By Shereem Herndon-Brown
I do not know if I am getting old or just bland, but when I am around my son, I am starting to disassociate myself with the music of my youth.
I love hip hop: the music, the culture, the hunger that helps me to keep going. Being from Brooklyn, I am a Big Daddy Kane devotee, and it was him who first uttered “Young, Gifted and Black” in a rhyme. My appreciation for Kane led to EPMD, A Tribe Called Quest, Smif -n- Wessun and countless others who spun tales about the depravation of the metropolis.
I called their struggles and triumphs my own, and I used their words to carry me to wherever I wanted to go. But nowadays, I am not hearing the same kind creativity or wordsmanship. Too often I am in my car and I am relegated to listening to today’s wannabes who want to talk about being hustlers. Little man, you’re 12 (or 40) and if you are really “hustlin'” the way you claim to be, you wouldn’t be stupid enough to talk about it. At least Jay-Z was clever, innovative and even a bit remorseful.
I cannot stand it when I am with my kid and even some of my favorite artists of now or yesteryear curse or say something derogatory that I know I am going to get a question about from my 6-year-old. If we are listening to local radio in Atlanta, I have to subject myself to the 145 lb. sexpots who can’t rhyme and will be broke and irrelevant in four years. Can’t do it. When I put on Sirius XM radio and want to rock out to Backspin or Shady 45, I know I can filter the message, but my son cannot.
I am not a hip-hop elitist who wants to censor music. Artistic integrity is on the artist. I just want to share hip-hop with my kid. After all, like jazz, rock, and R&B before it, hip-hop is OUR music. It inspires us, makes us laugh and even occasionally cry. I do not want my kid only to have to hear the instrumentals and I cannot do the Disney channel or the Fish anymore.
So what am I to do? Buy the clean versions and keep them on my iPod? Maybe. Or take hour-long trips to go get gas just to inhale the music that makes me think about being 15 or 22? I so desperately want to rhyme along with my people but I am afraid of what their words will do to my impressionable kid. I know it’s my duty to teach him — I do that — but music is an excellent teacher too and for the soundtrack of his life, I want him to have the same love and appreciation for homegrown Black music as I do.
Since I do not know which new rappers I can stomach, I will force feed him the good stuff: Kweli, Common and (a few) doses of Kanye should inspire. I will help him to sing along to “The Fire” off The Roots most recent album. My son will know what a Midnight Marauder is and that it was brother Q-Tip who said: “Quitters turn to losers and losers are forgotten.”
Committed to the wife he dotes on and the son he cherishes, Shereem Hereem-Brown is the mastermind behind the Black Family Man blog. Originally from Brooklyn, he currently resides in Atlanta, trying hard to help his wife to realize her dream of being a stay-at-home mom for their six-year-old son and all of the other children they may potentially have. Look out for his upcoming book, Do the Dishes and Other Ways to Make Your Wife Happy, due out this summer.