Icaros, Lil Wayne and Trimming Weed
When I quit teaching in 2022 to write, the empty days yawned before me. At home alone, I’d scrawl 2,000 words by 10 a.m. and spend the rest of the day freaking out that I wasn’t working hard enough. I couldn’t leave myself alone to take my time, to do the work well, and to give it the attention to detail it deserved.
Then I got a job trimming and weighing bags in a Native American-owned weed shop in Box Elder, Montana where I learned a new flow. When I started working there, people were judgmental, questioning whether a woman like me should work in such a place, whatever that meant. But to me, it was an education and a gift. Working there taught me to be present with my tasks for the day, to enjoy it, and to pay meticulous attention to detail.
Working there taught me to love Lil Wayne.
In the trim, the intoxicating smell of the bud, the conversation and the boys’ music induced a creative trance. It was like journeying in the shaman’s psychedelic groups, but better because I was among elders who became my surrogate fathers and a group of young men I called the flyboys because they were former basketball stars and some of the coolest and smartest people I’ve ever met.
In the trim, the most flow times happened after smoke break when the flyboys played hip hop. Although they liked old school rap, they were mostly into trap music and newer rap. When I first landed there, I criticized their “mumble rap” and tried to cancel Lil Wayne.
The woke teacher in me had yet to go up in smoke.
But the one who often took it upon himself to educate me said he could tell I hadn’t even tried to listen to Weezy and I was criticizing his music based on pre-conceived ideas. He said if I actually listened to the flyboys’ music, maybe I’d discover I liked it. Like Wayne says, “Keep an open mind/let em peak in.”
So, I accepted the challenge. In the trim, I became the 40-year-old former English teacher who begged the boys to tell me the name of the wee ooh wee ooh song. I annoyed them, but they often gave in and told me the names of artists and songs. Then I’d go home, get super duper high, sit in the bathtub and listen to their music.
This is how I started to understand that the genius of contemporary rap music is in its tones. Trap music is a certain kind of trance music, like icaros from South America or gnawa from Morocco. Icaros and gnawa are sung, but they don’t use human language. People say icaros are made up of tones that come from Ayahuasca, the same way I think trap music is made up of tones that come from marijuana.
Not only that, but in the weed shop I realized Mrs. Officer is arguably the best Fuck the Police song ever written. It works on so many levels—it’s hilarious, hyperbolic, ironic. It proposes its own form of protest.
It’s a slam dunk of a song.
Once I actually listened to it, I realized it was basically how I wanted to write, except in my own vernacular.
When the baller who controlled the music went on a bender and didn’t show up for work, I realized how essential his music was to the vibe. His music made the trim into FLOW; without him the trim was painful. One of the younger boys who was tone deaf played country music in there, and another bludgeoned us with beats he allegedly made himself.
In the flyboy’s absence, I had no choice but to suffer or make my own playlists. Trimming actually sucked without his sense of tone, so I got desperate about matching it. I want to be clear that I didn’t try to copy him because he wouldn’t have respected that and, truly, he’s one of those people who you’d be stupid to try to copy. Him and I have the same problem: People talk shit about us when we’re in their midst and copy us when we’re gone. He initiated me into a new way of hearing and to prove I’d received the lesson, I had to produce my own expression of the tone. This is the difference between copying someone and creating a work inspired by them.
So I started making playlists. Some for trimming, some for writing, some for tripping, all of them inspired by a tone I heard in the weed shop.
Idk where he is now, but I hope that flyboy is proud.