As life in D.C. becomes national news, a rapper shares his view from the ground

In 2017, the rapper GoldLink was lamenting a vanishing Chocolate City and doing his part to try to preserve its culture. His album from that spring, At What Cost , treated Washington, D.C.'s local hallmarks like psychic landmarks in an effort to stave off the erasure he saw encroaching, brought on by the gentrification overtaking the area. "I feel like we're long overdue for our story to be told," he told The Washington Post . "If it doesn't happen now, then everything we had is going to be gone, and no one will ever know about it — it'll be like a lost city."

I was thinking about this idea while listening to Dirty Harry 2 , the new mixtape from D.C. rapper El Cousteau. Eight years later, GoldLink's concerns are even more valid, and yet Cousteau's rise feels like an affirmat