Ebook: Rap Dad

Part memoir and part cultural critique, Rap Dad is a timely reflection on fatherhood in America, explored through the lens of 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 twenty-six, with but 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.

In Rap Dad, the musician-turned-journalist takes a thoughtful and incredibly 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...