The Curse of Scarface: A song of one’s own

As I instruct my Composition 101 students on the foundational essay, essay 1, a narrative, I recalled to them a moment in time, when I was a girl, to illustrate a possible approach to the #3 essay prompt, regarding a piece of music or media “influencing” you.

I told them about the conversation about hip-hop I’d had with Thomas, which this time, was influenced by an interview that Scarface (AKA, Brad Jordan) did with Shannon Sharp on the new club Shay Shay. The interview, which spanned about three hours, is a delicate look at life through a mirror of pain, shame and regret, from where I sat. In part one of the interview, Shannon toggled from performance to interview, asking Scarface of his particular influences and inspirations for certain songs, those we all know Scarface and the Geto Boys for.

As I began to criticize Brad and grow weary and frustrated by the trajectory of his responses and his general demeanor, Thomas purported (not for the first time) that I was not connecting with the interview because I, was not, in fact, hip-hop and that I had not been influenced by it in the same way that he had: Scarface and the Geto Boys, in particular. True. Recalling with Thomas, my own journey to and through hip-hop and back again, gave me fodder to provide a quick example to the six, bright young women in my evening class.

My arrival at hip-hop was somewhat forced. When I thought about it, they all had been: the genres, I mean – Gospel, Christian, House, Blues, Country, Oldies—Hip-hop. My listening, had all been by-products of the tastes and propensities of others: my parents, grandparents, aunts and brothers. And while early hip-hip provided a space for a pre-pubescent black girl… SONGS Give it to ‘em Queen—you go-ot it! What you say to me is just paper thin…You can’t play with my yo-yo, and even the ego-trippin’ sensibilities of LL’s, “I’m Bad” evoking Nikki Giovanni, and the militance of “Self-Destruction”, it turned into something I didn’t recognize—something depressing, disrespectful, vulgar and at times, sinister.

I told Thomas, and then my young women, that The Geto Boys were, always too dark for me. I’d remembered their songs on the radio and videos playing on The Box, and for me, music was supposed to insight happiness, joy and inspiration, and this wasn’t that. Beyond the sample track – dun dun nu nu du dun dun dun, dun dun nu nu du dun du dun…Issac Hayes, really in the forefront of my mind, I cruised over its message, trying not to let it permeate my psyche, even then. I was 11 years old.

It wasn’t until the later ‘90s, in the next couple of years really, when I discovered songs of my own. They were R&B, the new hip-hop soul, and neo-soul, I heard with my own ear, that I feel there was music, I had discovered for myself: SWV, Mary J. Blige, TLC, Aaliyah, Erykah Badu, Jill Scott…Alicia Keys, pretty much in that order. Boy, do I remember the first time I heard “Fallin”. I was riding in my Nissan Sentra to my Blue Island apartment. I was in love with a boy and in love with a sound. By the second verse, I was belting out the lyrics—I, I, I key-eep on fa’allin’ in and out…My mind’s playing tricks on me…wasn’t my vibe and when I finally understood what was, I began to lose respect for the genre born a few years before I.

Still, I love hip-hop and respect it. And I recognize its profound impact on me as a listener, a student of music, a writer, and a poet. With this, and possibly for this, I listened earnestly to that interview, even beyond what I initially thought my capacity would be, waiting with the proverbial bated breath, for Brad to say something profound, something reflective, positive or inspiring. What I ended up with instead, was confusion and an entry to ChatGPT…Is Scarface and atheist? Surprisingly, the chat bot said no, that he’d converted to Islam in 2006, to which I said, “Allah is not pleased”.

Never once did this man mention God, or spirituality or love or hope. Contrarily, he gave us the 3-B’s blame, boo-hoos, and bargains. He basically ran through the stages of grief over his own life while he sat there breathing on the Club Shay Shay’s couch.

For me—the same, fear and darkness that I’d felt in the music as a kid, sat there personified 30-some-odd years later. At 54, “Scarface” feels like a child, emotionally and spiritually, and as his moniker states—scarred. It was frustrating. And I was incensed listening to him, sitting there never talking about forgiveness, or redemption, not realizing that he’s already dead and is on borrowed time, but still talking about fearing death. He did not seem in the least bit grateful for his time here, his second chance and whatever life he has left. It felt blasphemous.

After nearly a lifetime of drugs, alcohol, cigarettes, violence, guns and death all around him…literally, the man should already be dead, and without lifesaving measures of a kidney transplant (donated by his son, four years ago this month) he would be. And as someone with her own medical intervention story, I speak from personal experience. When you have that “you would have died without this” revelation, your, “come to Jesus” moment, you speak differently. You move differently.

Mr. Brad Jordan…hasn’t begun to move in his gifts or purpose and I hope he finds his way—his song: one of his own, not shrouded in the pain of his past or the transgressions of his mother, or uncles, apart from the trauma of his days in the music game that seemed to bring him more death and destruction than it afforded him freedom and opportunity.

I think about the music that inspired me and influenced me the most when I was coming into womanhood, and I can’t help but pay homage to the women in music who let me know that I could be my full self (And I really have to put Eryka Badu high up, right now. Baduizm changed the game for me). As a high school senior, I began to aspire to be me. Shiiid, I could be outspoken, and self-sufficient, and powerful and strong and soft, and intellectual and queued into God/ess, and kind, and quirky and sexy and natural and gold and shiny and beautiful and vulnerable and real—a queen of my own volition and in my own right. I saw so many women, in music, film, television and in my real life who represented what I saw as “complete-womanhood”. Some of the same music carried me from my teens, though my 20s, 30’s and now 40s.

I wonder, now, what Thomas has to say about Scarface’s influence on him as a young man. What did “Scarface” teach young men to be? What did he say that they could be? Should be? In what ways does Brad Jordan, apart from the artist, inspire today? It makes me think about the ways that his contemporaries have grown and changed in the last 30+ years in the game.

According to an article published by Oldest.org in March of this year called, “9 Oldest Rappers in the World”, two men whose names are synonymous with hip-hop, Kurtis Blow and Chuck D, are 65 and 63 years old, respectively. They are the ages of my students’ grandparents. I wonder what they have to say about life, the culture; what wisdom do they have stored up in their bones? What would they tell Shay Shay, and the world, when asked?

I look at artists like Common, O’Shea Jackson (Ice Cube), Jay-Z,and Queen Latifa, who have parlayed the artform by which they entered entertainment industry into so much more, likely more than they could have ever imagined. I look at theways that even though hip-hop took a turn for a while, that the art, the culture has not only survived, but thrived through artists that even a shea butter baby, like me could appreciate. Fully formed, and unimpressionable, I returned to the culture through so many artists who’d held vigil, taken notes, laid low, incubated and emerged.

In the end, nothing ever really dies, I think, as I sit here listening to, “Hung up on my Baby”,a song released five years before my birth, pondering what a fully formed Brad Jordan looks like and realizing that I’d like to see it. I want to see everyone stand in their full self. I pray that for him: Peace. Healing. Resurrection, and a song even a soul-sista like me,would sing.