Bad Habits; Good Intentions
It’s difficult to start putting words together to describe my appreciation for Navraj Singh Goraya, more popularly known as NAV, and most popularly referred to as the self-proclaimed “First Brown Boy to Get it Poppin.” The 31 year old Canadian-Indian rapper has progressed effortlessly through his rap career, starting from humble beginnings as a producer for his own music, to now being signed to The Weeknd’s label and listing features as prominent as Future, Young Thug, and Travis Scott on his albums. As a South Asian male myself, I find a special connection to his music that truly speaks to me about the Collective Brown Boy Experience.
The most glaring reality of the Collective Brown Boy Experience is growing up feeling like you don’t quite fit into any community you’re immersed in. At school and outside, your white friends made you feel like a bit of an outcast when you talked about certain formative experiences like the music you listened to growing up via your parents - who are the Beatles? Why do you get so many gifts for Christmas? Why should I care? I grew up on Himesh Reshammiya music and Emraan Hashmi movies. Yet back in the house, your parents ridicule you for not living up to their standards, whether it be in terms of participating in cultural events or getting good enough grades. “How can you be you be a rapper if you can barely pass a High School English class?” is a variation of a sentiment every South Asian parent has expressed to their son.
This feeling is something NAV captures perfectly in his music, probably best summed up in his early-career songs “Myself” and “Brown Boy.” In “Myself,” NAV recites an emotional chorus, discussing his drug usage as a coping mechanism for that loneliness:
“When I'm sober, I just don't like who I am
Pour me up a 4 and I'll feel like myself again
Roll me up some dope and I'll feel like myself again
I'ma break every box they try to put me in
I got a lot of enemies who used to be my friends.“
These lyrics represent NAV’s Bad Habits. Yet singlehandedly, NAV normalized the conversation around mental health in the South Asian community with this song, in a manner similar to Logic’s normalization of that conversation to the world. NAV digs a little deeper in “Brown Boy” to express the gap between expectations and reality as a Brown Boy:
“I’m not the type of brown boy you take home to your daddy,
I’m the type you call when you wanna smoke a fatty.”
Luckily, NAV no longer needs to resort to drugs to escape his loneliness, and has instead embraced it and openly expresses it in his music. His most important transitional moment was when he hopped onto the 2017 song “Some Way.“ The Weeknd begins the song by stating “If I’ma talk, I’ma talk, I’ma keep it real”, opening the floor for NAV to pour his heart out. NAV proceeds, and does not disappoint, with the opening line “Way, we got ‘em feeling some way,“ and a later line “The Brown Boy and the Starboy on the track, Haters gonna say this sh*t is wack.” NAV claims his Brown Boy persona and turns it into his reality, while indicating that he feels unafraid to address the antagonists in his life’s storyline, such as his parents when they give him a 9pm curfew on a Friday night. The climax of this song, and perhaps of NAV’s career, is when he boldly exclaims, “I’m the first Brown Boy to Get it Poppin!“ at precisely the 2:22 mark of “Some Way”. This is a beautiful expression of growth and acceptance of reality, masterfully wrapped and gifted to the listener in the form of the angel number 222, an indicator of being in the right place at the right time. Keep it up, NAV, you’re making Prem Jyotish proud.
NAV continues to push the discourse further in this song when he states,
“I think the belts inside the store look better on my waist
I think my nuts look better on her face.“
It may not be obvious what NAV is doing here, but I’ll break it down for you. The “store” mentioned in the first line, and the girl being referenced in the second line, both represent Western imperialism. NAV is tearing down that imperialism by “looting” the store for belts that look better on him anyway. Similarly, NAV is obviously referring to a white girl in the second line, and by placing his nuts on her face, he’s putting her on the same level as the many other beautiful WOC he might surround himself with, thus defeating Western euro-centric beauty standards. NAV reclaimed his Brown-ness for himself. These are NAV’s Good Intentions.
Although NAV’s social movement specifically affects the South Asian community, the implications of this movement have a much larger reach. By moving the needle forward for our community, NAV is opening up space for other communities to do the same. Martin Luther King Jr. had a dream that young black boys and young white boys could play together; NAV simply added young brown boys to the picture. Hopefully, one day, folks across the entire skin color spectrum can be painted into the picture. As you can see, NAV represents all of us. So in a way… maybe we all are the First Brown Boys to Get it Popping.
