Illmatic gave me the strength to continue living when I was a teenager.

It was during my sophomore year at Brooklyn Technical High School when I had finally picked up the album. At the time, I was spending my time on the G Train writing my first horrible raps instead of doing my algebra homework. During weekends at my father’s apartment in East Harlem, I’d raid his CD collection and spend my days studying the rhyme schemes of Biggie, Jay-Z, and DMX. Their content matter, however, did not appeal to me. I was awkward around girls. I knew too little about money, save that the only way I could reliably precure it was by doing the English and social studies homework of others for a price. And DMX’s rage did not match the cloudy sadness that enveloped everything I did.

I had purchased Illmatic at the Sam Goody store in Flushing—the one on Main Street, in between the Burger King and Modell’s. I remember staying up late listening to “N.Y. State of Mind” because Nasir Jones told me sleep was the cousin of death. Throughout my late adolescence and early adulthood, Nasir would continue to provide the soundtrack for my milestones.

“Life’s a Bitch” was the very first thing I listened to when I hit 21: I woke up early on my born day, I’m 20 years/ it’s a blessing/ the essence of adolescence leaves my body…

His verse on “In Between Us” nursed my ego after I lost the last match of fisticuffs I would ever have:

Circumstances are like my first fight I lost/
It was swinging, my arms bugging, adrenaline pumpin’/
Oh shit, this little nigga’s thuggin’/
I mean, I was thirteen, I was nursing a knot on my face/
But chose another time and a place/
That I would avenge my last fight cuz the same shit/
Ain’t gonna happen that just happened last night…/

Nasir’s line on “The World is Yours” probably did the most to save my life. I need a new nigga for this black cloud to follow/ ‘cause while it’s over me it’s too dark to see tomorrow. I remember playing this line over and over again on my cheap headphones with no bass. It allowed me to make peace with that there was something stronger than me that made my teenaged self cry in private, sleep all day, and contemplate stepping in front of—instead of on—the G Train when it arrived at Fulton Street to take me home from school. I got help. I always listened to Nas on the way to the therapist.

I projected onto Nasir Jones the image of a reasonable patriarch. As I moved from poverty to middle class, I used his music to help birth myself into a better world. Like any fan who has given to idolatry, I ignored the red flags—his collaboration with R. Kelly on the “Street Dreams” remix, the quiet misogyny of “Black Girl Lost” and most of his tracks from Life is Good. I even excused away the explicit stuff like “Oochie Wally” and “You Owe Me” by arguing those tracks were simply not good and that, hey, a dude’s gotta eat somehow. All that I wanted was for his erudition to shape my young black personhood.

As a teenager, he was my hero—a model of manhood for me to aspire to.  As an adult, he still became my artist of choice. While in front of classrooms, I tried to mimic the consciousnesses in his rhymes. I played portions of Illmatic during poetry sessions for my students. And I did this all without reckoning with the more problematic aspects of his discography.

So, of course, Kelis’ interview today took a long delayed hammer to my heart.

I have posted the interview here for all to watch, and I encourage everyone to stop reading now to click play. I do not want to silence her voice. Even this piece I am writing, I think, silences her voice because I am writing about my reaction to my favorite musician versus the physical and psychological trauma Nasir Jones put the mother of his son through. All the words I have learned fail me. Kelis Rogers survived profound damage and my response is limited by all the lyrics I have internalized from Nasir Jones.

Few predators in nature use naked force to bring down their prey. The snake will use venom, the lion, the strength of the pride, the wolf, the power of the pack . The #metoo movement increasingly reveals how men—the most dominant predator on this planet—adapted when removed from the state of nature. I am glad the men so many of us looked up to are being revealed and torn down. I just never expected it to happen to one of my heroes. For days, my fingers have hovered over all the Nas songs in my “I Love Black People” playlist on my iPhone, pondering what to do with the wreckage of Nasir Jones.

Much of my adult vocabulary and concepts—my value of intelligence, self-reliance, and swagger—come from songs like “You’re Da Man,” and “Purple.” These songs were camouflage. They were the colors that a man used to hide his predatory behaviors toward his wife. “Life is Good” now stands revealed as a piece of masterful propaganda. The image of Nasir sitting, staring at me, his wife’s wedding gown draped over his knee…it is cover for all that he did to her. It is cover for a worldview rooted in malignant patriarchy—a view I have absorbed, and have passed down onto others.