A-side

I was sitting with Pendarvis Harshaw, host of the KQED podcast Rightnowish, in Fruitvale, an East Oakland neighborhood he grew up in. He was interviewing me about my debut book of poetry, which largely explores the complicated performance of masculinity, particularly in an era of social media and self-obsession.

From where we talked, you could look out the window and see young men walking the block in the way many young men are taught to carry themselves — fearlessly smooth and perhaps intimidating to outsiders, especially when in a group. As men of color, we are often indoctrinated to withhold expression and focus on our toughness and appearance since intellectual pursuits and creative exploration can sometimes be perceived as feminine or weak; it’s a form of toxic masculinity that we are raised to believe — that our manhood should be measured by our physical, rather than our intellectual, capabilities.

I know this because I’ve been in countless situations where my friends and I adorned that mask of masculinity, whether it meant representing ourselves with a certain exterior, talking over others to exert dominance, suppressing a certain feeling, or standing at a particular angle of conviction while drinking beer, because that’s what “a man should do.” But I’ve always felt that there was more to being a person than playing an assigned role, regardless of where you come from.

So when Penn hit me with a question I’d never considered before, I began to realize what helped me break my mold. He asked, “How did the Bay Area help to define your sense of masculinity in a way other places haven’t?”

I knew the answer immediately: growing up with Bay Area rap strongly shaped my identity as an independent and open-minded male. And I didn’t mean that in a “I got shot nine times in the face, and I’m a man because I survived the struggle” type of way — as some mainstream rappers I grew up with touted. I meant it in the “I’m not afraid to create my own path and be weird” kinda way; in the “It’s OK to be alternative and real while rooted in your community” sorta way. Because that’s what Bay Area rappers do, and I’m still learning how to be the human I want to become by listening to the music I grew up loving.

B-side

I should press Rewind here. I grew up in a single-parent household with an immigrant Mexican father and an older brother. The three of us lived in the South Bay’s suburbs until I transferred to UC Berkeley from community college. My mom was in our lives, but we never lived with her or my sister, which meant the majority of my hours were spent around male figures.

Translation: hella video games, sports, shit-talking, and breaking stuff took up more time than it should have.

In the many songs I grew up with, manhood became a type of expression that could morph and shift depending on the context and, ultimately, lead to a truer search for your own definition of yourself as a person.

There’s something about growing up in California without parental supervision that allows for getting away with a lot more than you should. Whether that means having too much unstructured time after school to box your friends in the backyard, shooting birds or each other with BB guns, breaking into abandoned buildings to smoke and practice tagging, or simply grooming your sense of identity by pressing Play on your brother’s boombox to study Tupac’s lyrics in the fourth grade. You slip under the radar more easily when everyone’s parents are at work.

I was never a bad or overly-reckless kid, just a lazy and aimless one who regularly flunked classes, attended summer school, and then repeated this cycle every year from 7th to 12th grade. Social responsibility and self-awareness weren’t encouraged or cultivated in me back then—at least not directly. I had to find it in the grooves of my youth, in unexpected moments when I’d just be sitting in my room sketching graffiti in a black book with my crew members while listening to Bay Area rap legends oozing from the speakers.

Some of the earliest songs I ever heard on the radio were from local icons like E-40, the Luniz, and Souls of Mischief. With dudes like Del the Funkee Homosapien, Zion I, Andre Nickatina, and Mistah F.A.B., we were raised with a gang of rappers who many outside of Northern Califoolya were sleeping on, but who were (and still are) the undisputed rap gods in our headphones.

Traditionally, L.A. always had the gang image; NYC had the boom bap; and the South had that slow and heavy stuff. But the Bay? The Bay had a distinctive and innovative mix of political/street/weirdo/drug-dealing/lyrical/pimp/soul/funk. And it was pioneered by a tremendously diverse range of characters who — now that I look back on them as an adult — heavily molded my sense of masculinity as a flexible act that could range from ridiculous and laughable to something feared and practiced.

In the many songs I grew up with, manhood became a type of expression that could morph and shift depending on the context and, ultimately, lead to a truer search for your own definition of yourself as a person.

C-side

Mac Dre, a fallen Vallejo king, isn’t known for being soft — he was murdered in Kansas City in 2004 in an incident that many say was related to his unabashed street politics. And although some of the realest dudes I know have nothing but love for the Mac, he was goofy as hell — and I say that with all respect. He was notorious for flamboyant album covers with some tie-dye-themed, afro-out, giant-stunna-shades-wearing version of himself dressed up and smiling as a spoofy, politically inspired alter ego, like Pill Clinton, Thizzelle Washington, and Ronald Dregan.

The fact that he was legitimately from Vallejo’s streets, then flipped his image of masculinity in such a nontraditional and exaggerated way while maintaining the label of a “gangster rapper,” needs to be recognized and celebrated.

The weirdest of his personas was revealed when he dropped The Genie of the Lamp, an album that featured him dressed up like a character from Aladdin floating in the air with his legs crossed, purple haze emanating from behind him and spewing from a genie lamp. This all came from the same feared and respected rapper who recorded parts of an earlier album, Young Black Brotha, while he was incarcerated in ’93 for his association with a series of bank robberies at the time.

In my decades of listening to hip-hop, I’ve never encountered another rapper who’d gone from recording music in a jail cell after a felony charge to being the self-proclaimed genie from a bottle. But this is exactly the sort of Bay Area game I’ve soaked up — that a man can change and can make poor choices yet maintain a deeper innocence and still do right while experimenting with new styles.

In his videos, Mac Dre does nothing but spit his truth, make thizz faces, wear oversized hats, and dance. Though maintaining a certain level of aggressive masculine energy, he seems more liberated than most rappers — especially when compared to the 50 Cents of his time — in producing a strangely fun-loving brand of rap. The fact that he was legitimately from Vallejo’s streets, then flipped his image of masculinity in such a nontraditional and exaggerated way while maintaining the label of a “gangster rapper,” needs to be recognized and celebrated.

True, he didn’t deliver the holy gospel for social change in his songs, but it wasn’t Dre’s lyrics — mostly about partying, violence, pimping, and his city — that inspired me to become a more genuine and creative male, but rather his persona. He didn’t care about how others perceived him, as long as he was able to express himself wholly by his own standards.

D-side

Truth be told, although I was familiar with the hyphy movement from parties and other events, I was more dedicated to the graff, B-boy, and backpack hip-hop scenes in the Bay. Artists such as Crown City Rockers, the Coup, and Paris exemplify how the Bay’s rappers have always been down with the progression of human rights.

One particularly influential emcee from the East Bay was Lateef the Truthspeaker, an Afro Latino activist. Imagine being a teenage kid of color in a space with other first-generation sons of immigrants, probably ditching class that day, with these lyrics grooving in the background:

If man wasn’t faulty and twisted, saddled with an ego and id

Half of the problems in our world wouldn’t exist

But that’s outta the persona wantin’ drama’s a trick

Forcing us to have to deal with it

And if power and greed didn’t tempt it

Maybe our leaders would be positive and productive

Instead of conniving, deceitful and corrupted

Caught up with the love of dollars so seductive… —“If”

In a sense, that was the most important education I received. It angers me to know how much of what the song explains remains true in our world today, but it also gives me chills when I relisten to it as a 32-year-old, knowing how much lyricists like Lateef instilled a sense of morality and goodness in my young heart and mind. He inspired me to be different and pursue change as a Mexican-American teen. Eventually, I became serious about my potential and applied intense discipline in community college to become a high school teacher.

I like to believe that I still live by this code — and many other lessons — that the Bay’s finest wordsmiths delivered to me when I was malleable and most susceptible to defining my burgeoning sense of self as a brown male: to give back, to be compassionate, and to stay informed about political corruption and injustice. These Bay lyricists showed me that a real man is someone who is thoughtful and cares for others, rather than someone who takes advantage or demands from those in our lives — a rarely delivered message for adolescent boys of any skin tone.

Hidden Track

I’ve been blessed to live in or travel to every major city in the U.S. — from New Orleans to New York City and everywhere in between — and I call tell you that their most popular rappers don’t dress up as genies or pretend to ride a yellow school bus. But somehow, it works here.

This isn’t to say that the Bay Area’s musicians — or myself — are without faults as men. After all, this is still the land of Too Short, Spice 1, and Dru Down, known for album covers with women hanging from giant martini glasses in bikinis and aiming sniper rifles at enemies. And even though I listened to these artists just as much, I understood this kind of misogyny as hyperbolic storytelling rather than a suggested way of realistically living.

Though rap can have an unforgivable portrayal of misogynistic masculinity, that shouldn’t negate the reality that there is also a deep authenticity in most Bay Area hip-hop that has shown me how to create and adapt my own definition of being an honest man who embraces transformation despite whatever societal expectations or other limitations might exist. As JT the Bigga Figga taught me, “Game recognize game in the Bay.” In other words, be who you are, because as long as you’re true to yourself, live with a purpose, and own your identity, you’ll thrive and earn your respect here.

As a result of cultural variety, counter-political histories, and expressive freedoms percolating in the Yay, young and OG men alike have been able to develop multifaceted rap personalities that creatively explore a wider range of masculinity more than other rap scenes have traditionally allowed. Instead of wearing costumes that perpetuate a singular or stereotypical expectation of a man in the rap industry, the Bay has popularized the notion of a male artist who can dress up like a president and do the thizzle dance; who can record a song in the studio, then march with community members at a city-hall protest later that day; who can put on a certain mask or nose — literally — just as easily as they can take it off; and who will forever resist mainstream categorization in order to seek independence within the complex, layered region we represent.