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Rap Dad
- A Story of Family and the Subculture That Shaped a Generation
- Narrated by: Juan Vidal
- Length: 5 hrs and 52 mins
- Categories: Arts & Entertainment, Music
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Publisher's Summary
A timely reflection on identity in America, exploring the intersection of fatherhood, race, and hip-hop culture.
Just as his music career was taking off, Juan Vidal received life-changing news: He’d soon be a father. Throughout his life, neglectful men were the rule - his own dad struggled with drug addiction and infidelity - a cycle that, inevitably, wrought Vidal with insecurity. At age 26, with only a bare grip on life, what lessons could he possibly offer a kid? Determined to alter the course for his child, Vidal did what he’d always done when confronted with life’s challenges. He turned to the counterculture.
“The counterculture took the place of a father I could no longer touch. Since things like school and church couldn’t get through to me, I was being trained up outside of organized institutions. What I gravitated to were these movements that not only felt redeeming, but also freeing. They were almost everything I needed.”
In Rap Dad, the musician-turned-journalist takes a thoughtful and inventive approach to exploring identity and examining how we view fatherhood in a modern context. To root out the source of his fears around parenting, Vidal revisits the flash points of his juvenescence, a feat that transports him, a first-generation American born to Colombian parents, back to the drug-fueled streets of 1980s-'90s Miami. It’s during those pivotal years that he’s drawn to skateboarding, graffiti, and the music of rebellion: hip-hop. As he looks to the past for answers, he infuses his personal story with rap lyrics and interviews with some of pop culture’s most compelling voices - plenty of whom have proven to be some of society’s best, albeit nontraditional, dads. Along the way, Vidal confronts the unfair stereotypes that taint urban men - especially Black and Latino men - in today’s society.
An illuminating journey of discovery, Rap Dad is a striking portrait of modern fatherhood that is as much political as it is entertaining, personal as it is representative, and challenging as it is revealing.
What listeners say about Rap Dad
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- Anonymous User
- 04-26-20
Really good read!!
As a father and a lover of hip hop, this book was right up my alley. I’m also a fan of the group Juan used to be a part of. He was always poetic, and it seems like he made the transition to from emcee to author seamlessly. I love this book and I ordered the physical book so I can read it. I love this book!
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- Catherine Bleish
- 10-12-19
fantastical!
I loved this book. The author's brother works with me and tipped me off to it. I was captivated. I come from the same generation, but grew up in the burbs of Kansas City listening to "oldies". this gave me a while new perspective on my generation.
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- Shopaholic
- 01-14-19
Hell and back...to Heaven
Juan took us on a literary travel through the hoods of the world. You can say he is world renown. The history described so poetically had me. Feeling I was running. Right along side of him.