What is blackness? Brooklyn activist (and Zen priest) Angel Kyodo Williams already tried to answer that eternal question in a book fronting the same name as this compelling journey into the hip-hop multiverse. But sound works much better on the senses, dig? With a little help from heavyweights like Blackalicious, Rob Swift, Dilated Peoples, Jurassic 5, DJ Spooky and more, Being Black is a journey through the soul of expropriated agency, at once rump-shaking and mind-expanding. And there’s not a bling-blinger or a ghetto fab in sight. Looks like the evening news got it all wrong, right? Damn right.