My Kids and My Music

I was just on a friend's blog and I asked a question that's been in my head for longer than a decade: Am I going to introduce my kids to the music of my youth?

When I was a kid, the house was filled with music, and it's music I continue to listen to, to this day. I remember Saturday mornings, when we had to get up and clean the house and the radio would be on (The Big DM 101 FM) or my dad might break out some records. And my dad wasn't that old back then, maybe the same age I am now. He'd start playing something like Earth, Wind, & Fire, The Commodores, LTD, Chic, Ronnie Laws...the list is pretty endless, especially if you see my dad's record collection. The music he was playing was still pretty popular stuff, from anywhere between the mid 70s to the mid 80s. Basically, the music of his early adulthood. That music stayed with me. In fact, I'm playing Ronnie Laws right now. But then, I compare it to the music of MY early adulthood...

There might be five CDs in the whole group that don't have a Parental Advisory warning on the front. And that's not counting artists that my dad introduced me to. The Jeffrey Osborne and Metallica CDs that I wore holes in during college can't be listed here.

I look back on that list of CDs, just the ones from 1998 alone...Jay-Z's "Vol. 2...Hard Knock Life," DMX's "It's Dark and Hell Is Hot," Eminem's "The Slim Shady LP," Big Punisher's "Capital Punishment." A year for great hip-hop. Not counting CDs that I was still playing from years past...Redman's "Muddy Waters," Biggie's "Life After Death," The Makaveli CD. And when I think about the parent I want to be and the mindset and musical tastes I want my kids to have, I don't think I could, in good conscience, allow my kids to listen to that.

I remember back in 1994, when I had Gravediggaz "6 Feet Deep" on constant repeat in my CD player, and I wondered (at the age of 16), how much further could hip-hop go? This was the most graphic CD I'd ever listened to, even to the point where Eminem wouldn't even shock me when he finally came out. I looked back on the evolution of music from my dad's generation to my own. I could see how funk and soul gave way to hip-hop. Sure, it was nasty, raunchy, and foul-mouthed, but it was the music of my generation. And then, I looked at the early days of rap to the (then) present day and how it seemed to become more crass, more nasty, just more, more, more. I began to wonder, "how can they top this?" And I was genuinely worried about what music would be like when I became a parent.

What could possibly top what I heard on "6 Feet Deep?" How much further would the law allow you to go? Would they just put recordings of actual killings on CD? Would they keep saying "Fuck" over and over, for the whole song (as it turns out, Lil Jon's music didn't get much further from this)?

My thoughts brought me to a strange conclusion: What if my kids' generation has a backlash to the music of my generation? What if, instead of being more graphic and violent, they just mellow out? What if their music hearkens back to the music of my parents' generation or before?

As it turns out, that's probably what they're going to wind up listening to in their formative years. Older music has become a larger part of my overall taste since 1994, and personally, I find that I prefer music that's played with real musical instruments. Call me old-fashioned. I want my kids to hear that, and I hope they can appreciate what I expose them to, like I eventually would with my dad's music. I know that when they get older, I probably won't be able to stop them from hearing whatever's going to be playing on the radio at that time, and maybe at that point, I'll let them get a taste of what Dad was listening to when he was a teenager.

In an ideal world, they'll hear the lyrics from those CDs, look at me and say, "Were you having trouble at home, Dad?"

One can only hope. I like to think a good parent would.