Cypher: Cole, Julius, Alex & Koku
Inspired by Kiese Laymon’s “Echo: Mychal, Darnell, Kiese, Kai, and Marlon”
Writing Boys—Alex Lewis, Cole Henderson, Julius Tunstall & Koku Asamoah—is a community focused on writing for ourselves and each other. We introduce “Cypher,” a project inspired by “Echo,” an essay co-authored by Kiese Laymon, Mychal Denzel Smith, Darnell Moore, Marlon Peterson & Kai M. Green from Laymon’s book, How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America. These are love letters to one another about growing up as Black men raised by Black men.
Cole
Dear Julius,
I am becoming my dad. I think we both can connect on the fact that our dads are the reason for our love of music. I specifically fell in love with hip-hop in the back seat of my dad’s 2001 Honda Odyssey. It wasn’t because he played hip-hop over those Kenwood speakers, but because he played the likes of Miles Davis, James Brown, The Temptations, Chaka Khan, and other old-school artists, but A LOT of jazz. When I was younger, I loathed hearing, “Summertime” by John Coltrane in the back seat of that mini-van. Back then, jazz music penetrating my ears was the equivalent of me eating lima beans — I was forced to consume them but it was the worst! So the dark side was calling my name. Jazz and Motown music chased me into hip-hop’s arms.
Life can be defined by phases, and as it relates to hip-hop, I went through many of them. In elementary and junior high school all I ever wanted to be was cool. In order to be cool I had to listen to 50 Cent and Dipset, so I listened. But because of my musical foundation, the hip-hop I really enjoyed came from artists who had jazz accents in their music like A Tribe Called Quest and Common. It’s fair to say I’ve always felt like an old soul. I think it’s because I grew up practically hearing “My Girl” on repeat:
“I’ve got so much honey
The bees envy me
I’ve got a sweeter song
Than the birds in the trees”
(“My Girl” by The Temptations c.1965)
I was told this was how you were supposed to talk about love over a record. Sometimes I feel like I’m fighting my own ethos by listening to current hip-hop artists. My Baby-Boomer dad can’t stand to hear the amount of misogynoir, hypersexualization, and expletives that occurs in hip-hop music nowadays. It’s hard for me to disagree with him at times.
But just as the song “My Girl” was on repeat, history also repeats itself. Bo Carter, a Blues musician from Memphis, Tennessee sang about wanting to roll a lemon. I imagine that’s a euphemism for oral sex:
Now listen here sweet baby, I never have been down
But I can roll your lemon better than any man in this town
Baby please let me roll your lemon
And squeeze it the whole night long
Oh let me squeeze and roll your lemon
Oh baby until your good juice come
(“Let Me Roll Your Lemon” by Bo Carter c.1935)
Now, almost 100 years later, we have a song like “Nasty” by hip-hop artist DaBaby.
I guess I’m reminded that Black music has been, and always will be, daring. J-Dilla did not sample those soul classics for nothing. He knew that it’s the soul that connects us together. We don’t get hip-hop if we didn’t have jazz and Motown music. Just like we don’t get voting rights if we didn’t have abolitionists and civil rights leaders. Hip-hop will become jazz one day, just like one day, we will become our dads.
Julius
Dear Cole,
It only feels right to start with some bars from my dad’s younger self:
“Suckers are ignorant, I am not into it
Doing things you do, Showing you’re illiterate
My rhymes are an idiom, come try to get some
If you are weak, then I’ll have no fun
I’ll just erase you and make it look easy
I don’t have to, it’s an idiosyncrasy”
Jazz was to bebop what hip hop is to jazz.
A way we can learn to love ourselves and our people better.
We are turning into our fathers, but I also hope—and think my dad does as well—that we learn from them. Their mistakes and when they have fallen short and extended.
Andre 3000’s best verses, he pushes and pulls your expectation. Taking what rappers would see as a normal rhyme scheme and elevating it. While extending what a rapper looked like. Rocking the straight hair perm and some bell bottoms, shirtless with some football pads on. All while dancing and pulling off some of the most interesting rhymes we’ve ever heard:
“Cause I thought it would be jammin’
But examine all the flawsky-wawsky
Awfully, sad and it’s costly, but that’s all she
Wrote and I hope I never have to float in that boat
Up shit’s creek, “It’s weak” is the last quote
That I wanna hear when I’m goin’ down
When all’s said and done and we got a new joe in town
When the record player get to skippin’ and slowin’ down
All y’all can say is, “Them niggas earned that crown”, but until then”
I’m turning 29 while typing this and hope that I’m not only the best part of my dad but an extension of what a straight cis black man looks like in this world.
We ain’t free until we are all free.
Alex
Dear Cole & J.T.,
I’m a third. Clinton Alexander Lewis III. I am quite literally my dad.
I hear y’all talk about jazz and I don’t know much of it, but I do know Dad and I ride around listening to Black men belt out whenever we’re together. Kem. The Isley Brothers. Charlie Wilson. We try to match their background vocals and ad-libs as best as we can. One of our favorites is in “Charlie, Last Name Wilson” when Uncle Charlie yells along with the hook:
“Here is my number
My manager’s number
My studio number
Even my mama’s number”
I didn’t realize it at the time, but I remember hearing Charlie Wilson for the first time on Snoop Dogg’s “Beautiful” singing alongside Pharrell. My dad probably heard Charlie Wilson for the first time as part of The Gap Band on “Yearning for Your Love,” “You Dropped a Bomb on Me,” or “Outstanding.” Over 30 years later, Tyler, The Creator not only enlists Uncle Charlie for writing and vocal help on “FUCKING YOUNG / PERFECT” from his 2015 album Cherry Bomb, but Tyler also samples The Gap Band’s “Outstanding” on the chorus from “911 / Mr. Lonely” off his 2017 album Flower Boy.
Cole, you mention sampling in your letter. Recently, I rewatched an interview that Earl Sweatshirt, Tyler’s former Odd Future mate, did with Zane Lowe in promotion of his 2022 album SICK! During the conversation, Earl shares how he thinks about music sampling:
“A big part of the whole thing with sampling is, like, you’re showing who you are. You’re showing what your influences are. You’re almost showing how you grew up. And the realest one is you’re trying to pay homage to this thing, so you’re honoring it with those details.”
J, you said you hope we learn from our fathers. From their mistakes, the things about them we admire, the things that make them them. And I believe those are the things that make us us.
My life is a soul sample. I pitch up my father’s shortcomings until they show up differently in me. I take the drum sounds of his achievements—mostly interested in the ones that have nothing to do with work or wealth—and I arrange them in different rhythms until they feel just right. He says, “You’re further along than I was at your age,” and I take that to heart.
I also think about my writing approach, and the act of writing, as sampling. I keep a note in my phone of things that stand out to me, the people and moments that have influenced me. Then, in my writing, I try to explore how they’ve shaped me. How they’re shaping me. How I’m growing up. In writing with y’all throughout this year, as part of the Writing Boys, you all have shaped how I write and, in turn, how I live. I find things in each of your essays I admire and see how I can bring that to the way I show up on the page.
Yes, I’m quite literally my dad. But I’m also each one of you. Y’all help me bridge the gap between who I am and who I want to be because the truth is there’s no one I want to be more than y’all. Loving and being loved by you.
Koku
Dear Cole, Julius & Alex,
I revere your connections with your fathers and music; I wish I could say that I share the same bond you all shared with your fathers as children, but faith dealt me a different hand. I like to see myself as the opposite of my father; he was the typical patriarchal figure looming over our household. I was not so much afraid of my father, but I was apprehensive about attempting to be something other than the perfect son.
There were instances when that apprehensiveness subsided, and our familial roles of intimidating father and timid son were shed. I remember riding in our family’s dark green Volvo, leather interior stained with the smell of McDonald’s fry grease, and Reggae, Soul, and Disco CDs strung all around. My father, a dread-headed Ghanaian man, loved Reggae, specifically Bob Marley. He would whistle in tune to every note on Bob Marley and The Wailers’ Exodus. These were the times I enjoyed the most; Bob Marley would sing:
I’m still waiting there
Winter is here
And I’m still waiting there
And my dad’s whistle would crescendo along as the drums hit with so much passion, and I would just watch in awe.
Later on in life, I would hear these same noises bellow from our basement as my dad escaped into his solitude. It’s funny because what I once saw as such a wonderful moment morphed into apprehensiveness again. I knew not to disturb him in his time in solitude because, deep down, I knew that was his form of escape.
As I said earlier, I don’t see myself as similar to my father. But as I grow older, I see we both chose music as an escape. I tend to go back and listen to Marvin Gaye, Bob Marley, and Michael Jackson, and I start to understand my father a little more. I know he was hurt and did not know how to express it in healthy ways. He chose to connect with the music and let that be his only friend.
Sometimes I think I’m headed down the same path; one line I recite by Earl Sweatshirt when I’m feeling at my lowest is:
When it’s problems, I don’t holler, rather fix ’em on myself
When it’s looking like it’s quiet for you, this the shit to yell
Which is a mantra I think my father followed too.
I treat music as one of my closest friends as well, but with friends like Julius, Cole, and Alex, I know that I don’t have to listen to music in the basement; I know that I can whistle and laugh along to songs with you, and I know as much as we see our fathers within us, we are becoming ourselves.
