Reginald Thomas II

A group of young boys play some half court pick-up ball outside of Bernard Harris Elementary in east Baltimore on a brisk October Saturday afternoon. Trees begin to shed for the winter and in preparing themselves for the spring, scatter their leaves across basketball courts all throughout the city making it easier for savvy ball-handlers to try and make their defenders slip and fall.

It was a mild October evening in Washington, DC, and GoldLink was at a photo studio in the city's Northwest quadrant, talking about what super power he'd choose. Among the group of friends and handlers assembled, time travel was the most popular. I opted for invisibility. But for the 24-year-old rapper, born D'Anthony Carlos, the risk of inadvertently changing the course of history seemed too high. "What if you go back to save MLK, and he ends up becoming an Uncle Tom?" he wondered.