by Kate Stewart
“Don’t blame Darla.” Grip’s cheeky grin foreshadows whatever outrageous thing he’s about to say. “Blame all this Chocolate Charm.”
My laugh comes out as a snort.
“I’m guessing that’s a self-proclaimed moniker.”
“I see you’re immune to it, but you do catch more bees with honey.” Grip offers this sage, if unoriginal, advice. “Or in my case, with chocolate.”
“Where’d you read that? The Player’s Guide to Catching Bees?”
“No, I learned it the way I learn most things.” His eyes dim the tiniest bit. “The hard way.”
I’m not sure what to say, so I don’t say anything for a few seconds, and neither does he. It should be awkward, but it isn’t. Our eyes lock in the comfortable silence.
“So before Darla buzzed through,” I pause for effect, waiting for his quickly becoming familiar grin. “You were telling me about the School of the Arts. You’re a musician?”
“I write and rap.”
“As in you’re a rapper?”
“Wow, they said you were quick,” he answers with a grin.
“Oh, sarcasm. My second language.” I find myself smiling even though it’s been a crappy day with too many complications and not enough food. “So you rap. Like hoes, bitches, and bling?”
“At least you’re open minded about it,” he deadpans.
“Okay. I admit I don’t listen to much hip-hop. So convince me there’s more to it.”
“And it’s my responsibility to convince you … why?” he asks with a grin.
“Don’t you want a new fan?” I’m smiling back again.
“I just doubt it’s your type of music.”
“We’ve known each other all of an hour, and already you’re assigning me ‘types’. Well, I’m glad you have an open mind about me,” I say, echoing his smart-ass comment.
I halfway expect him to volley another reply at me, but he just smiles. I didn’t anticipate conversation this stimulating. His body, yes. Conversation, no.
“So are you any good?” I ask. “At rapping, I mean.”
“Would you know if I were good?” he counters, a skeptical look on his face.
“Probably not.” My laugh comes easier than most things have today. “But I might know if you were bad.”
“I’m not bad.” He chuckles. “I think my flow’s pretty decent.”
“Sorry,” I interject. “For the rap remedial in the audience, define flow.”
“Define it?” He looks at me as if I asked him to saddle a unicorn. “Wow. You ever assume you know something so well, that it’s so basic, you can’t think of how to explain it?”
“Let me guess. That’s how it is with flow.”
“Well, now that you asked me to define it, yeah.”
“Just speak really slowly and use stick figures if you need to.”
Rich laughter warms his eyes. “Okay. Here goes.”
He leans forward, resting those coppery-colored, muscle-corded arms on the table, distracting me. I think I really may need stick figures if he keeps looking this good.
“A rapper’s flow is like …” He chews his full bottom lip, jiggling it back and forth, as if the action might loosen his thoughts. “It’s like the rhythmic current of the song. Think of it as a relationship between the music and the rapper’s phrasing or rhythmic vocabulary, so to speak. You make choices about how many phrases you place in a measure. Maybe you want an urgent feeling, so you squeeze a lot of phrasing into a measure. Maybe you want a laid back feel, and you leave space; you hesitate. Come in later than the listener expects.”
“Okay. That makes sense.”
“And the choices a rapper makes, how well the current of that music and his phrasing, his rhythmic vocabulary, work together, that’s his flow. Cats like Nas, Biggie, Pac—they’re in this rarefied category where their flow is so sick, so complex, but it seems easy. That’s when you know a flow is exceptional. When it seems effortless.”
“Now I get that.” I give him a straight face, but teasing eyes. “I can see how you won your rap scholarship.”
“Rap scholarship! It sounds so weird when you say it.” He sits back in his seat, a smile crooking his lips. “I actually went for writing. Rapping was kind of Rhyson’s idea.”
“Rhyson?” Shock propels a quick breath out of me. “What does he know about rap?”
“I’m guessing more than you do.” His smile lingers for a second before falling away. “I wrote poetry. That’s how I got in. Rhyson was looking for a way to translate his classical piano sound to a more modern audience, so I helped him. And he convinced me that all these poems I had could be raps. The rest is history.”
“So you have an album or something?”
“Not yet. Working on a mix tape.” He clamps a straw between his teeth. “Also working on paying my rent.”
“Thus the Deejaying?”
“Deejaying, sweeping floors for studio time, writing for other artists, doing stuff with Grady.” A careless shrug of his shoulders. “Whatever comes, I do.”
“You write for other artists?”
“Yeah.”
“I don’t get it. Rappers don’t write their own stuff? I thought it was so personal and rooted in where you’re from and all that.”
“To not know much about hip-hop, you have definite ideas about it,” he teases.
“You’ll find I have definite ideas about everything.” I chuckle because it’s true. “Even things I know nothing about.”
“Ah, so that’s a family trait.”
He’s so right. Rhyson and I are both obstinate know-it-alls.
“Apparently.” I nod for him to continue. “You were saying.”
“So hip-hop’s like any other genre. There are some guys who write everything themselves, and it’s like what you’re describing. But a club’s a club’s a club. Love is love. Anybody can write it. So sometimes guys like me, who are kind of writers first, we help.”
“Would I know any of the songs you’ve worked on?
“Probably not.” He grins. “Not because they’re not on the radio, but because I doubt you listen to those stations.”
“You’re making a lot of assumptions about someone you just met. Maybe I know all of them. Try me.”
He rattles off four songs.
I know none of them. Dammit.
I’ll have to eat crow, which if Darla doesn’t get my scallops, I might gladly do.
When Darla returns and confirms that they can provide my scallops, I place my order. The hurried meal I ate this morning is a distant memory, so I dive in as soon as the food arrives, working my way methodically through every morsel on my plate. I eat the scallops so fast you’d think I sprinkled them with fairy dust to make them disappear.
“Remind me to keep you fed.” Grip takes another bite of his burger.
“Very funny.” I glance up sheepishly from my empty plate. “How’s their dessert?”
We share a slow smile, and I can’t remember when I’ve felt this way with another person. Laughing at each other’s jokes, comfortable with each other’s silences, calling each other out on our crap.
“Grip.” A tall man with dark brown skin and eyes to match stops at our table. “I thought that was you.”
“What’s good, Skeet?” Grip stands, and they grasp hands, exchanging pats to the back. “Haven’t seen you in months. Congrats on the new album.”
“Man, thanks.” Skeet’s eyes flick to me. “Who’s the little shawty?”
The little shawty? Does he mean me?
Grip catches my eye, apparently finding it funny.
“This is Bristol,” he answers with a laugh. “Rhyson’s sister.”
“Rhyson, Rhyson. Who’s …” Skeet frowns for a second before he remembers. “Oh. That white dude who plays the piano?”
Not exactly how I would describe one of the greatest living classical pianists, but we can go with that.
“Yeah, that’s him.” Grip’s smile appreciates the irony of Skeet’s descriptio
n. “Bristol’s visiting for the week.”
“Nice.” Skeet smiles politely before turning his attention back to Grip. “What’d you think of the album?”
Grip screws his face up, a rueful turn to his mouth.
“That bad?” Skeet demands.
“It was a’ight,” Grip concedes. “Honestly, I just know you have something better in you than that.”
“Well, damn, Grip,” Skeet mumbles. “Why don’t you tell me what you really think?”
“Oh, okay. Well, that shit was whack,” Grip says.
“Um, I was being sarcastic,” Skeet says. “But since we being honest …”
“We’ve known each other too long to be anything but honest. It just felt kind of tired.” Grip sits, gestures for Skeet to join us. “Who’d you work with?”
“You know that guy Paul?” Skeet sits and steals one of Grip’s fries. “They call him Low.”
“That dude?” Grip sips his beer and grimaces. “Figures.”
“Well you ain’t been around,” Skeet says defensively. “I didn’t know if you was still down or whatever.”
“Am I still down?” Irritation pinches Grip’s face into a frown. “I’m the same dude I’ve always been. I’m working with anybody who can pay, so don’t use that as an excuse.”
“Right, right, but you know how some of these niggas go off and get all new on you.”
My eyes stretch before I have time to disguise my surprise when he uses the N-word so freely in front of me. I squirm in my seat, sip my water, and try to look invisible. That is one of the worst words in the English language, and I would never use it. I’ve never said it, and I never will. It’s hard for me to understand how people of color use it for themselves even casually.
“Well, I ain’t new.” Grip pulls out his phone. “Let’s get some dates down to hit the studio. See if we can write some stuff for your next one.”
While they set up studio time, I happily consider the dessert menu. I was totally serious. It feels like I haven’t eaten in days, and I have room for more.
“Sorry about that,” Grips says once Skeet is gone. “But the struggle is real. Don’t work, don’t eat, so I work whenever the opportunity presents itself.”
“Do you really think his album is weak, or did you just say that to drum up business for yourself?”
“Oh, no. The shit’s weak as hell.” Grip’s deep laugh rolls over me and coaxes a smile to my lips. “I don’t lie, especially about music. It’s the most important thing in my life. It’s my gift, so to me it’s almost sacred.”
“Now I understand how you and Rhyson became so close,” I say wryly. “Music always came first with him. Or at least it used to be. I don’t pretend to know him anymore. Not that we’ve ever been that close.”
It’s quiet for a moment while I pretend to read the dessert menu.
“You love your brother,” Grips says softly, drawing my eyes up to his face. “I know guys like us aren’t easy to put up with. We lose ourselves in our music. We neglect everything else in our lives, but don’t give up on him. Cut him some slack. He’s working his ass off.”
“I guess I’m not doing a good job of hiding how hard this is, huh?” I manage a smile.
“Well, I’m also really perceptive.”
“Not to mention incredibly modest,” I reply.
Laughter comes easily to us again, and something about the way he’s considering me across the table makes me think it surprises him as much as it surprises me.
“I am perceptive, though.” Grip takes one of the last bites of his burger. “Like your face when Skeet—”
“Dropped the N-word in front of me like it was nothing?” I cut in, knowing exactly where he’s going. “Yeah, like what’s up with that? I don’t understand anyone being okay with that word.”
Grip looks at me for a moment before shuttering his eyes, shrugging and picking up one of his last fries.
“Probably because to him it is nothing. I mean, if he says it. If we say it.”
“But I couldn’t say it, right?” I clarify unnecessarily.
He holds a French fry suspended mid-way to his mouth.
“Do you want to say it?” He considers me carefully.
“God, no.” My gasp is worthy of a Victorian novel. “Of course not.”
“You can tell me.” He leans forward, his eyes teasing me conspiratorially. “Not even when you’re singing along to the hippity hop and they say it?”
“We’ve already established that I don’t listen to the hippity hop very much,” I say wryly.
This is such a sensitive topic, one I’d hesitate to approach with people I know well, much less someone I just met. In conversations like these, before we say our words, they’re ammunition. After we’ve said them, they’re smoking bullets. There seems to be no middle ground and too little common ground for dialogue to be productive. We just tiptoe around things, afraid we’ll offend or look ignorant, be misunderstood. Honesty is a risk few are willing to take. For some reason, it’s a risk I decide to take with Grip.
“I just mean, isn’t that a double standard?” I pause to sift through my thoughts and get this question right. “It’s such an incendiary word with such an awful history. I completely understand why black people wouldn’t be okay with it at all.”
“Well, then you’re halfway there.”
I shoot him a look from under my lashes, trying to gauge before I go any further if he thinks I’m some weird, entitled white girl asking dumb questions. He’s just waiting, though, eyes intent and clear of mockery or judgment.
“So why … why should anyone use it? Why put it in songs? Why does Skeet feel okay calling another black man that?”
“First of all, I’m not one of those people who assumes because I’m black, I somehow represent every black person’s perspective,” Grip says. “So, I’ll just tell you how I and the people I’m around most think about it.”
He pauses and then laughs a little.
“I guess we don’t think about it. It’s such a natural part of how we interact with each other.” He gives me a wry smile. “Some of us feel like we take the power away from it when we use it.”
“Taking the power?” I shake my head, fascinated, but confused. “What does that mean?”
“Like we get to determine how it’s used.”
He pauses, and I can almost see him weighing the words before they leave his mouth.
“You have to account for intent. It was originally meant to degrade and dehumanize, as a weapon against us, but we reappropriate it as ours and get to use it as we see fit.”
“I don’t know that I really get that or agree,” I admit, hesitant because I’ve been misunderstood before in these conversations. I’m too curious. I always want to understand, and don’t always know when to stop asking.
“Because of our unique history in this country, that word will never be safe for anyone to use to us,” he says quietly. “But with all that black people endured, being able to take that slur back and decide how we want to use it feels like the least we should be allowed. And it’s the very definition of entitlement for others to want to use it because we can.”
“That I get.” I hesitate, wanting to respect his opinion, his honesty even though I don’t agree with parts of what he’s said. “I guess to me, we have enough that divides us and makes us misunderstand each other. Do we really need one more thing we can’t agree on?”
Grip’s eyes don’t waver from my face, but it’s as if he’s not as much looking at me, as absorbing what I just said. Processing it.
“That’s actually a great point,” he says after a few seconds. “I hadn’t thought of it like that, and it’s good that you ask that question. You’re not asking the wrong question. Is it the most important question, though? To me, some guy calls me the N-word, we’ll probably fight. I’ll kick his ass, and we’re done. It’s over.”
He slants me a cocky grin, and my lips refuse not to smile back.
“But I want to hea
r the same dismay and curiosity,” he continues, his smile leveling out. “About the issues that are actually eroding our communities. Let’s ask why black men are six percent of the general population and nearly forty percent of the prison population. Let’s get some outrage over people of color getting longer sentences for the same crimes other people commit. And over disproportionate unemployment and poverty.”
His handsome face settles into a plane of sharp angles, bold lines and indignation.
“I can fight a dude who calls me the N-word,” he says. “It’s harder to fight a whole system stacked against me.”
The passion and conviction coming off him in waves cannon across the table and land on my chest, ratcheting up my heartbeat.
“It’s not bad that you ask why we call each other that, Bristol.” The sharp lines of his face soften. “There’s just bigger issues that actually affect our lives, our futures, our children, and that’s what we want to talk about.”
Nothing in his eyes makes me feel guilty for asking, and I think that he wants me to understand as much as I want to.
“When other people are as outraged and as curious about those problems as black people are,” he says. “Then maybe we can solve them together.”
It’s quiet for a few moments as we absorb each other’s perspectives. My mind feels stretched. As if someone, this man, took the edges of my thoughts and pulled them in new directions, to new proportions.
“Now that, I get,” I finally say softly. “You’re right. Those things are more important, and that’s powerful.”
I look up and grin to lighten the moment.
“But don’t think you’ve changed my mind about the N-word. That still doesn’t make sense to me.”
He leans forward with a wide smile, his eyes alive and dark and bright all at once. And I wonder if this is the most stimulating conversation he’s had in a long time. It is for me.
“Is there anything that you don’t completely know how it works or why it works, but you know the rules that govern it?”
“Um, Twitter?” I laugh, glad when he responds with a smile.
“Then the N-word is your Twitter.”
He sits back in his seat, long legs stretched under the table, arms spread on the back of the booth and a smile in his eyes for me.