Our weekly recap highlighting the best feature stories from around the internet.
G-Eazy. Photo: AFP
White Rappers, Clear of a Black Planet – by Jon Caramanica, The NY Times
“But now we have arrived in the post-accountability era of white rap, when white artists are flourishing almost wholly outside the established hip-hop industry, evading black gatekeepers and going directly to overwhelmingly white consumers, resulting in what can feel like a parallel world, aware of hip-hop’s center but studiously avoiding it.”
Did I Kill Gawker? – by Max Read, NY Mag
“This is a familiar dynamic in web publishing. Enough dismissive or hateful comment threads, enough disingenuous or overstated outrage, enough undermining emails from an imperious and often humourless boss, and you begin to feel like the only people who really get what you’re doing are your co-workers.”
Dee Dee Wanted Her Daughter To Be Sick, Gypsy Wanted Her Mom To Be Murdered – by Michelle Dean, Buzzfeed
“It turned out that, in fact, Gypsy hadn’t used a wheelchair from the moment she left her house a few days earlier. She didn’t need one. She could walk just fine, there was nothing wrong with her muscles, and she had no medication or oxygen tank with her either. Her hair was short and spiky, but she wasn’t bald — her head had simply been shaved, all her life, to make her appear ill. She was well-spoken, if shaken by recent events. The disabled child she’d long been in the eyes of others was nowhere to be found. It was all a fraud, she told the police. All of it. Every last bit. Her mother had made her do it.”
The quiet racism of New Zealand – by Guy Williams, Sunday Star Times
“There's nothing more Kiwi than coming over here, and taking Maori land, then complaining about Chinese people coming over here and taking our land. Our country was built on immigration, and that's what makes it great. My mum is from Canada and every day I thank God for people from other countries so my dad didn't marry his cousin.”
One weird trick for winning lots of Olympic medals: funding female athletes – by Madeleine Chapman, The Spinoff
“New Zealanders need to value female athletes as much as we value our men. Perhaps even throw some money and encouragement their way in the years when the Olympics aren’t on TV 24/7. Let’s support women in sport for all four years of the Olympic cycle, not just the final two weeks.”
The Uber Killer: The Real Story of One Night of Terror – by Chris Heath, GQ
“What if one day a man became a mass killer and there were no real clues at all about why in the life he’d lived beforehand? Could such a person exist? In the aftermath, as everyone struggled to comprehend the chaos Jason Dalton had caused, that was exactly what those closest to him suggested was the case.”
