“Hip-Hop Is Not Music”

I grew up around vinyl.

My dad had this old turntable hooked up to some massive speakers. He’d constantly tweak them to ensure the “right sound” complemented whatever was playing.

As a kid, I remember running my hand along the hundreds of records he’d spent his life collecting. I always liked the way the texture felt under my fingers.

I’d push and pull on them until he’d bark:

“Hey! What are you doing?”

“N — nothin’.”

He’d readjust the records, remind me of how I needed to be careful around them, then go back to whatever he was doing.

I remember wanting to touch the turntable so badly. I didn’t understand how it worked, but it was mesmerizing.

One day, I waited for him to get comfortable in his favorite chair with his latest edition of National Geographic magazine and slowly moved towards the turntable. He had put on one of his Boston albums and I decided I had to touch the record.

Like a soldier in trench warfare, I army crawled along the floor.

The speakers blasted “Foreplay/Long Time” as I kept one eye on him and the other on my objective. I got right in front of the turntable and stood up. The Boston album spun and I just watched as the logo circled for a beat.

This was it. I looked to see if he’d seen me in front of the turntable and reached my hand out. Before I could put my hand on the record, he snapped:

“You better not be messing with my stereo, boy.”

He didn’t even look up.

He just knew.

I stepped back and stared as the record spun. I watched closely as this tiny needle somehow made music come out of those oversized speakers.

It didn’t make sense.

I remember getting so annoyed. I wanted to touch the record while it spun, pull out all of the sleeves on the shelves to look at the covers, and examine the stereo from top to bottom.

My dad played bass in the high school band in the 70s.

He had this obsession with 1960s and 1970s era bands… Led Zeppelin, The Who, Pink Floyd, Deep Purple, Queen — the list goes on. He continued listening to these bands throughout my childhood, but he’d also have these random binges.

I’d hear Edvard Grieg’s “In the Hall of the Mountain King” blasting out of the speakers when he was working on something tedious, B.B. King’s “The Thrill is Gone” after a rough day at work, or some jazzy riff when he was trying to relax.

He modeled appreciation and experimentation of music, but there was always one genre that was off-limits:

Hip-hop.

In his eyes, hip-hop was just swear words, random sounds, and samples stolen from his favorite songs that had sloppily been put together to “vaguely represent a melody.”

It had subject matter that he believed was too inappropriate to play on any airwave.

“That’s not music.” he would say.

But maybe that’s why I love it.

If I could pick one trait that I am thankful I inherited from my father that supersedes the rest, it has to be my love for music.

He’s the reason I am a self-diagnosed audiophile and why I let that control my listening views today.

As ironic as it sounds, my journey with hip-hop started with my dad.

No… he didn’t raise me on Biggie or Pac or educate me on the four pillars of hip-hop, but he’s responsible for my exposure.

My dad used to take me to Borders Bookstore to find a new book and whenever we went, I always found myself perusing the music aisles.

It was one of the few places he’d let me roam freely when I was little.

At 7, I was always attracted to album artwork and Jay-Z’s Reasonable Doubt caught my attention on the preview rack.

The black and white photo. Jay dressed like an old-school New York gangster with a fedora hat pulled over his face. Cigar blazing and pinky ring gleaming.

Shit — I was curious.

It was something I had never seen before.

I threw the headphones over my ears and selected Jay-Z’s album from the preview player.

The first song, “Can’t Knock The Hustle,” starts with a skit. You can hear a heartbeat in the background while a drug dealer gives instructions on his upcoming cocaine shipment.

I had no idea what he was talking about at that age, but the accent sounded funny, so I kept listening. As the heartbeat faded out and the beat came in, Jay-Z started spitting and I was hooked.

Three tracks later and halfway through the “Dead Presidents II,” my dad pulled the headphones off my head and brought me back to earth.

“What are you listening to?”

I hadn’t moved for 20 minutes.

I never stayed in one place that long. He must’ve seen me with my eyes closed, deep in dopamine consumption, bobbing my head, vibing, and wondered what the hell is keeping this kid still?

He put the headphones over his ears and listened for a minute.

“Wh… what is this?”

His face turned sour.

“I don’t think you should be listening to this.”

My heart sank. I felt like a whole world had been opened up for me and it was about to be taken away.

I wanted more and I was determined to get it.

On the ride home, I asked: “Hey, dad?”

“Yeah.”

“You know that small boombox in the garage?”

“The one mom uses for her classroom?”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah…” he responded hesitantly.

“Can I borrow it?”

He took a minute to respond. He knew where this was going. I found something that was mine and he was weighing out whether or not he should encourage it.

“Alright… but just until mom goes back to school.”

As a father now, I think about these moments often.

What if he said “no”?

What if he tried keeping me from listening?

What if the only time I was going to be able to listen to hip-hop was when I snuck off in Borders?

When my wife told me she was pregnant, I was determined to give the world another hip-hop head. Experts say playing classical music during pregnancy improves memory retention for an unborn child.

I can only handle so much classical, so I came up with a compromise: I’ll play hip-hop that samples classical music.

I thought it was genius.

I used to play Nas’ “I Can” which samples Beethoven’s “Für Elise,” Xzibit’s “Paparazzi” which pulled from Gabriel Faure’s “Pavane,” and Atmosphere’s “1597” that sampled Beethoven’s “Symphony №3” to name a few.

It was classical music… with a twist.

What could go wrong, right?

A year and a half after my daughter was born, I came home to her doing all the dance moves to Justin Bieber’s “Sorry” music video.

It crushed almost every Gangsta Rap bone in me. I had dedicated all of that time to mold her into a hip-hop head and what I got was a Bieber Believer.

I remember catching myself.

“What the hell? That’s not mus — “

Shit.

I can’t say that.

It’s moments like those that you realize where you had been wronged in your own childhood and you have a decision to make as a parent:

A. You can say something that will influence your child’s direction.

B. You can keep your mouth shut and let them influence themselves.

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