Too be, or not too be
I love hip-hop. Always have.
Since the moment I heard the first kick drum on the first Run DMC album, hip-hop was what I chose first.
In a chorus of punk, rock, pop, hardcore & country I would always hear the MC first, like he was standing in the front row with his mic turned up 3db louder than anyone else.
I didn’t grow up in the projects, or even in what I would consider the ghetto. In my Florida there was rich & not rich. It was pretty simple and straightforward. The neighborhoods were segregated, sometimes by color, sometimes by generations old neighborhood rivalries and almost always by who cut their grass on a regular basis but generally speaking nobody was any better off than the next.
My schools had 12 ft chain link fences, locker searches, .22’s & on-duty police officers before it was the norm. We had race riots, people being jumped, one guy that was known for going around & piercing people’s ears without their consent and I knew not to look at my watch if someone asked what time it was by the time I was 11.
The swagger that defined hip-hop was also the swagger that kept me from getting jumped on a regular basis, got me tested at least once a school year & kept me alive a few times. The street smarts of knowing what to look for, how to get away from it and how to interact when you had no choice definitely served me well over the years.
To this day, that upbringing lends me an advantage in some situations. I can read a con artist from a mile away & pick out a shoplifter with ease. I typically know how to beat them at their own game before they even realize I not only charged them for the drink they stole, but charged them double for it just on principal. I instinctively know when to step to the side in large crowds, try to always sit with my back to the wall & have always found myself aligned with people that would instinctively be standing right behind me when needed without even speaking a word.
Probably most importantly, I know how & when to speak the “right way” to the right audiences to get my point across whether that be a patent attorney from Yale, a 12 yr old rocking his brand new colors & even newer chip on his shoulder or a cat with a worn & faded VL tat at the base of his thumb.
I’ve done alright for myself. I’m alive, healthy and have held some good paying jobs. At the same time, that’s grading on the Florida curve. There’s so much more I could have done, so many opportunities I could have had and while I wouldn’t change my life for the world…. there are some thing I wish I’d done differently. I’ve definitely done some things I’m not proud of now and I most certainly have been lucky enough to have not been caught.
Now that I’m a father with three boys under my wings, it is inevitable that I compare my own childhood to what I envision for theirs. I think of opportunity missed, the errors made and the close calls narrowly escaped that would have drastically altered my life trajectory. I think about how inter-woven hip-hop was in all of that, whether cause, cure or both and I wonder….
As cute as it might seem to be able to sport a 5 yr old that can do windmill-90’s and read the illest wild style peice without thinking twice… is that really what I envision for my children?
As much influence as hip-hop has had in my life, and in as many ways as hip-hop has allowed me an opportunity to express myself, do I really want my kids spending time trading bragging rights about how hard their school was, how deep their crew is, or how many fights almost popped off but got squashed because they had the better stare.
Do I really want them spending time arguing over old school vs new school or whether freestyling means nothing written or not?
Do I really want them to feel obligated to pour a little out for their friends who aren’t with them anymore?
Do I really want them eventually realizing their too old to profit off the physical artform anymore and then realizing they don’t have any health insurance or 401k ?
Do I really want them taking the chance of having any one of those life-altering incidents NOT turn out for the better?
I find myself wanting for them, something completely different than what I had. I want them to assume college is the next logical progression in life. I want them to assume a part-time internship in the summer is what everyone does. I want them to appreciate the idea of busting your ass for an honest day’s wages and being able to be proud of what you do.I want them to realize that most of the time, earning your money taking short cuts requires 10 times the effort of having a normal job.
I find myself trying to pinpoint the EXACT moment I turned in my hip-hop card and started carrying my Ambercrombie & Fitch charge card, because that’s how it feels. It feels like I’m turning my back on hip-hop. I spent so many years trying to convince people that hip-hop wasn’t this big, steaming bowl of negativity and yet, when it comes to my own kids, screw that noise. I feel like a sell-out.
It’s at that point that the fear of being a parent sets in and I hear my grandmother saying in all her wisdom “you worrying about all this stuff for no reason, they’re gonna do the exact opposite of whatever you want them to do because that’s just what kids do, they spite you, that’s just how it works. All you can do is hope it doesn’t kill em.”
Easy for her to say, they didn’t have hip-hop in the 40’s.
~Disco Rob