Fear Of A Black Man
I saw my cousin the other day. We were helping to move a mutual friend into his new apartment. I hadn’t seen him in over a year.
He asked me when I would ever purchase that beat machine I said I was going to buy when I was 18. Back then, we were undiscovered hip hoppers: I made the beats, he did the raps. In truth, I was adequate and he sucked. But, that didn’t stop us from dreaming.
remember as teen-agers ( I was four years his senior) sitting in my bed room, a beat bursting through a cheap Home Shopping Club tape player, both of us trying to do freestyles. I stored my tapes in a “Return of the Jedi” lunch box, most on yellow, Tonemaster tapes.
IWe thought we were heading somewhere, ultimately staying, some seven years later, in the same damn place. The last time we met, he came over to my apartment with a tape of us both rapping on it. I was living with three other dudes at the time who were in my same boat: broke, lonely and hungry.
I was embarrassed that he wanted to play our shitty-ass material. I think we made the tape when I was 16. That was when I was in my gangster-Black Panther-Urban Jesus phase.
In one rap song, there was a diatribe about the white man screwing us over; the black woman, who wouldn’t let me screw her over; and the world, which was going to hell in a handbasket because it comprehend the love of Baby Jesus.
I remember at the time being proud because the songs actually sounded decent, some of the few that actually did. But, when I listened to the lyrics, I couldn’t help but notice that we sounded like idiots.
P.S. I thought about including this crappy little rap song we did called Fear. I posted it on MP3.com back in the day. But I decided against it. I’m not ready to confront that level of ridicule just yet. But here are some of the lyrics, as accurate as I can remember them:
They call me a Black Man
Understand if you can
A Brother with A Full House handBorn in the land, the land of reality
Fatally, you’ll see
damage is an ultimate possibilityFree from a white man’s lynching
The devil’s on a mission
to end our traditions
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