Diplomatic Immunity Turns 20

In Hanif Abdurraqib’s A Little Devil In America — a vivid treatise on the impact of Black performance in America’s cultural history — there’s a pretty fascinating excerpt on how the Diplomats inverted classic American symbolism throughout Diplomatic Immunity. In the chapter on “magical negroes” (an outdated trope in and of itself), Abdurraqib recalls a time when white suburbia and college frat boys across the country embraced Cam’ron, Juelz Santana, Jim Jones, and Freekey Zekey for draping themselves in red, white, and blue. They rapped along to the record’s many combative lyrics equating street violence to the War On Terror. They bought into the Harlem crew’s apparent zest for patriotism, from their stars and stripes bandanas to their Great Seal of United States-inspired insignia: a bald eagle toting two Glocks. The same crowd who cheered on Dubya’s invasion of Iraq ironically saw themselves in a group of bon vivant troublemakers who repeatedly name-checked the Taliban and bragged about making “9/11 music.”