Most of the important relationships in my life began with music.
My most vivid memory of my mother has her dancing alone in our living room, The Fugees oozing from the wall-mounted speakers. Music always made her curious for more, this curiosity being her most youthful trait. When she danced, she looked like a child.
Long before I reached puberty, my childhood best friend and I bonded over a shared love of Eminem. He taught us both that it was ok to be angry and definitely not corny at all. Most of my friends now hardly talk to me about anything other than music and I’ve designed it that way. I even met my girlfriend at a show for a local artist. We both knew the band and it broke the ice. Yet, it wasn’t until I traveled to the other side of the planet that I realized the true unifying power of hip-hop and music in general.
I first met Mario in Accra, Ghana, while studying abroad at the University of Oregon. We both stayed in the same student housing complex at Webster University. I’d been in Accra for three weeks before I met him, and thus far, I’d yet to circumvent the surface-level conversations common when traveling abroad. There was never enough time to break down the cultural walls that prevented me from really talking to someone.
I didn’t have trouble getting to know the American students on my trip. I asked about their goals, their relationships, their fears. I knew what music they liked and who had never bothered to see the Sopranos. Yet, I knew nothing of the Africans surrounding me, because even as a journalist, I didn’t feel comfortable asking tough questions to people I’d only ever meet in passing.
Mario grew up in Yaounde, Cameroon, considered both the west and central Africa due to its precarious location. There are 2.8 million people living there, making it the second-largest city in Cameroon, behind Douala. It’s a cultural epicenter, home to Cameroon’s National Museum and Mfoundi market, one of the largest wholesale open-air markets on the continent.
I grew up in Tigard, Oregon, where the population matters to basically no one at all. It’s considered the bleached asshole of Portland because while it’s outfitted with suburbs and modernity, it’s still a shithole. One that would make a perfect location for a museum dedicated to the opiate epidemic.
Through the paper-thin walls of our glorified hostel, I began to hear the familiar sound of Meek Mill yelling at me for being unmotivated. I heard Future crooning, seducing me into a brand of hedonism I may never know. When I heard Mario play ALLBLACK, I finally had enough and worked up the courage to knock on his door.
The familiar smell of cigarettes flooded towards me as he opened the door. Webstar was a non-smoking campus and I immediately felt a kindred spirit; for no cigarette tasted better than the illegal one. I asked if he had an extra and we sat down on the balcony. An anonymous Young Thug verse was struggling to make it out of his phone speaker sitting on his lap. I asked if he’d ever heard of Freddie Gibbs and we began to talk for the next two hours. We talked about Accra and Cameroon. We talked about how weed was legal in Oregon and how there are even stores that sell it on nearly every block. We talked about his brothers, both earning master degrees in medical science in South Africa. He showed me the music videos they’d made together, one of which featured Mario sitting on a bed with four phones on the dresser beside him.
It’s hip-hop’s ability to be everything at once that opened us up. The best artists are brutally honest. Whether it’s Maxo Kream, digging up the skeletons buried deep in his Nigerian fathers closet, divvying up the bones into equal piles for listeners worldwide. Or it’s Shotta Wale, disappearing into the Ghanaian slums of Nima for 12 years before returning to drop another hit, eventually catching the ear of Beyoncé. Or it’s Burna Boy, holding onto his African heritage tightly as he serenades the diaspora, with sounds that transcend western borders, simultaneously bringing us together while still being a constant reminder of how far away we truly are.
When I got back to my room, my mom had texted me to see if I had heard the most popular song in the world.
“I like that Old Town Road song,” she said. “It reminds me of when I was a kid and being in my hometown, with the farming and the horses.”
She recalls hearing it for the first time while visiting our family in Minnesota earlier this summer. I give a friendly lie and say that I liked it too. It was the most we’ve talked in months.
