In high school, one of my best friends and I drove to Sundown Mountain in the middle of a cold Iowa winter. The CD player in my car was a personal player connected to the tape deck. The burned CD was scratched to hell, so all the way there and all the way back we listened to ’93 ‘Til Infinity on repeat. I memorized all the lyrics on that trip. I can still rap most of them from memory.
During the spring of sophomore year, the same friend would drive his sister and me to and from school. Sometime in May, the weather encouraged us to roll down the windows and enjoy that ride home. It was an experience to savor. I was thankful it was finally hot enough I could smell the heat of the dashboard. Wyclef Jean’s Stripper Song bumped the trunk and rattled the rearview mirror as we cruised down First Avenue on our way home, pass the recently-busy Dairy Queen.
I was probably 17 around the time those memories were made. Since then, I’ve mostly listened to rap (with folk being my other preferred genre—both are focused on detailed storytelling). I was definitely exposed to rap before then. When I was in middle school, my other best friend’s older brother was a fan of The Wu-Tang Clan and The Fugees. My personal listening habits, however, were influenced by my dad’s tape and CD rack at home, which was stocked with classic rock and hair metal. As I began high school, watching MTV caused me to gravitate toward hard rock. But it was the influence of my friends and popular culture during sophomore year onward that turned my ears to rap. I’ve always tried to justify why I listen to hip hop music. At this moment, I think it’s funny that I even felt compelled to justify my musical preferences. But, there’s something intensely personal about the music that flows on your earbuds and into your mind, thoughts, memories, and demeanor. Music puts images into your head. Gives beats to your daily life. Creates your soundtrack to an extent. The lyrics become images and are sometimes as real as the memories from your own life.
A couple weeks ago I wrote:
Rap was escapist fantasy in which the safe, bored kid who grew up with protective parents in relative middle-class comfort yearned for an adrenaline rush, to feel what it was like to fight for survival, for something worth fighting for—his life.
That wasn’t true for me. I revised my thoughts the morning after I wrote that paragraph:
That’s a revisionist history. I actually listened to hip hop for the attitude and the beats. Rock was hardcore, angry, irreverent, depressive. Classic rock was cliché. Jazz was dated. Blues was sleepy. Pop was annoying. Hip hop was swagger, tongue and cheek. Hip hop made me feel cool.
Reading DECODED on a Kindle, my favorite line comes from Jay-Z’s track on Black Album Public Service Announcement: “I’m like Che Guevara with bling on / I’m complex.” I relate because in high school I drove an Acura Legend and bumped Busta Rhymes. People would be like What The Fuck is with that? Honestly, I didn’t know myself at the time that Nas, Busta, Jay-Z, Wu-Tang, and The Fugees were my Tolkien and C.S. Lewis.
In reality, I didn’t pay any attention to Jay-Z until last week. Sure, I liked his singles, 99 Problems, Izzo, and Hard Knock Life among them. But I lifted my roommate’s Kindle and found he had downloaded DECODED, a book I had first picked up at Powell’s when I was in Portland last December and mentally noted that I might like to read. The book is a selection of Jay-Z’s rhymes, interspersed with commentary and annotations. It’s been one of those quick reads that I can’t put down. I come home every night and it’s the first thing I do. I mostly eat up the commentary and annotations. I love Jay-Z’s story. Despite having actually listened to his hardcore gangster-focused album Reasonable Doubt, I didn’t realize he actually sold crack. I also didn’t realize how intelligent he is. The rhymes he writes are, at times, incredibly incisive. What I’ve gained from his book is a more nuanced understanding of rap history and culture, and more empathy for drug dealers, abusers, police, and mainstream culture that derides raps depiction and critique of the drug game.
I’ve checked myself, and in fact, Jay-Z is my C.S. Lewis. So I’mma “unfold a pack of bills, grab my balls then bet it all” because HOVA’s commentary is just as moral as the next.