The Frazzled Scribe

My mom used to have a saying about procrastination that I won’t share due to the nature of the saying, but basically what it said was that when you procrastinate, you don’t really affect anyone but yourself. To be fair, there are probably many valid reasons for procrastination. Sometimes to do something at a particular time will be hurtful to someone else, perhaps the instincts that protect us and tell us to be cautious go into overdrive. Sometimes, as in my case, a person has more things to deal with than mental space in which to deal with it. So we procrastinate. We put things off until tomorrow and only deal with the critical things today. What, then, happens when that person’s life calms down, when there is time to deal with everything? If you’re like me, you hold on to your procrastinating ways.

More than two years ago I stopped attending church. I mostly stopped going because my schedule of work and school only afforded me one day to sleep in—Sunday—and I didn’t want to give that day up. I don’t think that was a wise decision, but it’s the one I made. After I graduated from school I wanted so badly to return to church, to that loving community that provided the consistency that I came to depend upon. So the first Sunday after graduation came and I didn’t go. I woke up on time. Got out of bed, looked in the mirror and promptly went back to sleep. Why? I have no idea except that I didn’t do it. For weeks and weeks I didn’t do it. That wasn’t the only incidence, though. Chores around the house, bills, everything in my life started to fall behind and that’s when I kicked into overdrive, becoming superwoman. I cleaned the house, paid the bills, ran all my errands and after it was all over I thought: this would have been so less stressful if I had done these things when they were supposed to be done. What I realized is that my brain was still in the “over-committed” mind set. I’d spent four years fitting life into the small empty corners of my work and school schedules. Even my children had to tuck in there neatly. Post-graduation, my life was the same way except I transferred my school time over to watching television or reading magazines.

In September I decided, quite out of the blue, that the children and I would go to church that Sunday. And we did. And we’ve attended every Sunday since. How did I make that change? I just did it. My mother has another saying, which I can share with you, that goes “if nothing changes, nothing changes.” The thing that is so wonderful about life is that you aren’t really locked into too much at all if you think about it. Humans are slaves only to their own habits. My habit of pushing things off to the side had to do with a lot of the other problems in my life. I didn’t have energy because I didn’t eat properly (which I always wanted to do but didn’t). I didn’t have fun because I never took the initiative to go out and find something to do. So one day I did. And I’m better for it.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not totally reformed. I have a box I’ve been meaning to FedEx for a month that is still sitting in my living room. Perhaps I’ll ship it out tomorrow. Today, I’m too busy trying to live.

It goes without saying to most who really know me that I’m a hip-hop fan. Ever since before I could remember, I’ve been bopping my head to something. From “you talk to much, homeboy you never shut up!” to “Rollin’ down the street smokin’ endo sippin on gin and juice…” I have been hooked.

I liken hip-hop in the soul of a ghetto native to food in the digestive system. It nourishes us, energizes us, gets us ready to face whatever is out there in the world. It strengthens us through its affirmations of life’s ills and the prospect of coming up out of poverty (or just plain hard situations). It tells us it’s ok to be angry sometimes, it’s also alright to want to release it all and just move to the beat placed in front of you.

Well, if hip-hop is the nourishment of the ghetto, then the state of hip-hop today is leaving us at a stage of pre-diabetes.

How many songs do I have to listen to about people’s cars and their chains and how many women they can seduce? About getting high? I mean for real. Used to be that images of sex and material things were metaphoric of larger concepts and I understood that. Didn’t always agree with it, but I understood it. Now it’s truly just “look how much I have and how much you don’t.” What happened to the community? What happened to rapping the stories that we all share? Last time I checked, my car has regular rims and I have never so much as breathed near a Maybach. So obviously all the stories ain’t our stories.

But what is so hard for me to digest about hip-hop is the implosion of the core values that defined it in the first place. It was a competition. A back and forth. A battle. But not a battle emaciate your opponent. It was a battle of respect. Of who had the best skills. Who could lyrically sleigh people? Now anything to set to a hip hop backtrack is hip-hop? Methinks Nas, although being ironic, might have a point. Is hip-hop dead?

Nowadays, I take my doses of hip-hop in smaller versions than I used to. Too much of it makes me unhealthy. Watching it on tv makes me think I should have a body that affords me the task of taking my clothes off and shaking my ass at a camera. It tells me that I should want a man for money and that I don’t need one for anything else. It tells me that my little pile of bricks isn’t worth mentioning because it doesn’t have forty rooms. So I take small, controlled doses of mostly older stuff (ahem…second generation old school, that is). Public Enemy before Flava-Flav became a spectacle. Leaders of the New School before anybody really knew who Busta Rhymes was. A little LL. Some Fresh Prince. Wu-Tang. And of course Biggie and Tupac. Jay-Z gets a pass because of his lyricism. These artists, and others like them that I haven’t mentioned, are not the pioneers who frontlined hip-hop, but they defined the standard to which I hold artists today and I believe they represent the spirit of what hip-hop is and should be.

Everything else is just sugar gumming up our systems.