My Therapist Asked Me What I'm Most Afraid Of. I Said Corny Niggas.

Wayne Brady was in my dream last night singing Rent. Not any of the popular, good songs from Rent either. It was shit like “Love Heals - Bonus Track” and that one Idina Menzel song no one cares about.

The night before that Black Thought was 2 inches from my face talking about the importance of “brotherhood”, and what it means to be a “Black man in America”. I told him to back up and he said I was disrespecting “the 215”. I don’t even know the area code for Philadelphia. How did that get in my dream?

This has been happening for a year now. I made eye contact with John Legend at a concert of his that my mom dragged me to, and ever since I’ve been seeing the type of Black men who wear pink turtlenecks and haven’t taken a woman on a date that wasn’t Brunch or Happy Hour since they discovered the phrase “emotional maturity”.

You know the type. They were what made André 3000 comfortable enough to drop New Blue Sun. He knew there was a market of tea-sipping Negroes with small beanies. And that the sons of Niggas who used to do spoken-word at coffeehouses in the Neo-Soul era were out there, lost and searching for the country that had shaped their fathers, but no longer existed.

My therapist said to identify the root cause of the problem. My fear of Corny Niggas was really a fear of something else—deeper, within me—she said. She asked what scared me so much about them.

Their confidence, I answered. What makes corniness so scary is the same thing that makes insanity so scary. When you’re insane you think you’re sane. And when you’re corny, you think you’re cool.

Does this look like a man who thinks to himself, “Damn, I’m wylin right now”?

Not only am I scared of this kind of bravery, I’m scared of the culture that supports it.

No Nigga wearing a fedora should ever feel comfortable with himself. And yet, you all, my countrymen, gave a Fedora-wearing ass nigga THREE Platinum records.

”I’m not just scared of Corny Niggas, I’m scared of America,” is what I replied to my therapist.

“Do you think that maybe you envy them?”

Um, duh?

Corny niggas have historically been the group of niggas who succeed the most in America. Every Black person who’s ever reached any position of real power or real proximity to power in this country was unimaginably corny.

The other day I read an article titled, “23 Black leaders who are shaping history today” and the only real nigga on the whole list was Raphael Warnock.

To get over my fear, and envy, she recommended that I embrace the corny within myself.

And I tried. I tried on fedoras, and kangols, and tiny beanies. I made Instagram reels of me smiling really hard while Cleo Sol played in the background. I got plants, and watered them once a week. I read all the bullshit from all across the spectrum of Corny Nigga Reading Recommendations. Rich Dad, Poor Dad. The Autobiography of Malcolm X. The 48 Laws of Power. T.D. Jakes’ autobiography.

I took women to Brunch in downtown Atlanta and told them about my goals.

I couldn’t do it.

I figured, I’d rather live my life in fear of Corny Niggas, silently judging and resenting them, than embrace the fact that the reason why I hated them most was because they lived their lives in ways I wished I could’ve.

The reason I couldn’t keep living as a Corny Nigga wasn’t because it was hard, but because it was the funnest week of my life.

I loved seeing random little Black boys enjoying their life and having fun, and then giving them a lecture about the school to prison pipeline.

My small beanie felt like walking around with my dick out.

I sang D’angelo and rapped along to Jay-Z verses and sang deep cuts from Rent and wore see-through V-necks. I was a fucking animal. Any way I could have been a corny nigga, I was. I’d quote Farrakhan and Garvey and in the next breath talk about how Black Capitalism would save us all. I went from Fred Hampton to Thomas Sowell. Revolutionary Suicide to Hamilton. Hamilton to Erykah Badu and Incense.

In the heat of my fifteenth Brunch date that week, with alcohol, fried chicken, and waffles on my breath, and with a 90s Rnb song playing overhead, I uttered out, “It’s a vibe.” And like Icarus’ skin flayed by glory, I collapsed.

That was six months ago. I haven’t spoken to my therapist since.

Last week, Will Packer and Tyler Perry talked about the importance of Black stories and pitched me a script about four Black women, that even with no male characters in it, somehow still did not pass the Bechdel test.

I don’t know who I’ll see tonight. I just hope it’s one of the fun ones, like late-career Smokey Robinson, and not Trey Songz again.