Being Bout It

The role and significance of authenticity in writing.

I came into the literary world still selling XOs and speed while living out of my car, tweaked-out writing abstract fever dreams and sexually violent dystopian shit (the most brutal of which went unpublished and will forever only exist as a memento on an external hard drive). It was through conversations with J. David Osborne during the beginnings of Broken River—back when it was a small press—that I got it in my head what I needed to do was write from the streets, to bring an authentic voice to the crime fiction world, which then and now mostly consists of middle-aged suburbanites scrawling hard-boiled fantasies of vicarious living through two-dimensional low-life archetypes. I could bring the perspective of the corner boys these golf club card carriers were exploiting (at worst) and pseudo-psychoanalyzing for empathy/social justice points (at double worst). So from Heathenish to Letting Out the Devils, I dropped nearly half a dozen slipstream slice-of-life hoodrat novels.

I killed that shit.

And then I wanted to write something different.

Getting into cyberpunk and other shit, I’m again contemplating authenticity—what’s it even mean for a song, a painting, a book to be authentic? When does being authentic matter, if it ever mattered at all? Now I’m writing bout organs traded for black market guns and trailer park kids with Terminator arms and junkyard priests and cyborg hermits. I ain’t lived any of that shit, but it’s what I’m compelled to write now. Does authenticity still have a place, and what is it?

We gotta separate the art and the artist first, ‘cause ‘keeping it real’ is simply not a sentiment that translates verbatim between the persona of the creator and the work that they create.

I wanna attack the artist first.

Authenticity in rap has been grounds for conviction and even bloodshed since the genre’s conception. You name the opps while spitting bars into a mic with a sock over it in your closet and then your folks are wearing your face on a t-shirt. You get to making some actual money doing your thing and next thing you know, some crooked DA is bringing you to trial over a murder you had no part in (RIP the Ruler). Rap is the most extreme example of this since it’s a genre originating from first-hand perspectives with the explicit intent of authentic expression, but the real ones have always known that hyperbole and manipulation of details often make for a better story. Drakeo wasn’t tryna rat on anything he did or didn’t do, he was expressing himself through a language he was practically inventing in real time.

Art is not about balancing the level of exaggeration in the source material of your inspiration, it’s about expression. And the blurred lines between narrator and story in the world of rap are what make it the perfect example when speaking on authenticity in any medium. There may be a cautionary tale in there, as to the level of importance the artist places on the perceived legitimacy of their persona. If you’re spending more time cultivating an image of yourself as a barrio-bred broke boy getting it out the mud than you are honing your craft and filling up the bag, it might look some type of way when people find out whole time you’ve been the son of a Spanish diplomat with a clear-cut path through higher education. On the flip side, you could go to school with Angelina Jolie and just shut up and be bout your music and become one of the most lauded producers in the hip hop industry.

Point is, if persona is what you’re putting effort into, you’re playing a losing game. Because you become either a snake oil salesman or a martyr. You lie long and hard enough for your customers to realize you been selling them bottles of dyed piss, or: you’re too caught up making sure people know just how real you are that you live with your head on a swivel.

Drakeo was doing it best, making the music he wanted to make and saying what he wanted to say in the songs while tight-lipped and cold stare muttering “Ion know nothing.”

So how’s that translate to literature?

Broken River began as an indie crime press, so when the books I was writing started carrying the logo, that’s the world I became affiliated with. I’d get asked the same two things by all the Mids* in the scene: who was I reading, and how did I feel about people not from a criminal or marginalized background writing about the gutter?

*middle-aged/middle class

Answer to the latter was the same then as it is now: write whatever the fuck you want. It’s storytelling. Some of the most relatable content is lowkey exploitation, but so what? Every little kid in the hood thought NFL Street was fun as hell. 2Chainz went to college. Kid Rock’s first job was working in his dad’s apple orchard. Rick Ross used to be a judge or some shit. If it bangs, it bangs.

But it’s gotta bang.

I haven’t read a lot of crime fiction because most of what I’ve tried getting into lacks a flavor of authenticity. And I don’t mean the author’s background, ‘cause how the fuck would I know? The prose and the content just often feels hollow and uninspired. Of course you can sense a level of distance between the author and the substance when there is an emotional distance being represented on the page. But the geographical/social distance wouldn’t mean shit if there was an effort given towards making the story feel authentic. How that’s done, especially when one doesn’t come from the world they are painting pictures of, is simple: be genuine.

Donald Goines wanted to write westerns until he realized he could hit a lick off blaxploitation junkie pulp. Sure, there was a layer of authenticity from actually living in environments he only had to exaggerate and amplify a little bit (if at all), but the emotional current and vibe of Dopefiend comes from someone writing what they’re writing with a sense of purpose. To secure the bag, Goines transplanted his desire to write grandiose pulp from the Wild West to the projects, but you can feel in the style and energy of his books that the desire is present. It’s genuine.

Jordan Harper and David Simmons are perfect modern day examples because they do a ton of research. Not to simply sound like they know what they’re talking about, but because there’s a genuine drive to write about things they’re mostly unfamiliar with, so naturally, you’d want to convey the right details to pull the reader into the world you’ve only got an abstract idea of. With Simmons—having a history of incarceration and dope-dealing that he’s open about—it’s in all the weird, paranormal, and medical shit found in his work. He interviews rabbis and doctors and even street people from different neighborhoods than where he’s from to get the verbiage, logistics, and perspective as close to reality as he can with whatever he’s working on. And no, authentic doesn’t mean realistic. Simmons has a story bout a talking bug who gets locked up in human prison and begins nesting in its cell. But all the details and descriptions of the bug are dead-on true to life, because that shit matters to Simmons. And how much it matters translates to how it’s written, to how it’s read, and to how it feels authentic in a way that means something. He didn’t have to become a talking bug to write it from a genuine place. Same as with Harper, I’m pretty sure he’s never been in an Aryan gang or a black-bag publicist hiding the depravity of Hollywood elites, but he writes what he wants to write and you can tell because—look, you can just tell. Being real with yourself translates to the art you create.

The malleability of authenticity—whether by definition or application—makes it a tricky subject to tackle, and in the end, a lot of people seem to feel like who gives a shit?

I mean, for at least another eight years before they all die out, there will continue to be knitting circle book clubs hosted by Don Winslow fans.

But if you’re like me and it does mean something to be authentic in what and how you create, I think the only key to it is being real with yourself. Be authentic to the voice in your head that said write this thing. Be authentic to the vision. You either bout it or you ain’t.

But hey, Ion know nothing.