SHHH!!! *snort/chortle*...


-that was us down in the basement of Mama & Papa's crib, listening to my older cousin Birdie's stash of Richard Pryor records. KNOWING a whuppin' was in order if we got caught listening to "adult entertainment". my parents didn't waffle on that issue at all... we suspected that they thought RP was a funny cat, but they never back-slid in front of us.

but, kids being kids- we copped it covertly. laughed at the cuss words and the hilarious vocal inflections that delivered 'em, but didn't really "get" richard pryor until years later...

looking back on it, we knew there was a line that was clearly drawn:

you are a kid and this is not for you

so i realized i had to keep my "new vocabulary" hidden, restricted to the extreme edges of the playground and amongst trustworthy peers only (brother dave, cousins birdie & gary), lest the adults found out i had some new muthafuckin' things to muthafuckin' say about muthafuckas...

today i'd like to say thank you to Richard Pryor for his legacy of work- R.I.U. brother...

and i'd also like to say thank you to my folks and grandparents for making RP off-limits.

some might say they failed, since young dp surreptitiously spent that good chunk o' time in his grandmother's basement, ear pressed against a baaaarely audible speaker buzzing with the sounds of the "Is It Something I Said?" album...

but f'real, i needed that line drawn for me
i was a KID- entertainment absorbed me... all i did every day/all day was pretend to be that which i found entertaining.

-what kid really can process "adult entertainment" on an adult level? me? HA- nope.
(god help me if i'd had digital cable and the internet back then...)

so my folks made it ass-whuppingly clear to me that i couldn't behave like Richard Pryor. hell, they even went the extra step and denied themselves the glory of his comic genius (cuz the first rat virtually every kid smells is a double-standard)

nowadays, i make records that (generally) contain a mere fragment of the salacious material heard on the radio... but i still cringe when i play a new song for my mom, knowing the lines that were drawn for me at an early age.

and ya know what?

she doesn't bug out- in fact, she has actually pointed out that poem-cees' use filth and flarn in 'as needed' doses and not in a superfluous manner at all.
"usually- work on that, son".

my mom is a librarian y'all.
-and a grown-ass woman.
Richard Pryor was brilliant
-and i know my mom knew that
"they're gonna hear/see/do it anyways" is no real defense for abandoning standards for the kids.

easy,
dp

ps. my may my mom never ever ever hear the song "U.F.O."
pps. what am i saying- we may never ever ever finish & release the song "U.F.O."...

naturalaw-dp - 1:00 PM
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12.06.2005