I took Aaliyah’s booster seat out today. 

It’s weird to look back and see her seat be just an ordinary seat now. I’ve watched her grow, watched her become more independent, and watched her nearly every day of her life. 

But I don’t like that she doesn’t need a booster seat anymore. 

Maybe it’s because with the bucket seats in the back of my Buick, she couldn’t get herself buckled, so she always needed me to buckle her in. 

Until this morning. I popped the car seat out, it folded in defeat in the back of the car, and she sat right down and buckled herself. 

Then she begged me to play Dutton Ranch Freestyle. She didn’t want to listen to Number One Spot.

I dreaded the first day of school this year. Normally, it’s not a big deal. I take pictures, I take her through the drop off line, she gets out, and I’m headed to work. But the start of school means the end of summer, the return of school time routines, and colder weather. As that one TikTok account would say, “I don’t like that.”

Plus I locked us out of the house this morning. Thankfully Angel works 5 minutes away.

And to top it all off, she doesn’t need the booster seat anymore. Which means she needs me for one less thing. In a long list of things that she eventually won’t need me for.

I’m getting ahead of myself. 

She’s already tall for her age. And people tell us all the time how mature she is as well. I forget all the time that she’s only 8 when I expect her to act way older than she actually is. And she’s riding the bus for the first time from school. Not far mind you, but she’s in a vehicle that’s not mine or Angel’s. 

I don’t like that.

And she doesn’t need a booster seat anymore. 

She wasn’t really hugging me before she got out of the car this morning. I asked her if it was because she didn’t want to hug her dad. I mean, this whole booster seat thing had been sprung on me because she didn’t want to be that third grader in her booster seat on the way to school. So maybe she was too cool to hug dad now?

I was wrong. She couldn’t really give me a good hug from the back seat and she was really excited for her first day back. So at least I still have that going for me. 

Oh. I forgot to mention that she didn’t just want new shoes this school year. She wanted Converse. My 8 year old is officially a kick carrying member of the Taylor Gang. Although she would make me turn off Wiz to play Dutton Ranch Freestyle right now. On the other hand, she knows Wiz is from Pittsburgh and told me she thought he died once so there’s that.

Sorry Wiz. 

She also got a pair of Vans that she’s crazy about. My sneakerhead genes passed to her too. This is karma for buying the Foamposite Retros off eBay for $300 with my school refund check money in 2007. I just know it. 

I really want to get matching kicks now though. Something to keep in mind.

Now she’s asleep and not thrilled that she has to get up early tomorrow so I can go to work. But she won’t sleep in usually on the weekends. 

When she wakes up at 7 on Saturday, I’ll remind myself that she’s only 8. 

And I still won’t be over the fact she doesn’t need a booster seat anymore.

As you may have picked up if you’ve been reading the newsletter/blog, I fancy myself a bit of a writer. I used to write fanfiction in my last years of high school and during my first years of college. I tried my hand at some original ideas but never stuck with any of them. My one attempt at NaNoWriMo is still sitting untouched since I wrote the first chapter. And since then, inspiration has come and gone with nothing fruitful coming from it.

Over the years though, I’ve learned to appreciate the art that goes into a long form interview. I used to pour over The Source, then XXL, and eventually GQ magazines from front to back, soaking up every morsel of knowledge I could. I also learned that I could probably never be comfortable enough to afford GQ prices or bold enough to buy one of those LED belt buckles in the back of XXL. Didn’t stop me from dreaming though.

With everything being available online now, I will often find myself reading the latest interview of some celebrity or musician when I run across one. I was reading over one of those very interviews when inspiration showed up again:

I could use what journalism knowledge I have and combine it with a little imagination. I could write those same interviews I loved to read; I would just have to create each subject that the writer sat down with. I would format it around the idea that the anonymous writer was compiling a collection of his work into book form, giving the reader a main character of sorts without having to focus the story on them.

This idea sat in my Google Keep notes as “dumb idea about fake interviews” for a while. At some point though, it became “a book with fictional interviews with fictional famous people”. What follows is an excerpt from my first attempt at writing one of those interviews. I now take you to the conversation… already in progress.

********

Even as we sit alone in the restaurant, being in the presence of a 6’9” man is a little unnerving. Sensing this, Henry flashes me that million-dollar grin that has been plastered over ads for almost 10 years all over the world.

“It’s hard to go out in public and eat in peace,” he says as he mixes a chunk of wasabi into a generous pour of soy sauce. “When I’m at home, I can cook a little and when I’m on the road, it’s normally delivery to the hotel rooms.” He picks up a piece of his sushi but pauses above his soy sauce. I ask him if he has fears of ever getting a bad pizza and having to play sick, like that one guy did in the 90s.

“Nah,” he scoffs in between finally dipping and putting the whole piece of raw fish and rice into his mouth. “I still say he made a bigger deal about it than what it was. He was definitely sick, we all know he’s not the greatest actor from his movie, so that wasn’t fake. But the whole bad pizza that late at night? I don’t buy it.”

After the way Chance Henry has terrorized the league this season, his opponents were probably wishing he would eat some bad pizza. When available, he started every game, only missing time after he tested positive for Covid-19 in mid-December. He made a triumphant return in the Christmas Day game at home against New York, leading the charge with 31 points and the game winning assist with under a minute to play. By late-January, he had rung up five 40+ point games during a road trip, all which resulted in wins for Charlotte. Even as teams started to account for his hot shooting, Henry began to lean more into his teammates. He averaged 7.3 assists in the final 6 games heading into All-Star break, which saw two of his teammates, Bus Jones and Manuel Frush, trading 20-point games as the team only lost 2 contests.

He took it “easy” in the All-Star Game, logging 13 points as he deferred his second half minutes to third year guard Rahzel Thompson of Sacramento, who was playing in his first mid-season showcase. Henry’s numbers dwindled to a “paltry” 24 points, 4 rebounds, and 4 assists per game after the break but Charlotte has kept winning. They enter the last month of the season with a 49-25 record, good enough for the 3rd seed in the East. As Chance sits his chopsticks down to pick up his drink, I ask him what feels different than previous seasons.

“I wish I could say it was chemistry with my teammates or the coach calling more plays my way,” he begins as he dunks another piece of sushi. “But honestly, getting rid of all the off court distractions has been a huge help.”

I had been told not to ask about some of the off court distractions Chance is referring to by his team before we sat down to dinner but now Chance seemed ready to open up.

“What happened in Atlanta was stupid. I should have never put myself in that position, even with my friends. My daddy always said you won’t keep your same friends forever and I used to laugh. Now I realize that’s true.”

Last summer, while in Atlanta fielding free agent offers, the AirBnB Chance and several of those friends he mentioned were staying at was raided by police. He was arrested along with those friends with possession and intention to distribute several kilos of cocaine that was found in the home.

How he’s able to be playing this season is almost as unbelievable. A private investigator came forward, who had been tracking Henry at the request of a former flame. Chance had arrived at the AirBnB a day before the raid. His friends, including Tyrone Williams, had shown up days before to purchase the coke . The private investigator had photos of Chance at various spots in Atlanta but nowhere near the deal when it went down. It wasn’t easy but thanks to his lawyers, Chance was able to be freed without any charges.

“I haven’t spoken to them since I made sure they had good lawyers,” he sighed as he pushed his almost empty plate away. “It was the least I could do. But I can’t associate with them anymore. We’ve been friends since we were kids back in Virginia and we tried so hard to stay away from that world. And to have them decide now, when I’ve been on, and we’re grown with kids and families, that they want to get in the drug game now?” His voice fades as he looks past me, as if trying to find the words.

“I just can’t,” he chokes out.

 

It was decided in 2011 that I was going to Miami for WrestleMania XVIII. I had been watching the Raw after WrestleMania XVII with Moose, Anthony, and Thomas. The moment The Rock and John Cena agreed to face each other in 1 years time, we also agreed that we would be in attendance.

We began to prepare that very night. From each one of our paychecks we would make sure to save so much and put it into a joint account. We needed to buy tickets, we needed to buy plane tickets, and we needed to book a hotel room. It was WrestleMania or bust.

Moose, Thomas and myself had been wrestling fans for most of our lives. Since we had met Anthony about 3 years earlier, we had brought him into the fold. He went from a non-believer to being excited to watch most wrestling matches. 

When I went to college I lost touch with WWF/WWE. In 2007, I bought the WrestleMania 23 DVD after I had watched The Undertaker win the Royal Rumble on a torrented rip in January. From there, I would have Raw on most Mondays as background noise but I still wasn’t too invested. 

Deeply regretting that I missed WrestleMania 25 and Undertaker/Michaels I, I started keeping tabs on the storylines more. As WrestleMania season approached in 2010, I decided that I wanted to watch every pay-per-view leading up to Mania. Thomas, Moose, and Anthony all joined me for those pay-per-views and thus the squad was born.

There may or may not have been something to do with a pipe bomb in the summer of 2011 as well that really thrust me back in the wrestling fandom, but I digress.

Every payday, I would give my then -girlfriend/roommate whatever money she needed from my paycheck and then sock some away for the trip to WrestleMania. Even when a major life change occurred in the summer of 2011 (I don’t want to talk about it), I still was managing to save money. As balance was restored to my life in late August/early September, I realized the dream to go Miami for WrestleMania was closer than I knew.

I don’t recall exactly when we all met up to discuss purchasing options. But soon after, Moose had secured us four obstructed view tickets to WrestleMania XXVIII as well as plane tickets and a hotel room with two beds that we would share. It was around this time I had a realization:

I’ve never been on an airplane.

My entire life, anywhere I’d gone, and it had always been in a car. And now, at age 29, I was about to board my first flight.

To say I was shook was an understatement.

The morning of, I woke up early. I was so terrified in fact that I wrote a letter to my mother just in case the plane would go down. Shortly after, I met up with the guys and we drove to Aliquippa, PA to do a few last-minute things before we caught our flight out of Pittsburgh. We saw Moose’s mom, I got an aggressive haircut, and we may or may not have been drinking a 30 pack on the way to the airport. And maybe singing Lady Antebellum. I’ll never tell.

Was the flight scary? Nah. I fell in love with flying. Pittsburgh to Atlanta and Atlanta to Miami. Well, 40 or so minutes outside of Miami.

From here, I’ll hit the highlights of the weekend:

• We landed Friday, ended up in the hotel club before discovering liquor stores were still open. And not only were the liquor stores open, they were 24 hour liquor stores! Probably bad for us at the age we were and from the town we were coming from (Morgantown) but Thomas and I still picked up two huge jugs of Canadian whiskey.
• We rose early the next morning, tired but determined to make it to WrestleMania Axxess. We spent a few hours looking around at memorabilia, we saw Zack Ryder and Drew McIntyre wrestle at the height of Ryder’s popularity, and I took a picture with the WWE championship belt. We saw Paul Bearer and exchanged kind words but none of us took the time to actually meet him or get a picture. Hindsight being 20/20, that was my only regret from the weekend.
• After we arrived back at our hotel, we checked out the mall for some food. And me and the crew saw some THINGS. In fact, I’m willing to bet that mall is the reason why Moose married a Latina woman. 
• After we ate, we napped real hard. Then we met up with my friend Brandon who I worked with at the college radio station back home. We were ready to tear the town up… until I drank too much, ran into a wall full speed, and then passed out on the floor. #nohope
• I woke up cold on the floor the next morning, so I climbed in the bed with Anthony and scared him. After finding sleep difficult with how drunk I was, I awoke early, took some Canadian whiskey downstairs in a cup, politely asked the staff to find me some towels, and enjoyed the pool all to myself until my friends came and found me.
• It was time to go to WrestleMania. There we met Dylan and Jarred, two super fans with the right vibes. We were drinking in the hot Miami sun outside of the stadium. And then it was time to go inside.

Remember when I said our tickets were obstructed view? Four palm trees were placed in the corners of the ring to hold up a canopy in case it rained. Our view was straight at a palm tree. I’m proud to say that f*** these palm trees was chanted throughout the evening.

• After an amazing night at Mania, we had to get back to our hotel, try to sleep, and then catch a ride back to the airport. It took Moose pretending to be diabetic in order to get us into a cab but he got the job done.
• I don’t remember if we actually slept once we arrived back at the hotel. Shortly after, Thomas, Anthony, and I were packed and heading for the car. Moose was staying a few extra days and I wish I could’ve too. Soon we said our goodbyes to Thomas temporarily as well as he had different flights than we did. Anthony and I flew to Charlotte (I slept), then Newark (I slept), and then back to Pittsburgh (but I did get to see the Statue of Liberty when we left Newark). Back to the cold; back to reality.

I’ve been on a few flights since. Been to Jamaica and Disney World now. But I always would say how my friends and I had gone to Miami to WrestleMania as if it had just happened. But as the old saying goes, life comes at you fast. 

Moose now lives in Miami. Anthony and Thomas still live in Morgantown with me but I don’t get to see them as much anymore. And just like that, I realized it had been 10 years since the trip to Miami. We all have a standing invite to come to Moose’s house sometime and I’m optimistic that one day it will happen. But do you know how hard it is to recreate the magic of four dudes singing “Need You Now” as loudly as possible en route to the Pittsburgh airport?

So maybe Thomas and I immortalized the trip on a podcast long scrubbed from the internet but I’m sure I didn’t write down what happened. And maybe before this is scrubbed for the internet at some point down the line, someone will read this and feel some version of the joy that I experienced with my friends that weekend. Maybe it’ll make them grab some friends of their own so they can create some memories that they can write about on the internet at some point. Or even better, they can share the stories with their loved ones. 

At the time I wrote my mom that letter, we weren’t speaking. I think she called me Saturday morning in Miami. My letter gave us a starting place to rebuild our relationship from. It didn’t last because I’m hard-headed but Miami and a plane ticket gave me my last good memories of my mom before she died three years later. So not only did Miami give me memories that would last me a lifetime, it gave me back one of the most important people that’s ever been in my life, even if it was only for a short time.

For that, I’ll forever be grateful.

“Are you sure you want to do this?”

“Yes.”

With that, the clippers contacted the side of my head and a huge clump of my curls fell to the floor.

“There’s no going back now!” Sam cackled.

“Thanks Sam.”

That was over 2 months ago when my barber Sam cut off all the hair I had been growing for 17 months. I had reached a breaking point with it and wanted to decide by my birthday, January 22nd whether to keep it or cut it. Until today, I thought I made the right decision.

My hair has been growing since January but I definitely miss my hair.

Look, I was tired of curls being everywhere in the bathroom and the shower. I would get frustrated when it wouldn’t lay the way I wanted to and I gave my entire head an awkward shape. I didn’t want to keep shelling out money to keep it braided at least once a month. And I definitely didn’t have the patience to learn how to braid it myself.

But while I’m kicking myself, I’m also not totally regretting it.

For years, I would brush the top of my hair forward, the sides down, and top and the back backwards. I did this because my hairline wasn’t perfect and I wanted as much hair on my forehead as possible.

This wasn’t a problem until I started growing my hair. I gave it a few months and then I started picking it, like I always have. And the top of my head looked… spotty? Patchy? When it got fully picked it wasn’t noticeable to anyone but me but the different direction of brushing had had an impact.

I didn’t really think too much of it though. I was focused on getting a curl brush so I could start getting a different look than just my baby afro. Thankfully, I ran across King Bril’s videos on YouTube saying how bad those brushes could be on your hair. But also, I stumbled into the world of 4a, 4b, and 4c, because until then, I didn’t realize there were actual names for different hair textures.

I started watching more of King Bril and Juwan Gaines’ videos and began to actually develop a hair routine for the first time in my life. I used to wash my hair every single night, no matter what. But now I started washing and conditioning once a week and was actually making sure to use products that wouldn’t harm my hair. I stopped towel drying and picking my hair out dry which I had always done. My hair was healthier and I could actually tell a difference.

By the time April 2021 rolled around, I figured I had enough growth to accomplish what I had set out to do: get cornrows. I booked my appointment at Amina’s Hair & Beauty Salon and had Sam clean me up the next day. The braids lasted for roughly two weeks and so I was home on a Saturday pulling them out while I watched the finale of The Falcon and The Winter Soldier (sidebar: Please check out my most recent visit to the Superhero Cinephiles pod to hear Perry Constantine and I wax poetic about that series). When I was done, my hair was super curly but I didn’t expect it to still be curly after I washed and conditioned.

But apparently, I’ve had naturally curly hair my entire life and I didn’t know.

So by the time this past January arrived, my hair was the longest it’s ever been in my life. I had gotten braided a third time in December so Dad could see it in person when I last visited (he hadn’t seen it in cornrows outside of Facebook since high school) but this time the braids only lasted about a week and a half. I was down $80 between Amina’s and Sam to get it done. My shower was no longer dominated by my wife and daughter’s hair as mine had taken over. And nine times out of ten, my hair refused to lay the way I wanted it to if I wasn’t leaving conditioner in it under my bonnet every night (I forgot to mention that I became a firm believer in my pink bonnet and my satin pillowcase).

And when it didn’t lay right, I thought the front of my hair looked like I was balding. This brings us to today.

I really thought I’d be back to getting regular haircuts again and abandoning most of the hair routine I had developed. But it didn’t take me long to start oiling my hair nightly before wrapping it up in a satin durag before bed. Even with the little hair I had, I still was washing and conditioning once a week. And for the first time in years, I made sure to brush in one direction.

Slowly but surely, the natural curls are coming back out. E had made the comment about artists becoming even more of an artist when their hair is long. He had gone from a low cut for most of the time I’ve known him to having shoulder length dreadlocks the past few years. I don’t know if I agree but I do feel like a part of my identity is connected to my hair length now. I look damn good with a haircut by Sam; but I look even better with the curls popping. Sorry not sorry.

Aaliyah didn’t want me to cut my hair when I finally made the decision because she liked seeing that her curls were the same curls she could see on her daddy. And while I have to admit she was right, taking the steps to get my hair all growing the correct direction is going to make my hair healthier and look even better this second time around.

It’ll probably take me until August or September to get any real length back but when I do… I don’t know; just know that I’m happier with the curls than without. It’s also okay if you stop and stare because it’s hard not to watch a master when he’s at work.

 

I used to wake up early on the weekends in junior high school. Mostly so I could spend my Sunday morning playing my Game Gear and watching ESPN until my parents had me start doing something around the house or we went somewhere.

On this particular Sunday, I had turned the TV on, plugged in my AC adapter, and turned on my Game Gear when a report came across the screen. Kurt Loder and MTV News came roaring in and that alone was always enough to peak my interest. But I was shocked to learn that The Notorious B.I.G. had been gunned down in Los Angeles.

I was 14 years old at the time. Biggie Smalls was 25 years old and 2 months away from his 26th birthday. I know my journey into rap had only truly started around this time but I definitely knew Big’s hits and his videos. I also knew that Tupac Shakur had just been murdered in Las Vegas the previous September. The timing of both of their deaths when they were the biggest figures in hip-hop wasn’t lost on me. I knew the world had lost a spectacular talent.

I cried that morning. It wasn’t deep sobbing; but there were tears that Christopher Wallace’s life had come to an end abruptly. There wasn’t any deep mourning; I didn’t own any of Big’s music yet so I couldn’t even play anything in his honor. I just caught what I was able to from the music video channels and kept it moving. And it would be a long time until I was able to understand what Big was able to accomplish in his barely 4 year old career at the time of his passing.

Twenty five years later, Biggie is a worldwide legend, his shadow only eclipsed by 2Pac. His records have sold more than 20 million copies. His debut album Ready To Die and his second album Life After Death have been poured over from rap heads to scholars to athletes to former presidents. His videos live on thanks to the internet as each one is only a few taps away. There’s been movies, books, television series, and term papers done all about his brief lifetime.

His daughter T’yanna is 26 and his son CJ is 25. Their memories of their father are blurred into the rap phenomenon the world knew him as, but at the end of the day, he was always just daddy. His mother Voletta will turn 70 next February and she is seen as hip-hop royalty for not only bringing Big into this world but for also making sure her son’s legacy grew even as she dealt with the trauma of his death.

Big was far from perfect. Google Biggie Faith Evans, Biggie Lil’ Kim, or Biggie Charli Baltimore and you’ll be able to see he was no saint. Not that he ever claimed he was but the way his life ended can make one gloss over those details. Those things along with his criminal activities before he signed with Uptown are just as important as his accomplishments. They show that Biggie was human, as flesh and blood as you and me. He made his mistakes and he knew it. But most anything I’ve come across detailing the last few months of his life say that he was already apologizing to those he hurt and trying to be a better person. All any of us can strive to do is to try to do better than what we did the day before. Big wasn’t just incredible, he was relatable.

Today also marks 25 years Biggie’s murder has gone unresolved. 2Pac’s murder will reach 26 years without a resolution this September. Far be it from me to question how this happens when I know there are people in the world without answers as to why their own loved ones were killed. But aside from unproven theories and a heavy crutch thanks to the East/West animosity of the mid-90s, fans of both Big and Pac have accepted the grim fact that we’ll never know who was responsible for gunning down these two iconic men in the primes of their lives.

But when I think about The Notorious B.I.G., I don’t dwell on his ending. I dwell on his rhyme patterns, his ability to tell a story, his sense of humor, how big he was smiling in the “Hypnotize” video, and how a big guy with a lazy eye from Brooklyn was so damn charismatic.

I think about how I smile every time I hear the aforementioned “Hypnotize” play in Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse. I think about Voletta walking up to the podium with Afeni Shakur in 1999 at the MTV Video Music Awards. I think about how I played the edited version of “Sky’s The Limit” on loop the other morning while Aaliyah and I got ready to leave the other for the day. I think about that feeling when I first heard “Dead Wrong” and knew I now had a favorite Biggie Smalls’ song. And I always chuckle when Big says the UPS is hiring bar from the “Flava In Your Ear (Remix)”.

I choose not to remember Big just because he died today. I choose to remember him because of how much I think of him on the other 364 days throughout the year. And it’s fitting that The Lox had their moment in the sun last summer because they said it the best 25 years ago: We’ll Always Love Big Poppa.