I grew up in the suburbs of the Twin Cities. There was no gang-banging in my adolescent years, and there did not appear to be any on the horizon of my adult years. Sadly, I was not menacing in high school; I was medically certified to wrestle at 103 pounds my senior year. Most people are not intimidated by anyone who weighs 103 pounds. Compton was where I was from, but my family left in 1977…before it was terraformed by crack. My parents’ memory of Compton is that of a middle-class suburb of Los Angeles…not the hellscape that was ushered in when crack got a grip on the people who were lured by its siren’s song.
Yet, the rhymes of NWA, DJ Quick, Comptom’s Most Wanted, Above The Law, and other gangsta rappers had a vice lock on the youth of America. The once highly coveted Hammer Pants and Cross Colours clothing were quickly banished and replaced with black Raiders’ hats, Raiders’ Starter Jackets, black or blue jeans, and some type of black Nikes. That was the uniform of many of the wannabe Suburban gangstas who imagined the immaculately paved roads of the posh tony towns and burbs they lived on the same level as many of the gang-infested neighborhoods found in the politically and economically isolated portions of our large American cities. For them, the danger was constantly lurking in suburbs such as Edina, Maple Grove, and Apple Valley.
The overt and direct misogyny of gangsta rap had bested the 90s R&B ethos. Women were not women; they were hoes and bitches. The N-word reigned supreme. Rap was no longer about having fun and rocking a party; it was about the perils of drug dealing, gang banging, and crooked cops. We sought to imitate the art, and record labels manufactured more studio gangsters to satiate our appetite.
We were in these safe suburban streets cos-playing. Appropriating gang culture in order to distract from our privileged and mundane lives.
The alcohol that was usually sneaked out of parents’ liquor cabinets that fueled many parties was now rejected in favor of forties of malt liquor. Anyone walking into a party with a case of 40s was now the life of the party. We all knew 40s were disgusting. However, the brown paper bag around the St. Ides bottle was the aesthetic we all sought.
Unfortunately, too many wayward youths were swept up in the facade of trying to be a gangsta. I saw good kids from good families have their minds warped by this music and lost themselves. One of my wrestling partners transferred to a different high school and continued to delve deeper into this imaginary world of gangstas he had created for himself. It ultimately concluded when he obtained a shotgun, sawed the barrel off, and used it on his girlfriend's father at that time. The father survived, and my friend was given a lengthy prison sentence.
In other words, this is what happens when keeping it real goes too far.
It is tiring mean-mugging folks everywhere. It is exhausting putting on a costume each day. Pretending to be something that you are not takes a toll. It is evident in the black people who passed as white for their own survival. I am not blessed with the mental acuity to understand why white people try to pass as nonwhite, but some do. Regardless, we were a tired generation imagining a life in the streets of the hood. The high school weed plug who was selling nickel and dime bags of shake really thought he was out here moving weight. It was a dizzying time.
However, De La Soul and others like A Tribe Called Quest and the various members of the Native Tounges gave some of us an off-ramp. The video for De La Soul’s Me Myself and I was a more relatable world. Various archetypes of students were portrayed in a classroom. Nerds, dorks, bullies, jocks, and popular girls were all put on the screen with De La Soul playing the oddballs. There was life in this celebration of being yourself, which I want to celebrate.
This video and song were an anthem for those to accept themselves and be cool, not having to be a gangsta or B-boy, but just being yourself.
De La Soul’s music is (finally!) able to be streamed by all of us. And that's a blessing. But let's remember another revenge of the Blerds moment: black folk on TikTok appropriating Harry Porter by turning his famed school Hogwarts, into Hogwarts Agricultural And Magic University or HAMU for short. Hogwarts became the newest HBCU, and we were all here for it.
When Harry Potter was in full bloom, all I could think is this is some white people’s stuff. I never read the books and have only seen a couple of the movies; my family gave up on them. My wife and I are approaching 50, and our daughter is about to turn 10. She is not interested in these books or movies because her parents do not care about Harry. Yet, Pottermania swept the world, and it was forced upon everyone. I even knew the names of the most prominent characters before watching a minute of any movie or reading one solitary page.
What I knew was there were no black characters. Someone will correct me and tell me there might have been three, but no one who was mission-critical to the story looked like me, so I didn’t care and was not going to spoonfeed this to my daughter. I do read and love many books with no black characters: The Great Gatsby, The Golden Temple of The Pavilion, Moby Dick, Catch-22, and many others. However, those books were rooted in reality, not fantasy. I find it off-putting that fantasy books create worlds where only white people exist. While I recognize that is many people’s fantasy, it is not mine. Therefore I reject it.
Furthermore, J.K Rowling started letting people know how she felt about our trans family and loved ones. That was the final nail in the coffin for me. I would let these white folk have their Harry Potter and keep it moving. Then, the new video game came out, and black creators on Tik Tok did the damn thing: they turned Hogwarts into an HBCU.
They took this white woman’s intellectual property and seasoned it up the only way that the culture can. Common rooms that used to play Free Bird and Shania Twain exclusively now had Migos and Lil Uzi Vert booming. The stoic pep rally had been replaced with majorettes and the band strutting and strolling out before the crowd. I have seen Nupes with their robes show everyone why they are the frat to end all until the Omegas showed up. The Divine Nine made an entrance that will not soon be forgotten.
Black creators appropriated every single aspect of Hogwarts and the Potterverse. JK Rowling is a Brit, and I do not know or understand the racism or anti-black sentiment across the pond. All I know is that something that was not made for us, specifically black Americans, was taken over by us. We improved upon her intellectual property and did it in a way that she will not see a penny from our intellectual ingenuity.
Black folks will start selling their own HAMU swag. We will start putting our own spin on the various sorting house. We will start modifying the robes to accommodate us and our varying body shapes better. We will transform every single aspect of this Potter universe and introduce new types of slang. We will make a place where we all will be comfortable, regardless of whether Ms. Rowling wants us.
Black folks have made Harry Potter cool for me and most people who did not rock with Potter. They did it by remixing the source material into something that is uniquely ours. Instead of boiled chicken, we now have smothered chicken, cooked intentionally with a lot of love.
“Proud, I’m proud of what I am
Poems I speak are plug two type
Please oh please let plug two be
Himself, not what you read or write.” — Me Myself And I by De La Soul
There is no one way to be black, and that is what De La Soul showed the world when they burst onto the scene. It is ok to be a geek or a nerd or not to fit in. It showed us that the world is larger than the high school in which you might find yourself. De La revealed that there are members of your own tribe out there; you have to find them. That is the blessing of social media. It allows us to connect with like-minded people. This can be both a curse and a blessing for society.
For JK Rowling she now has to watch her beloved Hogwarts become the newest HBCU.