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Pop Culture
Mar 07, 2025, 06:29AM

This Is Just A Plus B

A 2025 Jacobin interview with rapper Billy Woods vs. a 1968 Archives of American Art interview with visual artist Emma Amos.

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Emma Amos: Well, we were all confused at that time. I was just so nervous and it was awful.

Billy Woods: Well, it depends. Will you be able to make it to the funeral?

Amos: No. Yes. I don’t know.

Woods: You don’t know if you’re going to win.

Amos: You just couldn’t. And it’s all a drag and so boring to be associated with that.

•••

Woods: Why?

Amos: Because I’m not interested in angles so much now.

Woods: You have more problems than you feel capable of dealing with, with whatever resources you have.

Amos: And they appreciate anything you can tell them about what you’ve done. Or they’ve never done it, or it’s something new. Or they haven’t done them recently.

Woods: But all of a sudden, there’s the coup in Portugal, and the Portuguese leave Angola and Mozambique.

•••

Amos: Jazz is supposedly dead.

Woods: What’s going to happen after that is hard to say.

Amos: Afro-Brillo.

Woods: This is just A plus B.

Amos: You know, I learned what it meant to be alone.

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