In 2001, I was lazing around at college, listening to the last two rappers who beefed at the turn of the century. This was about a generation ago, when rap beefs were first unfolding on the internet, and I thought 25-year-olds were oldheads.
As Jay-Z and Nas tossed warheads that could be bought on faded CD-Rs on Jamaica Avenue or at Broadway Junction, I was dawdling at the Buckhead Mall with my friends Earv and Evens. They were two very well-meaning Haitian brothers into rap and girls and the meaning of life as told through NFL Football and The Source magazine. Earv was the kind of friend I’d had throughout my childhood and teen years, upper-middle-class rich and driving by the age of 16. His parents could afford to give him allowance for five of my little Andrew pockets so I latched on. But he was also cool and unassuming and could hoop, also traits common to the friends I leeched off of in my Brooklyn poverty hazmat suit. They enabled my endless string of childhoods by tapping their parents for resources mine never had.
Evens was the older one and had been at Morehouse for many years, overstaying his term as a super-senior by at least a quartet of semesters. His flapping jowls and high cheekbones gave him the look of a James Earl Jones body double but with alcohol bloat tightening his sleeves to his biceps. He kept no affiliations. He wouldn’t pledge (that’s for fuckboys, he said) and he didn’t join student clubs (you expect me to read more?! I’m already five semesters behind, dawg!) He was the type to call me by my last name in that affectionate jocular way that pastime varsity athletes do to everyone between their age 15 and age 26 years. I liked Evens and he wasn’t a hater.
But he was also in his second childhood. The only time I disliked Evens, and when I’m sure the rest of my friends disliked him too, was when he was screaming, crying, and otherwise crashing out for his dad to give him more money.
You see, Evens had a strip club habit during the time when the exotic dancers were loading up their Atlanta heyday. The golden hour at Magic City would bring out the premier ATL rap acts, of which there were many between ’01 and ’05. T.I., Ying Yang Twins, Lil Jon, Field Mob, and Bonecrusher would jaunt into most big clubs and shut them down for the night, making Evens, a 6’5 charmer with rich doctor parents, seem like a brunch service valet in comparison.
That didn’t stop Evens from trying his hand though. He would go with this local drug dealer guy named Koko (who I owed money for trying to flip a QP of dirt weed from last semester) and they’d sit back like fat-nigga-kingpins waiting for the girls to ask them who they were or what they needed for the night. Recognition. A warm body to lay up under. A C-Pap machine probably. These humongous non-biological twins, Evens and Koko, were not a sight to see by my measure, and I always had dirty sneakers and some Levi’s that were ripped in the crotch so take that any way you want to.
Meantime, younger brother Earvin would get under his much larger older brother’s armpits and dig his knuckled fist into the part of the rib cage he could find. He’d bite down and hold his tongue tight inside his mouth saying, “Evens! Cut this shit out, man. You wanna drive our dad to the poor house so you can look like T.I.’s weed carrier, bruh? These fools will outspend you in an hour and send you packing to Baton Rouge, you hear me?”
He was effectively playing the older brother to his older brother, and derived no joy from it. I could hear in the rubbery vocal strains of those entreaties that he was fundamentally worried about his brother not amounting to much. I was also sure I wouldn’t amount to much, so me and Evens could hang out someday down on Skid Row. At least he’d have a car.
When we’d take off to my friend Rob’s dorm room to listen to Nas tracks off Audiogalaxy, we were searching for versions without that conspicuous bark sound added to stave off bootleggers.
That’s a long preamble to say that America is in its second childhood. Nas’s eponymous ballad is a tragic allegory of hood anti-heroes who jostle around trapped in the poet’s verses. My favorite bars are from the second one, where he describes a 31-year-old hustler:
“Got babies by/
Different ladies, high/
Smoking Ls in the same spot he stood
Since ‘85, well/
When his stash low, he be crazy/
Saved by his moms, hit her on her payday”
America’s stash low as hell right now. She’s hitting up billionaire oligarchs for loans and tearing up the social safety net for a sniff at previous glory. Sad state.
I was watching the Netflix miniseries Adolescence about a middle school boy who kills a girl in his class on a depraved impulse. He’s unable to see his pathology or take account of his warped view of young women. Instead of bracing for his regular pubescent lumps, he upends the social order of his small town and ruins his and many others’ lives. It’s not a spoiler to reveal the plot because the story is more about the local repercussions of broad social failings than it is about one character or another.
I noticed in the news many months ago, three separate pieces about how neglecting men, specifically young white men, led us to this apocalyptic timeline. Jacob Savage mused about the disappearance of Young White Male Novelists; Andrew Marantz wrote about the Podcast Bro Pipeline to the presidency, and Derek Thompson and Ezra Klein went on about liberals needing to listen to bigots and pitch the widest tent or some other phallic symbol.
White men are back. White men never left. American white men are in their second childhood. The president is on a revenge tour, as if him winning after cratering everything wasn't revenge enough. America had a chance to mature, maybe. But without giving up the ghost, laying down colonial conceits, ignoring its hard-on for others suffering, we now enter a phase of dipshit denialism. But instead of crapping out at the strip club, or puking up losses on DraftKings, we will surrender to A.I. and cyberterrorism. We’ll dine on FDA-approved effluvium til our guts bloom new toxins from the inside and the GLP-1s are the only (false) hope we have to not explode.
I am also in my second childhood. But I would like my retirement fund, a few Lil Debbie Cakes, and a self-driving electric cart to escort me to the checkout line.
This post originally appeared on Substack and is edited and republished with author's permission. Read more of Andrew Ricketts' work on Substack.