The talisman is an object that is believed to possess magical or supernatural powers. It has been used in various cultures and religions for centuries, serving as a symbol of protection, luck, or spiritual connection. The concept of the talisman is rooted in the belief that certain objects have the ability to harness and channel mystical energies. These objects can be natural materials like stones, crystals, or plants, or man-made items like amulets, pendants, or charms. Talismans can also take the form of symbols, sigils, or even written words or phrases. The purpose of a talisman is often to provide the wearer or possessor with specific benefits or abilities.

Gangstas, Thugs, and Hustlas: Identity and the Code of the Street in Rap Music

Recent research on identity, culture, and violence in inner-city communities describes a black youth culture, or street code, that influences adolescent behavior, particularly violent behavior. I build upon such literature through analysis of gangsta rap music, exploring how the street code is present not only in “the street,” but also in rap music. I first consider how structural conditions in inner-city communities have given rise to cultural adaptations embodied in a street code. These adaptations help to create an interpretive environment where violence is accountable, if not normative. I then examine the complex, reflexive relationship between the street code, rap music, and social identity. These issues are examined through content analysis of 403 songs on rap albums from 1992 to 2000. Portrayals of violence in the lyrics serve many functions including establishing social identity and reputation and exerting social control: these are the central topics of the analysis.

Keywords: rap music, crime, media, communities, social identity, street code, content analysis

Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation

Kubrin, Charis, Gangstas, Thugs, and Hustlas: Identity and the Code of the Street in Rap Music (2005). Social Problems, Vol. 52, pp. 360-378, 2005, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2028168

Charis Kubrin (Contact Author)

University of California, Irvine ( email )

Department of Criminiology, Law and Society
Social Ecology II, Rm 3379
Irvine, CA 62697-3125
United States

How to fire projectiles through materials without breaking anything

When charged particles are being shot through ultra-thin layers of material, sometimes spectacular micro-explosions occur, sometimes the material remains almost intact. This has now been explained at the TU Wien.

Vienna University of Technology

image: The authors of the TU Wien study: from left to right: Friedrich Aumayr, Christoph Lemell, Anna Niggas, Alexander Sagar Grossek, Richard A. Wilhelm view more

Credit: David Rath, TU Wien

It sounds a bit like a magic trick: Some materials can be shot through with fast, electrically charged ions without exhibiting holes afterwards. What would be impossible at the macroscopic level is allowed at the level of individual particles. However, not all materials behave the same in such situations - in recent years, different research groups have conducted experiments with very different results.

At the TU Wien (Vienna, Austria), it has now been possible to find a detailed explanation of why some materials are perforated and others are not. This is interesting, for example, for the processing of thin membranes, which are supposed to have tailor-made nano-pores in order to trap, hold or let through very specific atoms or molecules there.

Ultra-thin materials - graphene and its peers

"Today, there is a whole range of ultrathin materials that consist of only one or a few atomic layers," says Prof. Christoph Lemell of the Institute of Theoretical Physics at TU Wien. "Probably the best known of these is graphene, a material made of a single layer of carbon atoms. But research is also being done on other ultrathin materials around the world today, such as molybdenum disulfide."

In Prof. Friedrich Aumayr's research group at the Institute of Applied Physics at TU Wien, such materials are bombarded with very special projectiles - highly charged ions. They take atoms, typically noble gases such as xenon, and strip them of a large number of electrons. This creates ions with 30 to 40 times the electrical charge. These ions are accelerated and then hit the thin layer of material with high energy.

"This results in completely different effects depending on the material," says Anna Niggas, an experimental physicist at the Institute of Applied Physics "Sometimes the projectile penetrates the material layer without any noticeable change in the material as a result. Sometimes the material layer around the impact site is also completely destroyed, numerous atoms are dislodged and a hole with a diameter of a few nanometers is formed."

The velocity of the electrons

These astonishing differences can be explained by the fact that it is not the momentum of the projectile that is mainly responsible for the holes, but its electric charge. When an ion with multiple positive charge hits the material layer, it attracts a larger amount of electrons and takes them with it. This leaves a positively charged region in the material layer.

What effect this has depends on how fast electrons can move in this material. "Graphene has an extremely high electron mobility. So this local positive charge can be balanced there in a short time. Electrons simply flow in from elsewhere," Christoph Lemell explains.

In other materials such as molybdenum disulfide, however, things are different: There, the electrons are slower, they cannot be supplied in time from outside to the impact site. And so a mini-explosion occurs at the impact site: The positively charged atoms, from which the projectile has taken their electrons, repel each other, they fly away - and this creates a nano-sized pore.

"We have now been able to develop a model that allows us to estimate very well in which situations holes are formed and in which they are not - and this depends on the electron mobility in the material and the charge state of the projectile," says Alexander Sagar Grossek, first author of the publication in the journal Nano Letters.

The model also explains the surprising fact that the atoms knocked out of the material move relatively slowly: The high speed of the projectile does not matter to them; they are removed from the material by electrical repulsion only after the projectile has already passed through the material layer. And in this process, not all the energy of the electric repulsion is transferred to the sputtered atoms - a large part of the energy is absorbed in the remaining material in the form of vibrations or heat.

Both the experiments and the simulations were performed at TU Wien. The resulting deeper understanding of atomic surface processes can be used, for example, to specifically equip membranes with tailored "nanopores". For example, one could build a "molecular sieve" or hold certain atoms in a controlled manner. There are even thoughts of using such materials to filter CO₂ from the air. "Through our findings, we now have precise control over the manipulation of materials at the nanoscale. This provides a whole new tool for manipulating ultrathin films in a precisely calculable way for the first time," says Alexander Sagar Grossek.

A Nigga Abroad

My friend Krysten and I left the majority of our things in our hotel room, each packing a small bag, and we headed alone into the Egyptian night. We left the bubble of luxury and our tour guide behind and ventured off on our own, determined to actually live, feel, and breathe in the non-curated Egypt. We got a taxi from the stand outside of the hotel and offered only the direction of “downtown.”

Nearly a week in to our visit to Egypt, Krysten and I had found our dream trip more of a nightmare. Without international travel experience or any idea of the extent of activities and attractions Egypt had to offer, I had contacted a travel agent for advice. They recommended and helped me booked a laundry list of activities and lodgings: we would start off with a quick flight from Cairo to Luxor where we would board a luxury ship for a four-day cruise up the Nile River that ported near close to a dozen of Egypt’s most significant ancient monuments and temples. Once we arrived in Cairo, we had luxury accommodations at a resort with a rooftop restaurant that overlooked the pyramids. In the city, we had tickets for the Cairo Museum, the Pyramids, the Sphinx, and dozens of other attractions. Everything was first-class.

We had no idea how dreadful first-class in Egypt would be.

I don’t wish to condemn or disparage the quality of goods and services we received, because everything was truly top-notch. The cruise was exquisite: a huge, plush king-sized bed, a never-ending buffet of Zagat-quality food, a library full of the banal but entertaining, mindless but consumable detective and romance novels interspersed with various history books and travel guides for Egypt. The accommodations were entirely focused on allowing one to shut down, relax, and forget about the world.

The issue was that we did not want to forget about the world. We did not wish to disengage from Egypt, but rather experience it. First-class luxury placed us in a protective bubble. And by the time we arrived at our five-star resort in Cairo, both Krysten and I were both stir crazy and desperate to see what Egypt was like outside of the walls designed to shield white Americans and Europeans from scary brown people. But I’m not a white American. I’m black. And I didn’t feel the need to be protected from the people based on their skin color. So we kicked a hole through the bubble and leapt into the cab, we were finally free and within thirty minutes, we stepped into another world. Cairo was unlike anything I had ever encountered. The United States offers nothing that approaches Cairo in either scale nor density—at the time of our visit, more than twenty million people made Cairo their home, close than two and half times the 8.5 million in New York City.

Upon stepping out of the cab, our senses were immediately assaulted with a range of stimuli for which my brain had little reference. The energy of the city is both frantic and rhythmic—a steady, high pulse beat of traffic lights and pedestrians that is interrupted by the off-time whistles of traffic cops for whom drivers have little regard and the shouting of vendors advertising their wares from booths and trucks and tables. I was overwhelmed with the familiar smell of a city, an intense air of construction dust and human bodies, the concrete mingling with sweat and cologne to produce and earthiness that is both natural and manufactured. But in this case, the industrialized humanity had an undertone of sweet spices, warm honey, and falafel. I became disoriented—I could smell the car horns and I see the musical chanting of the baklava trays that lined the tables set up just off the curb.

Once my senses sorted themselves and I regained my directional bearings, Krysten and I made our way to a cheap hostel that the concierge at the traffic stand had marked on a tourist map alongside the cartoons of the Great Sphinx and the camels that the ministry of tourism had printed. The six-dollar a night hostel was above a liquor store and only reachable by an art deco styled cage elevator that required a manual closing of the collapsible metal door. Upon check-in, we were greeted by a young Egyptian man who couldn’t have been older than twenty, his hair falling in long, dark braids bound in dozens of colored rubber bands, two of which framed his almond-shaped eyes and pierced septum.

“Hello!,” he exclaimed with an enthusiasm and that shook my heart within my ribcage, “My name is Ahmad, and welcome to Cairo!”

“Thanks!” Krysten said with an enthusiasm that matched his, smiling for the first time in days.

I smiled too, recognizing that we had finally formed embarked on a journey worth remembering.

We spent that first night dancing to the hand-played drumbeat of the hostel keeper Ahmad and laughing and joking with a German couple about how to best avoid the armed guards of the pyramids so that we could climb to the top at sunrise. In abandoning our tightly planned schedule and overzealous tour guide, we were able to discover the sense of wonder and exploration that had fueled our desire to travel to Egypt.

We were lost within twenty-four hours.

Egypt has an interesting history with race.

While the American consciousness, fueled by media, history, and racism, tends to conglomerate all of Africa into one nation, the continent contains dozens of individual nations and hundreds, if not thousands, of distinct cultures. This internal division of Africa is no more apparent than in the separation between North African and sub-Saharan African countries. Many Mediterranean and North African countries, including Morocco, Algeria, and, of course, Egypt, have histories of often oppressive relations with their sub-Saharan neighbors. While Morocco and Algeria both engaged in the enslavement of sub-Saharan Africans, Egypt’s relations with the land of Punt were moderately less grotesque. Beginning the 25 th century BCE, Egyptian explorers began sailing south on the Red Sea to Punt, which modern scholars locate in present-day Eritrea, Djibouti, Ethiopia, and Somalia, with eyes on accumulating gold, aromatic resins, wood, and other valuables. Along with these inanimate commodities came the people of the Punt, whose name derives from the black name for the land: Nubia.

Although never enslaved in Egypt, the Egyptians have a long history of treating Nubians as second-class citizens largely due to their darkened skin. Cairo is still to this day segregated not only physically, but mentally. More than once during our trip I heard Egyptians from all walks of life—cab drivers, tour guides, shopkeepers, waiters, bankers—all speak derogatorily of Nubians.

When we stepped of the plane in Cairo, Krysten and I were immediately approached by dozens of cab drivers. The scene as you exit customs in the Cairo airport is not much different from those found in Braveheart or the Battle of Helm’s Deep in The Lord of the Rings: two opposing armies, one of passengers and the other of cab drivers, race across the open space, two waves of flesh hurtling toward each other, waiting to engage in commercial combat. The waves crash in the middle producing a cacophony appeals and denials: “Taxi!, Taxi! Taxi!” arising from one side, “No! No, Thanks! No!” rising from the other.

The overwhelming cacophony of voices was disrupted by a man who grabbed my hand and spoke to me in Arabic. He herded Krysten and me out of the crowd, his native tongue opening a path through the chaos like Moses parting the Red Sea.

Once we were safe from the melee, the man continued to speak to me in Arabic.

“Marhabaan ‘ahlaan wasahlaan,” he said, or “As-salāmu ʿalaykum,” or some equivalent of the standard Arabic greetings that flooded our ears from dozens of passers-by welcoming us and our money to Egypt.

I interrupted him with an apology. “I’m sorry, I only speak English,” I said, much to his confusion.

“You’re not Egyptian?!” he exclaimed in a mixture of shock and confusion, the revelation of my ethnicity meeting his ears as though I had told him I was some mythical beast, “Butyour hair? Your eyes? What are you?” he asked, any filter he may have shown on a normal day noticeably absent.

“I’m black,” I stated, defining myself as I had been defined so many times before in America.

This proclamation seemed to confuse him even more. “No, you are not black. You are not Nubian. You do not look or speak Nubian. Where are you from?” he said.

“California,” I replied.

“Ah, you are not black,” he said, “You are American.”

My brain broke. In this man’s response it occurred to me that, until this moment, no one had ever considered my American nationality before my race. I was twenty-seven years old, and for the first time, my citizenry was qualified by neither a hyphenated racial signifier—African-America—nor a color descriptor—black; in this country, the “African-” was obliterated by the presence of actual Africans, and in relation to their Nubian skin, I was simply “American.”

The moment rendered me unable to process thought. I was not black. I was suddenly thrust to the oppressor side of the scale. In this strange land, I became a stranger to myself. My blackness disappeared into the void. I was now the one who had the power to obliterate by looking at someone and uttering the magic spell that obliterated Frantz Fanon all those years ago: “‘Dirty nigger!’ Or, simply, ‘Look! A Negro!’” But I could never wield this power for two reasons. First, I was most definitely black. I had been my whole life. Second, being black, I was intimately aware of the consequences such an uttering can have on one’s being. But blackness here was different—and yet, not different. The who was changed, but the what remained the same—denigration, derision, and violence still structured black experience and black being, yet the beings whose bodies occupied that space were defined by a different history and a different tone than my own. While notions of blackness and anti-blackness are global constructs, my specific blackness was not. My blackness did not travel, but had been left behind, confined to the geo-political borders of America. For the first time in my life, my skin was not a symbol of lesser than, but the sign had flipped, and with it catapulted my being into the upper echelon of the social strata. Not only was I not black, but the label of American, and the cultural and literal currency it brought with it, made people work to please me, as any tip I would leave would be multiplied by six at the currency exchange.

My new status was met with both pride and guilt. Is this how white people in America feels, I wondered? Torn between the pride of not being the bottom rung of society, of always having someone to look down upon, and the guilt of knowing your position relies on being neutral at best and participatory at worst in the oppression of those below you? Fighting so hard to not be labelled an oppressor while striving equally hard to maintain the privilege of your flesh, always working to elevate those who are different while always keeping them a rung below you? Always pushing and pulling, stretching, tearing, and reconfiguring? For the first time, I almost felt pity for those occupying the position of power in an anti-black nation.

We must have gotten on the wrong train.

With our time and activities now firmly in our own hands, Krysten and I left our hostel with intentions of finding the Egyptian Museum of Antiquities, commonly known as the Museum of Cairo. The museum is located in Tahrir Square, the site of the largest protests and most damaging riots of the Arab Spring. Our fear of violence, however, was overridden by our desire to bask in the history of one of the world’s greatest civilizations; everything from King Tutankhamen’s burial mask to the pharaoh’s mummified pet cats are held within its walls.

We had gotten on the wrong train.

In the calamity of the metro station, we must have gotten turned around, and now we found ourselves on the right track, but somehow traveling in the wrong direction. We allowed the rush of bodies to sweep us off the train at the next station, and in the brief moments of relative calm that preceded the arriving storm brought on by each train, we searched for a map of the metro.

As we wandered through the station, a short, light-skinned Egyptian man with short dark hair and eyes approached us. He was impeccably, though humbly, dressed. The creases on his button up shirt and khaki pants had been ironed to a sharp point, and his shoes, though worn, were well-polished.

He approached us with a generosity that had been absent so many of the peddlers and shopkeepers who had interpreted Krysten’s pale, white skin as the sign of a mark of whom they could find advantage. He stopped just in front of us, smiled, and in a tone that told as much as asked, “You are not from here?”

“No,” we responded, as wary as we had become of all strangers here.

“Where are you from?”

“We’re from California,” we said hesitantly, still trying to analyze and decipher his motives.

I will never forget the next words he spoke, “Welcome to my home.”

Muhammad Yousri was born and raised in Cairo by his grandfather. He never told us what happened to his parents, and the manner in which he switched the subject when we asked informed us that it was a topic best left alone. Despite his destination being on a completely different metro line than ours, he offered to escort us to the museum. Still wary of his intentions, we initially refused, but he persisted, and the kind tenor of his voice and the creases of genuineness at the corners of his smiling eyes persuaded us. We spent the entirety of the train ride to our station engaged in conversation, Muhammad asking what we had done thus far on our trip and offering the type of off the beaten path suggestions that are only known to locals.

Upon arriving at our station, he walked with us towards the museum. Before reaching our destination, however, he stopped.

“I would be honored if you would allow me to treat you to lunch,” he said unexpectedly.

“Oh, that’s way too nice,” I said, feeling as though we had already taken advantage of his kindness.

“We couldn’t,” said Krysten, echoing the sentiment.

“Please, it’s no trouble at all,” Muhammad responded, with ease and sincerity.

“Thank you so much for escorting us here, but we don’t want to take advantage of you,” I said, vocalizing the thoughts that led to my initial decline.

What he said next, however, thawed our denial of his request. “I will respect your wishes,” he began, “but only if you truly do not wish to have lunch. But if we were declining because you feel you were a burden, then I will have to insist.”

His tone was docile and inviting. I stared intently at his face for just a moment, searching every nook and cranny for any sign of ill intent, but all of these signs were absent.

I hesitantly asked, “are you sure?” slightly confused by a kindness that in America would be overbearing, bordering on creepy.

“It would be rude,” he said, “to send away a guest without providing them a meal.”

Krysten and I relented, “Okay. Thank you,” we each said, mildly baffled by both his generosity and out luck in finding him.

“Wonderful!” he exclaimed, expressing genuine excitement at the prospect of being able to provide these two foreigners with a meal in his hometown.

Upon hearing our affirmation, he quickly leapt toward me and did the unthinkable: he grabbed my hand. Not in an aggressive way, but in a loving, caring way; in the way that a brother might hold his little brother’s hand when crossing the street. In the Arab world, holding hands with another man is a sign of respect and friendship. It is also a sign of family. Muhammad had claimed me as his brother.

His brother. Being here, in this country, standing on this soil, I felt something I had not felt in a long time, and felt it in a way I had never felt it before. Growing up, my home life was always either broken by of my parents’ fighting or their silent resentment. Growing up, my worldview and my experiences were always framed through the lens of the middle passage, slavery, Jim Crow, segregation, and miscegenation. But here, on this soil, I understood why Africa is known as the Motherland.

After our lunch of falafel and hummus, Muhammad invited us to participate in another local tradition. He walked us around the corner, holding my hand the entire time, to a small hookah lounge. He ordered us a round of smoke and coffee, and while waiting for it to arrive, my skepticism overcame my politeness, and I questioned his motives.

“Why are you being so to kind to us?” I asked.

“My grandfather raised me to think that we are all one people, one family,” he said, “and that we should perceive no one as a burden, but everyone as a pleasure. One of the ways he taught me to do that was when you encounter guests in your country, you are to treat them as guests in your home. I wanted to have the pleasure of showing you my home.”

I couldn’t help wonder if he still would have treated us this way if I were still black.

Matthieu Chapman is a professor of Theatre at SUNY New Paltz. His memoir, “Shattered: Fragments of a Black Life” is forthcoming from WVU Press in 2023.

Reviews for "The language of symbols: decoding the messages of the ralisman"

1) Jane - 2 stars - I really wanted to like "What is the Talisman About" because I've heard so many great things about Stephen King's writing. However, I found this book to be extremely confusing and hard to follow. The plot was all over the place, and the characters seemed to lack depth and development. It felt like the author was trying to cram too many ideas into one story without fully fleshing them out. Overall, I was disappointed and wouldn't recommend it.

2) Mark - 1 star - "What is the Talisman About" was a complete letdown for me. The writing style was convoluted and difficult to engage with. The supposed twists and turns in the plot were predictable and uninspiring. I struggled to connect with any of the characters and didn't feel invested in their journey. The pacing was off, with long stretches of boredom followed by rushed and poorly executed action scenes. I expected so much more from Stephen King, but this book fell flat for me.

3) Lisa - 2 stars - I picked up "What is the Talisman About" because I enjoy supernatural and horror novels, but this one didn't live up to my expectations. The story was unnecessarily complex, and the world-building felt haphazard. The protagonist's quest felt disjointed and lacked a clear purpose. Additionally, I found some of the dialogue to be awkward and unnatural, which made it difficult for me to connect with the characters. Overall, I was left feeling underwhelmed and unsatisfied with this book.

4) Michael - 2 stars - "What is the Talisman About" was a frustrating read for me. While I appreciate the creativity and originality of the concept, the execution fell short. The pacing was inconsistent, with long periods of meandering and slow development. The ending also felt rushed and unsatisfying. I struggled to stay engaged with the story and had to push myself to finish it. Unfortunately, this novel did not live up to the hype for me, and I was left feeling underwhelmed.

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