Dr. Dre visits the classroom

12-30-2007

Nothing brightens my day like when a student shows up to my youth center and doesn’t understand a word of English, can’t even ask me my name, but then pulls out a guitar and plays me a smashing rendition of “Hotel California” pronounced in perfect English. Pop music is the best educational tool I’ve found so far, because people love American music and are often overjoyed (though sometimes shocked) to find out what the heck the songs they’ve been singing in the shower actually mean.

So needless to say, my favorite quote of the entire Moroccan experience so far is, “Chris, explain to me the lyrics of Dr. Dre and what is it meaning ‘Crib of gangsta rap?’”

This particular student came up to me after class and pulled out an online printout of the entire “2001” album and asked me to help him understand the colloquialisms. What proceeded was a hilariously entertaining educational session involving an awkward white boy from South Dakota, delicately trying to explain the poetic subtleties of Compton’s notorious Grand Daddy of Rap, including craftily edited explanations (“It means, ‘These immoral women are only after the money of a streetwise African American man.’”), and who is and is not allowed to use the N-word (“But Chris, I live in Morocco. I am African, so I get to say it, yes?” “Umm…I don’t think so.”). And then came an even more awkward conversation involving “So if a person says in his song that has killed many men, I think he is lying, because he then would be in prison, yes?” followed by me trying to explain tough-guy image and survival in the “hood.” Let me repeat—ME trying to explain tough-guy image and survival in the “HOOD.”

They say that when you travel, you often become a representative of things for which you never considered yourself a representative. Before it was American foreign policy, and I thought THAT was tough. But now that I—Chris Bacon—am the baddest motha’ on the block and the be-all and end-all source of knowledge on “the crib of gangsta rap,” I see the truth of that statement more than ever.

Cultural ambassador oh yes I am!