Trapped in the Closet. Junk in the Attic.

I learned a writing activity from my teacher Jeff Kass that I still use when I teach. Students were instructed to begin each line of their poem with:
“Under my shirt is my….”

Then end that sentence with an important object from the past.

Jeff would ask his students to pretend that their pen was a shovel, and use it to unearth artifacts that we’ve buried and examine what they mean to us currently. While there are some funny red herrings from my past (Moon Shoes©, Jenco Jeans, Limp-Bizket Albums), in terms of Hip-hop I can specifically point to several objects that show my progression from a voyeuristic fan, to someone who understood some of the complexities that Hip-hop has to offer. I present to you a poetica, on the objects that helped me through hip-hop


Under my shirt is my Arm sleeve



When I first started playing basketball, my style of play must be described as biblical in scope. Not in that I make awe-inspiring plays that indicate a higher power (A la Lebron “King” James). Biblically in that I seem to be reinterpreting the plagues of Job. Turnovers, travels, bricks and missed layups; no matter how hard I tried I was constantly smote by the gods of basketball. While I now have tailored my play to resemble Job in my yeoman-like demeanor on the court, this was not how I first tried to cure my deficiencies. I first tried by fetishizing Black/hip-hop culture and using one of its talismans as a cure-all for what ailed me, I first tried by rocking the Allen Iverson Arm-Sleeve.

I would grant Marc this condition: Anyone who remains in this stage is a “tourist”. If you view certain items or elements of Black/hip-hop culture as a panacea, you do not understand what Hip-hop is all about. During my freshman year of college I made the erroneous assumption that if I dressed like A.I; I’d be able to play like him. Much like people who make the assumption that if you “dress hood”, you automatically become a “gangster”. I had to learn the hard way through many future basketball breakdowns that an arm-sleeve does not make a man. But at least I learned. Some individuals are still stuck at this stage, schizophrenic Cinderellas, wondering why their pumpkins aren’t turning into escalades. Wondering why the arm-sleeve doesn’t make the man.

Under my shirt is my hooded sweatshirt

Past the snake-oil insanity of Hip-hop fetishism, we reach the epicenter of most peoples’ relationship to hip-hop: adaptation. At this stage, rather than co-opting an identity, one adapts an identity that already exists, to help find their place in hip-hop. The difference between wanting to play like Allen Iverson, and thinking an arm sleeve will make you AI, is a huge one. After my hubristic basketball debacle, I reached out to the attire of a man who went through his own issues with Hip-hop: Eminem in 8 Mile

In the opening frames of Curtis Hanson’s film, we see Eminem arriving incognito, a hooded sweatshirt pulled tightly over a head staring at the ground, to attend a local battle-rap. For the audience this strikes us as Trojan-horsian, surely the greatest (White?) rapper of all time isn’t intimidated by this setting. The audience finds itself sucker-punched as Eminem takes the stage and is subsequently destroyed by a mediocre battle rapper. We watch dumbstruck as Eminem leaves, as he entered; hood over head, his gait shuffling, staring at the ground in a mix of fear and shame.
Witnessing that first scene I could not help but draw a parallel between Eminem’s failure and my own.

Despite his failure at battle rapping, Eminem is accepted up until he tries to peacock his way into hip-hop’s good graces. If I had approached the basketball court with more humility, instead of trying to recreate the flair of Allen Iverson, would I too have been accepted? I tried to answer the question by taking a new approach to hip-hop. I replaced the gaudy aesthetics of my arm-sleeve with the drab tones of Carhartt Hoodies. Waiting to return with something that wouldn't get me booed off the stage.

Under my shirt is my Hip-hop Album.

In my own classrooms, when I’ve taught Jeff’s writing workshop I’ve witnessed many powerful emotional moments. Girls breaking down over high-heels and boys angrily testifying on fathers over a baseball mitt. But the greatest satisfaction for me is when two students do poems about the same object and have completely different interpretations. It sends a chill down my teacher spine to realize that no matter how similar we are, we all have our own stories to tell.

After two years I emerged from the cave of my hoodie with my own platonic ideals of hip-hop. Though I had gone through a period as a peacock, and a recluse, I now found myself with my own ideas and interpretations. This culminated in the formation of a Hip-hop album.

Hip-hop has always been the genre most seeped in the element of story-telling, and that’s why it diffuses through as many demographics as it does. Fans of Allen Iverson pay to see him as much for his own narrative as the one he creates within a basketball game. Eminem’s fans emphatically cheer him on as he retells his history through rhymes. But hip-hop’s strengths are getting drowned out by us: the fans. We’re forgetting that while many of us come from similar backgrounds we each have our own stories to tell, and they don’t always mirror those we pay to see or hear. If under your skin is a: arm sleeve, or a hoodie, or a doo-rag, or a pair of timbs, that’s fine. But those objects alone don’t make you hip-hop. Hip-hop’s the only place where throwing your hands in the air is a sign that you agree with what’s going on.

I’m raising my hand to ask some questions.

Link to the album below:
Myspace.com/themrmess

Introduction to the Expat.

Expat in the Fitted Hat: A Tourist’s Guide to Hip-Hop.

To explain how I first got into Hip-Hop, you have to understand that I was a step-kid. After having my biological dad (who was Black, I look White, I’ll address that later) abandon us, Mom immediately remarried. They were two Arabs from different cultures, (Lebanese and Armenian), but both were tan, dark haired individuals who had come from families steeped in the nuances and idiosyncrasies of Arabic culture. Despite their differing ethnicities, both they and their families were able to coalesce into one unit, through their common traits. My two step-sisters were loved by my mom, and my dad tried to love me the best he could. But no matter how hard my mother, my stepfather and their families tried, there was no changing who I was. In the two families of dark-skinned, dark-haired Arabs, I was the only child with blond hair and white skin.

While the rest of the family tried to help me coalesce around their mutual Arabic identity, the mirror didn’t lie; I was a white kid. While the rest of the family wanted me to join into the cultural practices we shared, I always felt uncomfortable, a guest rather than a member, A tourist rather than a native. Because of the level of discomfort in my own family, I was never able to have a bed-rock to which I could anchor myself, and was forever adrift in the turbulent seas of youth. Gained weight all throughout high-school, constantly thought about suicide, started getting into drugs. Any activity to escape the fact that I had no identity was given a chance, no matter the consequences it had. After-all, how can you hurt a ghost? How can you hurt a person who has no identity?

Hope arrived through one such act of escapism, slam poetry.

People tend to view slam as the liberal equivalent of the soap-box preacher. In the hands of most youth, it’s a clumsy instrument for expressing yourself, like using trumpets as drumsticks. But I was fortunate in that the high-school I attended had one of the best poetry teachers in the country, Jeff Kass. Under his mentorship, my writing came off as intelligent and well-spoken. But despite success, I was never able to coalesce an identity around this medium. Though I went to some protests, and wrote angrily and passionately about social issues in my poems, that was mostly for the chicks. My heart never coursed with the rhythms of slam, it moved to a different beat. A beat I would soon discover when I graduated college and met my next mentor. A kid from Ann Arbor named Marc.

Due to his penchant for loving rock and rap music, coming from a wealthy family and a vocabulary that would rival Calvin’s or Hobbes’s, Marc was cursed in the eyes of his high school classmates: the black kid who acts White. For most of his adolescence Marc was a prisoner in his own life, unable to articulate who he was, since so many other voices were speaking for him (ironically telling him what he was, due to his articulateness). Much as slam poetry had given me a purpose without meaning, Marc was given an identity without a sense of self. He very easily could have chosen the blueprint that was assigned to him, and chosen this identity. Instead he chose a different blueprint, one designed not by his classmates, but by a sharp-tongued M.C. from Marcy Projects: Jay-Z.

When I met Marc two years later I was a college junior and still a lost insect. I gravitated to the bright lights of dynamic personalities in the vein of Jeff Kass; but like before I found myself burned and charred when I came in too close. I had joined a frat, become heavily involved in women’s studies, continued to do slam poetry, and aggressively used drugs, always lured in by exciting figures of these varying milieus. I assumed Marc, who I met as we were defending the course of action taken by the Black Panthers within an African-American lit class, would be just another of these figureheads. One more step into the quicksand of pan-identity and the lack of knowing who I really was. Marc however knew who he was at that point: A pro-Black Hip-Hop head. He did not worry about being a cipher, when he stepped in a cipher.

Much like why I joined a frat (the men seemed strong and confident) or why I was drawn to feminism (The women seemed strong and confident . . . . and attractive), I was interested in Hip-Hop because Marc seemed strong and confident. No more so was this evident than his attitude towards me. In my previous failed attempts at identity, I was ostracized oftentimes to the point of resignation, by the members of the groups I was trying to imprint on. “You don’t know what a Jaeger bomb is? . . . Fag!” “You don’t know who Susan Faludi is?. . . Imbecile”! But, rather than try to shelter me from the more nuanced “old-heads” of Hip-Hop who were within Marc’s social circle, Marc flaunted that I was an ingénue and let me apprentice on the fly. He took the attitude of a parent teaching a child to ride a bike. Even though I would oftentimes fall, He would always encourage me to get back up and keep riding. During those years I ate soul-food in Flint, Wore a Kofi to class, and had my beard lined up in Black-owned barbershops. For the first time in my life I had someone who believed in “the me” in me.

As a White kid who now dressed and spoke in the garb and diction of Hip-Hop heads, I constantly found myself under assault over my new identity. “You talk Black”, “what are you a Wigger?”, “hey White-boy freestyle for us”. Whites, Blacks, boys and girls all launched cannon fodder. Most often though the assaults didn’t come in a combative form but under a duplicitous one. “Tourist” was a phrase that Marc used when anyone didn’t pass his initial polygraph of being a genuine Hip-Hop zealot. Anyone who thought that Hip-Hop wasn’t a forum for giving a voice to the oppressed was a “tourist”. Anyone who thought that being “gangster” was integral to both their own image and the image of Hip-Hop was a tourist. Any cute liberal white girls, who liked Atmosphere, were also tourists. In my Hip-Hop armor of fitted caps, basketball jerseys and Timberlands I knew what was at stake. My identity itself a battle-ground for the valor of Hip-Hop.

Though Marc had finally given me an identity we eventually parted ways after graduation. The conflict over Hip-Hop’s valor eventually had become a civil war between us, turning brother against Brotha. Our fissure ironically coming over the context of the word “tourist”. I forcefully argued with Marc that not only was there room within Hip-Hop for all races/creeds to expand on what Blacks started but that anyone should be able to enjoy it. Even the backpackers/cuteliberals (who loved Atmosphere), even the rich-kids/potheads (who loved Outkast), Even the angry blondes (who loved Eminem). I was firmly in the camp that a “tourist” could eventually become a “native”. As a result of my stand I lost a great friend, but I gave birth to a new identity: Someone who stands up for what they believe in,

The creation of this blog stems from my activity for the next year: self-reflection. In the next two months I’ll be leaving to teach English in Changchun, China. For the first time in my life I’ll be completely cut off from both Hip-Hop and U.S. culture. In this vacuum, I want to examine the identity that I had in the past in the context of the one I’m still growing into. While the scope may be narrow, I believe that I can use my past to finally flesh out my future. In this blog for the next year, I will be someone standing up for what they believe in Hip-Hop. Looking at the principals I wish I had spoken up about while I was Marc’s foot soldier, Asking the questions I wish I had asked, being the man I wish I could’ve been in college . In my own life, I’ve always been a tourist. I’m hoping that in a foreign country, I can finally become a native. But no matter what while I’m in China I’ll always be.


The Expat in the Fitted Hat.