“A Child is born with no state of mind / Blind to the ways of mankind / God is smiling but frowning too / Because only god knows what you go through.” – Grandmaster Melle Mel (“The Message”)
It was 1982. The crack cocaine era was about to explode. The Furious Five‘s Melle Mel was the first voice to speak on the reality of situation. This was before we knew how devastating the drug could be to infants, how babies were born addicted to the substance and how state run social work agencies were waiting to take custody of these children. The message was clear and those who survived it were always close to the edge.
When Jay-Z said, “Men lie, women lie / Numbers don’t,” he may as well have been talking about the foster care system. In a Philadelphia study, over 75% of foster children fail to graduate high school. These same figures are consistent throughout the country. Under a third of the 25% who do graduate go onto receive higher education. Foster children are more likely to be incarcerated or homeless. You name a high-risk category and they top it. Teenage foster children who have been in care for several years have on average been in six different homes, and the same amount of schools. Numbers don’t lie, yet they can’t even begin to tell their story. Melle Mel said “Only God knows what you go through,” but 30 years since that statement was made, we have an assortment of rappers who understand. Some lived a life in foster care (Xzibit, Game, DMX, DMC, Ice-T) while others have detailed how addiction fractured their childhood (Joell Ortiz, Crooked I, Cormega, 2Pac.) A generation that has witnessed the ills of crack cocaine and abandonment is now telling their story. We are listening. Children in care are surviving because of these words. Melle Mel saw it unfold in front of his eyes, and now artists like Joell Ortiz are sharing how the ills of this era affected their childhood on wax. The ’80s babies have grown up.
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In many ways this editorial started 20 some years ago, before my career path took me into foster care, before Hip Hop blind-sided my life. This editorial started in first grade, when I met a young girl, who to this day, is like my sister. This girl was in foster care from birth to 18 years of age. Her mom, who is entering the 38th year of a nasty cocaine addiction, said the right things, but never did them. This story started there. It continued seeing my friend struggle to find herself, scared of her foster parents, switching homes a handful of times and walking out at 18 simply because if she didn’t get her freedom she felt like she might die. From there, it continued with couch-surfing, a brief reunification with her mother, and several more tragedies. Throughout it all she was 4.0 student (partially out of fear of the mental abuse she took from her foster parents) but life is never about grade point averages; it’s about existing, being heard, seen or felt – it took her 27 years until she lived that. This story started then, and continues now as a social worker in the city of Philadelphia – where each day I’m shown how remarkable my friend’s story is and reminded how many kids are going through the same things she did. I still remember the 2Pac lyrics written on her book covers, just as I see lyrics from today’s rappers covered on the book bags, book covers, and sometimes tattooed on the arms of the kids I see daily.
“I don’t remember the date or the judicial debate / But legally I was in custody of the state.” – Xzibit (“Carry The Weight”)
Xzibit’s 1996 debut album At The Speed of Life told the story of the kids in foster care. “Carry the Weight” was one of the first times that an artist spoke about their childhood custody situation. That simple admittance (highlighted above) is as big as DMX’s “Slippin’” when he mentions his hard drug use by saying “Look how that rock got him.” It’s part of what made At The Speed of Life so captivating. The album didn’t feature incredible production or unseen lyricism; it did however have the intensity of Xzibit’s honesty. Lyrics on the albums title track like, “The main goal’s to achieve, to succeed / Have it laid out for your seed” hears an artist concerned more for stability than the excesses of life. Just a few songs later, “Foundation,” sees Xzibit talking to his son through record. At age 22, he delivered arguably the most thoughtful and touching tribute to a child ever seen in Hip Hop, despite the fact that he was in states custody instead of his father’s home in his teenage years. At The Speed of Life demonstrates how the systems cycle can be broken. Yes, it presents a flawed man, but it also presents a free man, hungry to live, to be successful. Statistically speaking, Xzibit wasn’t supposed to be successful, but by doing so, he also became a voice for the near million kids in care. I still remember a friend of mine, who is now locked up, coming to school and saying “did you know X was in state custody when he was my age.” He said it with a sense of fulfillment that to this day I can still see and hear.
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Put your mind around the fact that your parents can no longer have any rights. That regardless of what happens in your life; they have no input, no legal standing. Now imagine that all decisions regarding you while in custody are taken from state law. Your life is given to a county worker, who leaves at five and goes home to their family. It’s a flawed system, that doesn’t have many other options. Doesn’t it make sense that foster children are more likely to join gangs? By all means there are good people who work in the foster care system. There are people who are constantly advocating for children, foster parents who go above and beyond their legal obligations and social workers who give up their time, social lives, and risk their safety for foster children. However, all it takes is one person in this system to not do their job, to overlook their responsibilities for that child to fall through the cracks. It’s easy to become a statistic and if you become one, there are tons of people to blame.
“Group homes and institutions, prepare my ass for jail” – DMX (“Slippin’”)
Only Game knows how life in foster care shaped him. Was it the streets of Compton that guided him to the life that he so intricately writes about or was it life in a foster home during pivotal years of his life? Lyrics like, “I was forced to live this life, forced to bust my chrome / My pops left me in a foster home” on “Don’t Need Your Love” speaks to the latter point. Foster care took Ice-T from a reportedly well-off family in New Jersey to the projects of South Central. From there he helped father Gangster Rap as we know and love it. Only recently did DMC deal with baggage that his experience in foster care left him with. Xzibit still references the situation. In one of his most recent released tracks, “Highest Form of Understanding”, he says “First night I spent in California I was homeless in Venice Beach,” before rapping “It was all a dream / Came to California at 17.” DMX rapped what every social worker fears, “Group homes and institutions, prepare my ass for jail.” In many ways maybe DMX never overcame the issues that group homes and institutions presented him with. I can’t tell their story like they can, and we can’t understand their story like the kids who are going through it. Yet one of the greatest feelings of empowerment that man has is when he realizes that somebody else experienced the same hardships he went through. Hip Hop is that voice to foster children.
“The saga begins / I’m a reflection of the drama within…” Cormega (“The Saga”)
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Every state-funded children and youth agency has classes available that attempt to prepare children for adulthood. All children in care are encouraged to attend therapy and both of these tools are helpful. Yet there is always an undeniable disconnect between the child who was abandoned and dealt considerable trauma and the therapist or career counselor who is attempting to help them. We can all sympathize, but few can empathize. Few can say they walked in their shoes. This is where Hip Hop plays a significant role as a form of music therapy that has the ability to relate to kids in such a direct way. Recently, I played Cormega’s “The Saga (Remix)” in my car and subsequently had an 18 year-old foster child cry, telling me that one of his earliest memories was seeing strange men coming to his home, and that his little brother always had his shoes on backwards. As he got older he realized the men that came were just supplying his mother’s crack cocaine addict, and that his brother was never told what shoe goes on what foot. He’s pieced together his childhood from the rappers he idolized. He came to understand his mother’s addiction and loss from artists like Joell Ortiz and Tupac Shakur. The greatest parenting lesson he received was from Xzibit’s “Foundation” and Game’s “Like Father Like Son.” This young adult been through more in his teenage life than most rappers go through in their lifetimes, but their stories assist him in understanding his own.
“Brenda wants to run away / Mama say, ‘You makin’ me lose pay,’ and social worker is here every day / Now Brenda’s gotta make her own way / Can’t go to her family, they won’t let her stay.” 2Pac (“Brenda’s Got A Baby”)
When 2Pac released “Brenda’s Got A Baby” in 1991, it evoked an incredible emotional response. The songs relevance is still eerily depressing. Ask any social worker if their agency has seen a case like this and the answer is always a resounding yes. I’ve been in college courses where professors have used this song to showcase the issue of child prostitution and/or the effects of broken families. Sadly, it’s never mentioned that Brenda’s baby would eventually grow up. The tragedy wasn’t just Brenda; it was the seed she bore. That baby is 20 now – angry, scared, afraid, confused, and alone. If Brenda didn’t have a family to lean on, just imagine what the baby had? Maybe she was adopted early in her foster care situation; maybe she bounced from group home to group home. Sure, this is all hypothetical, but if it isn’t Brenda’s Baby, whose is it? And just as importantly, whose voice is telling her story, inspiring her to shatter the glass ceilings of statistics that surround her? High school drop out, behavior problem, teenage pregnancy, gang member, criminal record, homeless – she is more likely to be lumped into any of these groups than to be labeled with anything that remotely means successful. The girl who inspired this story has six maternal siblings and only her and her younger sister have avoided jail time. Only she and a brother graduated high school. When you love someone who’s been through it, the statistics aren’t numbers, they’re people.
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“Time don’t go back, it go forward/ Can’t run from the pain, go towards it / Some things can’t be explained, what caused it?” – Jay-Z (“Lost Ones”)
The high rise project buildings might be gone. Chicago, New York and Philadelphia have all made it priority in the last decade to eliminate them. Crack cocaine use has lessened, and has been replaced by plenty of other vices. It’s no longer the ’80s. The crack epidemic that spawned extreme gang growth is no longer public enemy number one. Time moves on but that history is still ingrained in society. The victims of that generation must carry the weight. Our history books might ignore the blight of the ’80s. They’d much rather talk about the arms race with Russia, which led to the Cold War ending. That history is written, taught, and memorized. The crack-era devastated and altered society and birthed the next generation in the shadows of the city. Hustling came full circle and is now ingrained in our inner cities. The message started in 1982 and continues to this day. The history books of this era are told by our emcees, they know the saga. They acknowledge the lost ones, the children who lost a parent to the game (physically or mentally). They provide first hand encounters of a reality that society wants us to forget. Some of us nod our heads and enjoy the ride, while others hang on every word, making sense of their own life.
Luke Gibson is a Philadelphia, Pennsylvania-based Hip Hop journalist and Foster Care Social Worker. He has contributed to HipHopDX.com and is presently working on a book of poetry.
