Carlos Roman

Carlos Roman, while pursuing a degree in English Education, has quietly amassed one of the most impressive collections of “Oh wow, I could never be a teacher” reactions in the tri-state area. He hopes to accomplish many cool things that he can one day add to his bio. Maybe like writing a book or something (yeah, that’d be cool), but until then follow him on instagram @_adreamihad.

Am I Us or Am I Them: Finding Identity Through Hip-Hop

. . . And Then There Was X—I stared at the front cover of the cassette. While the cellophane reflecting the sun made it difficult to read the tracklist, the parental advisory labels were legible. It may as well have come with a blow horn announcing to parents that the content was explicit. The vendor, looking to recoup the deposit he paid to have a table at the flea market, watched me like Johnny Whatshisface on his first day as a “loss prevention agent” at Target. Maybe he was afraid I was going to steal it, or maybe he was considering the repercussions of selling a hardcore rap album to a 9 year old. I put the cassette down, zigzagged through the older women pushing the foldable shopping carts, zoomed past the table filled with fresh produce next to packaged tube socks, and sliced through that fragrant cloud that sometimes comes from hotdog carts.

      My mom was looking through a pile of women’s clothes that were $1 a piece—come and get ‘em! I pleaded my case: sure, I had no liquid assets, but I had a demonstrable and consistent income from a silent investor—my grandfather would slip me a fiver whenever he shook my hand. Leveraging those projected five dollars helped me secure a small interest free loan from Mom—I pinky promised to pay it back. Once the capital was secured, my Nikes with air bubble technology propelled me past the table with every variety of rusted hammer and power tool imaginable, and I nearly bumped into a man at the “Authentic Air Jordans” That- Were-Suspiciously-Discounted stand. 

      My approach to the table was supremely confident the second time around—none of that pretending-to-really-study-the-romantic-comedy-selection-at-the-video-store-before-accidentally-tripping-into-the-section-behind-that-beaded-curtain demeanor. The man looked at me. I looked back at him with my hand ready to draw. I pulled out the five dollars like a loaded revolver. His integrity battled his bank account. I needed the product. He needed my money. This is America—we completed the transaction. 

      I studied that cassette—the syllables were seared into my memory; every inflection and adlib was stored and backed up somewhere in my brain.  “. . .And Then There Was X” was more than just an album I’d purchased from some guy at a flea market. DMX was a master of words and the conductor of the orchestra that was his voice; with swoops of his baton he varied his vocal inflections in perfectly sporadic patterns and filled the empty spaces with his signature dog growl. Throughout eighteen tracks, DMX told me tales of violence, guns, the realities of the game, gang culture, and the dangers of dating too many women at once. 

      “. . . And Then There Was X” was a psychedelic experience—producer Swizz Beats’ soundscape coupled with DMX’s lyricism were better than any of that Kidz Bop shit. I didn’t fully understand the content, but I understood the anger, and frankly, where he was from sounded a lot like where I was from. 

      I’m a first generation American born to two Guatemalan parents. My parents, expecting their 2nd child (my sister), worked long hours and purchased their first home when I was 10—a foreclosed single family in the city I had been born and raised in, Elizabeth, NJ. They had a small budget, so when they found a home for $60,000 they didn’t care that it was in one of the poor areas of the city. By the time we moved in I was already fully immersed in hip-hop culture; “...And Then There Was X” had been Genesis, and Hot97 helped me compile my holy scriptures. I dubbed Funkmaster Flex world premiers over my dad’s Angeles Azules cassettes, purchased my first CD—The Marshall Mathers LP, began to understand the void left by the deaths of Biggie and Pac, and bugged out when I heard Redman had grown up just a few minutes from me.

      I was a customer of the culture and so acquired all of the accoutrements: XXXL t-shirts with their hem hitting that mid-shin sweet spot, jeans from the big and tall section with way too many pockets, and whatever variety of sneakers were popular that year. The area I grew up in and the music I was listening to was pushing me in a direction my parents didn’t understand—in Guatemala you stayed away from the pandillas, so their son dressing like he wanted to join one of those gangs worried them. Jay-Z was selling me on his extravagant mafioso lifestyle, MOP was giving me a false sense of confidence in my fighting abilities, and I had just listened to Eminem kill his girlfriend in a song—there was no room for my parent’s ideas of having a son that was a muchacho bueno. I’d developed a West Coast gangster inspired limp reminiscent of Snoop Dogg, but it was reserved for only when I was on school premises—we all did. Street and gang culture wasn’t merely synonymous with hip-hop culture, it was in the very fabric of its DNA. 

      English isn’t my parents’ native language, but bitch, fuck, and shit are cornerstones in our universal economy of words. As I got older my attire and music taste concerned my parents since they didn’t want me acting and dressing like a moreno. From my perspective, I wasn’t acting like anything. This was my culture, the culture of everyone around me. Hip-hop was the music of inner-city rebellion, the music of the displaced and disenfranchised. Sure, I was Hispanic, but Hispanic in a poor neighborhood was entirely different. The kids around me weren’t dancing Bachata, they were learning the Crip walk; that feliz navidad sweater could have you forgetting how to speak English if that group of guys smoking black and milds on the corner asked you “What’s that red about little homie?”

I was given a (provisionary) license to a certain word—a word my ancestors hadn’t fought to repossess and repurpose. I didn’t yet have the knowledge that it was a word generated from racism; a word shouldering a history of pain. We all called each other the same thing regardless of skin color—the intent was never malicious. To all of us it was just a word—it was as commonplace as “dude”—a placeholder for brother or friend. It wasn’t until much later that I realized there were no white kids in our school, and perhaps that played a part in the freedom we all felt in using the word. There was no them; sure, there were different groups, but those groups didn’t exist in an effort to exclude anyone. We were all from lower class families, we were all minorities, we all knew someone who was in a gang, we all got free lunch, and we all listened to Hip-Hop. 

      Hip-hop culture is what helped me find my best friend Lamod in middle school. After he and his sister (Jareesha) moved into a house across the street from me, Lamod and I became friends because of a debate on who the illest rapper was. My parents used to pay for someone to pick me up from school because, well, we lived in the hood. It could be dangerous for a kid to be walking home alone in an area littered with gangs and drugs—even the Fresh Prince got jumped while playing basketball. The woman my parents paid to pick me up owned a van in which she would pick up kids from various schools throughout Elizabeth. I hated having to sit in that van. There was only one window in the back—that meant fresh air had to travel through hot breath and the smells of kids who were old enough to be going through puberty (but not old enough to care about hygiene) before it reached me. Between the motion sickness, the disproportionate amount of windows per square inch, the glorious amalgamated aroma, and missing the new (to me) episode of Joy of Painting, I was looking for any way out. After meeting Lamod in eighth grade, I decided to ditch the ride and walk home with him and Jareesha instead.

      As we had everyday for months before, we were walking home after school, stopping to laugh about whatever it is that 8th graders laughed about, (maybe an “I’m Rick James, bitch!” from Lamod) we noticed two older kids behind us. Judging by their height, they were likely in high school. We stepped aside to let them pass as we finished our laugh, but they just slowed down and lurked behind us. None of us were seasoned enough, or had watched enough military movies, to know we should have kept our heads on a swivel. Moments later I felt it; on the spectrum of pain it was closer to a papercut in the eyeball. One of them punched me in the back of the head. The sharp pain of his knuckles digging craters in my skull made me instinctively cover myself. Jareesha yelled, “What the hell!?” Neither one of the guys said anything or had any reaction; they were like the freaking Queen’s Guard with saggy pants. The other kid punched me. I checked to see if my brains were spilling out of my skull as they walked away. They never even gave me so much as a facial expression to make sense of it. 

      I know if Lamod or Jareesha had been physically capable of doing so, they would have helped me, but we were all still young and those guys were at least 3 weight classes above us. My head pounded. I was confused about what had just happened. Jareesha, just as angry and confused as I was, said, “That’s fucked up! Those dudes are bitches! Why’d they do that? Because he’s white?” I wasn’t sure what hurt more, the two punches or the stinging realization that came with Jareesha’s words. “I’m not white.” I said between my ahhhs from pain. “You know what I mean,” she replied. Had it not been for the impact of those two punches still sizzling through the layers of my scalp, maybe I would have never known what she meant. We continued our walk home in silence, and they said they were sorry about what happened as we made it to our street. I went home, threw on my headphones, and played 50 Cent to help process what had just happened. For the first time in my life I had been “othered.” 

      I was influenced by music made by people who felt victims of the circumstances they were born into and oppressed because of their skin color, but I’d just been punched in the head because I was “white.” I was there with them, I lived in the same neighborhood, and treated everyone equally. My friends were Black, my heroes were Black, and the culture I loved was Black. But what I hadn’t realized was that I looked more like the oppressors, than the rebellion that raised me. My dumbass hair didn’t have enough texture to get braids like Ja Rule, and my skin wasn’t the same color as DMX’s. Sure, Eminem was famous, but he was white. I couldn’t identify with white. White was television sitcoms. White was guys like Seinfeld or Frasier—cornballs. Is that what she thought of me?

      Lamod moved away the following year, but I still walked home everyday. Once I started walking alone I became hyper aware of the street that divided the areas where I was (and wasn’t) the only Hispanic kid around. I got jumped one more time, in a very similar fashion, except it was four or five kids this time. They took turns running up behind me and punching me. The first kid only acted as if he punched me. He got in front of me as I walked and mouthed “Just pretend.” He seemed like a solid person giving into peer pressure—I hope he made it out. The rest of them actually did punch me. I was outnumbered—a hyena without a pack now surrounded by growling lion cubs, and it was only because a man sitting on his porch said “leave that boy alone” that they stopped stalking me. Those remaining three blocks home were an emotional rollercoaster: fear, anger, and confusion followed me to my front step.

      Hip-hop helped me fantasize about how to exact my revenge. I fetishized the violence in every one of those G-Unit tracks. I would join a gang like Snoop, find out where all these guys lived and would do to them what they’d done to me (the way 50 Cent had done to those guys that shot him 9 times.) I wished I could get a gun. I didn’t care if I went to prison. Shyne Po didn’t! That was part of being a man, right? No fear! I’d kill them—so what? 

      Except I did care, and the thought of my family dealing with the aftermath made those two weak ass punches seem not so bad. Tupac would have gotten back at them, but I wasn’t Tupac, and let's be honest, Tupac wasn’t actually Tupac.

      I wish those moments had been revelations that helped me solve race relations in the inner-city, but all they did was create chaos in my sense of self. I wasn’t like Lamod or the kids that punched me—Jareesha enlightened me on that. However I also wasn’t Kevin McCallister; one day when I was home alone, police chased some guy into my backyard and we later found the gun he had buried back there. Yeah, I didn’t sell drugs, but the people around my neighborhood did, and I still had to survive the collateral damage of living in an environment where that was prevalent. I wasn’t in a gang, but you don’t have to be in a gang to get jumped by a gang. I felt like an outsider of the world I lived in, and I didn’t even have access to the world outside of it. Who was I supposed to be? 

      The wisdom that comes with time helped me gain an understanding of what happened—I stuck out. That’s it. It wasn’t about Hip-hop. I was on some Tarzan shit—I thought we were all native to this jungle, but I was just an easy target in an area where many kids had gang affiliations that they had to prove themselves for. We could talk about the systemic oppression that goes on in poor areas, the crime rate, and all the other potential factors, but being (fill in race) in a predominantly (fill in other race) area will always yield similar results; tribalism is an undeniable inclination we have as humans—the other is the enemy. 

      Hip-Hop was the older brother I needed to copy while I found my place in this world. The little boy that picked up the “...And Then There Was X” cassette tape in 1998 (and many like me) couldn’t have known the pitfalls that came with turning to a 20 year old art form in search of the answers to life. All Hip-Hop, or any other culture, religion, or belief system could ever offer was an introduction to ideas and perspectives, and I would have never fully understood that were it not for artists like Kanye West. 

      When Kanye stepped into the spotlight it was suddenly okay to want to dress like Seinfeld, it was okay if you weren’t the tough guy—people liked Kanye because Hip-Hop was about being unapologetic, and in that regard he is the most prolific artist we’ve ever seen. Kanye West and DMX are on opposite ends of the spectrum in many ways, but realizing they could both be celebrated by the same culture is what gave me the confidence to begin piecing together and synthesizing my own identity. After all, the culture I wanted so badly to emulate had found its own place by taking from Jazz, Rock n’ Roll, Blues, and countless other sources in order to create something unique. 

      Hip-Hop has transcended music and become a frequency to communicate ideas through; it's a low barrier to entry open source marketplace of ideas. Many of us have found ourselves with the help of the artform, and I hope it continues to serve many generations to come. In roughly 40 years, Hip-Hop has become a reflection of the inclusive society we strive to be; there are rappers from almost every single race, religion, gender, and sexual orientation. I am Hip-Hop, they are Hip-Hop, we are Hip-Hop, and, if you’d like, You can be Hip-Hop too.