Heroes, Hip-hop, & History

Heroes, Hip-hop, & History

Heroes, Hip-Hop, and His-story

‘Take me out to the ballgame’

They were looking at pictures of Lil Wayne the rapper and I said, “That sure looks like a weave to me”. Right away, they answered, “ No! that’s his real hair.” A few minutes passed and I jumped in again with – “He’s got some nice teeth though”. “Actually – those are diamond grills in his mouth.” Finally I said, “Well he won’t last long in the business; next year you’ll be talking about another Lil Wayne, Little Kim, or Little Bow Wow”. To which my daughter answered, “Daddy, he’s already been in the business for 15 years; he’s a good rapper”. That’s when I said to myself – shut up man, you don’t belong inthis conversation. They were teenagers and they were having the time of their life. Still, I wanted to be a part of it.

I’d driven over 700 miles to get them to their promise land – the land of subways, skyscrapers, and bridges; of Brooklyn,Queens, Harlem, and hip-hop. For one fun filled week, they took a serious bite out of the Big Apple. But the sweetest bite of all was visiting the studio of the hit BET show,‘106 & Park’ in Manhattan. Each of the girls got to meet their favorite hip-hop host but more importantly– each got on camera.

You can just about imagine the mood they were in as we drove home. I wasn’t into hip-hop or anything, but I must admit, I was caught up in the excitement. Even though the show taped that Monday, it would not air until 6pm the following day; there was no way they were going to miss it. All that was standing between us and their national television debut were 14 hours and a 700 mile drive back to South Carolina. Without saying a word, we each knew what we had to do. They had to call up everyone they knew and tell them they were coming on T.V. (which they did) and I had to get them home as quickly as I could. So I decided to take an old shortcut – the Interboro Parkway.

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