“Southern hip-hop has always straddled the line between the struggle and the party, and the culture takes the same approach to how it mourns as a collective.”

If I hadn’t known better, I would have assumed that the crowd of Black people walking toward State Farm Arena on November 11, 2022, were headed to a concert. Instead, they stood in line to pay their final respects at the memorial service for Atlanta rapper Takeoff, a member of rap supergroup Migos, who had been fatally shot days earlier. With a camera on each arm, I stood in the rain to capture the moment, on assignment for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Media wasn’t allowed inside, so I was tasked with documenting the fans and the scene from the outside.