Jesus Walks

My last year of high school, Kanye dropped The College Dropout.

Rap was my favorite genre and I couldn't listen to it openly. It was secular. It was forbidden. And then Jesus Walks came on the radio and a song about Jesus had a beat I'd been trained to fear. For the first time, the two worlds I'd been tightroping touched.

Kanye was the bridge.

To explain why that mattered, I have to go back.

Rewind.

My love for music started with MJ.

Man in the Mirror. I was two years old. At first, it was all about dancing like him.

When I was 8, I had a cassette of Buju Banton's 'Til Shiloh and I played it religiously. By the tweens it was gospel rap from Bread of Life, the Christian bookstore on the east side of Bridgeport — Cross Movement, KJ-52, the Grits. I'd recite my Christian raps. The form was secular. The content was sanctioned. I didn't yet know that was the trick I'd spend the next decade trying to pull off in every other domain of my life.

In 7th grade the girl behind me was singing All About the Benjamins by Puff Daddy and Mase. I wanted to know it too. I couldn't buy the album.

The next year I started getting bused to Westport.

Westport is one of the richest towns in America. Bridgeport is one of the poorest cities in Connecticut. The two are 20 minutes apart. Every weekday morning I crossed the line and every afternoon I crossed back. I was one of two Black kids in the program from my town.

The school had a computer lab open before first period. I had an hour. I used it to search Eminem lyrics. The internet had everything. I'd print them out and study them on the bus ride home, the way I studied scripture on Sundays. By the end of high school I'd done it for four years.

Music was how I held the two worlds in my head at the same time. Westport had the kids who already had what the videos promised. Bridgeport had the church that said wanting it would damn you. The bus was where I read the lyrics.

After months of being one of two Black kids from the poor town, I came home one day and saw a guy on TV with platinum hair, chains, a white outfit, dancing on the beach.

If $iggo was loved, I could be $iggo.

So at 13 I became mini-Sisqo. Dancing down the halls. Breaking into song. I had an audience — boys and girls, both. By the end-of-year dance I was king of the dance floor. I'd found the thing that would get me what the church couldn't.

Then they sent home the video from the dance.

I dubbed over the tape, hoping to hide the evidence. I was riddled with guilt. When my mom found it, I lied.

That was the lesson. Joy required concealment. Concealment required lying. Sisqo cost me my honesty before I knew that was the price of admission.

In high school I had to find myself again. This time it was Dipset, D-Block, Tims, jerseys, fitteds. I tried to look like the guys in the videos. Westport didn't help — everyone there was wearing Abercrombie. I found my place at the minority table.

Every day I got home around 3:30, just in time for Rap City: The Basement.

One day a new song came on.

Dr. said I had bloodclots, but I ain't Jamaican, man.

The beat — Through the Wire — hooked me. I wanted to make beats like that. The wordplay was my language. A Jamaican-coded line in a non-Jamaican rapper's mouth. A man with his jaw wired shut still rapping. The form bent the rules. The content bent the rules. Both at once.

Then Jesus Walks.

It was the first time secular music had said the name out loud without being Christian rap. Christian rap had always been corny to me — the form was secular but the content was sanctioned, which is the same trick I'd been pulling and I knew it didn't fool anybody. Jesus Walks was different. Kanye was talking to God on a beat that belonged to the world I wasn't allowed in. He wasn't trying to pass either inspection.

I listened in secret anyway. Habit.

But I could listen.

Kanye gave me what Sisqo had given me — an identity I could hang on to, to make sense of my environment. The difference was Sisqo had cost me the lie about the dance video. Kanye didn't ask me to choose. He stood on the bridge and refused to come down.

When I got to college, my boy gave me a program called Fruity Loops.

I was finally able to do the thing I'd heard on Through the Wire. Sample.

I'd been rapping in church for years by then. We'd take instrumentals and flip them — Courtney and I and whoever else was in the room. Always coming up with rhymes. Every time I saw him I had something new.

One day we flipped 50 Cent's P.I.M.P.

Pastor was livid. We had the whole church bumping.

I don't know what yuh heard about me… I'm young, but I serve G.O.D.

It was the same trick the gospel-rap kids were running, just with a song that was too obviously a song about pimping. The form had crossed a line the content couldn't redeem. We knew it. That's why it was funny.

Music was a big deal. Every once in a while raps or cassettes Courtney and I had recorded off the radio would get confiscated. There was a period around the 50 Cent flip when a DVD called The Truth About Hip Hop started circulating in the church. It confirmed demonic forces and spirits in the music and the industry. Pastor ran a campaign. People brought their secular music in to be burned on the altar.

It was intense.

I didn't bring mine.

I'd already learned the lesson Sisqo taught me. The institution always asks for the evidence. You don't have to give it to them.