Wop’s Wisdom: Losing and Loving Myself in Corporate America
In the immortal words of Sanaa Lathan in Brown Sugar, I question-“When did you fall in love with hip-hop?” For me it was around 2009. Prior to then, I liked hip-hop, often listened to it on the radio and bought the clean CD’s of the most popular rappers (when I was able to convince my mom to buy it for me). However, in 2009 and forward I discovered datpiff.com which led to hotnewhiphop, 2dopeboyz, complex, pigeons and planes and many more. I was immediately in love with what is now called the blog era of hip hop. This was a formative discovery and quick developing love for a 16 year old struggling to define himself. I slowly became known for my music taste and would burn cds and mixtapes for friends prior to the rise of iPods and the death of the physical copy. In fact, it was the death of the physical copy that really opened the musical world up. Access to music became much easier as we moved from paying for it (or begging our parents to pay for it) to stealing it off of limewire (I was more of a frostwire guy myself). This new access allowed me to pick, choose and define what I liked versus what I didn’t like. This act of defining my musical taste coincided with me defining who I was as a person. Sixteen is a formative and definitive age for most Americans as we begin to take the training wheels off and have our first taste of freedom. It is also the time in which every option is open as to who you can become. This era of hip hop was a safe space for me to explore and define, and that I did. I filled my 2002 Hyundai Elantra with Wale, Wiz Khalifa, J. Cole, Joey BadA$$ and an identity as a hip hop head.
Twelve years later I’m a 28 year old still struggling to define myself and the person I want to be. In those 12 years I have earned a few degrees and am now a corporate attorney at a large law firm. I am the lawyer that 16 year old me dreamed of, but I often wonder whether I am also the person that was in that dream. I have made quite a few changes to the man that I am to fit into a corporate America mold, as a Black man this can sometimes feel like selling out. I often wonder how I have commodified myself in “building a brand” at my firm and how capitalism has capitalized on me subtracting portions of myself for material additions. I have missed countless family functions and have spent time that I will never get back away from my wife and chained to a desk. When you spend that much time from the people who know you best, the line between “Work Me” and “Home Me” becomes blurred, as the time you spend as Work Me greatly supersedes the time spent as Home Me. 2021 was the year that I noticed that my love for hip-hop was waning, Work Me couldn’t find the time to listen to the new hip-hop albums, let alone the interviews, think pieces and gossip. Thus, I must amend Sanaa Lathan’s immortal words to the question- “When did you fall out of love with hip-hop?”
Hip-hop isn’t the first art form that I have fallen out of love with, I once was a poet. Poetry was everything to an angsty teenager like me, I went to slam competitions (never competed because I was too shy) and watched every episode of Def Jam Poetry that I could rip off of YouTube, (which hadn’t figured out copy written material quite yet). But hip-hop feels different. I wrote, listened to and lived poetry to put words to complicated feelings that I didn’t have a vocabulary for, so I crafted metaphors and similes. As my vocabulary grew, my need for poetry lessened. In some form of cosmic resolution (I promise this is still about music so I put in a music allusion) the last poem I wrote was my wedding vows, after a million poems about not finding romantic love and being misunderstood as a teen. I had found my vocabulary. But hip-hop is different. I still need it.
I still need the wisdom that is unique to this genre: the ancient philosopher and Nobel Laureate Gucci Mane once said “If you ain’t got no sauce then you lost, but you can also get lost in the sauce.” I had finally attained that sauce in becoming a successful attorney, but I was becoming lost in corporate America. In 2020, while the world was shut down and forced to take a break due to an epidemic, I started a blog which felt like the final step of years of being a hip hop head, getting in countless online and barbershop debates about top 5 dead or alive, Kanye’s antics, or whether the term “Femcee” was appropriate. I had things to say. But as the world opened back up, in my experience Corporate America had awakened from its nap more invigorated than ever. 2021 is the busiest I have ever been as an attorney and Work Me had only glimpses of what was happening in the hip-hop world. Those glimpses weren’t enough to force an opinion out of me. After 1 quarter in 2020 as the hip hop blogger I had always wanted to be, I now had nothing to say. What would 16 year old me, reading every comment on hotnewhiphop think about the person he had become, as I replaced the art form that metaphorically fed me and helped define who I was, with SEC comment letters and NVCA form documents? I honestly don’t know.
To be honest I am still struggling with this, but I am making a commitment to myself through hip-hop to preserve who I am. I am still reading those SEC comment letters, but I might have an air pod in listening to Wale’s new album (ya’ll see how apple and Wale are at he beginning and end of this? I might still be a poet lowkey). So sorry, I wish I could re-answer Sanaa Lathan’s question with a date or definitive moment this year (3k’s verse on Life of the Party is VERY CLOSE), but I truly can’t. I am still on a journey of re-discovery and while hip-hop is a step forward, I have a lot of Alex to find. Ultimately, this year I have been less focused on the “falling” and more focused on the “loving”, not only hip hop, but myself.