When Brittney and I got home from the hospital, I was carrying Little Bobby in his car seat and we walked in the front door, and our friends had hung up a beautiful banner that said, “WELCOME HOME, BOBBY AND HIS MOMMY,” and we took some pictures and it was cool. I set the car seat down on the carpet and we just stared at him while he slept and then we stared at each other like, “Holy shit. We have a human that they gave us. What the fuck?”
Five weeks later the COVID pandemic hit and the whole world shut down and I felt weirdly blessed because I’d planned to take the year off and do nothing but be home with Little Bobby and Brittney anyway. So it was like the whole world changed, except our lives didn’t really change at all, at least not right away. We were already sequestered at home, and every day the kid was growing and changing and just a few weeks before he’d been inside another person and now he was his own person and the whole thing is just weird and amazing.
I know I’m not going to be a perfect parent. I’m going to have to learn. I might raise my voice here and there by accident. I might have to be firm and grab him and say, “Chill,” if he’s being a real brat in the middle of the supermarket. But I know I’m never going to abandon him. I know I’m never going to get drunk and ignore him or leave him at home for two weeks by himself. Now that I have my own kid and I’m so consumed with love for him every minute of every day, it’s even more insane to me how my parents treated their kids. It’s made me understand even more just how broken they truly are, because only a broken person could have done what they did.
The hardest part of writing this book has been knowing that, once it comes out, my parents will likely deny a lot of what I’ve said. My father will say some things never happened. My mother will say she just doesn’t remember, which, to be fair, there’s a good chance that she doesn’t. In some ways, having them deny things is more painful than having gone through them. But I’m good. Because I love my parents. I love my sisters. I love my brothers. I haven’t written any of this from a place of anger or hatred. All has truly been forgiven on my end. I made it. I did it. I am financially and emotionally secure. I have the family I always wished I had—not just my wife and son, but all the people who’ve been there for me in so many different and important ways.
None of what I’ve said in this book was to try to hurt anybody, but sometimes the truth hurts. I chose to reflect on those experiences so that I can heal, first and foremost, and so I can help others who’ve been through hard times by letting them know they’re not alone. But I also chose to write the book because reckoning with the truth is an essential step for forgiveness.
The hardest part of my entire life has been feeling the constant need to explain myself and prove myself to get the love and acceptance I need from the people I want to love and accept me. Before it was social media and hip-hop, it was my mom and dad, and that’s a love and acceptance I still don’t have to this day. However, even though they may not be able to understand it, I hope you, the reader, will understand that this whole book is about my coming to terms with my love and acceptance of who they’ve always been and always will be.
The fear I have for Little Bobby is that I know he’ll have pain in his life, too. He’s going to make mistakes, too. He’s going to have his little heart broken by some girl, he’s going to bust his lip open or break an arm. These things are going to happen to him, and I know they’re going to happen because of what happened to me. All I want to do is protect him from all of it because it’s scary, but going through those hard times is also how you become a human being. Those are the experiences and the memories that make you who you are, and as much as I want to protect him, I know all I can do is make him know that he’s loved so he’ll grow up to be a good person.
I still have anxiety. I still get panic attacks. I still feel derealization at times, and it’s nothing. I’ve just learned that if I’m feeling out of it, I can’t pay attention to it. It’s a pink balloon or a pink elephant—the more you feed into it, the more the monster grows. Now, whenever I feel a bout of anxiety coming on, I go, “Huh, I feel a little out of it.” And I have to talk myself down or just sit and work my way through it. But I’ve already dealt with the worst part of anxiety. The worst thing about anxiety is feeling like you’re alone and trapped inside this bubble of fear all by yourself, which is how I felt for most of my life, and that’s the biggest difference between then and now: I know I’m not alone anymore.
I have my wife and my son. My in-laws are cool as fuck and they live around the corner and come over all the time. Jordan and Pepé are still with me and we’ve become family and they have my back any time I need them. Same with 6ix and Zarou and Harrison and everyone I came up with. Lenny’s still with me, too. He lives with us because now it’s my turn to give him a home and get his career off the ground; as I write this, I’m producing his first album and it’s going to be dope as fuck.
I’m still in touch with Mary Jo and Bernie all the time. I always make sure to ask about Josh, who’s out of prison and back living with them again. I don’t talk to Amber and Geanie too often, but Jesse’s been back in my life more. Ralph, too. And I’m grateful for that. My dad and I, I can’t even say where we’ll be by the time you’re reading this. Sometimes we don’t talk at all. Other times he calls and he wants help with promoting his music and I try to get him to open up and talk about himself and our relationship and sometimes it works but usually it doesn’t. But at least with my dad he can call and we can have a conversation about something. As for my mom, nothing’s changed, and at this point it is what it is.
And I still have my art. The irony is that I’m doing more in retirement than I ever did while I was working. I told everyone that I was putting my foot down to go away and do nothing, but everyone who knows me knows I can’t ever do nothing. I wrote this book you’re reading right now. I’m writing screenplays and another novel. I’ve literally never been so happy. I feel like I’m fifteen again, just learning and conquering new horizons every day. I can spend a whole day strumming the guitar or a whole day watching movies, or I can drop it all at a moment’s notice to go and be with my wife and my son. I’m a workaholic who gets paid to play, a workaholic who’s addicted to joy and discovery instead of fear and the need for recognition.
I’m still recording music, too. I know when I drop any new music some people will be like, “Hey, I thought that guy said he was retired,” and how it was all a stunt and all that. But it wasn’t. I am retired, because I’m doing it all for fun. I don’t have a job. I don’t “work.” I’m a creator who creates.
What’s funny is that I feel more financially secure even though I have less money, because my fear was always that I would never have enough to retire, but by retiring I’ve proved to myself that I do have enough to retire, so I can finally just relax. I’m secure. I’ve made it. You can’t make it any more than I’ve made it. I get such a kick because I look back now at all the professional haters, the vloggers and the morning DJs and the gatekeepers who thrive on creating backlash to get clicks and get money, and those motherfuckers can’t retire. They have to keep hating and churning up the phony outrage and the negativity and drama every day, because that’s their whole livelihood. And that’s been fun, sitting back and seeing those guys still having to hustle every day. They still have to hate, but I don’t have to be hated. I can just chill.
On July 24, 2020, at the height of the pandemic, we dropped No Pressure. It sold two hundred and twenty thousand copies in the first week, which is unheard of, especially on some rap shit. It went to #1 on the hip-hop charts and #2 overall and it would have been #1 overall if Taylor Swift hadn’t made a surprise drop that same week.
After Confessions dropped, I was fuckin’ Rick Dalton from Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood. “It’s official, buddy, I’m a fuckin’ has-been.” That’s how I felt. Now, with No Pressure, I felt like I’d just walked up Sharon Tate’s driveway, like I’d ridden off into the sunset, which is kind of cool. The reception has been low-key undeniable. Everyone loves the album and I couldn’t be happier. Professionally speaking, it’s been the best moment of my life. People were really sad and happy for me at the same time. Even a lot of the people who used to shit on me were sad. It was like the series finale of their favorite reality show was ending, which meant their role in the reality show as the people who loved to hate on the reality show was ending, too. They were like, “Shit, this dude’s leaving? Like, he’s gone? Whoa.” I saw a lot of the hate and criticism turn into “We’ll miss you.”
It made me feel old, but in a good way. Hip-hop is a young man’s game. I was a teenager when I started, and as long as you’re on your come-up, every album is not as good as the album before. Your new shit ain’t as good as your old shit until your new shit is your old shit. But by retiring from the game, I put a stop to all that. Now people can just look back on and enjoy the work that I’ve done, and I’m starting to feel that appreciation from the general populace of rap, which is pretty cool.
Part of saying “Fuck y’all, I’m out” was to see what would happen. Because I wanted to know: “Did I ever actually have a place in hip-hop? Was it ever really real?” But then my leaving created an absence, and it was only by seeing the me-shaped hole I left behind that I knew I’d ever really belonged for sure.
Then, right around the time we dropped No Pressure, it was time for another kind of departure. I was never an L.A. guy. The only reason I’d ever moved there was because my label told me I had to. Once COVID happened and everything moved online, it made me realize I didn’t need to be there anymore, either, and with Little Bobby in the world, it was time for a new chapter.
I’d always thought about moving to the country and Brittney was down, so one day we pulled out a map of the world and laid it out and that was when it dawned on us, like, “We could literally go anywhere. Oregon? Washington? Northern California? New York? Maine? London? Hawaii? Japan?” We started looking and found this beautiful house in the mountains. It was gigantic, amazing, and it had everything we could want or need, way more, which I liked because my family is a village. It’s not just me and Brittney and Little Bobby. It’s Lenny and his sister, Chrissy, and Pepé and Jordan. It’s all these people who’ve become a part of my life, and I wanted a place where all of us could come together and be together.
So we did it. We bought the house and called the movers and started packing up and a few weeks later, the movers arrived to take the bulk of the furniture and everything else. They loaded it all up and took off, and Brittney, Little Bobby, and I were alone left in this big house that was utterly empty, no sofas, no beds, no nothing. At five-thirty the next morning, an RV would be pulling up to take us away, and we had one last night to spend in the house. Bedtime came and we rolled out sleeping bags in the middle of the living room. It reminded me of the last time I’d slept on the floor in an empty house, with my mother when we were squatting in a vacant unit in Farmingdale because we had no place to go, which gave me an idea.
“Hey,” I said to Little Bobby. “I want to show you something.”
I pulled out a flashlight we’d kept with us and I pointed it up and I made shadow puppets for him, little dogs and horses dancing around on the ceiling. Of course he’ll never remember it because he was only six months old. But Brittney and I will remember it and it’ll be one of those memories we hold on to and cherish for the rest of our lives.