Memoirs dig up the nasty gristle of each neglected gut part and hold it up to merciless, sterile light. They’re distinct from biographies because they don’t retell the timeline of a life. That would be boring and unfeeling, like the original intro I wrote for this essay. (Read it below.) We depend on memoirists to curate the important themes within a life and jam them down our throats.
“Memoirs are my favorite genre to read and explore because they give focused information about a specific aspect of the author’s life. They’re distinct from biographies because they use a finite theme to bring into bold view one embodied aspect of the first-person point of view. We learn early on to see our lives as stories with standout chapters and crucial sections.”
Rap is autobiographical and, like writing, it must punch. Sucker punch, swift jab, uppercut, whatever. Rap bars need to hit you when you think you’re looking but you’re not. The defining question of hip-hop is “what now?” Further distilled, it means “what do you bring to it?” How will you enrich this endless archive with your own story?
In sixth grade, we had tabletop beatbox freestyle sessions. Steve B. was a capable percussionist, as was my friend Akie. They’d hit the steady “boom-boom-clap” while we shouted verses. If at a loss for words, you could do what Steve did and recite existing hits.
“It was all a dream/I used to read Word Up! Magazine” was how Steve opened his turn on a breezy fall day in 4th period lunch. Then, he re-spat Biggie’s seminal verse with sparkling aplomb to the point it sounded new to us. His Polo rugby shivered to the thumping milk cartons and the warbling rubber bands on his braces curdled every verb in exact time. We broke into cheers.
“Used to” was the memoirist’s stamp in Biggie’s verse that I didn’t pick up on back then. I used to read the Source Magazine. I used to prep rhymes in my head for the tabletop beatbox. I used to, but I don’t anymore so this memory flares because it feels present. That’s memoir. That’s good rap.
I’ve been listening to JID’s The Forever Story for a month now and it’s a pristine Atlanta memoir. The wordsmith caught my ear with features before he had punched himself into my psyche. Like a lot of beginner artists, he sounded too much like his influences, which was distracting. On TFS, JID is deep in the catacombs of his “used to.” Great rap albums are memoirs because they drop you into the setting of a life and let it play around you. The bars that snatched me out of my shooting stance on the Tivoli basketball court and cracked the skies to slap my ears open in a thunderstorm:
“But fuck that, the whole team bust that motherfucker down/Now we fighting in the street, it’s like ten against twenty-three/I was seventeen, swinging on any and everything/Bing, bing, see my brother doing buddy like a boxing ring/Ros’ got a bitch doing the hair weave sling/So beautiful, beating ass was like a family thing/Fighting together made us tighter in spite of how we would argue and scream/And now we brawling right outside of a party in New Orleans/And all the people start police-calling”
— JID, “Crack Sandwich”
On graduation night, the author (and his closest family) get jumped in a club. They fight everybody in their radius. In the third verse’s cinematic turn, the brawl dilates the rhythm, forcing you into an audio melee. I want moments like that in books I read. I want to be consumed by their violence. I want to be broken down.
That JID visual reminded me of the four other albums in that continuum of memoirs I revisit when I write. These are works that show me I’m equally what I used to experience and what I continue to churn through. In no real order, these are rap’s best memoirs and the gut punches they delivered.
Mos Def (a.k.a Yasiin Bey), Black On Both Sides
It’s eleventh grade and I’m on the bus with Rumi. He’s telling me about “New World Water,” one of the prescient political songs on Mos Def’s Rawkus Records debut. I hadn’t gotten past “Ms. Fatbooty,” an anthem for my piquant teenage hormones. Rumi was right to underline this song about the state of resources like water, though. The live reporting of an era-defining climate dilemma seared in that prophetic voice. I’d revisit the album during my lackluster freshman year of college, where missing Brooklyn turned me into a junkie for home sounds. Mos Def’s nasal, brash, jovial reggae mash-ups drew me back home. I left school in Atlanta, never to return. I’d flown too far from the source of my dreams.
Kemba, GILDA
Kemba’s mourning album, GILDA, ensnares grief the year after his mother’s death. His reputation as a singular voice in rap burnished, the artist struggles to make sense of life outside of his career. I’m fortunate to have found early Kemba and that he allowed me to witness an immeasurable loss via his art. I thought of every friend who’d lost his young mother, how boys don’t understand their mothers as people until too late in life, and the humanity I’d denied my mother. The album strikes at you from its opening line “I am not a finished product,” using the slow creep of mortality to drag you into the muck with each track. Hunts Point, Bronx dreams float over each title, tethering Kemba to his mother’s unknown, unrealized visions. It’s heartbreaking and that’s how I want my emotions trampled.
Kendrick Lamar, good kid m.A.A.d. city
To be clear, neither JID’s The Forever Story nor Kemba’s GILDA could exist without Kendrick Lamar’s signature album good kid m.A.A.d city. Those artists lean heavily on his composition and narrative cues. It’s a memoir. It’s stuck in time, one night after a burglary. Protagonist Kendrick wants to make good on his Friday night date but his nihilistic crew might get them all killed or arrested first. They also walk parallel to redemption roads meant for them. The songs dare you to live in the suspense of the sinner-saint binary. I walk the road to my ignoble death and my unlikely salvation at least once a year by listening to it.
Biggie, Ready to Die
I don’t know how else to explain this except to say…Biggie is part of me. His Jamaican roots, his penchant for a tight sentence, and a funny triplicate? That’s me too. His debut album indulged the sticky allure of depression and explored the power of violence as a redress. How could such a young man understand the timeless experience of breaking out of boyhood only to find grinning death on the other side? “Juicy,” the most popular first-person rap song, has 480 million views on YouTube. Biggie blew up like you thought he would, and paid for immortal renown with his eternal youth album. I want to write sentences just as ready to die as he was in 1993.
Cardi B, Invasion of Privacy
Cardi B’s so funny, vibrant, and honest that her single studio album is a double feat. The ability to transfer that unfiltered honesty doesn’t always extend to prepared long-form work. But Cardi’s album leaps from the Bronx to global recognition by emphasizing confidence. When you come from modest means, and still shout out the beauty there, it carries the mob of supporters that propelled you. Invasion of Privacy is a New York day overhearing music at intersections: salsa, boom bap, trap, drill. New Yorkers are already arrogant but confirmation through rap music keeps us edgy, springy. I’d love to write a memoir that people quote like Cardi’s.
This post originally appeared on Medium and is edited and republished with author's permission. Read more of Andrew Ricketts' work on Medium.