Abstract
In March 2014, for an article in GQ magazine, Pharrell Williams invoked term the black; he further elaborated on phrase's definition in an interview with Oprah Winfrey for her show Oprah Prime . A little over a year later, in summer of 2015, Rick Famuyiwa's film Dope , executively produced by Williams, was released to rave reviews. Although these two events appear disparate, this article asserts that film is a cinematic interpretation of Williams's ideation. By highlighting movie's aesthetic nods to hip-hop—clothing, paraphernalia, music, and casting—as forms of nostalgia, and reading protagonist's preoccupation with attending Harvard as a form of cultural amnesia reminiscent of rhetoric from bygone cultural movements, piece questions, what is new that constitutes blackness? In like manner, does arrival of such a category suggest that the old black no longer exists, or does it maintain a paradigmatic influence which stands to impart a lesson on culture and history to new?
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