“You have become the very thing that you swore to destroy” – Obi Wan Kenobi
Being a millennial, I was able to experience many things. The advent of the internet and social media from the start. Saturday morning cartoons with Kids WB and Fox Kids. Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network, and Disney Network dominating the cartoon game (Rocko’s Modern Life, Angry Beavers, Invader Zim, the list goes on and on). Snick with All That and Kenan and Kel. Going outside to play then going back inside to play PlayStation or Nintendo 64. Hip Hop in the Golden Era, Bling Era and subsequent eras. Sooo many things in my childhood that I experienced were vital to my outlook on sooo many aspects of life. However, one thing that my parents did that was very crucial had me listen to the music that they grew up on. It all started with my grandmother, who would listen to 88.7 the Jazz station religiously. Any time we spent the night in her place, she always had that radio station on with Jazz playing. If that wasn’t playing, then the Quiet Storm was on rotation on Majic 105 . So many nights, I would listen to those stations while looking at the city skyline, allowing the rhythms and energy to wash over me, not even realizing what exactly I was listening to. All I knew was that it felt right. Follow that up with my parents playing 70s-90s R&B, Blues, and Hip Hop with The Temptations, The Four Tops, Cameo, Earth, WInd, & Fire, 2Pac, Toni Braxton, New Edition, Johnnie Taylor, Babyface, MJ, Prince, Stevie Wonder, Notorious B.I.G. Juvenile, and soooooo many other acts, my musical palette became pretty robust even at a young age. This created a tie, or a generational through line, from what my grandmother listened to and grew up on, to what my parents listened to and grew up on and how powerful music can be utilized as a tool to combine all of our shared experiences through one medium.
As I got older, I gradually became more fascinated with hip hop. Going through the 2000s and watching the genre rise to new heights and continuously evolving was an awesome thing to experience in middle school and high school. However, it came with a fair bit of criticism mainly levied by my parents’ generation and older. “That’s not real music. You need to be listening to x”, “You kids don’t know nothin about this”, “Whatchu listening to that trash music for?”, “All that stuff is demonic”, and whatever iterations of those statements. A term was coined to describe folks with these critiques: Oldheads. All through high school, we would hear constant critiques from old heads, talking about how their music was superior and how the music that we listened to and enjoyed was inferior. These critiques wore on some folks, and they started to “other” the music that they listened to. Thus, the headass was spawned out of a desperate need for acceptance. “Oh, this is ‘real hip hop’. I don’t listen to that other stuff that they listen to” or even shooting back by saying that they music that the older generations listened to was trash and that they needed to get with the times. The headass needed to be vindicated at all costs, even at the expense of building that relationship with what “was”. All in all, many of us vowed that we would NEVER become those types of people when we got older.
As I’ve gotten older, I’ve seen more and more people of my generation betray the vow that their younger selves made. The same judgements levied to younger generations about their musical tastes. Same critiques. Same stubbornness. Same headassery, but now it has taken on a familiar state. These folks, knowingly or unknowingly, became….old heads. They became the very people that they swore against. But how? And why? What happened over the course of a decade plus to cause this deterioration between the generational through line? My running hypothesis was all but confirmed with one music video and that hypothesis was that we, as millennials, younger Gen Xers, and older Gen Z did a shit job at bridging the generational gap in music. We can see it in how hip-hop discourse is currently and we can see it in the nigh elimination of R&B as an entire genre. We got too cozy and lost some recipes, so to speak. Due to what we experienced from the old heads as we grew up, we went full force into the music that we loved while relegating the music from generations past to family functions. We didn’t aid any of the youth in learning about the origins of different samples. We didn’t put them onto some older artists that were still making music. We didn’t encourage folks to make more music in traditional R&B to keep that genre thriving. It became Trap and Trap lite. You had rappers and rappers that couldn’t sing trying to croon their way to an R&B hit. Soon, everyone in that genre sounded the same with the same beats, the same trap hi hats, and no soul to show for it. It honestly wasn’t until freaking Bruno Mars came with 24k Magic where folks realized that they genuinely missed 90s R&B and began questioning what happened to that type of music. Then, it wasn’t until Silk Sonic dropped when folks really realized that there’s a clear void in the genre that needed to be filled. Lastly, it took the Luther music video and to drop for folks to realize, “shit, this is what R&B used to sound like”.
Gen Z/Gen Alpha are generations that are thirsty for knowledge but have shown a propensity to be unable to think beyond their own existence. Some of them think that the world started when they were born and when you bring information to them that existed prior to them being born, they have a resistance to believe it. This further shows that we haven’t done our part in building that rapport and bond with them to show that generational through line in music beyond just sampling. We treat them the same way that the oldheads of yesteryear treated us. We bash their music. We criticize their fashion. We use the same patronizing slogans used against us to shame them. All the while, we are creating that same sense of rebellion in them that was calcified within us. We are creating the very headasses that that we became as a defense mechanism. We have become the old heads that they’ll look at with disdain. The cycle continues in perpetuity until we change it.
Which brings me back to Luther. Luther was a perfect fusion of hip hop and R&B in the same vein as Dilemma by Nelly & Kelly Rowland and You’re All I Need (Remix) by Method Man & Mary J. Blige, utilizing a sample of Luther Vandross and Cheryl Lynn’s cover of Marvin Gaye’s song, “If This World Were Mine” throughout the track. The music video brought the sample a step further by giving a spotlight to showcase Luther’s impeccable vocals, bringing the theme of the entire music video full circle. It was a loving tribute to two legends, and it created that generational through line that was so desperately needed for a new generation of youth. You had younger generations looking into who Luther Vandross was because they never heard of him. Some thought that it was Kendrick singing on the track. Some even thought that Luther Vandross was a new artist. All of which are indictments of what we failed to do. We can’t afford nor allow this through line to falter yet again. We need to build on what has been established and start sharing those songs, those genres, those artists with younger generations so they too can grow an appreciation for what our parents, grandparents, and ancestors listened to. That shared experience is truly generational, and it would be a shame for us to let that fall by the wayside simply because we allowed the trauma of headasses and oldheads alike get in the way of truly bridging the gap to the youth and young adults alike.
In conclusion, nobody likes a headass. Nobody likes an oldhead. Either bridge the gap or fall in it.
TCI
The Cool Intellectual 
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