Icky_Sheikh and Lessons Learned

Estimated read time: 8 minutes

The all too common refrain being passed off as truth is young people are too busy glued to their cell phones taking selfies, texting, sexting, keeping up with the Kardashians, or playing games to be to be cognizant of the real life all around them.  I used to ascribe to that view of young people, but young people are teaching me a thing or two.  Take Nathan as an example.

Ok, Nathan might not be his real name.  I'm terrible remembering names.  His Sound Cloud account shows his name is Nick Lopez so maybe I at least got the "N" in his name right.  Since his handle on his Sound Cloud account refers to him as Icky_Sheikh and I'm pretty sure I heard him refer to himself as Icky in a couple of his songs, for the rest of this article I'll play it safe and refer to him as Icky.

Icky...what a name.  I'll never understand nineteen-year-olds.  Heck, when I was nineteen, I didn't understand nineteen-year-olds so it shouldn't come as a surprise I still don't understand them.

Within the first fifteen minutes of meeting him, he referenced his rapping at least three times.  There are three genres of music I don't care for, rap being one of them.  He talked; I sort of listened politely.  He's a kid who likes to rap and I'm a grandpa who likes to rock so we didn't really have much in common.

Being polite and since we had a long drive to Annapolis, I asked him, "Do you live on Delmarva or are you visiting?"

I reckon I'm not a good journalist because I didn't take notes of our conversation.  I haven't mastered the skill of driving and writing at the same time and even if I had, I'm sure there's a law against it.  I reckon my memory isn't that good any more, either.  I remember the gist of our conversation, but not the conversation word-for-word.  From this point forward, anything you read in quotes should be taken as my recollection of the gist of our conversation as I recall it and not an exact replication of our conversation.

"I grew up in Salisbury," he answered.  "It's a trip down there.  The KKK or some group like them always shooting at me and my friends.  I live in Annapolis with my girlfriend now."

And thus began an engaging, forty-five minute conversation.

"Really?  Shooting at you?" I probed.

"Yeah.  You know how it is.  Bunch of rednecks shooting to scare us more than anything."

"Unfortunately, Delmarva is about thirty years behind on their diversity training, maybe fifty or more behind when you venture south of Salisbury.  I asked a local in Pokomoke how to get to a state park.  She gave me directions, but warned me to tread lightly because the KKK down there don't take kindly to strangers snooping around," I added.

Icky laughed in agreement and took the conversation in the direction of current events and politics.  He expressed his thoughts intelligently and not in slang or street language.

"Are you in school?" I asked.

"I want to study history, but I can't afford to go back to school right now.  I know I have to go back.  I'll get there some day."

"It's important you get back to school.  I'm still paying on loans and haven't been able to go back, but some day I will get my degree.  Don't do like me and procrastinate, though."  I glanced up in my rear view mirror.  "Really?  History?"

"Yeah, man.  That's the problem with people my age.  They don't know history that got them where they are today.  That's why they're running around tearing down monuments.  But you're right.  I gotta go back to school."

"Have you heard about the controversy over the Talbot Boys in Easton?"  I probed, knowing the young man had a story to tell.

"No, I haven't."

I told him the whole story of the monument recognizing Talbot's Confederate veterans and how I was working with a group of other people to build a monument recognizing Talbot's Union veterans so the whole story of that era could be told.

"My grandfather will be happy when I tell him about this.  He gets mad anytime he hears about Civil War monuments being torn down.  He's White and I got a few relatives on the White side of my family who fought on both sides of the War."

"Sounds like your family has a story to tell.  I would love to tell it."

"A lot of people don't realize that slavery was the spark that ignited the war, but it was a war of brother against brother, not about slavery."  Icky looked up from his phone.  "I just followed you on Twitter.  I'll work on collecting the family stories for you."

When I got home, I opened my Twitter account.  Icky took the time to follow me to read my stories; the least I could do was listen to his stories.  He's one of the few people I know who could seamlessly weave a story of the KKK, backwards politics turned tragic comedy, the Civil War, rapping, and the importance of family all wrapped in a neatly bowed package.

From his Twitter account I followed his link to his Sound Cloud account that I linked at the beginning of this article and was greeted with a dozen songs...rap songs.  I shook my head and thought, "Why couldn't he have aspired to be a rock star?" 

I knew the right thing to do would be to listen to his stories through his songs so I cracked open a beer, put my headphones on, and braced myself for an assault on my ears.

It's funny how when one knows what the right thing to do is, they'll find justification for taking shortcuts to fulfill the obligation to do the right thing.  I figure my fan base, all two or three of them, probably scroll down to the TL;DR (Too Long;Didn't Read) paragraph that follows my more lengthy articles, skims it in a few seconds, then moves on to another blog.  Icky, if he even went to my blog, would probably read my articles the same way - skim the TL;DR paragraphs of a few articles and move on. 

Ok, I had my beer and my justification of how to sample his stories in song.  Take a big gulp or two of beer and listen to about ten seconds of the song.  Unless it caught my attention (I might not care for rap, but there are some rap songs I do like), ten seconds of listening is like ten seconds of skimming my TL;DR paragraph and saying, "I read your blog."

I started at the top of his list and worked my way down.

"Not bad.  Not bad.  Not bad...."  I moved through the list quickly and drank my beer even quicker...until I reached the next to last song.  That's the way it always works.  The good stuff is always near the end of the list - until you try to be smart and start at the end of the list, then the good stuff is at the beginning of the list.

His song, Winning, caught my attention.  It was dejected and hopeful, tragic and triumphant.  I've listened to it several times to make sure I get this story close to right, and each time I listen, I take away a new interpretation.  No, I don't care for the offensive language, but I reckon I hold the minority view that an artist doesn't need to use offensive language to make the message real.

Language aside, the song expresses a universal  emotion, the feeling that one isn't where they should be because others don't want to see them winning.  Who those "others" are is what makes the emotion being expressed universal.  On my first listening, the "others" was the system, society, you know, those people that no matter how hard you try, "they" see to it you don't succeed by putting nearly insurmountable obstacles in your path.  Several listenings later, the "others" were friends and family stuck in their own ruts who think you might get hurt if you try to climb out of their rut you share.  Like a drowning man will pull you under as you try to save him, friends and family pull you in their rut and keep you there where they believe you will be safe.

Something about the song struck a chord in me.  Maybe it was the tone of his voice.  Maybe it was the words.  Maybe it was the contrast of emotions playing off each other.  All I know is the other night, as I stood in the liquor store deciding on the best bottle of wine to go with an Indian curry dish, a song on the speakers caught my attention.  First, I didn't realize the store played music.  Second, I reckon I did know, but never paid attention because its the rap/hip hop stuff I don't care for, but this song caught my attention - not because it was good, but because I immediately thought of Icky's Winning.  The song playing, similar in style to Icky's, could easily have been done by him, only he would have done it better.

There's two lessons in this article to be learned. There might be more, but only two I hope you take away.  The most obvious: never underestimate the impact you have on others, even if your interaction is limited to sharing a forty-five minute ride with a stranger.  The other lesson is maybe we should start listening to our young people.  Mr. Sheikh is a good example of what we can learn if we only step outside of our comfort zone and listen.


TL;DR Folks:
Contrary to what you may have been told, young people aren't glued to their cell phones taking selfies, texting, sexting, keeping up with the Kardashians, or playing games.  They have plenty to say if you take the time to listen.

For your listening pleasure:

Posted by Five Drunk Rednecks