But that doesn’t mean she’s not going to listen to it, download it, bounce to it.Īnd I get that. Yes, her mother and I talk ad nauseam to her about the lyrics in these songs, how they exploit and degrade women, how she should in no way take them to heart. With the 13-year-old, a part of me wonders, “Am I failing her? Have we all failed her?” every time something like “No Worries” comes on the radio. Not sure how long this embrace of Taylor will last, but at this point I much prefer Taylor Swift to Lil Wayne (something I didn’t think I’d ever hear myself say). We still have some time with her little sister, who at age 10 is (thankfully? painfully?) in love with Taylor Swift and wants nothing to do with the rap that blankets the black airwaves here in Atlanta. Now she’s actively looking for this stuff to download onto her iPhone. Gone are the days when I could simply change the channel when something came on the radio that I deemed inappropriate. But the difference for me is that now I have to listen to them with my newly minted teenage daughter in the car, a 13-year-old who has a deep passion for hardcore hip hop.
Of course, we have been accosted by unbelievably explicit and offensive rap lyrics for more than a decade.
I feel shame and embarrassment that as a dad, my generation has allowed “No Worries” and all the songs like it to be presented to my daughter as acceptable entertainment, as lyrics that she should absorb into her brain as an appropriate way for a young man to talk to her and about her. The song triggers my fatherly protective instincts-the desire to shield my daughter from things that will do her harm. Every time it comes on the radio when my teenage daughter is in the car, I feel shame-a reaction that took me by surprise. It was Lil Wayne’s song “No Worries” that did it- sent me hurtling down yet another slippery slope on the rollercoaster ride that is parenting.Ī prominent part of the song is Wayne’s blushingly explicit tribute to abundant pubic hair.