Rapthology by Jermaine Scott a.k.a. Wretch 32

Author:Jermaine Scott a.k.a. Wretch 32
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781473561632
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2019-11-05T16:00:00+00:00

5.

The Father

(‘Hush Little Baby’, ‘6 Words’, ‘Mummy’s Boy’)

In this life, you are born three times. The first time, obviously, is when your mother brings you into the world. Another is your first brush with death, which is what I talk about in the ‘Soldier’ chapter. The most transformational of them all, however, is when you become a parent yourself. And that’s what this chapter is about: the lost son being reborn as the father.

So far, this book has talked about life stages purely in terms of artistic development. I’ve tried to show that no artist begins their craft fully formed. You’re constantly drawing from life, and that process of depicting what you’re living changes your circumstances as you do it. But this chapter is a little bit different: I’m talking about how my children turned my whole world upside down. It changed how I write, how I think, and even how I remember my own past. After my kids came along, my work changed. It’s like you can see their smudgy little fingerprints on every record I’ve made since. Because at that moment in the hospital, it wasn’t just my child who was born. It was a new me.

Before I had my boy, I was a clever lyricist but I wasn’t a thoughtful one. I didn’t really think about the responsibility I had as a rapper to my audience; I kind of thought that as long as they enjoyed the work, that was all that mattered. Then after he was born, I started thinking about life differently. So that sense of being a bit more reflective began naturally to affect the music as well. I reflected more deeply on the messages I convey in the work. And once I had my daughter, I considered what my overall message about women was like in my work. You can’t disrespect the life you’ve just produced! It’s a very deliberate choice that I made, to make sure no one is spoken of in a brighter light than my gran and my mum. It’s so important to show that it’s two women at the top of the pantheon for me.

I wanted to make sure the overall message was positive. Like sure, there might be one line or one song where I talk about wanting to sleep with a girl. But that’s not the whole picture. In a lot of rap, women are presented as always wanting to take something from a man. They’re bitches holding you back, or they’re demanding commitment that you don’t wanna give, or they’re hoes using sex in exchange for clothes and clout. How is it that men will depict women as wanting to take without giving, when it was a woman who gave you life in the first place? Who put shoes on your feet and food on the table? Next time you want to say that a woman is too clingy, just remember that for years you cried every time your mum went into the kitchen to make herself a cup of tea.

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