[Show Notes] My City Need Something | Show #248

[Show Notes] Soundscapes of Chester, PA Pt. 2: 'My City Need Something'

Cover Art for My City Need Something: Portraits and Prose for Black Existence

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Soundscapes of Chester, PA Pt. 2: 'My City Need Something'

Queue PointsNovember 02, 2026

248

00:42:35

Cultural & Social Commentary,Interviews & Community Voices,

Soundscapes of Chester, PA Pt. 2: 'My City Need Something'

Jay Ray and Christopher R. Rogers on 'My City Need Something,' the book that began as a letter to PnB Rock and became a Black studies syllabus for Chester and Philadelphi...

Show Notes

Editor's note: These show notes were developed using AI assistance and were subsequently reviewed, fact-checked, and edited by the Queue Points team to ensure accuracy and voice.

The Big Picture

Christopher R. Rogers, Ph.D., stays on for Part 2 of Soundscapes of Chester to talk with Jay Ray about My City Need Something: Portraits and Prose for Black Existence, the book he made with photographer Karim brown (Common Notions, 2026). It began as a letter to PnB Rock, written the week the Philadelphia rapper was killed in September 2022, when Rogers was meant to start writing his dissertation. The two talk about writing for home instead of a committee, sampling photographs like records, and why hip hop scholarship should listen to what people actually play. They end on Chester's Southern roots, sound systems, and the DJ's real test.

A Letter to PnB Rock

Rogers was about to write up Storying a Black Village, his 2023 University of Pennsylvania dissertation, when PnB Rock (Rakim Hasheem Allen) was shot and killed at Roscoe's House of Chicken 'N Waffles in Los Angeles on September 12, 2022. On the day he was meant to start, Rogers wrote PnB Rock a tribute instead. "I need to do this in order to find the will within myself to be able to do the other thing," he says. It became "a shadow project" under the dissertation: "I'm doing this work to come home." He names Aimé Césaire's Notebook of a Return to the Native Land as a model, and June Jordan's essay on Mike Tyson, "Requiem for the Champ," as the source of the book's structure: sharing the lessons you learned last year. Rogers also invokes Beanie Sigel on telling the truth in your writing.

Hip Hop in the Academy

Jay Ray says Rogers has entered PnB Rock into the academy. Rogers says that was deliberate. He grew up on State Property, DJ Clue mixtapes and Jadakiss, and he's tired of hip hop scholarship that stops at Tupac, Lauryn Hill, Common and Talib Kweli. Coming out of K–12 education, he listens to what young people listen to "because the type of stories that they're attracted to tells me a lot of where they are." PnB Rock's life, he argues, reflects "an experience that is shared amongst a whole generation of Black boys" in the city.

Sampling Photographs, Building an LP

Karim Brown, a Philadelphia photographer and teacher, sent Rogers photos without their stories, at Rogers' request, so he could "sample them." Rogers made beats when he was younger and frames the collaboration that way: Brown "is on the beat and I'm on the verse." He credits Tina Campt's Listening to Images and closes the book with a DJ Premier tribute. Jay Ray hears the quotes from Etheridge Knight, Toni Morrison and Toni Cade Bambara as interludes on an '80s or '90s album, and Rogers, raised on a boombox, tape decks and VHS recordings of Rap City: The Basement, agrees.

The Southern Cousin and the DJ's Test

Rogers argues Chester is the Southern cousin who moved north and didn't change: a block party the Chester Gifted Program threw alongside The Missing Plug, with a line dance showcase, jump rope and a fashion show; Oldies Night at Ethel Waters Park; bounce music on weekends at Boots and Bonnets. Jay Ray recalls finding writer Charles Stephens' "unlimited blackness" when he moved to Atlanta, until JP Brice of CMP Radio, Show #208 guest, pointed out that the same things had been in Chester all along. Rogers reads Zora Neale Hurston's 1934 essay "Characteristics of Negro Expression" and says, "I grew up in that." On sound systems he cites UK poet Roger Robinson and the Jamaican tradition, then Detroit DJ Theo Parrish, who, as Rogers tells it, says getting a crowd moving is easy and the real test is keeping them moving through the transitions. Jay Ray remembers Kai Alcé playing George Benson's "The World Is a Ghetto" for him at Atlanta's The Sound Table, and Caron Wheeler of Soul II Soul putting a book list in Beach of the War Goddess (1993). Rogers' own reading list runs through Shana Redmond, Stephen E. Henderson and Larry Neal, and his dissertation has a chapter written to Patti LaBelle's "Somebody Loves You Baby (You Know Who It Is)."

FAQ

What is My City Need Something about?

It's an "experimental essay-as-LP" by Christopher R. Rogers with photographs by Karim Brown (Common Notions, February 17, 2026). Rogers writes to the late PnB Rock about Black life in Chester and Philadelphia.

Where does the title come from?

From PnB Rock's mixtape single "My City Need Something." PnB Rock was from Germantown, Philadelphia.

Who is Christopher R. Rogers?

A cultural organizer and educator from Chester, PA, with a Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania. He's a facilitator with the W.E.B. Du Bois Movement School for Abolition & Reconstruction, co-coordinates Friends of the Tanner House, and is one-third of the Chester Gifted Program sound system.

What is the Tanner House?

The Strawberry Mansion home of painter Henry Ossawa Tanner, a National Historic Landmark. Friends of the Tanner House acquired it in August 2026, and Rogers says the plan is an arts and cultural heritage hub.

Is there a Part 1?

Yes. Show #246 has Rogers and DJ Naij B on Engineered Grace, Vol. 1, the Chester Gifted Program's EP of field recordings from Chester.