Editor’s note: The following article is an op-ed, and the views expressed are the author’s own. Read more opinions on theGrio.
I’ll be 45 years old in June. That means I’ve been involved in the game of dapping folks up for 30-plus years. I’m a dap savant. I have complicated daps I do with my kids. I know when to come in for the Black-man-hug dap or when to just pound it up. My dap game is legendary. The aliens will speak about my expertise and my excellence.
That’s why what happened recently broke my soul in a way that would have disappointed Beyoncé: I fumbled a dap in public on a historically Black college campus. M.C. Hammer has a song called “It’s All Good” — this was not all good; it was all bad.
Let me put you on to what happened, son.
I recently had a guest speaker come to talk to the class I teach at Howard University about his writing journey and provide some insight and best practices for the burgeoning writers in the class. After the class, as is typically the case when there is an interesting guest speaker, some of the students stuck around to talk, and a few walked with us out of the building. Once we got outside, a conversation about hip-hop commenced, specifically the recent happenings of one J. Cole, aka Lightskinned Jermaine, and his mea culpa to Kendrick Lamar on the stage during his performance at his Dreamville Festival in Fayetteville, N.C.
The conversation was good and spirited. Three of us were exchanging ideas and speaking to the power of the culture and where the culture could go. You’ve never seen a more important conversation on the sidewalk in front of Howard University’s Cathy Hughes School of Communications about hip-hop in your life. The hop was hipping and the hip was hopping. The Black excellence was on 10 and all who sauntered by were blessed to bask in the glow of this generational discussion about the most significant musical culture of all time.
Whew.
And then it…
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