There are always generational disagreements, especially around art and aesthetics. And I get it. We all have our cultural contexts and the contexts of older or younger generations may feel at odds with ours. Not to mention how territorial we can be about the cultural things we consider integral parts of our lives.
My mom, who wasn’t the best mother by any stretch, but instilled in me an outsized love of music, was a huge reggae and lovers rock fan. The only thing we could ever connect on was our love of music. The only time there wasn’t music playing was when she was beating me, or, she was watching television. Outside of those times, music was practically another person living in our apartment. While she dabbled in the R&B and Soul music of the time, she preferred her music to come from the West Indian diaspora. Carlene Davis, Horace Andy, The I-3s, Bob Marley, Hortense Ellis—the only times I ever saw my mom smile was when she hooked up with another guy who’d turn out to be horrible for her, and when she received shipments of music from Jamaica and the UK. Her relatives would send her these audio care packages and she would…change. She’d put on some Desmond Dekker and it was like she had undergone an exorcism. She’d ask me about my day, if I had any friends, how I was doing with my studies. But as soon as the music ended, the demons came roaring back in and she’d revert to being enraged at me for the smallest things.
And like all good little traumatized children, the more it seemed she hated me, the more I tried to connect with her. The more I tried to turn her into the mother she wasn’t capable of being.
It was the 80s and hip-hop fundamentally changed the core of who I was. I’d argue, no hyperbole, that if it wasn’t for rap music and hip-hop culture, I’d probably be dead or jailed up. Hip-hop was more than just music. It was culture, and community, and a level of freedom that I didn’t know existed. There was something about the way hip-hop operated as the proto-internet that isn’t discussed enough.
We got our style, our language, knowledge of geography, and even our politics from hip-hop. And, yes, we did pick up particular strands of misogyny and homophobia as well, but as we got older, many of us have been able to excise these toxic manifestations out of an otherwise liberatory culture. Hip-hop jumpstarted poor kids dream machinery. Granted, much of the early hip-hop music was nonsensical (Rapper’s Delight, anyone?), or willful engagement with hyper-materialism, but it was transformative. Us project-dwelling kids learned how to tell and appreciate stories, stories that elevated us out of our dire circumstances. Hip-hop (despite the…exaggerated experiences emcees presented to us) gave us aspiration—it confirmed that our current situations didn’t have to be permanent. We could move up and out, or we could stay put and be loyal to our hoods/blocks/streets. At least we were exposed to options, options that many of us didn’t know existed. That’s why I’m overly-delighted that there is a strong hip-hop pedagogy movement amongst so many educators. When you emphasize the basics: creativity, improvisation, collective art-making, DIY, language acquisition, clarity of thought—hip-hop is a near perfect pedagogical tool. And while I didn’t have the words or the insight to express this to my mom, I did have a mixtape my uncle, Maurice, made for me.
I remember this tape as clearly as I’m typing on this tablet. It was a TDK Normal Position Type 1 D30. It was black and white with grid lines on the outside of the reels. The insert was covered in ornate graffiti. My uncle could always draw his behind off, but when he shifted into graffiti writing, he went into overdrive. His work was brilliant. When I carried that tape with me, it was like carrying a pocket-sized Sistine Chapel. I felt special that my uncle decided to bless me with his considerable artistic gifts and give me a mixtape with Marley Marl Scratch by Marley Marl, Run-D.M.C.’s Can You Rock it Like This, Needle to the Groove by Mantronix, Roxanne Shanté’s Bite This and so many more bangers on it. Out of all the gifts I’ve received in my entire life, I treasure this above all others. Looking at the graf and listening to the music elevated me out of my abusive household and poverty—which is also abusive. The tape gave me hope and direction and I thought it would do the same for my mom.
It was quiet in our house. The quiet I’d learn to dread. If I was too loud, or otherwise disturbed the mood, I’d be in for a beating. I figured my mom was a better person with music playing, so let me put on some music. I took out my black Panasonic cassette player that I…liberated from the AV room at school, slipped the tape in, and pressed play.
Momma, listen to what Maurice made me. This is rap!
The look of utter disgust and offense on my mom’s face. She just went in, talking about how this wasn’t music and how it was going to make me stupider than I already was. I explained that Kool Herc, an architect of hip-hop, was from Jamaica and how hip-hop’s expressive foundation was rooted in Jamaican culture (facts Maurice drilled into me), but this didn’t matter. She forced me to turn it off and hand the tape to her.
Honestly, I would’ve rather died than give up that tape.
In one of my (very few) moments of open defiance, I refused. Her anger increased and she tried to snatch the tape player from me. I dodged her attempt, and she lost it. As she beat me, I just kept repeating the songs in my head. They brought me comfront and allowed me to disassociate from the abuse I received. When she was done, I went to my room, barricaded my door, brought the tape player under my pile of blankets and listened to that tape until I fell asleep, too afraid to eat or go to the restroom.
The next morning, I heard Marcia Griffiths playing and felt safe enough to come out of my room. My mom looked at me as if nothing had happened the previous night, but pointed to her ear as if telling me to listen. Despite how my mom treated me, I’ve been so lucky not to associate her music with her violence towards me. In fact, I adore reggae and lovers rock, along with minto, rocksteady, and ska. I also love punk, new wave, hardcore, and drum and bass, jungle, and hip-hop. But I knew that this wasn’t something that I could share with my mom.
This is why, as soon as my wife told me she was pregnant, I was committed to all types of art and music being part of the fabric of our family. I couldn’t wait to see what kind of music my child would gravitate towards, and how she’d express herself culturally. Would she rap, or dance, or draw, or beatbox—what would a GenZ hip-hop fan be like?
Turns out, I wouldn’t ever find out because my daughter has gone in a very different aesthetic direction.
A very different aesthetic direction.
My daughter (as I write this, is a couple of months past her 14th birthday) came of cultural age during the rise of COVID. Granted, she was heavy into the whole manga, boba milk tea wave, but watched the film and television we chose, and listened to the music we played. Then, she got a phone. She got access to YouTube. Everything changed.
One Saturday we were listening to music. This used to be our regular routine. I’d pick an album for Saturday night, and we’d listen to it from beginning to end and then I’d explain why I thought the album was worthy of listening to, then we’d have a conversation about it. I cherished those times. The older she got, the more complex and interesting questions she would ask. Those questions forced me to reevaluate the music, deepening my affection for it.
I started doing “New Music Saturdays” because I wanted to make sure she had a well-rounded musical education. Since music was such an important part of my life, I wanted her to experience the same thing. And she is, but not in the way I wanted, but have now come to respect.
We had just finished listening to Ms. Dynamite’s, A Little Deeper” and I was in my full “daddy is talking too much, again” mode. I’m explaining why this album was just as important as Lauryn Hill’s, “The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill” and how, despite some preachy elements, it was the ultimate love letter to Black and Brown girls living on council estates. I asked her what she thought and she hesitantly said, “It’s great. I really like her voice… Can I play something?”
That had never happened before. And I felt like a horrible dad in that moment because I never considered that she would have something to share with me. I nodded and she paired her phone to the speaker and played, “Sugar We’re Going Down” by Fallout Boy.
I was stunned. What the hell was this? This pop-y white boy shit was being played in my house? My musical biases came leaping out like a jack-in-the-box. Not my proudest moment.
She had to have seen the disgust rippling around my face, and I saw her slump. Not so much slump, as slowly implode. She unpaired her phone. Seeing her that way, knowing I hurt her, it broke me. I hated the part in me that I recognized as coming from my mother. I asked her to connect her phone back and asked her if there was any other music she’d been digging on.
That smile. Her smile put my heart back together. Her’s, too, I think. Whenever I’m sad or depressed, I think of how she looked in that moment and life becomes that much more manageable.
She played things I’d never heard before, some I never knew existed. What surprised me the most was that she loved heavy, loud, screaming music. And emo. We all like what we like, but how did this become part of her cultural influences? I knew I never exposed her to any of this.
I was truly intrigued, so, I asked her. She launched into a whole TED talk about YouTube and why it was important to her. She explained to me that out of curiosity she played a video because she liked the way the guys were dressed on the thumbnail. The lyrics were at the bottom of the screen and the poetry in them spoke to her in a way that nothing else had. The lyrics, plus the comments section, made her feel as if she were part of a community. She adored the humor and the support she read in the comments. With a little less enthusiasm, she explained that she didn’t feel the same sense of support in the comment sections of hip-hop videos. There was a level of aggression and oneupmanship that she found, frankly, disturbing.
Facts, though. I couldn’t argue against that.
I then asked her about the content of some of the bands she played me: Paramore, My Chemical Romance, Black Veiled Brides, Palaye Royale, Falling in Reverse and gently asked if she was feeling depressed. She expressed that she did feel, “sad sometimes, but not to the point that I want to hurt myself. But I do get sad and anxious, and all this music helps me to understand what I’m feeling and that I’ll get through it. Sometimes even how I can get through it.”
Gut punch.
I had no idea she was dealing with these big emotions. I knew she was a little melancholy, and I was always concerned that she was almost painfully shy, but I didn’t know the depth and complexity of her feelings. But now she had found an emotional Rosetta Stone to help her translate all she was experiencing. And I’ve never been more thankful, about anything. I was also thankful that she chose to share a part of herself with me.
If your child invites you into their world, you graciously and humbly accept the invitation and you do whatever is necessary to enter. You enter, you shut up, and you let them lead. You let them show you what they deem important. You give them your undivided attention. As a parent, you should never be the reason your kid lacks the ability to be open and vulnerable.
Fact is, they never had to invite you into their world in the first place. Fact is, if you’re raising your child in a healthy way, as they get older, they won’t need you. They may want to be around you, but they’ll be so ready and able to support themselves, find the support they need, that the raising part of parenting is done. Now you’re riding the bench, just waiting to be called in. So, while they still depend on you, you have to be there. You have to be there on their terms. Not all the time, though. Sometimes our kids will bring some silly shit to us and we have to squash it. But most of the time, they want our attention and participation.
Our children are trying to find their way in a world that is changing and scary and daunting and like nothing we’ve experienced. Think about it, we and our children are from different eras, with different relationships with and to technology, and wildly different social and cultural mores—not to mention how we receive and transmit culture.
Of course there’s going to be friction. But sometimes friction is good. It can sharpen you both. It can give you insights into each other that you may have never had, if not for the friction. Or tension. Or the butting of heads like bull elks on a nature show.
As I was still getting over the idea that my daughter was getting her social culture online, during a pandemic—I struck me, despite how seen she felt, the shit must be a lonely experience. While I’m not one of those people who believe that online communities and interactions have no value, I’ve yet to be convinced that they can hold a candle to meat-space interactions. I am willing to be convinced, though. I recognize in my daughter the need for a varied community, especially since she will be entering high school in the fall of ‘22, just having spent her entire middle school experience bouncing from virtual, to in-person, to high-flex, to who the hell knows. She’s had zero peer-relations consistency. Now, she’s meant to leap from a small private school experience to a huge, public high school one? I know she can do it, but I’m a bit worried as she’s lost two years of consistent social practice. She says she’s been okay with how things went, but I can tell there is a longing.
As she continued to share her musical life with me, I (arrogantly) grieved for her loss. I grieved that she had any and everything at her fingertips; she rarely had to wait for anything, and if she did, she could amuse herself with all the videos, lip synchs, and video essays about the band, song, whatever it was she was waiting for. No digging. No waiting. The music was on all the time. It made me wonder how transient this made the culture she was taking her first few steps in.
I shifted into stereotypical dad, ‘back in my day’ mode and explained to her the absolute magical experience of New Music Tuesdays (NMTs).
I detailed how me and my friends went to the record shop, met other friends there, discussed all the new joints that dropped that day, a few new friends and rivals, and then went all together to cop a slice from the corner pizza shop. She has no idea what that life was like. Not even a reference point. I have multi-decades friendships with people who I met at record shops.
When my over-talking daddy whirlwind ran out of steam, my daughter smiled and said, “Oh. Kinda like Hot Topic.”
What. The. Absolute. Eff?
For those of you who don’t know, Hot Topic is a staple store in most shopping malls. It has been derisively called: ‘insta-punk,” “mall punk,” “poser’s palace,” and my favorite, “Satan’s Recruiter,” among others.
What it is, is a one-stop-shop for…damn near everything. Most of the stores are laid out the same way: You walk in and a punk-ish looking person greats you. One one side is all manner of anime and manga paraphernalia—except for books or films/shows, on the other side is a section dedicated to a huge pop-culture franchise: Harry Potter and Stranger Things have had surprising longevity. The cash wrap is dead center of the shop. There are all kinds of trinkets and snacks (mostly Asian: Pocky, Yan Yans), and buttons/pins directly in front of the cash wrap. On the walls there are t-shirts. Oh, so many t-shirts. There is really no rhyme or reason to the selection. Nirvana and Green Day and Doja Cat and Paramore. The range moves from pop-punk, to nu-metal, to what passes for hip-hop, emo, goth..it can be overwhelming.
Then there is the fashion. Tartan overalls, cropped shirts and plaid mini-skirts, oh-so-many dangling chains—it’s like if Tim Burton was in charge of a fashion house. It’s the Rainbow Coalition of fandoms. The U.N. Of subcultures.
And this isn’t all.
There is also, as my daughter and her friends put it, a ‘witchy vibe.’ Never in my life, outside of one of those bookstores, have I every seen so many things dedicated to the supernatural. Shirts, coats, and bags with Ouija boards drawn on them; you get a pentagram, you get a pentagram, you get a pentagram; spell books, it’s kind of amazing, really. I’d argue that Hot Topic has been instrumental in the wave/resurgence/introduction of contemporary witchcraft, interest in the supernatural, that seems to have kids in my daughter’s generation on lock. I’ve seen parents flip out on Hot Topic staff members, accusing them of enticing their children to become involved in all manner of evil. I’m less worried about enticement to evil than I am worried about why so many bands represented in the stores, talk about self-harm as a virtue, and not something to seek help for. This is why I talk to and with my daughter. I’m not one of those parents who will restrict things from my kid. My philosophy is if she is old enough to ask the question, she’s old enough to receive an answer, in an age-appropriate way.
I asked her to explain how she drew that particular parallel.
While I won’t provide a verbatim accounting—as we got really deep and personal and her story is her story to tell—I will provide the gist.
With an earnestness I’ve never seen, she told me what it was like to see people, “people who like the same music and other stuff I like, all in the same space, being awkward around each other. When I’m there, I don’t feel so alone. As soon as I walk in, it feels like I have community that’s not restricted to being online. I’ve met some really wonderful people there. And the people who work there are always so nice. They have the stuff me and my friends like.”
There’s a moment in most parent’s lives when we realize that we’re the asshole. Maybe not a 24/7 one, but we’re a major asshole in a couple of areas in our parenting. Mine was culture. I have a very inflated sense of my aesthetic tastes and I wanted to curate the perfect aesthetic diet for my daughter. My wife and I make sure she eats well, and I figured I’d do the same with her (pop) culture diet. In retrospect, I was heavy-handed and it is no wonder she emo’d in the opposite direction.
I get that the online culture portals help anybody find anything anywhere, but there's something about the record store that was just golden.
But my daughter is having her own golden moments and she deserves to.