Channeling Lil Wayne

Deep in the heart of my 5 year old lives a circa 1980’s b-boy. There’s is just no explaining his love for hip-hop, or sneakers, or the need to wear his Dodgers cap cocked to the side. He aspires to be a doctor, a soldier or one of the Black Eyed Peas. I wonder if there is a triple major for that at Harvard.

His affinity for music, live concerts in particular, have become norm, so I wasn’t surprised when I cam home one night and Snickiedoo was asking The Hubbie when they could watch “the concert”. I am trying to enforce the No-TV-on-Weeknights unless Mommy & Daddy are really worn out rule, so I was impressed that The Hubbie told him that they could watch “the concert” after dinner. I assumed that the concert in question was the Nickelodeon Mega Music Festival that has been on our DVR for about five months. It’s the one where Dora the Explorer sings “Walking on Sunshine” with Colbie Callet (yes, it’s as full bottle of wine guzzling as it sounds).

After Snickiedoo’s third request, The Hubbie obliged and turned on the concert… “Live from Madison Square Garden…” Wait a second. “Make some noise for Cash Money…” This isn’t Nick Jr…
Turns out my son was begging to watch the rapper Drake sing/rap his hits live from Madison Square Garden. I turned to The Hubbie and gave him the look, the one that says why do I have to be the responsible parent while you do things that clearly undermine my efforts for our children to be geniuses! The Hubbie simply looks at me and says, “All of the profanity is edited out.” Comforting.

So Snickiedoo is sing/rapping along with Drake (I’ll admit it’s kind of funny how he butchers the more controversial lyrics with his pre-school dialect) and I try to ignore the fact that I can clearly notice when the cuss words are being bleeped.
Snickiedoo: “When is he going to sing my song?”
The Hubbie: “What song is that?”
Snickiedoo: “Forever. Drake hasn’t sang Forever yet.”
The Hubbie: “Oh, he sang that already.”
Snickiedoo: “No he didn’t, he did not sing Forever and that’s my favorite Drake song.”

I give The Hubbie the look and decide to leave the hip hop kid and move on with my evening. Soon I hear the opening cords of “Forever”… hmmm, the kid was right, he knows his Drake. I make my way back towards the TV room and The Hubbie stops me dead in my tracks. “You don’t want to go in there,” he says. It was a rare moment when I should have listened to him.

That day Snickiedoo had worn to school a fleece Old Navy sweat suit with a white t-shirt underneath. He had on all three articles of clothing when I first left the room. Now the hoodie was thrown on the floor, his pants were hanging on his hips a little low, and the white t-shirt was off, exposing his scrawny bare chest. He was dancing on one leg and swinging the t-shirt in the air, channeling Lil Wayne. No need for Drake to worry about Weezy being in prison because the ultimate hype man was dancing in my living room.

“Snickie, what are you doing,” I gently ask.

He keeps singing Forever at the top of his lungs swinging his shirt in the air and tapping his chest on beat. He looks at me but ignores me.

“Honey, why did you take your shirt off”

He looks at me like “Bitch, don’t you see me getting my party on?!”
Knowing that this moment calls for something stronger than a Cabernet, I head for the freezer to make a Belvedere and cranberry, and decide that Dora might have a nice voice after all…

Tags: hip hop kids, Lil Wayne, Nick Jr