Word: hip-hop
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...spring of 2004, I quit hip-hop. It wasn't the first time. Our relationship was stormy from the start. Hip-hop was my first literature, and it was Rakim, not Fitzgerald, who first made me consider writing. Still, all that macho blathering was a weird match for me, a kid with the self-esteem of an earthworm. So every few years, I'd bemoan the state of the music, rip my Public Enemy posters from the wall, unspool all my mix tapes and swear, "Never again!" That was mostly posturing--all it took was something arch and underground...
...then that spring when I walked into a bar with 50 Cent and Fabolous pumping at maximum volume, it felt like an audio beat down--everything I ever hated about hip-hop blaring at me in all its nihilistic glory. I left with an equally black and dismayed friend. This was absurd--two black men in their late 20s acting like two white women in their early 70s. We could not close the night on that depressing thought, so we headed to another party, where the DJ deftly mixed the White Stripes and Eurythmics. We sat down. We ordered from...
...went out with white music like a girl my parents didn't want me to date. I kept the volume low. I hid my new CDs. A new magic poured into me, mostly from Bjork and Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Unlike hip-hop, here was a music that I did not have to reconcile with the fact of being a father, music that had lyrics so surreal that they bent my head into knots. And although my greatest fear still was that a visiting friend would find my copy of Radiohead's The Bends, I was in love again and shocked...
...realized that I was connected by experience and history, connected in a way that didn't require recitations of Big Daddy Kane. But more freeing was the simple sense of disconnection--the ability to listen to White Music the way white kids must have listened to jazz, soul or hip-hop. I had no personal stake in the Arcade Fire. I did not have to debate the effects of Foo Fighters on young black youth. For the first time ever, I was just listening to music...
Daddy Yankee Rebel Roots: San Juan, Puerto Rico Reggae Sound: His Gasolina popularized reggaeton, a reggae-derived, Latin hip-hop. Island Cred: Last we looked, Puerto Rico was an island...