How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America: Essays

In 1998, Laymon was in the basement restroom of Mudd Library at Oberlin College asking himself what a cipher was. He had first heard the word in a Central Mississippi restroom back in 1992. He and six other boys used their lunch period to hang out in what they had designated the B-Boy bathroom. B. Dazzle, the younger brother of the emcee Kamikaze, presided. Laymon provided the beat box while B. Dazzle rhymed. No Black girls, Asians, or white people were allowed in the B-Boy bathroom while they rhymed. For the Black girls, however, the B-Boys would open the door just enough to allow them to hear. Their cipher, B. Dazzle told Laymon, was off limits to anyone not in their group. One’s worth within the group depended on how New York one sounded. Laymon had some credibility there, due to the summers he spent in upstate New York visiting his father. To Black people in Mississippi, all of New York state meant New York City.

B. Dazzle told the group that they should define their sound as “hip-hop,” not “rap.” Their group was a “cipher,” not a “rap circle.” Hip-hop was about lyricizing and dropping knowledge.