A few months later, I did a scene with P for an episode of Anthony Bourdain’s “The Layover” in which he told everyone on camera that he loved reading Popular Science while he was locked up and that his favorite dish was Mongolian beef from the P. F. Chang’s chain. It wasn’t that P didn’t understand the expectations of foodies watching the show; he was going to show love to the cultural artifacts that held him down regardless of what anyone else thought.

About a year later, P pulled up to my 30th-birthday party, stood on a couch and performed his classic, “Shook Ones,” screaming, “Ayo E, spark the Philly!” My friend Steven Lau actually teared up that night, telling me: “You made it, man. P remixed ‘Shook Ones’ for your birthday.”

P didn’t have to do any of it. That’s just what he was like.

When we’re kids, our favorites are usually whatever is most popular. Why else are so many children wearing hideous “Chef” Curry Under Armour sneakers? We fiend for influences, emulate them and would do anything to hurry up and be adults. In adolescence we’re mature enough to see through the lies and determine who’s real and who’s not. We resist “store-bought rap” and prefer the “insane man who strike back,” as Prodigy put it. We start to wonder why we’re all here watching as the world slowly turns on itself. When I felt that way, it was “Losin’ Weight” by Cam’ron, featuring Prodigy, that picked me up. It became one of my favorites.

Why I feel like I’m losin’ weight?

Why I got no money, if I’m movin’ weight?

Why my life based upon what I’mma do today

Why I can’t move away

Thirteen years later, the dedication quote for my first book came from that song. The quote for my next book was from P, too: “Now take these words home and think it through or the next rhyme I write might be about you.”

The older we get, the less we want to admit our influences. Credit gets buried. The narrative changes from one about a man raised by a village to one about a man who rose out of the water, a self-made island, and doesn’t want to pay taxes. But you never forget your favorites — the people who revealed something to you, the ones who gave you a piece of themselves, and through that revelation got you closer to the meaning of your own life.