I was lucky enough to grow up while rap music was coming into its own in the mid to late 1980’s. But while I was falling in love with hip hop as a kid, the media portrayed it as the worst thing ever. My parents watched how the media told one side of this story so anything related to rap music was potentially a bad influence on me and my brother’s upbringing. My dad hated rap music. But my mom? Hmmm… She definitely didn’t like rap music but I think she recognized what it meant to me and my brother. That’s why when she drove me around (without my dad!) and would allow me to turn that radio dial to 90.3 in her Gold 1988 Volvo 740 GLE. From there it was a struggle on how loud we could play the music. It’s funny today that I still have these volume squabbles with my wife who just never likes it as loud as I do.

My favorite times in that car were when my mom would go grocery shopping at Safeway while I got to stay in the car and listen to my music. This gave me a good 20 minutes to pull that cassette out of my sweatpants and throw it in the tape deck. And the volume? C’mon now…. You know those Volvo speakers were rattling. I had to keep the doors locked and the windows up but everything else was fair game. In 1989 - 1990 you could probably find me bumping some beats from Dre with my main man The D.O.C. on the rhymes in my mom’s Volvo. Head nodding while riding shotgun and not caring who saw me.

My mom always gave me room to be me. And if she didn’t like what I was into she didn’t get mad at me… She would just look the other way so I could express myself creatively. My parents were the best. My dad was there to keep me in line when I was getting off track and my mom was the caring woman who was always right beside me. My parents were the perfect balance of how a kid should be parented. When I was younger there were times when I probably didn’t understand everything going on but as I get older and wiser I see it as clear as day. My parents sacrificed their lives to make sure that my brother and I were raised with all of the morals to be great human beings ourselves. A lot of people throw the word love around but love to me are your actions. My parents always showed us love by everything that they did and I will forever respect them and love them for that. They gave us the perfect role models to be great human beings. My mom taught us how to be nice to others regardless of their background, how much money they had, or the color of their skin. She also allowed us to have soda whenever we wanted!

I’ve never been good at expressing myself verbally. I’ve always been more of a writer to get my thoughts out and most time those thoughts stay tucked away in notebooks. But my memories? Those lie within the lyrics of my favorite rap songs. I might not remember our road trip in our station wagon as a kid but I do remember looking out that back window of our car with tears running down my face while listening to Dana Dane’s “Lonely Man” in my walkman. Rappers like Dana Dane poured their feelings into their art and that’s why I love rap so much. There isn’t another music genre that perfectly wraps up one’s pain, love, happiness, and struggles within a few minutes of a song. So when May comes around and Mother’s Day hits, I look back at family pictures and listen to songs from my favorite rappers about their moms. It is the perfect way for me to my day started before we drive over to my parents house to hang out with mom and dad.

To celebrate Mother’s Day this year, I wanted to put a full Spotify playlist together of all of my favorite rap and hip songs about mom. This playlist will forever live in my music library and I can pull it out each May for Mother’s Day. I think I captured all of the top mom hits but if I missed some please drop them in the comments!