When Rick Ross went to South Africa and Gabon

For some odd reason the latest issue of The New Yorker ran a profile of rapper Rick Ross. Lots of good, clever writing by Sasha Frere Jones on familiar controversies about Ross (for example, Frere Jones calls Ross out for lying about his real life drug dealer exploits; show me the rapper who doesn’t make things up) and gratuitous breakdown of Ross’ mostly misogynistic lyrics. The oddest part was where the magazine encourages its readers to go and listen to Ross’s music on the New Yorker website. (Just imagine the reader.) Anyway, it reminded me of the two-part “vlog” (video blog) that Ross’s people produced of trips he took in 2011 to perform in South Africa and Gabon. This is part 1:

It’s a full 9 minutes of product placement, driving cars, scenes from a casino, screaming fans and Ross occasionally reminding people of his surroundings (“Johannesburg … one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been”). Here’s part 2, still titled with reference to South Africa, but which is really about his trip to Gabon and talking about the chicken pasta Kenya Airways served him (“that was love”) and how he thought Kilamanjaro was the name for weed.

Further Reading

How to unmake the world

In this wide-ranging conversation, para-disciplinary artist Nolan Oswald Dennis reflects on space, time, Blackness, and the limits of Western knowledge—offering a strategy for imagining grounded in African and anti-colonial traditions.

A migrant’s tale

On his latest EP, Kwame Brenya turns a failed migration into musical testimony—offering a biting critique of ECOWAS, broken borders, and the everyday collapse of pan-African ideals.

What Portugal forgets

In the film ‘Tales of Oblivion,’ Dulce Fernandes excavates the buried history of slavery in Portugal, challenging a national mythology built on sea voyages, silence, and selective memory.

Trump tariffs and US Imperialism

Trump’s April 2025 tariff blitz ignited market chaos and deepened rifts within his own coalition. Beneath the turmoil lies a battle between technocrats, ultranationalists, and anti-imperial populists, all vying to reshape—or destroy—American global power.