In the ninth grade, Noah meets a new student at his school named Bolo. Bolo is entrepreneurial, setting up a black-market business to sell pirated video games and CDs with his partner Daniel. The black students often accept the product and claim to pay later. When those students eventually refuse to pay, Bolo and Daniel are too afraid to confront them, so they bring Trevor into their business to handle those interactions.

When Daniel graduates from school, he gifts Trevor his expensive CD burner for Trevor to continue the business. Up until that point in his life, Trevor has only been allowed to listen to church music, so his knowledge of other genres is nonexistent.

While he burns his bootleg CDs, Trevor listens to the songs, many of which are by black American artists. This becomes an important moment in Trevor’s life because these albums often focus on the concept of African American identity and the associated struggle to overcome the legacy of slavery and subsequent segregation. Trevor finds that this struggle in many ways mirrors the struggle of black South Africans during and after apartheid.

In Trevor’s school, apartheid is a subject rarely taught, so this music offers him an avenue to learn about and reflect on black identity.