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Ta-Nehisi Coates

Ta-Nehisi Coates - Ta-Nehisi Coates is a senior editor for The Atlantic, where he writes about culture, politics, and social issues for TheAtlantic.com and the magazine. He is the author of the memoir The Beautiful Struggle. More

Born in 1975, the product of two beautiful parents. Raised in West Baltimore—not quite The Wire, but sometimes ill all the same. Studied at the Mecca for some years in the mid-’90s. Emerged with a purpose, if not a degree. Slowly migrated up the East Coast with a baby and my beloved, until I reached the shores of Harlem. Wrote some stuff along the way.

Oddly, This Made Me Feel Better

By Ta-Nehisi Coates
Jul 24 2009, 5:06 PM ET Comment

I can't think of dude's name, Richard from Sex In The City. He was the man in this--and until he tried to rape a cop. I swear I've run like this before, but I was never the dude to catch wreck like that. Every time I see this I think of Dilated Peoples, "And when I swing my bat don't think I miss like Baseball Fury..."

One thing about the memoir--it really could have used a Baseball Fury reference. What a great name.Weird to see the 72nd street stop, as it was back in the day. Weirder still is how there's this urban mythology that radiated out, pre-internet. By the time I got to Howard, if you'd come up like us, you'd seen The Warriors. You were sure Criminal Minded had altered the curvature of the Earth. You remembered Tyson dispatching fools in minutes. This was the vocab for our lingua franca. These were our signs. 



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