They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us

Abdurraqib explores Gaye’s album What’s Going On. He argues that the album attempts to question what will happen to the world if injustice, racism, and hatred continue. Abdurraqib feels that daily life in America requires him to fight and suffer but believes that Gaye’s album has a second purpose outside of entertainment value: to transform “heaven” from something that people seize in fleeting moments to something that everyone can participate in.

This essay is broken into sections that follow various Fall Out Boy (or individual band members’) performances. There are two relationships at the center of this piece: the tenuous friendship of Pete Wentz (bassist for Fall Out Boy) and Patrick Stump (lead singer for Fall Out Boy) and Abdurraqib and his friend Tyler.

Tyler and Abdurraqib became good friends after Tyler helped Abdurraqib up when he fell in the mosh pit at a Fall Out Boy concert. The two continued to attend concerts together until Tyler’s death by suicide. Interwoven with stories of the two men’s relationship, Abdurraqib describes Wentz and Stump struggling with their differing levels of desire for fame. The band eventually went on hiatus because of this conflict, with the shyer Stump performing independently while Wentz self-destructed in the media.