thinks we’re a bunch of hillbillies who don’t know nothing,” a young church member preaches one Sunday. “They think we’re backwards because of the way we listen to God.” Church members tell stories of coworkers who tell them they’re crazy, of family members who beg them to attend a more mainstream church. “This world,” Pastor Bruce Helton, who heads another snake-handling church in nearby Harlan County, explains to me one afternoon, “is wicked.” If it weren’t, the thinking goes, fewer people would fear taking up snakes.</p>
<p id="AgeYdg">Snake handling traces its lineage back to a man named George Hensley, an early-20th-century moonshiner turned minister based in Cleveland, Tennessee. Hensley preached in Pentecostal churches known for ecstatic worship styles, where churchgoers danced and wept and spoke in tongues, in the belief that the Holy Spirit had compelled them to do so. Hensley became transfixed by Mark 16:17–18, the passage that references taking up snakes. People in the faith say that to him, the most important word in the passage was the word “shall.” Hensley saw this as a commandment. If you followed Jesus, he believed, then you drank poison and handled snakes. One day, Hensley ended a sermon on the passage by pulling a rattlesnake out of a box and holding it as he preached. He then handed it to congregants, and they passed it among themselves. Soon Hensley began traveling around the Southeast, preaching and handling and drinking strychnine at churches throughout Appalachia. Within a few years, the practice became routine at a small number of churches scattered throughout the region.</p>
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<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/k90RLqO5jMsAW-aZsWvAl6EpVTQ=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/9112719/IMG_1925.jpg">
<cite>Jordan Ritter Conn</cite>
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<p id="oqdiAY">Years passed and Hensley floated in and out of the church, returning to his moonshine business, marrying four times, entering and then escaping from prison. He settled in Kentucky, where snake handling in religious services was outlawed in 1940. Police, though, rarely paid much attention to snake handlers unless someone ended up dead or in the hospital — which they did, from time to time. Hensley and others established small churches, often with a couple dozen congregants or fewer, and continued their practice, largely undisturbed.</p>
<p id="j6PIQC">It’s unclear how many snake-handling churches exist today. Estimates in the last two decades have ranged from about 40 to as many as 125, all of them small, most concentrated in the Southeastern United States. While Pentecostalism has exploded globally, with tongues-speaking and faith-healing denominations growing exponentially in Latin America, Africa, and Asia, snake handling remains a practice almost entirely unique to the American South.</p>
<p id="J6XmMV">The Full Gospel Tabernacle in Jesus Name was founded in Middlesboro in 1978 by Cody Coots’s great-grandfather, Tommy Coots, who eventually turned the church over to his son Greg, who can still be found playing guitar and singing and occasionally preaching on Sunday afternoons or Saturday and Wednesday nights. Greg Coots, though, didn’t feel led to pastor the church for long. Instead, he turned it over to his son Jamie, who passed it down, after more than two decades, to Cody.</p>
<p id="1yQmkR"></p>
<p class="p--has-dropcap" id="3xSaO7">Growing up, Cody didn’t want to be a pastor. Maybe that was right for his family’s previous generations, but not for him. He found himself curious about life outside of snake-handling churches. Though he was homeschooled, he made friends from around town, and he drifted in and out of other worlds. As a teenager, he went one Sunday with a girlfriend to her Baptist church. Only then did he begin to realize that his family’s tradition existed outside the mainstream.</p>
<p id="dlJ6Hl">But by the time he approached his 18th birthday, Cody was back in his father’s church for every service. He couldn’t wait to turn 18. Not because it meant graduating high school or buying cigarettes. In Cody’s world, your 18th birthday meant only one thing: He could handle snakes. (Waiting to handle until adulthood was not mandated by scripture but was rather the church’s policy. Children and visitors are both barred from handling.) Beginning with the first service after his 18th birthday, Cody packed a box of several snakes for every service, riding to the church alongside his dad, who brought his own box with his own snakes, and they laid them out together by the pulpit, alongside plenty of others, maybe 15 snakes present for worship in all. Cody handled whenever he felt the Spirit move, and at that time, the Spirit moved in almost every service.</p>
<p id="7K9Ydb">It was strange, the way a snake’s effect could change depending on when and where he touched it. Cody would go snake hunting with his dad — taking four-wheelers off-road in the mountains from Kentucky to South Carolina, crouching down with poles, reaching under logs and boulders, sometimes staring eye-to-eye at four or five rattlers in the wild. “That,” he says, “is the ultimate adrenaline rush.” But he felt no adrenaline when he handled snakes in church. From afar, it may look thrilling, but up close, he says, it’s something altogether different, serene. “It’s completely peaceful,” he says. “I’m just blissed out. I never feel so close to God.”</p>
<p id="HjYlCH">Yet the experience can hit different people in different ways. Says Nolan: “I’ve had it come over me just completely peaceful, like someone could walk through the door and point a gun at me and I wouldn’t care. Then sometimes it feels electric. I get a churn in my stomach. It just depends on how the Holy Spirit moves on you.” No one, though, ever describes snake handling as routine or mundane. To handle a snake is to worship with an intensity otherwise unknown, to transcend the life that exists before and after you hold death in your hands. The practice can numb or it can enliven, but it always, for at least a moment, transforms.</p>
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<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/YAUPdvJv0D_aSWDJmtGAelnyYOI=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/9112723/Snake_boxes.jpg">
<cite>Jordan Ritter Conn</cite>
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<p id="0VlxCY">“It’s a high,” says Nolan. “It’s a high you can’t explain.” Nolan himself knows other highs. His father died of an overdose when Nolan was 15, and afterward he turned to drugs himself. He dropped out of high school and spent his days drinking and smoking pot and popping pills. The drugs delivered momentary relief from an emptiness that consumed him. Yet the desperation felt ever-present, just barely underneath the buzz. So when an aunt invited him to her church, another snake-handling congregation in Harlan County, Nolan went with her. He got clean. Once he turned 18, he started handling snakes. “When you’re on drugs,” he says, “you get that one big high the first time, and you go back after that same one. But it gets weaker. Your body gets used to it. With God, that high always comes the same. It’s a feeling that’s completely unexplainable. The hair on your head and your arms stands up. It’s something better than drinking, smoking, or pill taking. It’s better than all of that.”</p>
<p id="b6qqkJ">When handling, Cody says, he feels present in his body like in no other moment. His eyes close or they wander, barely paying any mind to the creature in his hands. He is fully submissive — not to the snake, he believes, but to God. “I feel,” he says, “like nothing in the world can hurt me in that moment.”</p>
<p id="BrIsDL">And yet, of course, something has.</p>
<p id="gCoD1I"></p>
<p class="p--has-dropcap" id="nEcJVi">Cody’s mother, Linda, is a firecracker of a woman, gray-haired and usually long-skirted, often found at the drum set, where she bangs and harmonizes her way through the most upbeat of worship songs, or sitting on the back pew, where she tends to grandchildren. On occasion, when she feels led by the Holy Spirit, she speaks.</p>
<p id="Rzpfwz">Like right now. “I got something to say,” Linda announces. It’s a Sunday afternoon in August. The service has drawn near its close. Today, like many days, the snakes have remained in their boxes, the strychnine in its jar. The crowd is thin, and no one felt the Spirit move them to follow the signs. Together, they’ve sung a few worship songs and listened to a short sermon on 1 Samuel 1. The chapter tells the story of Samuel’s birth. His mother, Hannah, had prayed for years that God would give her a child. When that child was born, she dedicated him to God and gave him over to Eli, who would raise him to serve in the temple.</p>
<p id="EFmnJX">Linda is sitting in the back pew, feeling reflective. The rest of the church turns around to listen. Women do not often preach in snake-handling churches, just as they don’t in most conservative Christian traditions, but near the ends of services here they often “testify,” speaking to the congregation about ways God has affected their lives. “God knew,” she says. “God knew that she had made a vow to him, that she was gonna give this child to him.”</p>
<p id="zUuCRg">She adjusts in her pew, expression soft, gaze wandering. “You know,” she says, “sometimes God keeps us out of trouble because of the things we say and the vows we make.” She tells a story. Back in 1993, a few years after she and Jamie were married, he suffered a bite on his left arm from a rattler. He collapsed there in the church, the poison working its way through his veins. For years Jamie had been adamant: If he ever went down with a bite, or from drinking too much poison, God would heal him. And if God didn’t heal him, well, then it must have been his time to go. So no paramedics tended to him. Instead, the church members knelt down and prayed.</p>
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<p id="HjbV4c">“I said to God,” Linda remembers, “‘God, please do not let him die. God, if you save him, I will never eat chocolate candy ever again.’” Now she stops. She looks around, shaking her head. “I was new to snake handling back then. I didn’t have no sense or nothing.”</p>
<p id="o5HxGT">And yet she was desperate, flailing, watching her husband’s color drain. Only later did she realize: “You don’t make deals with God. If it was Jamie’s time, there was nothing I coulda done. He was gonna go anyway.”</p>
<p id="XTmH1H">Only he didn’t. Jamie recovered despite never seeing a doctor. He returned to the pulpit, and five years later, when another rattler bit his right middle finger, turning his arm purple and pocking his body with blisters, the venom killing the tip of his finger until it fell completely off, he refused to see a doctor once again. Jamie became famous. CNN came to Middlesboro. So did a parade of curious worshipers from around the country. He welcomed them all, insisting that the attention would help him spread the gospel. He was living the way God intended, Jamie believed. He didn’t care if that meant he’d eventually die. In 2012, he told WKYT-TV, “I don’t actually want to die of a serpent bite, but I’d rather die and leave these walks of life with a serpent bite knowing there are people standing around me praying than to be in a car wreck and people standing around me cussing. I would rather die in that spiritual atmosphere, even if it does mean a serpent bite.” In 2013, National Geographic aired a reality show about Jamie and others in the snake-handling community. The show, <em>Snake Salvation,</em> ran for one 16-episode season in 2013 before the network canceled it.</p>
<p id="Q1tWr0">The next February, Jamie was bitten for the ninth and final time. During a Saturday-night service he handled three snakes at once. One, a two-and-a-half-foot long timber rattler, struck him on the back of his right hand, near the base of his thumb. He dropped the snakes and moments later he collapsed, face tingling, on fire. A friend and fellow evangelist, Andrew Hamblin, helped Jamie stand and walk to the bathroom, near the back of the church. There he lay down. He would wait out the bite’s effects on his own, refusing medical attention just as he always had. God would heal him or take him. No human doctor would intervene.</p>
<p id="yh7bZ7">He lost strength by the second. He spoke, weakly, not to his congregants but to Christ.</p>
<p id="729M6m">“Lord, come by.”</p>
<p id="QBGCQ0">“Oh, God, no.”</p>
<p id="6mBZQ9">His final words: “Sweet Jesus.”</p>
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<p id="t3yGM3"></p>
<p class="p--has-dropcap" id="tj0GYT">Cody didn’t expect his father to die that night. They’d handled dozens of snakes together, and when Cody was a child he’d watched his father handle hundreds more. He’d seen him bitten. He’d seen snakes sink their teeth into his flesh without producing any venom, leaving no more than a couple marks from their fangs. He’d seen his father get woozy, seen him need some rest, seen his arms swell up and turn purple and seen the tip of his right finger fall off. He knew the drill. They would ride back to the house and sit up the whole night and pray. God would heal him. That Sunday or the following Wednesday, Jamie would be back in church, likely handling snakes once again.</p>
<p id="qnX0hY">So when Jamie died, Cody was too stunned to be able to feel. Even if he didn’t expect it, he knew this could happen — God gives life and God takes it, after all — but the image of his father, dead, still felt like too much for Cody to comprehend. Others in the church insisted that this was what God wanted, that Jamie’s time had come. They praised the Lord in their joys, so they’d praise him now in their grief. Jamie had been a wonderful man, a loving father, but this must have been God’s will. They canceled church that Sunday, buried Jamie the next Wednesday, and came back together the following Sunday, ready to move on. They needed a new pastor. Few questioned who that man might be. One week after his father’s death, Cody took over the church. He was 21 years old.</p>
<p id="A5lVaO">When Jamie was still alive, he taught Cody all he could about pastoring their church. He taught him to memorize scripture and to capture rattlesnakes. He taught him how to play worship songs and the right way to counsel a married couple considering divorce. He showed him the proper methods for storing poison, how to lead a congregation in prayer, and how to pray when a snake sunk its teeth in someone’s flesh — as happened from time to time, and as had killed a church member named Melinda Brown back in 1995. He also passed down wisdom on how to respond when the cops show up, as they sometimes do after bites, given the fact that snake handling remains illegal. Be polite. Shake their hands. But know your rights. By law, pastors are shielded from divulging information given to them by members of their churches. So when someone goes down and the police want to know who brought the offending snakes or jar of poison, just shrug and say, “pastor’s privilege.” That, Jamie said, should be enough to get the police to leave you alone.</p>
<p id="DqHBOR">The week after his father died, Cody stood before his congregants in his place. He sang and he preached and he pulled out the very rattler that had killed his father and he handled that snake and praised God. Within weeks he settled into a rhythm as a pastor, setting up and breaking down before and after their thrice-weekly services, taking late-night phone calls from congregants who wanted to tell him about their struggles with sin. That was the hardest part, listening to those confessions. He heard about affairs and about crimes, about drug abuse and drinking, and occasionally, he says, about things he can’t even bear to think about anymore.</p>
<p id="2h9C28">Pastoring was exhausting. By age 21, Cody already had a wife and a child. He had a job hauling furniture for E-Z Rentals. Pastoring the church paid virtually nothing. Attendance was too sparse and the congregation too poor for the offering plate to bring in any significant money. He would be up late at night listening to churchgoers’ confessions, offering prayers for their ailments, both physical and spiritual. Then he’d be up early and off to work. Sometimes he wondered why he did it. Sometimes he wondered why God hadn’t called someone else.</p>
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<p id="dhHhox">Then he got bit. In June 2014, he pulled out a rattler mid-sermon and it struck him on the side of the head, near his eye socket. When he tried to pull the snake away, it bit him on the ear before he could throw it to the ground. Even after the bite, Cody continued preaching for three minutes. His face bled. His vision blurred. His balance weakened. Finally, there in the pulpit, he collapsed.</p>
<p id="Dm24ez">Cody had said before that he wanted to follow his father’s example, refusing medical treatment for any snakebite. Others in the congregation felt differently, though, believing that turning to modern medicine didn’t necessarily mean turning away from God. God had created the doctors, after all. Surely their skills could be put to use in service of God’s will. So while Cody lay on the ground, a church member said to him, “You’re either going to the hospital right now, or you’re going as soon as you pass out.”</p>
<p id="1FnGH9">His memory from the hospital comes in flashes. Lying in bed, unsure of where he was or how he got there. A tube down his throat, causing more pain than he’d ever felt from any bite. His wife, Brittany, by his side, hysterical. And the moment, soon after his arrival in the hospital, when he asked the doctor, “Do you think you can save my life?”</p>
<p id="5sWVNw">“I don’t know,” the doctor said. “Do you promise you’re gonna stop handling snakes?”</p>
<p id="JjRXnK">Cody looked back up at him, grinning. “Let me die,” he said.</p>
<p id="cjSMez"></p>
<p class="p--has-dropcap" id="XT7G2B">He lived. He spent 10 days in the hospital, then another 20 out of work. When he came home, Cody noticed, the entire world felt different. It wasn’t just the lingering pain, not simply the weakness from the poison. His mind had changed. He looked around him and saw everyone as a threat. At night, instead of going to bed, he sat awake in his camo recliner and he stared at the door to his family’s apartment. Someone was coming to get him, he thought. He didn’t know who and he didn’t know why, but any moment someone might burst through the door and kill his entire family. He knew it, believed it as solidly as he’d ever believed anything else. He had to stay vigilant. He had to keep watch.</p>
<p id="g1LhBU">Sitting awake and staring at the door, he allowed his mind to wander. He flashed to dark images. His father snakebitten and dying, along with every other violent memory his conscious mind could find.</p>
<p id="rWi8Bm">He started collecting guns. A .357 with a six-inch barrel. A Glock that held 21 rounds. When that didn’t feel like enough, he bought himself a 32-round clip. Then there was the pair of brass knuckles, good for any situation when a deadlier weapon might be out of reach. He found himself consumed by thoughts of violence, desperate for someone to give him an excuse to inflict pain. Strangers cut him off in traffic and Cody tailed them, inches from their bumpers, fantasizing about sending them flying off the road. An aunt upset him and he slashed her tires. Coworkers bossed him around and he imagined going back home for his brass knuckles, then seeing what they’d say when he returned.</p>
<div class="c-float-right c-float-hang"><aside id="lR4Y7p"><q>“It’s something better than drinking, smoking, or pill taking. It’s better than all of that.”<br>—Shelby Nolan</q></aside></div>
<p id="zCWnhj">He resigned as pastor. He couldn’t lead the church while consumed with so much anger. He needed space. He needed a breath. Rather than replacing him, the church continued without a pastor. A rotating group led songs of worship. Cody’s grandfather Greg often preached. But no one else ever took over Cody’s spot. Church members told him they believed God wanted them to wait until the day he returned.</p>
<p id="fhKOEc">He still went to church. Sometimes, at least. He sat in the back and said little, and he never dreamed of handling snakes. Snakebites were mysteries in his and other worshipers’ minds. But they all believed one thing to be true: If your heart was in the wrong place, or if your mind was fixated on sin, you should stay far away from the snake boxes and the strychnine jar. Serpents loved nothing more than sinking their teeth into the flesh of sinners. Only the righteous belonged at the front of the church.</p>
<p id="GjcVeM">So Cody abstained. Instead he sat and stewed, and sometimes he carried his guns with him into the church house, just in case someone pissed him off, just in case he needed to up and shoot somebody right then and there.</p>
<p id="NtodMl">Finally, he stopped going altogether. He didn’t belong in church. Not even on the back pew. He started drinking. Instead of using shorthand like “eff” and “BS,” he started saying “fuck” and “bullshit.” He gave himself fully to his anger, not worrying what God would think. In the car, he turned on the radio and tuned into the local rock station. He listened to songs about drugs and sex and he sang along. He went to an AC/DC concert. Never had Cody felt so rebellious. Once, he saw a man wearing a cross necklace. He reached for the man’s neck, grabbed his cross, and flipped it upside down.</p>
<p id="LP79sq">One night, he sat awake in his recliner, listening to AC/DC songs on YouTube. He played his two favorites: “Hells Bells” and “Highway to Hell.” He started wondering to himself: Was hell even real? If it was, he knew he was going there — the drinking and cussing and rock listening made him sure of that — but what if it wasn’t? Maybe, he thought, he’d been raised in a lie. Maybe, he thought, God didn’t even exist.</p>
<p id="z7F4gS">The possibility of losing belief terrified him the moment it entered his mind. Up until now, he’d been sinning consciously. He believed in God; he just chose not to follow his religion’s teachings. Now, though, Cody was entertaining something altogether different. As long as he had his belief, he could turn back toward a holy path at any moment. Once he lost that belief, Cody had no idea where he might end up.</p>
<p id="nzCoBX">He decided then and there that he had to go back to church. He started in the back pew, then moved up a few rows, then finally returned to the front, where he played and sang in the worship band. Here and there, he even handled snakes, though not as often. His anger remained, and he knew better than to handle while his mind was consumed by violence. He prayed that God would heal him, that his rage would dissipate. Desperate, he went to see a psychiatrist. He told her the story of his life, about the loss of his father, about the stresses of pastoring, about his paranoia and rage, about the way it all consumed him after he suffered the head trauma of the snakebite. She told him he had symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. He began receiving treatment. Soon, his anxiety started lifting. His head started clearing. He’d already sold his guns at his wife’s request, and now he didn’t even miss them. For the first time since he got bitten in the head, Cody felt some sense of peace.</p>
<p id="YBumyf">Later that month, he went to church with an announcement. He was ready to come back. Not just as a church member, but as pastor.</p>
<p id="AGTPFr"></p>
<p class="p--has-dropcap" id="K3lfke">The snakes are back in the boxes. The guitars rest neatly against the walls. The churchgoers sit in their pews, quiet and enraptured. For the first time in more than a year, they have a full-time pastor. Up in the pulpit, Cody grips a microphone and he speaks. “I’m gonna tell it like it is,” he says. “I’m gonna preach what the Lord put on my heart, and if you don’t like it you can get up and go.”</p>
<p id="6FjkmX">Signs-following preachers rarely prepare sermons in advance. To write down their words is to rely on their own wisdom, they believe. Instead, they think and pray and wait for whatever scripture they believe God gives them, and then they speak extemporaneously on that scripture, led by the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Cody opens up his Bible and turns to 1 John 4:7. “Beloved,” he reads, “let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God.”</p>
<div class="c-float-right c-float-hang"><aside id="gLEq9T"><q>“You don’t make deals with God.”<br>—Linda Coots</q></aside></div>
<p id="X8hGsK">Cody pauses. He scans the room, sweat beading on his brow. “This is what the Lord spoke to me,” he says. “This is the message he gave me.” He preaches about avoiding gossip, about the evil of talking about brothers and sisters behind their backs. In this church, members drift in and out of services, between lives of sinfulness and holiness, between handling snakes and using drugs. This is why church members welcomed Cody when he decided to come back. Everyone in the church has struggled with their own sins — be they using drugs or alcohol, soliciting prostitutes, dancing in bars, or watching <em>Game of Thrones</em>. Hamblin, a former star of <em>Snake Salvation</em>, went to jail for reckless endangerment after firing a gun in the vicinity of his children and their mother. Now Hamblin is back, playing music and singing and handling snakes.</p>
<p id="qrBFhO">In the church, though, gossiping about others’ sins can masquerade as sharing concern for their souls. No one knows this better than Cody, the wayward pastor now returned. “You shouldn’t be talking about me behind my back,” he preaches. He glowers around the room, listening to a chorus of <em>amen </em>and <em>glory </em>and <em>come on now. </em>“Don’t talk about me behind my back!” he shouts. “That’s not me saying it! That’s what the Lord spoke!”</p>
<p id="hdDMRl">He settles in, calmer now, and behind him a young man starts playing guitar as a soundtrack to the rest of the sermon. “I backslid,” Cody says. <em>Backsliding </em>is the term used for anyone who falls into sin and away from God.</p>
<p id="LmqXNe">Cody continues. “I backslid and I thought I might never come back. I prayed for God’s will, but I wasn’t listening to God.”</p>
<p id="SG3mvH"></p>
<p class="p--has-dropcap" id="cDATvu">He’s listening now, he says. One night he sits in his living room and explains what keeps him in the faith. “This is a dying religion,” he says. “I look around, and I see people ain’t doing it like they used to. People think we’re hillbillies. But this is my religion. I done been raised in it, and it’s the only path I know. It ain’t for everybody. I always say it ain’t for everybody. But if I’m not willing to take a stand for it, to be in it, then I’m leaving behind something that’s a big part of who I am.”</p>
<p id="zqFZwH">And although he admits he’s gotten angry with God, and although he’s questioned whether God even exists, still, through all of his life, both the faithful times and the backslidden times, in trauma and triumph, Cody has never, once, questioned the theology of handling snakes. “I guess that was just bred into me,” he says. Once, during the time when Cody wasn’t going to church, a coworker asked him if he’d consider becoming a Baptist. “I flew off the handle,” Cody says. “I said, ‘Eff you and eff your God. If I’m not gonna handle snakes, then I might as well go to hell drinking beer and smoking pot and doing whatever else.’”</p>
<p id="JGGG2L">But why, the coworker said, couldn’t Cody find a middle ground? Why did he have to be handling snakes or abusing drugs? He careened from one extreme to another, just like so many in his congregation, some of whom are either in the church with a rattler in their hands or out on the street with a needle in their arms. Cody works for $9 per hour. When he’s backslidden, he leaves work and wants to get blackout drunk. When he’s faithful, he leaves work and wants to pick up a poisonous snake. Both pull him out of the mundane and into the extreme. He encounters both the sacred and the profane through rituals of escape.</p>
<p id="D9NVMZ">“That’s just who I am,” Cody says. “If I’m gonna be in this religion, I’m gonna be all the way in it. If I’m not in it, I’m not going to any other religion. I can’t be any other way but this way.”</p>
<p id="SSjn9F">He shrugs. “Maybe it’s crazy,” he says. “But that’s just who I am.”</p>
<p id="aqjDES"></p>
<p class="p--has-dropcap" id="QYZNxR">Snake handlers drive to Middlesboro from all across the Southeast every August, gathering here for a weekend of worship they call “Homecoming.” Many churches have weekends like this, a few days when others in the faith travel from around the region to worship together and catch up with old friends. Pews fill with pilgrims coming from as far away as Alabama. A church that typically welcomes about 15 worshipers now fills to the brim with more than 50. A pulpit that usually allows space for three or four boxes of snakes now makes room for about a dozen. Cody preaches. Others preach, too. Most sing. Some take up snakes, one after another, singing praises as they dance with the creatures that could strike them dead.</p>
<p id="5zRcXJ">On Sunday morning, homecoming winds down. The service is relatively subdued. Worship songs echo through the building. A few snakes find their ways out of boxes and into hands, lifted high. At one point, a young church member, a mountain of a man who just a few weeks ago preached against the theory of evolution — “I ain’t come from no monkey,” he said — reaches for the jar of strychnine. He takes a sip. Then he lifts it again for another. Finally he takes a third sip — a gulp, really — before he returns the poison to the lectern and takes his seat in the pews.</p>
<p id="bey0I8">Cody remains in the pews, too, and Helton, the pastor from nearby Harlan County, steps to the pulpit. “I believe in good singing and taking up serpents,” he says, “but there’s a whole lot more that’s important.” He launches into a tirade against the sins of the flesh — against drinking alcohol and smoking pot, against wearing short skirts and looking at women who wear short skirts. “If you ain’t hearing this,” he says, “you go find you a Baptist church.” At this, the churchgoers all laugh, and Helton’s face contorts into a grin. “If you ain’t hearing this, you ain’t good for nothing,” he says.</p>
<p id="xNk0IK">After the service, the churchgoers drive across town to the Middlesboro Community Center for lunch. Cody walks in alongside the man who took a few gulps of strychnine in the service. He is struggling. He sits down and he grabs a plate and he eats a bite of macaroni and cheese and then his face twitches. He turns to barbecue chicken and his body spasms. Soon he gets up and he leaves, Cody alongside him, and they go back to Cody’s house to rest and pray, and by the time they arrive, a group of about seven men dragging his 300-pound body through the front door, he is going in and out of consciousness, spasming and vomiting and speaking only to say, “I ain’t going to no doctor.”</p>
<p id="w4zFVg">But he is. The Gospel of Mark may say that believers shall take up serpents and drink poison, but it doesn’t forbid seeking medical help — that was just Jamie Coots’s personal philosophy. Cody doesn’t want any more death in his church. So someone calls 911 and soon the sirens sound in the distance, closer now, until paramedics rush inside to find the man in a pool of his own vomit. They load him onto a stretcher and carry him out of the house, and Cody is left behind, using a wash rag to clean vomit from his carpet. Soon the cops will be here, asking for a statement. They’ll want to know whether anyone forced the man to drink the poison. The answer, of course, will be no. They’ll want to know whether the poison belonged to Cody. That answer, likewise, will be no. Then they’ll want to know where it came from, who brought the strychnine to church and how that person got it.</p>
<p id="kbly0M">Cody doesn’t have time for these questions. He has a church to pastor and a family to raise. The man who drank the strychnine is going to be just fine. He’s already alert in the ambulance, and by tomorrow he’ll be out of the hospital. But still, for now, Cody needs to offer prayers and comfort to the man’s family, to calm the rattled members of his church. He can’t get entangled in a legal mess. Not now. Not today. So when the police come, he’ll recite the same words his father taught him, long before he died.</p>
<p class="c-end-para" id="YrHjps">“Pastor’s privilege.”</p>
<p id="mUPZnD"><em>An earlier version of this piece incorrectly quoted a member of Full Gospel Tabernacle in Jesus Name in a passage describing his sermon commenting on evolution. He said, “I ain’t come from no monkey,” and did not use the word “damn.” Further, this piece originally used that church member’s name without his permission. His name has been removed from the piece.</em></p>
https://www.theringer.com/features/2017/8/25/16201182/south-week-snake-handling-preacher-cody-cootsJordan Ritter Conn2017-08-25T08:30:54-04:002017-08-25T08:30:54-04:00Assembling the André 3000 Album We All Deserve
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<img alt="André 3000" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/QIHaEjZ7bCcOla7UKFvjoVjw3Nk=/167x0:2834x2000/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/56358553/AndreAlbum_NOBUG_Getty_Ringer.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>Getty Images/Ringer illustration</figcaption>
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<p>The reclusive Outkast star hasn’t released a project in 11 years. We scoured his output since then to make an André LP of our own, complete with a Spotify playlist.</p> <p id="10kLET"><em>Welcome to </em><a href="https://www.theringer.com/2017/8/21/16177760/the-south-week"><em>The South Week</em></a><em> at </em>The Ringer<em>. For the next several days, we’re celebrating — and reporting on — the richness of the region. You’ll find stories from all over the map, exploring topics such as the enduring legacy of Confederate monuments in Richmond and Montgomery, the evolution of Charleston barbecue, and the intersection of faith and football in Lubbock. We’re also ranking the best Southern rap albums, imagining the André 3000 mixtape we all deserve, and arguing about what even constitutes the South anymore. In the words of two great Southerners, nothin’ is for sure, nothin’ is for certain, nothin’ lasts forever.</em></p>
<hr class="p-entry-hr" id="vNr4Ah">
<p class="p--has-dropcap" id="W3u5j3">It’s been 11 years to the day since the beginning of the end of Outkast. On, August 25, 2006, three days after the group’s sixth LP, <em>Idlewild</em>, dropped, their Depression-era speakeasy musical was released (’Kast had a <em>lot </em>of leeway after <em>Speakerboxxx/The Love Below</em>). <em>Idlewild</em>, the movie, was a confused mess that was neither good nor so-bad-it’s-good, and therefore is rarely spoken of. <em>Idlewild</em>, the album, was a confused mess that was neither the traditional funk-infused Outkast album Big Boi wanted to make nor the experimental modern blues album André 3000 wanted to make, and therefore is rarely spoken of. While that musical project did gift us “Mighty O,” “Chronomentrophobia,” and Janelle Monáe, its damage to the increasingly strained creative relationship between Big Boi and Dre was irreparable. No wonder the final song we are likely to ever hear on an official Outkast studio album is called “A Bad Note.” </p>
<p id="s1mXGo">But from the ashes of <em>Idlewild </em>rose the phoenix of post-Outkast André 3000. Three Stacks’ malleable flow, nasally twang, and cerebral shit talk made him a prime candidate to be a memorable feature-killer; he had already spent an entire early career trying to one-up his partner on every track, and more broadly fighting to prove Outkast’s place in a hip-hop pantheon that still idolized coastal artists. But by the time <em>Idlewild </em>had come and gone, André had spent most of the 2000s trying to match Prince, Jimi Hendrix, and Stevie Wonder rather than Eric B and Rakim. </p>
<p id="8lGIZR">His 2007 feature run, then, was a revelation. For the first time in years, André was rapping his ass off, with a talent that came so naturally to him that he had temporarily grown bored with it. He was the most curmudgeonly 31-year-old on the planet, dismissing tall T’s as night gowns on DJ Unk’s “Walk It Out (Remix),” berating music pirates on Devin the Dude’s “What a Job,” and awkwardly romancing a Whole Foods cashier on Lloyd’s “You (Remix).”</p>
<div class="c-float-left"><div id="Zy1dni"><iframe src="https://open.spotify.com/embed/user/v-luck/playlist/580v0M1uZzAtaso37zRo7W" style="border: 0; width: 100%; height: 380px;" allowfullscreen=""></iframe></div></div>
<p id="F2fWJp">Instead of keeping Dré in top form for another Outkast album, these features seem to have satisfied his need for creative output. He has taken to them as his primary form of expression over the last decade, appearing on everything from a grimy trap song to a glossy track starring Kesha. There is little discernible coherence to why or how André picks his features, other than the sense that he likes to experiment far afield of traditional rap but then regularly remind everyone that he is very, very good at traditional rap. If Dré had gone radio silent after Outkast ended, the group would still be legendary, but it’s André’s amazingly consistent feature run that’s catapulted him into the “GOAT rapper” discussion. </p>
<p id="gSpgpB">With no proper Outkast reunion album or official André solo project in sight, we’ve taken it upon ourselves to sift through Three Stacks’ ATL collabs, R&B duets, and strange pop dalliances in order to assemble the Platonic ideal of a modern André 3000 record. Check out the accompanying <a href="https://open.spotify.com/user/v-luck/playlist/580v0M1uZzAtaso37zRo7W">Spotify playlist</a> and just remember: If it don’t move your feet, then I don’t eat, so we like neck to neck. </p>
<h3 id="omoIbn"><strong>1. “Sixteen”—Rick Ross Feat. André 3000</strong></h3>
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<p id="l1g7Vb">Every Outkast album needs to (a) start with a memorable instrumental and (b) include a song that is at least seven minutes in length. “Sixteen” meets both of these criteria. While it’s ostensibly a track for Rick Ross’s <em>God Forgives, I Don’t</em>, it’s really a showcase for André, who sings the hook and raps about his innocent youth and his current travails as a celebrity turned recluse for much, much longer than 16 bars. It’s the perfect intro track. </p>
<h3 id="u5XMBi"><strong>2. “Sorry”—T.I. Feat. André 3000</strong></h3>
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<p id="mlisHy">At some point André needs to account for where the hell he’s been for the last decade, and “Sorry” is an effective way to do that sooner rather than later. On the 2012 track for T.I.’s <em>Trouble Man: Heavy Is the Head</em>, Three Stacks offers mea culpas to his mom, music partner Big Boi, and baby mama Erykah Badu for various screw-ups in his life. “I hated all the attention so I ran from it,” he admits, talking about the dissolution of Outkast. We’ll have to accept all these fire guest verses as penance. </p>
<h3 id="ufSAA0"><strong>3. “Walk It Out (Remix)”—DJ Unk Feat. André 3000, Jim Jones, Big Boi</strong></h3>
<div id="oduAo1"><div style="left: 0; width: 100%; height: 0; position: relative; padding-bottom: 75.0019%;"><iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/HhCS7I13Xd8?rel=0&" style="border: 0; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; position: absolute;" allowfullscreen="" scrolling="no"></iframe></div></div>
<p id="TS7HI7">Released in January 2007, the “Walk It Out” remix marks the beginning of André’s rebirth as a feature-killer. Practically every line is revered by Three Stacks scholars, but these bars right here:</p>
<blockquote><p id="x5oSHU"><em>You don’t want nan day of Three Thou</em><br><em>I’m like jury duty, you’re new to this part of town</em><br><em>Your white T, well to me, looks like a nightgown</em><br><em>Make your Mama proud, take that thing two sizes down</em></p></blockquote>
<p id="N9W1B6"><em>These </em>bars are the reason a new André 3000 verse is still a drop-everything-you’re-tweeting event, even 10 years later. </p>
<h3 id="XRbOza">
<strong>4. “The Art of Storytellin Part 4”—DJ Drama Feat. Out</strong><strong>k</strong><strong>ast and Marsha Ambrosius</strong>
</h3>
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<p id="03kypw">A rare post-<em>Idlewild</em> collaboration between Big Boi and André 3000, this 2007 track features a still-grumpy Dré bemoaning the materialism that has taken over hip-hop (“I swear it don’t cost much to pay attention to me / I tell it like it is then I tell it how it could be.”) Outkast had low-key been criticizing their peers for not being on their intellectual level since at least <em>ATLiens</em>, but the vitriol is a lot more stark on late-era André verses. </p>
<h3 id="ISDKo7"><strong>5. “Play the Guitar”—B.o.B. Feat. André 3000</strong></h3>
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<p id="cnEOOC">Trying to capture the essence of post-Outkast André 3000 without including some goofy guitar shit would be a disservice to the man and his eclectic tastes. This bouncy collab with B.o.B., who probably owes his entire pop-rap career to Outkast’s experimentation, includes the indelible image of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7k4QQ0UjsQ">André playing an electric guitar on top of a Church’s Chicken</a>. It deserves to be remembered. </p>
<h3 id="t0L7wu"><strong>6. “Party”—Beyoncé Feat. André 3000 </strong></h3>
<div id="OpX6ap"><div style="left: 0; width: 100%; height: 0; position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.2493%;"><iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/eIW1GAnAuyU?rel=0&" style="border: 0; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; position: absolute;" allowfullscreen="" scrolling="no"></iframe></div></div>
<p id="4pE6iN">If you’ll recall, <em>The Love Below</em> is sort of barely a concept album about a suave singer named “Ice Cold” who has sworn off romance but still finds himself falling in love again. I like to think it’s “Ice Cold” delivering these frigid rhymes, which combine with the sultriness of Beyoncé’s voice and the warm backing synths to create the perfect temperature for a glass of crisp white wine. This is a grown and sexy turn for Beyoncé’s <em>4</em>, a grown and sexy album. </p>
<h3 id="BuQLYI"><strong>7. “Back to Black”—Beyoncé and André 3000</strong></h3>
<div id="cD3rqu"><div style="left: 0; width: 100%; height: 0; position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.2493%;"><iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/jxQWckbhVTU?rel=0&" style="border: 0; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; position: absolute;" allowfullscreen="" scrolling="no"></iframe></div></div>
<div class="c-float-right"><aside id="sAbw6n"><q>As with the strangest Outkast songs, debating whether or not the track is good is half its appeal.</q></aside></div>
<p id="YYayvk">Another requirement of any Outkast or André 3000 project is at least one track that feels subterranean. This cover of Amy Winehouse’s signature song, created for <em>The Great Gatsby</em> soundtrack, channels the most abstract edges of <em>Stankonia </em>and <em>The Love Below</em> to deliver an otherworldly experience. As with the strangest Outkast songs, debating whether or not the track is good is half its appeal. </p>
<h3 id="QL8HNW"><strong>8. “Decemba (Remix)”—Divine Council Feat. André Benjamin</strong></h3>
<div id="B4uMLl"><div style="left: 0; width: 100%; height: 0; position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.2493%;"><iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/oNqz2WAG7bs?rel=0&" style="border: 0; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; position: absolute;" allowfullscreen="" scrolling="no"></iframe></div></div>
<p id="yE2S0V">After the sun sets on “Back to Black,” it makes sense to fully embrace the night on the eerie “Decemba (Remix),” a recent collaboration with the Virginia group Divine Council that offers up a couple of personas we rarely see: trap André and violent André. While Three Stacks has long cast himself as a hopeless romantic, here he goes by his birth name of André Benjamin and weaves a dark tale of hedonism and murder. The closest comparisons in the ’Kast canon are probably “Gangsta Shit” (very good) and “Mamacita” (not very good). </p>
<h3 id="lcT7Cu"><strong>9. “Pink Matter”—Frank Ocean Feat. André 3000</strong></h3>
<div id="PBvp4Z"><div style="left: 0; width: 100%; height: 0; position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.2493%;"><iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/tOl41Oi_PtE?rel=0&" style="border: 0; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; position: absolute;" allowfullscreen="" scrolling="no"></iframe></div></div>
<div class="c-float-right"><aside id="QtmZRR"><q>Combined, they create a song that feels both intimate and distant, a staple of the lovesick state that André often defaults to. </q></aside></div>
<p id="uOe0Il">On “Decemba” André seemingly dies in a hail of bullets, so why not have him reemerge on “Pink Matter,” which floats in a twilight haze between waking and sleeping, life and death. Three Stacks reminisces over a woman from his past after Frank Ocean ruminates on the female form, with a guitar wail that’s as erotic as any Organized Noize instrumental bridging their perspectives. Combined, they create a song that feels both intimate and distant, a staple of the lovesick state that André often defaults to. </p>
<h3 id="bTPnLO"><strong>10. “Solo (Reprise)”—André 3000</strong></h3>
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<p id="9M3mAs">Amid the often slight and ethereal <em>Blonde</em>, “Solo (Reprise)” is the adrenaline shot that gives you the energy to comb through the rest of Frank Ocean’s splintered thoughts on the back half of the album. The track is 78 seconds of André flipping out in a way he hasn’t since the most frenetic parts of <em>Stankonia</em>. But instead of backing by electric guitars and apocalyptic synths, a somber piano gives his disillusioned rhymes a gravitas that fit an artist firmly in the 40-plus club. No one was expecting the best rap verse of 2016 to sneak onto a Frank Ocean album, but it happened. </p>
<h3 id="pesf3E"><strong>11. “Hello”—Erykah Badu Feat. André 3000</strong></h3>
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<p id="q1PgMb">It’s a new day and a new love on “Hello,” as signified by the chirping birds that open the track. This duet between Erykah Badu and André 3000 captures the giddy exuberance of a budding romance, even though the pair’s relationship dates back two decades. The song manages to meld tenderness, honesty, and humor all in the five seconds when André course-corrects after using the word “bitch.” What more could you want from a person you’re just learning how to say hello to? </p>
<h3 id="6oJgZy">
<strong>12. “Int’l Players Anthem”—UGK Feat. Out</strong><strong>k</strong><strong>ast</strong>
</h3>
<div id="8YoDIE"><div style="left: 0; width: 100%; height: 0; position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.2493%;"><iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/awMIbA34MT8?rel=0&" style="border: 0; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; position: absolute;" allowfullscreen="" scrolling="no"></iframe></div></div>
<div class="c-float-right"><aside id="r0Tobr"><q>This song is a roller coaster, but somehow André’s earnest narration of the initial ascent is the best part. </q></aside></div>
<p id="XEkbaT">Imagine that the delicate infatuation from “Hello” has grown into a love so sturdy it can withstand the seismic impact when Pimp C dive-bombs onto a track, and you’ve got “Int’l Players Anthem.” This song is iconic for so many reasons—the heartfelt “I Choose You” sample, the exultant music video, the specific moment when Big Boi’s voice pitches down to growl “Ask-ask Paul McCartney”—but André is its moral center. Pretty much every line he utters is now part of hip-hop canon (there is a <em>triple entendre </em>here referencing John Donne), and the metaphors he uses to capture the terrifying thrill of commitment (“spaceships don’t come equipped with rearview mirrors; they dip”) will probably never be topped. This song is a roller coaster, but somehow André’s earnest narration of the initial ascent is the best part. </p>
<h3 id="ObNSNs"><strong>13. “I Do”—Young Jeezy Feat. Jay-Z, André 3000</strong></h3>
<div id="xPsOqP"><div style="left: 0; width: 100%; height: 0; position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.2493%;"><iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Wrf6f4e_W_A?rel=0&" style="border: 0; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; position: absolute;" allowfullscreen="" scrolling="no"></iframe></div></div>
<p id="70Rxzq">“Players Anthem” spends as much time questioning the sanctity of marriage as it does embracing it. “I Do” makes sense as a follow-up to illustrate that André really is ready to walk down the aisle. While Jay-Z stumbles through an overwrought “married to the game” metaphor, Three Stacks keeps it simple by mapping out a relationship from the moment it begins at a nightclub to the year 2030, when he and his newfound love have a nerdy kid who’s turning heads at the club herself. It’s a poignant, perfect climax to this would-be André project. </p>
<h3 id="WoCOgA"><strong>14. “What a Job”—Devin the Dude Feat. Snoop Dogg, André 3000</strong></h3>
<div id="u2h2UU"><div style="left: 0; width: 100%; height: 0; position: relative; padding-bottom: 75.0019%;"><iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/2T1jdreS6ko?rel=0&" style="border: 0; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; position: absolute;" allowfullscreen="" scrolling="no"></iframe></div></div>
<p class="c-end-para" id="t5Y7Te">Though André talks about women a lot, almost all of his projects end with him reflecting on his one true love: music. “What a Job,” one of the standouts from André’s 2007 feature run, captures exactly why Three Stacks has remained a fixture in hip-hop even though he hasn’t released an album in 11 years. He raps about meeting a pair of fans who got high to his songs in high school and made love to them in college. Something he created is now an inextricable part of their lives, as well as millions of others’. But he has little time to revel in his own genius. “Hate to cut you off, but I gotta go,” he says as he finishes off his verse. “I wish you could tell me mo’, but I’m off to the studio. Gotta write tonight.” Even if we never get that Big Artistic Statement from him that we’re all clamoring for, we can still hope André keeps writing.</p>
https://www.theringer.com/2017/8/25/16200044/andre-3000-album-south-weekVictor Luckerson2017-08-25T00:07:38-04:002017-08-25T00:07:38-04:00Southern Rap Special: Best Albums, Dopest Mixtapes, and the Future of the Genre
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<p>A roundtable of Ringer staffers wrap up South Week with a discussion about Southern rap superlatives</p> <div id="EOUS1r"><iframe src="https://open.spotify.com/embed-podcast/episode/1xohUGiMI8nMkofWYM7cZJ" style="border: 0; width: 100%; height: 232px;" allowfullscreen="" allow="encrypted-media"></iframe></div>
<p class="c-end-para" id="2umQOg"><a href="https://art19.com/shows/the-press-box/episodes/4e6bdca0-201d-47f1-8a3f-68d149ccda8d">East Coast bureau chief Donnie Kwak</a> is joined by special projects editor Hannah Giorgis and staff writer Micah Peters to talk omissions from <a href="https://www.theringer.com/2017/8/21/16170892/southern-rap-album-ranking-south-week">"The 20 Best Southern Rap Albums Ever"</a> article on <em>The Ringer</em>, including reader submissions (0:35). Then, Donnie sits down with a roundtable of <em>The Ringer</em>’s music experts to discuss their favorite Southern rap mixtapes (10:20) and predict the future of the genre (31:00).</p>
https://www.theringer.com/2017/8/25/16201124/southern-rap-best-albums-mixtapes-future-of-the-genre-podcastThe Ringer Staff2017-08-24T11:28:34-04:002017-08-24T11:28:34-04:00An Undocumented Activist in the Age of Trump
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<figcaption>Larami Serrano</figcaption>
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<p>At age 32, Cesar Espinosa may not be eligible for American citizenship until he turns 60. But that isn’t stopping his fight to make Houston—and the nation—livable for immigrants.</p> <p id="1LRX0v"><em>Welcome to </em><a href="https://www.theringer.com/2017/8/21/16177760/the-south-week"><em>The South Week</em></a><em> at </em>The Ringer<em>. For the next several days, we’re celebrating — and reporting on — the richness of the region. You’ll find stories from all over the map, exploring topics such as the enduring legacy of Confederate monuments in Richmond and Montgomery, the evolution of Charleston barbecue, and the intersection of faith and football in Lubbock. We’re also ranking the best Southern rap albums, imagining the André 3000 mixtape we all deserve, and arguing about what even constitutes the South anymore. In the words of two great Southerners, nothin’ is for sure, nothin’ is for certain, nothin’ lasts forever.</em></p>
<hr class="p-entry-hr" id="hSiN7Q">
<p class="p--has-dropcap" id="xxQSfY">Cesar Espinosa remembers the first time he received instructions for what to do if he ever came home to find that his parents had been deported. It was 1993, and his mother, Olivia, explained it all to him and his older sister, Aura, as they sat inside the house they’d just moved to in Columbus, Ohio. By that point, his parents had already long overstayed their visitor visas, which granted them legal access to the United States for six months; they’d been in the country for three years. But, having moved from Houston to Columbus, Cesar’s mother suddenly felt more aware of the threat of deportation. After they’d moved in and gotten settled, she realized an important fact: The Espinosas were the only Latino family in their new neighborhood.</p>
<p id="3XoNfw">The instructions were as clear as they were overwhelming. “She gave us some phone numbers to call,” says Cesar.</p>
<p id="M2RqiM">Cesar is not a physically intimidating guy. He’s 5-foot-6, maybe 170 pounds. His voice is polite and soft, which is surprising given that he’s one of the most influential immigrant-rights activists in the country. You expect it to boom, or to vibrate the walls, or to wobble you a bit. Most times — at least in conversation, anyway — his words seem to evaporate as soon as they leave his mouth. Not now, though. Right now they’re heavy. Right now they’re atlas stones. Right now they’re unavoidable.</p>
<p id="TdQOPb">“They were numbers to places in Mexico,” he says. “That’s how we were supposed to reach her. She told my sister and me to make sure that we stay together and to call those numbers.”</p>
<p id="Cs5IKT">Cesar was in a new city, and he didn’t speak the language. He’d just found out there was a chance he could arrive home one afternoon and find that both of his parents had been sent back to Mexico. He’d also just learned that, were that to happen, he and his sister would be responsible for finding them and stitching the family back together. And he’d also just learned that, were they unsuccessful, they likely would be taken into custody by child protective services. Because Aura was just 11 years old. Cesar was 8.</p>
<p id="lc1sib">“Ohio was very hard for us,” says Cesar. “We felt very out of place. My sister and I actually had to go to this special school that was 45 minutes from our house because we didn’t speak English yet and it was the only one that could accommodate us. I remember I was afraid to even bring my lunch to school because the other kids there would make fun of me because it was Mexican food and they weren’t used to seeing it. We only made it a year there before my mom and dad decided to move us back to Houston.”</p>
<p id="xIej6u">Cesar and his family were five of the estimated 4.5 million people living in the United States illegally <a href="http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/04/27/5-facts-about-illegal-immigration-in-the-u-s/">that year</a>. As of the most recent count, that estimate stands closer to 11.3 million. Through 2014, 66 percent of adults in the United States illegally have been here for longer than a decade. But that anxiety, that apprehension, that constant fear, is nearly palpable today in this community, the result of a rigid shift in policy during the first seven months of the Trump administration.</p>
<p id="XXzFZ9"></p>
<p class="p--has-dropcap" id="niEQ6r">As we speak in August, Cesar sits behind a large desk in a small office in a part of Houston known mostly for its stores offering knockoff versions of designer items. His desktop computer is opened to an active company Slack channel, which he peeks at periodically. Two cellphones take turns buzzing every few minutes. A landline rings every so often. “Can I tell you a quick story about this phone?” he asks, pointing at the receiver of the landline phone. His voice turns soft again. “When we first started FIEL, we had a fake phone.”</p>
<p id="826knE">FIEL stands for Familias Immigrantes y Estudiantes en la Lucha, which is Spanish for Families of Immigrants and Students in the Struggle. It is a Houston-based nonprofit that advocates for immigrant rights.</p>
<div class="c-float-left c-float-hang"> <figure class="e-image">
<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/RtNiK6dvY1HaPlex4TGrRKtGYuQ=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/9104705/IMG_2245.jpg">
<cite>Larami Serrano</cite>
</figure>
</div>
<p id="rkn7Mc">FIEL serves as a voice and resource for young, undocumented members of the Latino community (though there’s been a push in recent months to reach other immigrant communities). Cesar, along with his mother, older sister, younger brother, and a group of about 15 students, started piecing it together in 2007. It started as an impromptu group, a tiny social activist club born of necessity, really, because there wasn’t one like it. It grew naturally, slowly at first, and then seemingly all at once. It became an official nonprofit in late 2011, and then a cornerstone for the Houston immigrant community after Barack Obama announced the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy in June 2012.</p>
<p id="RmD8Od">The organization, which has more than 8,000 registered members, fields deportation calls and cases every day. It consists of three branches that oversee civic engagement, legal counseling, and helping undocumented high school students figure out how to get into and pay for college. Cesar says that it’s become the largest organization of its kind in Texas, and has cultivated national clout. At 32, Cesar is its executive director. They’ve progressed tremendously from the days of the fake phone.</p>
<p id="ysM0pW">“We had it on the desk just for appearance. There was a cord on it that plugged into the wall, but it wasn’t connected to anything because we couldn’t afford it. One time, this news station came by to do a story on us and they wanted some pictures so they asked me to pick it up and call someone so they could have some shots of us in action. I just pretended like it worked. I picked it up and dialed some number and acted like I was talking to someone,” he says, politely laughing at the thought.</p>
<p id="tS0uKH">“We’ve come a long way since then.”</p>
<p id="BR7sk3"></p>
<p class="p--has-dropcap" id="pcXzW3">Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals — more commonly referred to as DACA — was introduced by the Obama administration in 2012. It’s still in place. Its primary purpose is to protect the qualifying children of immigrants who’ve entered the United States illegally, because if you’re the child of an immigrant who’s entered the United States illegally it is nearly impossible to live a full, fulfilling life. The requirements to qualify for DACA are substantial: Applicants must have been younger than 31 as of June 15, 2012, and they need to have entered the U.S. before 16 and lived here for five or more years; and one is required to either be in school, a high school graduate, or the recipient of a GED. There are also stipulations regarding an applicant’s criminal record: A felony or significant misdemeanor conviction, three or more misdemeanors, or being deemed a “threat to national security” would disqualify someone from DACA. People who meet all these requirements can apply for a renewable two-year reprieve from fear of deportation.</p>
<p id="CHBf2l">Those who qualify under DACA can get a work visa and a driver’s license, and can apply for government benefits. Opponents of the order find it controversial because as opposed to the <a href="https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/research/dream-act">DREAM Act</a>, which is legislation that has come up for periodic votes in Congress since 2001, Obama pushed through DACA by executive order. Nearly 800,000 immigrants have registered for DACA since it was implemented. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who is spearheading a campaign to get Donald Trump to repeal DACA, wrote in a letter to <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2017/07/26/trump-not-king-we-must-phase-out-daca-and-return-rule-law-column/488732001/"><em>USA Today</em></a> that DACA “represents an unconstitutional exercise of legislative power by the Executive Branch.”</p>
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<img alt="Fair Immigration Reform Movement Holds Vigil At Supreme Court" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/YkyXo8FOnr2S8fCc4mTVhHiLdOY=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/9107653/500971474.jpg">
<cite>Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>Rosario Reyes, left, and her son Victor Reyes at a rally in front of the Supreme Court in December 2015 in Washington, D.C., where 40 people gathered to pray for the high-court justices after they agreed to hear a case about DACA.</figcaption>
</figure>
<p id="Y6EmRO">The DREAM Act was something of a precursor to DACA. (The primary difference is that DACA allows for only a temporary reprieve from the threat of deportation, while the DREAM Act has proposed a path to full citizenship.) The act was first introduced in 2001 in an attempt to help protect the children of immigrants living in the United States illegally; these children became known as DREAMers. Various versions of the legislation have come up for a vote in Congress in the past 16 years, though all of them have had the same purpose: to allow DREAMers a chance at a traditional life in the United States. None of them, however, have passed. Generally, it’s Republicans who have blocked the DREAM Act’s passage, but senators Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) recently put forth a bipartisan effort to revive it. Many DREAMers have been raised almost entirely in the United States. And often, they will have nearly no connection to the country they left behind. But right now none of that matters. Because if you aren’t an American citizen, you aren’t an American citizen.</p>
<p id="bVIsqs"></p>
<p class="p--has-dropcap" id="IIKwke">Cesar has lived in America for almost three decades, but he is still undocumented. Being undocumented in America presents an almost unfathomable number of challenges. There’s a stigma that comes with the label, and it’s as present within the Latino community as it is outside of it. (Cesar remembers the shock some of his friends expressed when he first told them that he was undocumented.) And so there’s always that part; the <em>feeling</em> illegitimate part, which is profoundly stressful. But there’s more to it, too. There are bureaucratically bigger things. Things that prevent you from living a proper life; things that prevent you from actually <em>being</em> legitimate. You can’t get a driver’s license in Texas, for example. Or a Social Security number anywhere. Or be legally employed. Or receive adequate health care. Or government benefits. You live in a gray fog.</p>
<p id="znUd2O">The first time his undocumented status substantially affected Cesar’s upward mobility was his senior year in high school.</p>
<p id="MWJGKV">“It’s the DREAMer Moment,” he says. “It happens to us all.”</p>
<p id="9jPAMx">After Cesar’s family moved back to Houston in 1994, his mother enrolled them in a nearby elementary school. Back in Ohio, it had taken him only two months to become fluent in English. After that, school came easy. Cesar’s mother had graduated from high school early in Mexico and was two years into medical school before she quit so that she could bring her family to America. Cesar had academia in his blood. By the end of elementary school, he was, by all measures, in both English and Spanish, an exceptional student.</p>
<p id="OVO9oV">When Cesar registered for middle school, he was placed into the now-defunct Long Vanguard program, where students with high test scores were funneled. Despite a small setback during eighth grade (his parents were going through a divorce and he thought that torpedoing his education would bring them back together), he tested into several of the best high schools in Houston. One of them was DeBakey High School for Health Professions, one of the most rigorous and acclaimed schools in the country (earlier this year, DeBakey was ranked higher than 99.918 percent of 22,000-plus high schools assessed by<a href="https://www.usnews.com/education/best-high-schools/national-rankings"> <em>U.S. News & World Report</em></a>). He excelled there, and as he neared his graduation date he received acceptance letters from Yale, Cornell, and Brown, among many others. It was exactly the kind of thing his mother had hoped would happen for him when she decided to come to America. And then everything fell apart.</p>
<p id="SuNrNj">“I went into the counselor’s office. I’d watched friend after friend get these full scholarship offers but nothing was coming for me,” he says. “I’d done all the same work as them, and in many cases I’d done it better than them, and still: nothing. There were no envelopes. Nothing ever came.”</p>
<p id="cHJFRA">But Cesar knew why his offers never materialized: He didn’t have a Social Security number. Not having one precluded him from getting basically every scholarship he otherwise would’ve gotten. It didn’t matter that he was graduating near the top of his class at one of America’s premier high schools. It didn’t matter that he’d scored a 1598 out of 1600 on his SAT. It didn’t matter that he could speak two languages and play four different instruments and had completed hundreds of hours of community service. All that mattered was that he didn’t have anything to plug into those nine SSN boxes on the scholarship and financial aid applications.</p>
<p id="kHjQQC">“That’s the DREAMer Moment. When it happens — when that moment comes — you feel helpless,” he says. “You feel lost. You think, ‘Why me? Why do I have to go through this? I’ve done everything right.’ It’s hard. And you already have it in your head that you’re wrong. So who do you turn to? Where do you go? Who helps you?”</p>
<p id="CIrghO"></p>
<p class="p--has-dropcap" id="REsWA3">The only college that Cesar and his mother could afford was Houston Community College, so, starting in 2004, that’s where he went. He took one, sometimes two classes a semester if money allowed, working whatever jobs he could on the side. One day, his mother asked him to pick up some bird food from a PetSmart that was near campus on his way home. When he went in, he saw that the store was hiring. He knew that he couldn’t technically get gainful employment, but applied anyway. Similar to the forms he filled out for college, there’s a part on job applications where you have to fill in your Social Security number. When he got to it this time, he just scribbled in numbers until the boxes were full.</p>
<p id="UvSvYY">For Cesar, and for the masses of undocumented immigrants in a similar situation now, the risk was and is clear: You can pretend you have a Social Security number, and maybe you can get a job where someone doesn’t pay you under the table, an exceptionally fulfilling moment. Or you can pretend you have a Social Security number and potentially get caught and charged with a crime, which could, if things break against you, lead to your deportation. Cesar got lucky.</p>
<p id="55eqrO">“I didn’t think too much about it,” he says. “I knew they wouldn’t hire me if I didn’t have that part filled in, so I just filled it in. I figured they would never bother to check it. And they didn’t.”</p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/M-v7CrrAXE3EdrS3TBbWQoipcxE=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/9104725/IMG_2257.jpg">
<cite>Larami Serrano</cite>
</figure>
<p id="Tdj6CB">Once hired, he began grabbing any and every shift he could. Each time an opportunity came up, he reached for it. One year in — after the extra night shifts and weekend shifts and even obtaining a forklift driver’s certification because it came with a 25-cent hourly raise — management finally noticed him. They offered him an assistant manager position, which he gladly and proudly accepted. And then, just like before, everything fell apart.</p>
<p id="3YBQJ8">“I guess they finally ran my Social Security number when they decided they were going to offer me that job,” he says. “They called me in and told me that the number I gave them didn’t match up. I quit right then. I was too ashamed. It was me being in that counselor’s office all over again. It was that same feeling. Everything I’d done to that point was just … erased.”</p>
<p id="GJM2sh">Cesar found himself forced back into the underground and unauthorized workforce, of which there were <a href="http://www.pewhispanic.org/2016/11/03/size-of-u-s-unauthorized-immigrant-workforce-stable-after-the-great-recession/">8 million people by last count</a>. He milled around a bit, working those odd jobs here and those pay-under-the-table jobs there, but was eventually able to wiggle his way into another ostensibly secure job, as a cashier at Fry’s Electronics.</p>
<p id="eIuZJo">“I applied on a Wednesday. By Thursday, I got a call back. They were really excited because I was bilingual and had experience working with computers. They said I got the job, to be there on Monday for some training. I was all dressed up when I showed up — black slacks, white shirt. I was very proud to have that job. I was there for half a day and then they called me into the office. I already knew what they wanted before I even walked in.”</p>
<p id="qrHekq">It was his Social Security number again. It didn’t match. He tried to play it off, to pretend like it was just some sort of clerical mistake. He tried to talk them into holding the job for him while he sorted it out. They knew, though. Security escorted him out of the store.</p>
<p id="Mv1Cgq">“I was humiliated. It was really embarrassing. I sat in the car and cried in the parking lot for an hour. Everything was broken for me. I didn’t know what to do.”</p>
<p id="3zIFJa"></p>
<p class="p--has-dropcap" id="vupxPW">As a student at DeBakey High School, Cesar had to complete 100 hours of community service to meet the school’s graduation requirements. His mother, who’d participated in political activism in Mexico, pointed him toward an immigrant nonprofit organization called the Central American Resource Center (CARECEN). It took all of one trip for him to fall in love. He started during his sophomore year, giving him three years to fulfill the 100-hour requirement. It took him less than a month.</p>
<p id="NhSk47">“It was so exciting,” he says. “It felt important. I wanted to be a part of that. I went there every chance I could. They couldn’t get me to leave. It was one of the few places I could go where I felt like I belonged. It was very empowering.”</p>
<p id="vU2c1W">Cesar stayed active with CARECEN during his time at Houston Community College and PetSmart, and through luck or accident or destiny, they called him a week after the Fry’s incident to offer him a job. He threw himself into it.</p>
<p id="IbQ9Wf">But after a while, Cesar began to struggle with the organization’s central mission: “They were mostly concentrated on Central American adults, which I guess should’ve been obvious because of the name,” he says, laughing. “But I started to feel like, ‘What about the people like me or my sister or my brother or my friends? What about the [other] DREAMers? Where’s their support network?’ I’m not the only one out there. Who’s helping them?”</p>
<p id="obBny2">That realization fueled FIEL’s origin story.</p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="Activists Hold Vigil In Support Of Immigrant Children At White House" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/TJXAL1RxgH8qK0ldaGzWlNyVVPg=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/9107671/459535006.jpg">
<cite>Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>Demonstrators at a CARECEN-organized vigil in support of children fleeing violence in Central America.</figcaption>
</figure>
<p id="xpjLWI">From 2007 to 2010, Cesar worked with CARECEN, learning the business end of running a nonprofit, and also worked with his family and friends to establish FIEL. (He also transferred from Houston Community College to the University of Houston, where he graduated in 2010.) And during that period, his profile as an activist grew. He went from organizing smaller events and rallies to being named CARECEN’s community outreach specialist (he showed a knack for using social media to ensure that meetings and assemblies would be well attended). He started making appearances on local news stations and then on national ones. In 2008, he was named executive director of Houston’s America for All, an ancillary nonprofit started by CARECEN. That year, he was presented with an activism award by the city, and subsequently was honored with his own day by the mayor of Houston. He was 23 years old.</p>
<p id="uKqxCR">From 2008 to 2010, while Cesar was also handling a full workload at CARECEN, FIEL aggressively petitioned for the reintroduction of the DREAM Act. If it passed, the act would grant a pathway to citizenship to anyone who met the requirements (they were similar to DACA’s requirements). It was FIEL’s first big fight, and the thing that helped establish it as a genuine organization. They protested, worked the phones, staged sit-ins. They were a force. And the initial indications were that their work was going to pay off. Which is why when the Senate failed to vote to stop a filibuster in September 2010 — and then again that December — it was so devastating.</p>
<p id="8IBFc9">“We really thought it was going to get through. I remember we were all sitting in this conference room watching the vote and I figured out that the numbers weren’t in our favor a little before the others and I just sat there, totally silent, trying to figure out what I was going to say. People were crying. There were news cameras there because everyone was anticipating we were going to be celebrating. It was really bad. If it’d have passed, me, my sister, my brother, we’d have all been eligible. We’d have gotten our temporary citizenship. I was finally going to get in. I had real hope. So many of us did; hundreds of thousands of people. And it was taken. It was a tough day.”</p>
<p id="D3scsc">Nevertheless, FIEL persisted. By 2011, it had become a certified nonprofit and Cesar was the face of the organization. In 2012, he received a request to come to Washington, D.C., from the office of Cecilia Muñoz, then the director of the White House Domestic Policy Council in the Obama administration. He’d been invited there along with about 30 other immigrant leaders from around the country. She spoke with them about how the White House had heard their concerns, and told the gathering that help was coming soon.</p>
<p id="Yrv5fl">“We were all in there in this room together and we were like, ‘No. You all keep saying that. Why is this going to be different?’” says Cesar. “It was frustrating. I was thinking about the DREAM Act again. And that’s when she says she has someone who’d like to speak with us about it. The doors open. President Obama walks in. It was unbelievable. We were all in shock.”</p>
<p id="mdKxB9">Like Muñoz, Obama assured them that their voices had been heard, and that their lives and their rights in America were important. A few weeks later, on June 15, the 30th anniversary of a Supreme Court ruling against public schools <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plyler_v._Doe">charging illegal immigrants tuition</a>, DACA was announced.</p>
<p id="8iNUvk">“That was a moment of ecstasy,” says Cesar, his smile stretching toward his ears. “It felt like … we <em>finally</em> got something. It felt like, ‘My life is about to change. So many people’s lives are about to change.’”</p>
<p id="ekuBiP">When the White House announced DACA, FIEL became the only place that mattered to undocumented immigrants in Houston and beyond. A line stretched through its building, down the stairs, across the parking lot, and down the block. People slept in it to make sure they’d be seen. Part of the requirements to qualify for DACA were that you had to prove residency in America for at least five years. Unsure of what would or wouldn’t count as proof, people showed up with suitcases of paperwork. They had certificates of achievement from kindergarten, old utility bills, handwritten letters, pictures, everything. It was mania those first few weeks; a constant stream of people and news crews and 100-hour work weeks for FIEL’s employees and volunteers. They’d never been more tired. They’d also never been happier.</p>
<p id="HlycsF">Certainly not everyone who applied for DACA qualified, “but it didn’t even matter,” says Cesar. “All of the stuff that was happening around the decision. … It felt like that was the feeling I was chasing for so long.”</p>
<p id="Drex9s"></p>
<p class="p--has-dropcap" id="0DXZp3">At the 46th minute of the <a href="https://youtu.be/q_q61B-DyPk">June 16, 2015</a>, speech announcing his intention to run for president, Trump made a bold proclamation: “I will immediately terminate President Obama’s illegal executive order on immigration.” He was talking about DACA.</p>
<p id="oxxjjH">At the time, the threat seemed silly — for one, because he was Donald Trump, and it seemed like there was no way he would ever be elected, and for two because he said it literally three seconds after he’d finished promising to the crowd that he would “never be in a bicycle race, that I can tell you,” which is an odd thing to say right before you let the country know you’re planning to upend millions of lives if you’re elected. Now, though — obviously, clearly, definitely — it seems less silly, and certainly more dangerous.</p>
<div class="c-float-left c-float-hang"> <figure class="e-image">
<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/wJbdkuTV1hQrreIpfp8ZcCYUiUs=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/9104723/IMG_2265.jpg">
<cite>Larami Serrano</cite>
</figure>
</div>
<p id="o4kGcM">“Watching Trump get elected was very painful,” says Cesar. “We didn’t expect it. All the preliminary polls leading up to that night had Hillary ahead. Her husband did some things with immigration in 1996 that were very harmful to our community,” he says, referring to the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, which as <em>Vox</em>’s Dara Lind put it, “<a href="https://www.vox.com/2016/4/28/11515132/iirira-clinton-immigration">invented immigration enforcement as we know it today</a>.”</p>
<p id="uZTbxv">“But we [FIEL] still felt like we were going to be better off if she’d been elected because of the things Trump was saying during the campaigning.”</p>
<p id="VQXL4T">President Obama pushing DACA through as an executive order made it what the DREAM Act was never able to become, which is to say it made it official and real. But his action also made the policy vulnerable. Trump can, almost unilaterally, end DACA at his discretion. There’s been a push from the community at large to keep it in place (a 2016 polling showed that 60 percent of Trump supporters are in favor of letting undocumented immigrants currently in the country stay legally, if certain requirements are met, and <a href="http://www.people-press.org/2016/10/27/6-views-of-domestic-issues-race-immigration-health-care-abortion-supreme-court/">that number goes up to nearly 80 percent among all</a> voters). But there’s been a substantial push to remove it, most powerfully the aforementioned campaign by Ken Paxton, who has formed a 10-state alliance that has threatened to sue the federal government if Trump doesn’t rescind DACA by September 5.</p>
<p id="Ofusdc"></p>
<p class="p--has-dropcap" id="PCZOZ0">The rescinding of DACA is what FIEL and the undocumented immigrants it serves fears more than anything in a long-term sense. It would instantly upend the lives of the 800,000 people currently registered for its protections, and that’s to say nothing of the ramifications it would have in the immigrant population as it rattled outward.</p>
<p id="I672yI">More immediately, what most scares the masses of people who would be vulnerable under a rollback of DACA is ICE, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. This is the part of the federal government that deports people. Trump’s hardline stance on immigration has led to what appears to be an escalation in unnecessary detentions (and, potentially, deportations). Per <em>The Washington Post</em>, 4,100 immigrants who had not committed a crime were arrested in June, “<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/immigration/trump-is-deporting-fewer-immigrants-than-obama-including-criminals/2017/08/10/d8fa72e4-7e1d-11e7-9d08-b79f191668ed_story.html?utm_term=.ebf84f18b907">more than double the number in January</a>.”</p>
<p id="mpFSC3">Under President Obama, ICE prioritized deporting convicted criminals. Under Trump, however, ICE has seemingly prioritized grabbing <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/whats-the-difference-between-trump-obama-immigration-orders-2017-2">any undocumented immigrant it can</a>.</p>
<p id="9E730i">An example: In March, the <em>Houston Chronicle</em> <a href="http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/Immigration-agents-deport-Houston-father-whose-10973024.php">ran a story</a> about Jose Escobar, a 31-year-old man who’d lived in Houston since he was 15. He had no criminal background. Escobar was also married to an American citizen, and he was the father to two American citizen children. But he lost his temporary deportation protections when his mother accidentally didn’t include his paperwork when she filed for a renewal. (Since he was a minor at the time, she assumed that his renewal would be attached to hers.) When he went to his annual check-in at the immigration office, he was arrested and deported back to El Salvador, a country he’d not been to or even seen in 16 years.</p>
<p id="0x9TiV">The fear of being insta-deported is such a staggering concern that it’s caused a decrease in the reporting of crimes in immigrant populations. In Houston, for example, reports of rape in the Latino community have dropped<a href="http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/HPD-chief-announces-decrease-in-Hispanics-11053829.php"> by nearly 43 percent</a>.</p>
<p id="4x0rIa">“It used to be that we’d get one or two deportation cases or calls about every six months,” says Cesar. “Since Trump has started, we’re getting three or four calls a day. There’s real fear in these families. People are terrified. Before, if you did everything right then you felt like you’d be fine. Now, everyone feels like they’re in limbo, like they can be deported at any time, because that’s what we’re seeing.”</p>
<p id="7ilS5H"></p>
<p class="p--has-dropcap" id="YDepug">FIEL’s current fight exists on multiple fronts.</p>
<p id="StYfCx">First, the organization is attempting to pressure Paxton into ending his crusade against DACA. (FIEL can have no direct impact here, but it can show up wherever he is and protest him, which is what they did earlier this month when he appeared in Houston<a href="https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/news/2017/08/08/229241/watch-immigration-activists-protest-as-texas-attorney-general-paxton-visits-houston/"> for a scheduled appearance</a>.)</p>
<p id="gSwjaa">Second, FIEL is working against the enforcement of a recently passed immigration-enforcement law that will, in effect, remove Houston’s sanctuary city status. A sanctuary city is one where local officials do not fully comply with federal immigration authorities. FIEL’s fight against the bill, which goes into effect on September 1, will be a long legal battle. Its goal is to file a lawsuit that would eventually be heard before<strong> </strong>the Supreme Court; it’s a plan that could take upward of a decade.</p>
<p id="IE2LOh">But perhaps most urgent is the organization’s handling of the sudden overload of ICE seizures and deportations, which is tied in so tightly with the crusade against DACA and the pending Texas law that there’s no real way to prevent them from happening, only ways to respond quicker to them when they do.</p>
<p id="AoMKyr"></p>
<p class="p--has-dropcap" id="Cawjs3">Cesar’s mother eventually remarried to an American citizen, so she gained her citizenship that way. And his younger brother was just young enough at the time of DACA’s implementation that he qualified for it, too. For Cesar, though (and for his older sister), short of marriage there is no way to gain permanent citizenship in the United States. As the law exists today, the soonest Cesar believes he could be granted citizenship would be about 18 years from now, and that would include having to live in Mexico for anywhere from three to 10 years as a penalty for how long he’s been in America undocumented. That would put him at 50 years old. That’s the best-case scenario.</p>
<p id="lIaKFW">“It could take up until I’m 60,” says Cesar, “or I could even wait all that time and still not get in. But it’s not about me. It’s about the others.”</p>
<p id="YPVkk9">I remind him of the conversation he had in that house in Ohio, and I ask him if he thinks that somewhere, right now, in some house or apartment in Houston there’s a mom talking to her kids about what to do if they come home one day to find that she’s been deported.</p>
<p id="axouc0">“Yes. Absolutely.”</p>
<p id="dmGIhL">When I ask if he thinks FIEL’s is one of the numbers those parents are writing down, he goes silent for a moment. When he speaks, his words are heavy.</p>
<p class="c-end-para" id="QY18tr">“I hope so. I think so.”</p>
https://www.theringer.com/2017/8/24/16194748/cesar-espinosa-immigration-interviewShea Serrano