Love Letter to the culture

Hey, I love you

Love letter to the culture

Tonight I can’t sleep. I’m in my feelings. Yesterday was a good day, but I can’t get this off my mind.

Forget all this tossing and turning; let’s rewind it a couple of months.

Back in early April, I heard of the song Rascal by Rmr through a Joe Budden Podcast exert on Youtube. They were hype about it, and I looked up the song. It was fire, and as asocial as I tend to be, I shared it with as many people as I could think of in the moment (admittedly, not a lot; like 2% of the cemetery of a contact list I have - what an effort that was). As I shared it with one of my best friend and the smartest person I know, he asked if he should laugh or cry first. I answered: “both”. Then, he agreed when I shared how the song had impacted me so much in the moment; to me, this was rap decoded.

Let me break it down. The melancolic country melody which seems at first to undermine the gangster portrayal actually highlights the despair and alienation behind it. I don’t see a difference in message between this song and Still Think I’m Nothing by 50 Cent. Being a renegade, an outcast raging against the machine, even when elevated as a badge of honor, is still deeply rooter in pain. Is that pain love, or only begging for us to give it to them?

There is a Jay Rock lyric that I mention... to nearly everyone discussing psychological issues with or around me. At the opening of the second verse on Is It Worth It, he offers an alternative to money as the root of all evil: “the power of p*ssy and scarred people”. Back to Rmr’s song, the chorus mentions how the “b*tches that broke [his] heart” fueled his hustle and his pimp juice with a feeling of revenge. (Pussy seems even more powerful in its denied access; is that why cultures and societies obsessed about restricting and regulating it? Questions for some other time.) But now that he got his money up and his shine on through his spirit of scorned competition - purportedly through (outdated?) drugs - he is finally respected and admired; he has fame, if not clout; he thinks they like him. Tell me, how many other thousand songs does that remind you? 

Long ago, women in my life have learned to decode my emotions through my playlists (not always to my advantage). Boys don’t cry, so the songs did it for me. Put together and actually listened to, they painted a picture of my fragile mental health rolled up in my emotionless attitude, my shield at the time. Nobody liked me, and that was OK, ‘cause I hated you too, [expletive]. It’s just me against the world and all I had to do is win, or die trying. 

My life clearly tells me why I relate to all of this. The question is, how come so many people relate, and have been for so long? For the last 40 years, Rap has been expressing the dark emotions tormenting the Black men who incepted it and still dominate it. From rebellion against the powers that be to grief and suicidal thoughts, the non-conscious rappers have expressed these feelings in their rawest forms and in over compensations, so I can’t blame put the blame on them when for not finding the exact words at the exact time the world finally realizes what made them so mad to begin with. Songwriting and poetry exist to paint pictures of what cannot be said simply and directly, it is  the sublimation of accumulated pain. With every step they take and every move they make, rappers have been demonstrating their anger, paranoia and coping mechanisms for the longest time; this is psychology 101, especially since some of them say it outright. “Got beef with the world, so it’s anybody K[iller]”, as B-Brazy puts it in True Flue Killer. While some are anxiously asking When Will They Shoot, others engage in escapism by finding fleeting meaning in glamorous consumerism, prideful drug abuse and vengeful sexual conquests. Your inability to see it doesn’t mean it’s not there; it just means you can’t see me.

Again, it ain’t easy for us but somehow, people can relate with it and still deny the status of victim to Black men. Dr. Tommy J. Curry explores this expertly in his book The Man-not (to those who know me: no, I’m still not done mentioning this book at every opportunity). That refusal of victimhood to Black men that Dr. Curry explores and documents so well is the reason the world couldn’t see the flags we’ve been raising. Some artists (and fans) will go to any length to exhibit how much they fit into the stereotype of the mythic supersexual and supermasculine buck. Even when they’re not built for it. 6ix9ine has put his whole family in danger by turning on the dangerous people he associated with for clout, and even that scare is not enough to get him to stop trolling for likes and let go of this persona. How is that not a mental issue? Maybe he should have pleaded insanity instead of snitching; that way he would have at least been true to the game, to that G code we glorify like a modern version of the mythic chivalry and bushido codes (to make it explicit, I consider them myths, all tree of them). Tupac set the trend by getting killed for being down for a set he wasn’t even from. Hell, Chris Brown is Michael Jackson on steroids but he still feels he needs to be a thuggish Piru to have an edge, and perhaps feel safe as well.

But as disturbing as all of this is, you all relate. Somehow, you don’t need to be Black in America, or even Black, or a man to be touched and influenced by this music born to intense pressures, like the diamonds on a rapper’s neck. Even the privileged elites are smoking weed, bumping our beat, while denying they made a living out of our misery. What’s the point of privilege if it doesn’t shelter you from the stresses and the paranoia intrical to our struggle? Hip Hop became mainstream not through its vanilla happy music (yes, it existed and still does), but through its gritty and disturbing expressions. How is that not symbolic of our mental health in this world, and an indictment of the way we live? To those hailing from “developing countries”, might these be red flags for things you may want your country to filter out of its development plans? Is it too late for you? Is it too late for us? Is total destruction the only solution? If we’re all hurt and run around hurting each other, who (or what) benefits from it? How can we turn it around and make it better?

Why are your scars so hard to see?

Why are your scars so hard to share?

I don’t want to be hurt anymore.

I don’t want you to hurt anymore.

I don’t want you to hurt me anymore.

I don’t want to hurt you anymore.

And yes, I still love you.

(Shit, I didn’t work in K.dot and Cole. Oh well. Anyway, Gaza to di world)

A. Ribeiro

*Bonus points if you decipher the playlist indirectly alluded to throughout the text. Bonus track: Black by Dave