Most people don’t know this about me, but I was an award-winning rapper way back when. I was recognized for my rap game before Native Tongues, before Colors, before N.W.A. or “Boyz-n-the-Hood.” I have a certain claim to having been there early, if not actually at the beginning.
That I was recognized by the Kiwanis Club of San Rafael, California, bears mentioning. As a sixth grader at Miller Creek Middle School, in Marinwood, I won second prize in a contest they sponsored to make promos for a sober graduation. If this sounds like the whitest thing ever, that’s because it was.
The idea to make a rap was not my own. That came from, I think, my social studies teacher, who was also the art teacher. I have no idea what she knew about rap or why she thought I ought to try it. At that point, I only owned two rap albums, Run-DMC’s Raising Hell and The Beastie Boys’ License to Ill. I’d seen Breakin’ 2: Eletric Boogaloo in the theater, and I remember my dad saying he liked “You Be Illin’.” We had only recently stopped calling the genre “break dancing music.” In the next year or two, I’d get to know the Colors soundtrack, Kool Moe Dee, and the dirty raps of 2 Live Crew and Too Short. But that was all in the future. In sixth grade, The Beastie Boys were everything. I remember a field trip where the entire bus was chanting “Paul Revere.” No idea where we were actually going.
I may have known next to nothing about hip hop, but I took the rap recording very seriously. I can’t recall now where I got my beats, but I must have had them. I can’t remember any lyrics except for the final words, delivered with all the toughness I could muster: “Don’t … drink … and driiiiive.” I do remember laboring over one particular line where I could put the rhythmic emphasis either of two ways, and I liked them equally. I worked hard on my delivery.
I didn’t know anything about the Kiwanis Club or similar organizations. My grandfather was a Freemason because it made his father-in-law happy, but he had zero interest in it by the time I was born. My parents were hippies who didn’t go in for that sort of thing. We did Indian Guides instead of Boy Scouts. So the award ceremony, held at a Kiwanis luncheon, was like a visit to a foreign country. They started with grace and then the Pledge of Allegiance. It freaked me out. I’d never heard anyone say grace before. Hamotzi, sure. Grace, no.
The prize was two shares of Pacific Gas & Electric, worth about forty dollars, which, if I had held on to them until today, would be worth about twenty dollars. I don’t remember ever selling them, but I must have. It’s not much, but I can say honestly that I got paid for my award-winning rhymes before Jay-Z or Biggie or Pac ever did.
Hotel, motel, Holiday Inn, Kiwanis Club.
Also published on Medium.