What I’ve Learned by Listening to my Seventeen-year-old Son’s Music
Lately, I have been attempting to remember what it was like being seventeen. I want to return to some of the songs I used to play over and over, desperately—alone in my room, in my friend’s car, on my Walkman. To bring these songs back into my body, line by line, hook by hook, so that I might remember what it felt like listening to them, what I got from listening to them. Remember what I was trying to figure out, trying to avoid. The Police’s “Walking on the Moon.” Grandmaster Flash’s “The Message.” The Clash’s “Trian in Vain.” Bowie’s “Rebel Rebel.”
Why this project? Why now? I have been watching my son do his version of the same thing, and it’s breaking my heart and blowing my mind at the same time. I can still remember—to a lesser degree, I still know firsthand—what it means to play music as though it were a mood-altering drug, as if my life depended on it. Song as bivouac. Song as bittersweet salvation.
Watching Avery from the sidelines I can feel his desperation, the intensity of his need. So, instead of pushing his music away, which is my first inclination, I’ve spent these last months listening along with him. Avery’s been mostly tuned into hip hop—DaBaby, Lil Tecca, Lil Tjay, Juice Wrld, Lil Baby, Robby Ricch, Lil Durk, Quando Rondo, XXXtentacion. Also: Chance the Rapper, Future, Drake, Eminem, Nipsey Hustle, Jay-Z . He listens in his room, while taking a shower in the morning, on his earphones while working out, on the soccer field, in school, and, at least two times a day with me, in my car.
I don’t tell him to turn the music off when he blasts it on my suburban Subaru’s speakers. (Though I sometimes ask him to turn it down.) I don’t complain about it or critique it harshly. I try not try to school him with the “real stuff,” lecturing him on the original music that these new bands are “ripping off.” Though it’s hard when I hear an echo of Bootsy Collins in almost every song, or pick-out a sample that goes unnoticed.
I grew up listening to hip hop (though not religiously nor monogamously), from the first wave of Grandmaster Flash and Kurtis Blow, through Run-DMC, Public Enemy and Tupac, into the more soulful, jazzy stylings of The Roots, A Tribe Called Quest, Arrest Development and De La Soul. I am comfortable with the genre. Which means I don’t feel it’s just a bunch of noise, as many parents do, or that it’s a bad influence on our kids, or that it all sounds the same. (Or whatever it is that parents say to defend their well-guarded taste and maintain their own little musical sanctuaries.)
I must admit I get tired of hearing the N-word and the B-word; and I get sick of the misogyny, the violent and paranoid musings. And, yes, the pumped-up bass rattles my bones a little. But none of this deters me. (I’d be a hypocrite if it did, for I had my own version with early rap, punk, ska, indie rock). It’s true that I have to work hard not to give into my own musical needs (mostly jazz now, soul, some World music, reggae, blues, Dylan, Joni, Van), but by letting Avery listen to his tunes in my presence I am gaining much more than comfort.
Avery pulls the songs off Apple Music and plays them through his phone onto my car speakers. He scrolls through and picks the songs he wants to hear, sometimes coming back to the same song more than once. It’s not just about passive listening; I’m not just allowing my son to control the stereo. We talk about the songs. He gives me info about the artists. He helps me decipher some of the lyrics, which, as in any hip subculture, are coded (‘whip,’ ‘pack,’ ‘lean,’) to keep out old farts like me. There are some references we both get—the nods to ballers, the pot references—and some that I school him on (a reference to Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing, for instance, or a particular neighborhood in L.A.).
I let him know which songs I don’t like so much and the ones I prefer (21 Savage’s “A Lot,” Lil Baby’s “Catch the Sun,’ Quando Rondo’s “Real Love”). Knowing my taste, Avery selects new tunes for me to sample. Once, after a sleepover, Avery and his buds were down in the kitchen making pancakes and I put on some of their favorite cuts—DJing from my office—and threw in a few of my favorites (James Brown, Gil Scott Heron, War) for good measure. I even found a Bob Marley’s “No More Trouble” remixed by Krayzie Bone. The boys found it amusing, but you know they grooved through the whole set.
Where listening to my son’s music became most valuable, though, occurred in the heat of a recent argument. Exasperated at his parents, Avery pulled out his phone and asked us to listen to a Lil Tj tune. This is how I feel, he told us without having to tell us, sitting there and chanting along with the lyrics: “I just want my name to be around when I ain't here/ Livin' in the moment, but I want this shit for years/They like, "Tjay, bro, you made it", I still feel like I ain't there…” When his mom asked him what the lyrics meant to him, he did his best to explain. But he didn’t have to. I knew what he was trying to assuage the doubt, the anger, the anxiety—the whole ball of mixed-up confusion—of being seventeen and in high school, trying and flailing to fit in and find his people. It’s there in the music. In the sharing of that music.
Honestly, the toughest part of these last few months, musically speaking, has been rolling with Avery’s strange new interest in Urban Country. He’s been playing Luke Combs inside all the hip hop. I’ve never been a fan of the sound, the style. But I listen to it, too, for who knows what I will learn in the process. Avery’s favorite is “Beautiful Crazy.” And, after six or seven listens, it has begun to grow on me.
I even turned it up the other day as we drove toward his soccer tournament just outside Gatlinburg, TN. Without knowing it, I started speeding up as I sang along with the chorus (“The way that she dances, ain't afraid to take chances/And wears her heart on her sleeve…”), unaware that I was topping the 35 miles-per-hour speed-trap limit. It didn’t take long for the cop’s lights to show up in the rearview, then to hear the cop’s voice over the pounding bass, “Please pull your vehicle all the way off the road.”