Between Meek Mill, Candy Crush, and Very Smart Brothas, levels are having the greatest year ever. The fun part about levels is that they’re something people can understand, unlike Matrix 2 which nobody could understand, well except for the people who claim that they could understand it when nobody else could which makes some sense since, ya know, there’s levels to this sh*t. See what I did there?

By the way, its important to note that, “Levels” – the song by Meek Mill, the most yellin-est rapper of all time – is a smart dumb ninja song. It’s one of those songs that’s not deep at all, but some people will claim its deep, thereby informing you and everybody around you that said person who thinks its deep has either been to jail or is likely to go jail at some point. See also Pastor Troy “Vice Versa”. I do judge people who find “Levels” to be a song with any depth to it.

Moving on up to the east side…

While Champ did such a good job of illustraing the perfect levels of Blackness, it seems almost counterproductive to not discuss the various levels of Blackness that must exist for there to be a perfect level. You cannot have hot without cold which yields you the perfectly docile and splendid, warm. Just like you can’t have The most perfect color in the Republic and/or the Union, pewter, unless you have both black and white at the ends. If there’s perfect then there are various other levels. Like?

Like…

Really Really Black

You know something is real when you use the adjective twice (or adverb, I was never good at American). Things that are really, really Black are those things where pretty much nobody but (we’re talking 95+ percent) Black folks dwell, enjoy, participate in or appreciate like Detroit, Belly, weave pats, Donald Goines novels, Tyler Perry, red kool-aid flavored chicken gizzards, chicken gizzards, shooting dice on the corner or anywhere really, public school system in most major cities, etc

Pretty Damn Black

This level is where you still have a majority of Black people actively leading the charge for independence (what?) but you get a pretty significant number of others involved, and bougie Black folks are present but there’s definitely division amongst the reading ninjas. Such things that are pretty damn Black are: HBCUs, Project Pat, watermelon, Popeyes chicken, “Swahili” names, Kwanzaa, the last half of Mariah Carey’s career, Atlanta, Lupe Fiasco (he’d be more on the other side of Blackness except he’s gon’ full fledge conspiracy theorist lately), conspiracy theories, Final Call, Nation of Islam,

Not As Black As You Might Think

This is kind of explanatory. We’re moving to the side of things where there’s definitely some Blackness, but just because its led by the Blackness doesn’t mean that only (or even mostly) the Blacks indulge, though there’s still enough Blackness associated that we could claim them/it in the race draft. Such as? Wu-Tang Clan, Common (hey, he said its just coffee shop chicks and white dudes), hip-hop, Barack Obama, watermelon, fried chicken from Popeye’s, driving hoopties, saying hooptie, the itis, the sugar, the pressure, Bill Cosby, Drake, cognac, Moscato, etc.

And finally…

Not That Black At All (Or Just Black By Default)

This is the category where something is created by or inspired by the Blacks but has pretty much gone so mainstream that they’re just Black by default because they’re..well, Black, but they’ve transcended (though we’re still claiming), like Beyonce, Tiger Woods, Micheal Jordan, or Michael Jackson, Jordan’s, Lil Wayne, Kanye West (currently), crime (I keeed, I keeed), Scandal, The Butler, The Help, The Shoe Shine Boy (you’re saying that doesn’t exist yet? My bad), Soledad O’Brien, well you get the point.

Those are the levels of Blackness I came up with while listening to Meek Mill yell at me and tell me that he was a boss. I mean, there are levels to this since we probably don’t wear the same clothes or feathertickle the same women. It’s true.

So what are the levels of Blackness that you’ve observed? Or did I get them right? WHAT SAY YOU?

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