Allow me to introduce myself... IT'S BIGGER THAN HIP-HOP

I attempted to register some time ago, however I never received my password. After many failed attempts to retrieve it, I gave up. But I got it now! I feel kinda cheated though- I'm a month behind everyone else. Nevertheless I'm in this just as much for the "sport" as the check. Let me introduce myself, give you an idea of where I'm from...  

IT'S BIGGER THAN HIP-HOP (in response to those that discount/hate/don't appreciate/dismiss/want to censor etc. hip-hop)

 A couple of months ago I went out for a few drinks with my uncle. At one point he asked how I felt about my mom being in rehab and my father in and out of prison. I told him I was used to it… at 26 years-old the damage has been done. I must admit though, there have been times when I wished my dad was there to put me up on game.

Last week I was giving my son a haircut, and I recalled the scene in “Boyz n the Hood” where Laurence Fishburne’s character is cutting his son’s hair. It was one of those candid moments in time that not even Gordon Parks could capture. A moment in time I’ll never forget. A moment I thought about just how much I missed out on because my father wasn’t around.

To this day I have romanticized thoughts of getting schooled by an old black man with salt and pepper colored hair in a rocking chair. I don’t have too many elders in my life, and the ones I do have are women. There’s been times in my life where I could have benefited from having a man there to say “slow down,” “hold ya head,” “it’s not that serious” or simply “How you doing?” All of my male influences have come from my peers and/in rap music. The times I felt like nobody around me could relate, there was always a rapper that did. The times I was caught in the hustle and bustle of the 9 to 5, night classes and raising my child, a rap lyric was the only thing that validated my feelings and reaffirmed the lessons learned through my experience. It may sound a little romantic… but I guess that explains why I’m in love with it.

The first rapper to ever sit down and speak to me was Tupac:

“With all this extra stressing/ The question I wonder is after death, after my last breath/ When will I finally get to rest through this suppression/They punish the people that's askin’ questions/And those that possess steal from the ones without possessions/The message I stress/To make it stop study your lessons/Don't settle for less/Even the genius asks questions.”

I had to be about 15 years-old. In addition to the teenage angst, I was beefing with my grandmother about not wanting to practice being a Jehovah’s Witness. I felt guilty and doubted myself for not wanting to. It was the anger, depression, and rebellion in Tupac’s voice that spoke to me. For a while all I listened to was Tupac. I believed he had the key and to some point, I still do. If Tupac was alive today the only thing I would say is “Can you elaborate?”

After Tupac it was Dre, aka Andre 3000 bka Andre Benjamin. I was almost 18 years-old, had gotten my high school girlfriend pregnant and was about to get kicked out of church for fornication. While our families were bugging out because my girlfriend and I were being excommunicated from the church, Dre was the only person to tell me everything would be okay.

“Sin all depend on what you believing in/ Faith is what you make it/ That’s the hardest shit since MC Ren.”

At 18, I was ready and determined to be the father I never had, but was ostracized by the elders of a religion that had been spoon fed to me since a childhood. At that moment in time, Dre was the closest thing I had to an elder. The closest thing to someone telling me although I may have fucked up, everything would be alright.

Last night I was sitting at home trying to fight the urge to drink. There’s a thin line between having a beer after a hard days work and getting plastered. I tend to keep a foot on both sides. I’m in between semesters right now and I’m low on funds so there’s not much to do but watch television and drink beer. Last night I felt like if I was going to get drunk, I was going to be productive while I did it. So I decided to clean. Before I drowned my sorrows in Ajax and a case of Pacifico, I needed a soundtrack. I looked through the music folder on my computer and, Scarface’s “The Fix” caught my attention. It’d been awhile since I listened to it, but I remembered loving it. Before I knew it, in between sips of the bottle I was scrubbing away at my bathtub, hypnotized by an early Kanye West beat in the song “Guess Who’s Back.” The next song on the album, “On My Block” (another West production), sunk me deeper, making me take bigger sips and nod harder. By the time I got to “In Between Us,” Scarface had gained my trust and become that old man that I romanticize.

“You only as good as what you come up against/ Nigga you get what you get/ Sure the grass is greener on the other side of the fence...”

Not too profound, but it was what I needed to hear, from someone I respected. In the same song Nas joined in on the conversation:

“I was thirteen/ I was nursing a knot on my face/But chose another time and a place/That I would avenge my last fight/ Cuz the same shit ain’t gon’ happen that just happened last night/Knuckle-game changed quicker than lighting…”

The song- the whole album lift my spirit. It was a fix.

For me rap music fills a void. There have been times in my life when a rapper was the only one saying anything I could relate to. The times I experienced what Chris Gardner calls the “no daddy blues” in his book the “Pursuit of Happyness,” a rap record was all that could validate my feelings/experience and inspired me.
 

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