Hip-hop was created as an outlet for Black and brown people to grapple with the realities of life as we experience it. Poverty, racism, violence, and even sex have always been a welcome part of that narrative. We have given emcees the freedom to ruminate on those experiences at length in both their personal and professional lives. However, the Black people who choose hip-hop as their art are rarely allowed to examine metaphysical beings without an echo of doubt, suspicion, concern, or trivialization. One of the unfortunate byproducts of sexism is the demand that people who identify as masculine be self-actualized and self-assured out of the womb. To reveal that one has spent time considering how more “love” and “free thinking” can improve your life is an admittance that at some point you didn’t have it all together. The aftermath is that critics symbolically wave them, and their nuance, away.