I halfway expect him to volley another reply at me, but he just smiles. I didn’t anticipate conversation this stimulating. His body, yes. Conversation, no.
“So are you any good?” I ask. “At rapping, I mean.”
“Would you know if I were good?” he counters, a skeptical look on his face.
“Probably not.” My laugh comes easier than most things have today. “But I might know if you were bad.”
“I’m not bad.” He chuckles. “I think my flow’s pretty decent.”
“Sorry,” I interject. “For the rap remedial in the audience, define flow.”
“Define it?” He looks at me as if I asked him to saddle a unicorn. “Wow. You ever assume you know something so well, that it’s so basic, you can’t think of how to explain it?”
“Let me guess. That’s how it is with flow.”
“Well, now that you asked me to define it, yeah.”
“Just speak really slowly and use stick figures if you need to.”
Rich laughter warms his eyes. “Okay. Here goes.”
He leans forward, resting those coppery-colored, muscle-corded arms on the table, distracting me. I think I really may need stick figures if he keeps looking this good.
“A rapper’s flow is like . . .” He chews his full bottom lip, jiggling it back and forth, as if the action might loosen his thoughts. “It’s like the rhythmic current of the song. Think of it as a relationship between the music and the rapper’s phrasing or rhythmic vocabulary, so to speak. You make choices about how many phrases you place in a measure. Maybe you want an urgent feeling, so you squeeze a lot of phrasing into a measure. Maybe you want a laid back feel, and you leave space; you hesitate. Come in later than the listener expects.”
“Okay. That makes sense.”
“And the choices a rapper makes, how well the current of that music and his phrasing, his rhythmic vocabulary, work together, that’s his flow. Cats like Nas, Biggie, Pac—they’re in this rarefied category where their flow is so sick, so complex, but it seems easy. That’s when you know a flow is exceptional. When it seems effortless.”
“Now I get that.” I give him a straight face, but teasing eyes. “I can see how you won your rap scholarship.”
“Rap scholarship! It sounds so weird when you say it.” He sits back in his seat, a smile crooking his lips. “I actually went for writing. Rapping was kind of Rhyson’s idea.”
“Rhyson?” Shock propels a quick breath out of me. “What does he know about rap?”
“I’m guessing more than you do.” His smile lingers for a second before falling away. “I wrote poetry. That’s how I got in. Rhyson was looking for a way to translate his classical piano sound to a more modern audience, so I helped him. And he convinced me that all these poems I had could be raps. The rest is history.”
“So you have an album or something?”
“Not yet. Working on a mix tape.” He clamps a straw between his teeth. “Also working on paying my rent.”
“Thus the Deejaying?”
“Deejaying, sweeping floors for studio time, writing for other artists, doing stuff with Grady.” A careless shrug of his shoulders. “Whatever comes, I do.”
“You write for other artists?”
“Yeah.”
“I don’t get it. Rappers don’t write their own stuff? I thought it was so personal and rooted in where you’re from and all that.”
“To not know much about hip-hop, you have definite ideas about it,” he teases.
“You’ll find I have definite ideas about everything.” I chuckle because it’s true. “Even things I know nothing about.”
“Ah, so that’s a family trait.”
He’s so right. Rhyson and I are both obstinate know-it-alls.
“Apparently.” I nod for him to continue. “You were saying.”
“So hip-hop’s like any other genre. There are some guys who write everything themselves, and it’s like what you’re describing. But a club’s a club’s a club. Love is love. Anybody can write it. So sometimes guys like me, who are kind of writers first, we help.”
“Would I know any of the songs you’ve worked on?
“Probably not.” He grins. “Not because they’re not on the radio, but because I doubt you listen to those stations.”
“You’re making a lot of assumptions about someone you just met. Maybe I know all of them. Try me.”
He rattles off four songs.
I know none of them. Dammit.
I’ll have to eat crow, which if Darla doesn’t get my scallops, I might gladly do.
When Darla returns and confirms that they can provide my scallops, I place my order. The hurried meal I ate this morning is a distant memory, so I dive in as soon as the food arrives, working my way methodically through every morsel on my plate. I eat the scallops so fast you’d think I sprinkled them with fairy dust to make them disappear.
“Remind me to keep you fed.” Grip takes another bite of his burger.
“Very funny.” I glance up sheepishly from my empty plate. “How’s their dessert?”
We share a slow smile, and I can’t remember when I’ve felt this way with another person. Laughing at each other’s jokes, comfortable with each other’s silences, calling each other out on our crap.
“Grip.” A tall man with dark brown skin and eyes to match stops at our table. “I thought that was you.”
“What’s good, Skeet?” Grip stands, and they grasp hands, exchanging pats to the back. “Haven’t seen you in months. Congrats on the new album.”
“Man, thanks.” Skeet’s eyes flick to me. “Who’s the little shawty?”
The little shawty? Does he mean me?
Grip catches my eye, apparently finding it funny.
“This is Bristol,” he answers with a laugh. “Rhyson’s sister.”
“Rhyson, Rhyson. Who’s . . .” Skeet frowns for a second before he remembers. “Oh. That white dude who plays the piano?”
Not exactly how I would describe one of the greatest living classical pianists, but we can go with that.
“Yeah, that’s him.” Grip’s smile appreciates the irony of Skeet’s description. “Bristol’s visiting for the week.”
“Nice.” Skeet smiles politely before turning his attention back to Grip. “What’d you think of the album?”
Grip screws his face up, a rueful turn to his mouth.
“That bad?” Skeet demands.
“It was a’ight,” Grip concedes. “Honestly, I just know you have something better in you than that.”
“Well, damn, Grip,” Skeet mumbles. “Why don’t you tell me what you really think?”
“Oh, okay. Well, that shit was whack,” Grip says.
“Um, I was being sarcastic,” Skeet says. “But since we being honest . . .”
“We’ve known each other too long to be anything but honest. It just felt kind of tired.” Grip sits, gestures for Skeet to join us. “Who’d you work with?”
“You know that guy Paul?” Skeet sits and steals one of Grip’s fries. “They call him Low.”
“That dude?” Grip sips his beer and grimaces. “Figures.”
“Well you ain’t been around,” Skeet says defensively. “I didn’t know if you was still down or whatever.”
“Am I still down?” Irritation pinches Grip’s face into a frown. “I’m the same dude I’ve always been. I’m working with anybody who can pay, so don’t use that as an excuse.”
“Right, right, but you know how some of these niggas go off and get all new on you.”
My eyes stretch before I have time to disguise my surprise when he uses the N-word so freely in front of me. I squirm in my seat, sip my water, and try to look invisible. That is one of the worst words in the English language, and I would never use it. I’ve never said it, and I never will. It’s hard for me to understand how people of color use it for themselves even casually.