Started From the Bottom

This song has been on my mind a lot lately, and not just bcuz Drake looks like a young Ben Stiller in the video. I went to White Plains Family Court last week to help a client file for a "Guardianship petition" to have his sister named his legal guardian (his moms either doesn't know how to / won't take him for doctor's appointments, haircuts, etc.). While we were filling out the paperwork a teenager walked by singin "started from the bottom now we up..."

the only reason I didn't finish the line was cuz I was like "Brett, you're at work, maintain professionality," but then we kinda caught caught eyes for a sec--I was checkin out this gray Phoenix Suns' hat he had on--and then he was like "what the f*ck you lookin at cracker"?!?!

that may be a first for me, but it also got me wonderin if I woulda been less of a cracker if I had said the line. Now, I can't make too much of it bcuz knowing a Drake song is not like hood credibility or anything, but maybe it would've made me more relateable, and less like a hostile, foreign whiteman.

Either way, I didn't take it personal. if he's wandering around White Plains Family Court by himself at 11 AM on a Friday, chances are he's goin thru some tough times right now. as I left the courthouse, I saw a gun tossed on the traintracks and told the conductor, who called it in to the po-lice. typical cracker.

the last thing I was kinda thinkin about was Drake's cross-class trajectory. as the video makes clear, his "momma's house" is not the same "everything in my momma's name" type situation that we usually see in rap. in fact, rap is one of the very few places where people cross class lines regularly. for all our terrible history it's still easier to cross racial lines in America than class ones (in my experience). and yet there is one section of our popular culture that does it regularly: rappers.

Ironically, Drake prolly isn't one of them. "started from the top, now at a totally different place but still also at the top." not as catchy. nobody gonna be singin that at White Plains Family Court.