Where is the Love?

It’s been two weeks since LeBron’s “decision.” I’ve finally accepted what has come to be. With that being said, what I am about to write has nothing to do with LeBron James, the NBA or sports in general.

What I am about to write is something I’ve been meaning to write about for months.

Maybe even longer.

I actually got up the nerve to start writing what you are about to read a couple of days ago. I think I had close to 600 words written before I decided to delete them all. It was way too self-deprecating and depressing. At that point, I decided that what I wanted to write was too personal. Maybe I shouldn’t be so open. Usually I would look at those 600 words as a release. A way to get whatever I needed to off of my mind. But those 600 words didn’t give me that relief, it just made me realize that I didn’t even know what I wanted to say in the first place.

Well, now I have a direction. A new direction and while I have no clear cut destination for where I’ll go with this, it will be a lot more focused and hopefully more poignant than depressing.

This story starts in 2003. One of my favorite groups of all time – this is probably not what I thought then, but I was kid, sue me – released a double album, titled Speakerboxxx/The Love Below. The duo had decided against doing two discs worth of music as a group and essentially released two solo discs. You may be familiar with this group. They’re called Outkast and feature the playalistic-slick talking tongue-twisting Big Boi and the otherworldly Andre 3000.

Before ’03, I would say I was an Outkast fan. Though I never owned any of their albums, I always liked their radio singles. “B.O.B.” “Rosa Parks” "Da Art of Storytellin’ Pt. 1” were some of my favorites. One thing I distinctly remember, is me liking Big Boi more than Andre. I would see and hear a lot more from Big Boi outside of the duo. He was on songs with Missy Elliot and Slick Rick, so since he was the more visible member, I figured he was better.

Back to ’03. I’m a freshman at Meadowdale High School. A disillusioned, skinny kid with no real identity. I cringe when I think of trying to buy tall white t-shirts . I was a sheep following with the herd. It wasn’t until probably 2007, when I was able to completely leave that mindset behind and become the person that people know and love today – I hope.

Ok, so it’s ’03 and I’ve just finished my first month of high school. It was September and the new Outkast album was soon to be released. Being the broke, skinny kid I was, there was no way I was going to have money to buy the real Outkast album in stores, but that wasn’t a problem at all. There was this white kid named Josh, who would sell Cd’s in the library for $2 or $3. When the Outkast album came out, I had to be the first kid to fork over my $3.

(Sidenote: Approximately seven years later, I would end up working with the same Josh at Red Lobster. I never told him this, but he kind of changed my life by selling me that album.)

I remember being so excited to listen to this epic double-album. As a 14-year-old kid, the first two things I noticed about both cds, were 1) Why are Big Boi and Andre only on like three songs together, they’re a effin’ duo for a reason, 2) And what’s up with Andre and all this stuff about love and Cupid and why is he singing, I mean it’s cool, but I don’t get it.

Regardless of my first impression of the album, I still enjoyed it and I was obsessed with Andre’s “Hey Ya” and I’m pretty sure I wasn’t alone in that sentiment because it was number one on MTV’s TRL for what had to be a couple weeks in a row – for all the kids born after ’91 this was when MTV actually played music videos, who’da thunk?

It took me awhile, but eventually I would start listening to the rest of The Love Below, the following year. It was practically all I listened too. And it had a profound effect on me. Can you imagine really hearing “Prototype” at the impressionable age of 15? To this day, “Prototype” might be my favorite song ever. This lyric especially sticks out to me: “If we happen to part/ Lord knows I don’t want that, but hey/ We can’t be mad at God/ We met today for a reason/ I think I’m on the right track now.”

The Love Below and that song, in particular, affected every way I interacted with girls from then on. I will go on record as saying as a 15-year-old kid I shouldn’t have taken Andre so seriously when I was pursuing other 15-year-old girls. Trust me, the results aren’t good. Either way, Andre’s thoughts on love and women planted the seed that would eventually grow into to how I viewed women. And the roots of that seed are still planted rather deep.

A few months back, I read this great article about the Dungeon Family – a collective of artists, including Outkast – and there was a section of the article that hit a chord with me:

[Andre] made The Love Below sessions extra exclusive. Swift was one of the few people who witnessed Andre 3000’s magnum opus about the thing that scares him the most: love. “Dre got an extreme level of passion for women,” he says. “This nigga love women… But I think love and life has disappointed him ... So I think he’d just rather sing about walking down that road of love than to actually experience it.”

My world almost crashed down. If the man who (unintentionally) shaped my biggest ideals on love and women isn’t satisfied with it and would rather live it vicariously through a song then what does that mean for me. I’m only 21, and in no way actively seeking out love – not that I think you can seek it out, I think it’s something you kind of fall into unexpectedly, hence the term “falling in love” – but still I do worry about ending up alone. Even now I recognize that there is love out there, just waiting to jump out the bushes and get me, O.J.-style.

Honestly, I just don’t want to go through life without ever saying I experienced the love… below.