Introduction

I was riding on the train one day traveling from Brooklyn into Manhattan. Broke. Squished between two passengers. Couldn’t sit back in the seat. I was in that pensive mode, where I worked hard to shut out everything around me, including the passengers I was squeezed between, the tourists snapping photos of the inside of a subway car, and the irritating announcer who kept telling me to say something if I see something. I was contemplating my life, my future, and the suffocating bedroom that I was occupying in Crown Heights because it was all that I could afford. I was thinking about leaving my comfortable, average-wage job and devoting my time to Me, Inc. I wanted to take the steps toward professional freedom where I decided what time I rose in the morning and which projects deserved my attention.

It didn’t help matters that the fabulous life I was supposed to live in New York was a perpetual cycle of empty bank accounts, lofty ambitions that I couldn’t seem to achieve (like living without a roommate), and teases from my passion. Allow me to cut to the chase: I was unhappy. So as I sat on the train— the meat in an uncomfortable sandwich, trying to think in the midst of chaos— my iPod provided the sanity I needed to get me through my adventures in the land of Postgraduationunhappilyeverafter. A Tribe Called Quest’s classic hip-hop contribution, The Low End Theory, blared through my headphones. I heard the music but knew the album so well that I wasn’t really listening. That is, until Phife Dawg, in one eloquent rhyme, captured how I was living. On “Buggin’ Out,” he says simply and poignantly, “Riding on the train with no dough, sucks.” If I could have, I would have jumped up with a loud “Amen” like I was in church. (I couldn’t even raise my arms, it was that tight between my fellow passengers.) I played the line again. Again. And again. I didn’t want to ride the train broke anymore. How could I change my situation?

I called my boy to tell him my new mantra. This is what I do. Adopt a hip-hop rhyme and claim it as a guiding life principle. I remember describing to him in great detail my epiphany moment. “I need to take control of my life,” I told him. “I’m tired of riding the train broke.” Yep, my mission to become an independent (read quit my job and work for Me, Myself, and I) was partly prompted by a hip-hop lyric. I’d be rich or at least able to afford a one-bedroom apartment in Manhattan if I had a nickel for each time I heard a rhyme that’s written for me. One that speaks directly to me, like the MC is peering into my life at that moment and creating a theme song to accompany it.

Felicia Pride

Excerpted from THE MESSAGE: 100 Life Lessons from Hip-Hop's Greatest Songs © Copyright 2011 by Felicia Pride. Reprinted with permission by Running Press