I am having a Collard Greens’ conversation about the movie Brown Sugar and Hip-hop!

Hip-hop has a way of moving through the brain cells, into the Cerebral Cortex, down through the veins, into the heart. That is Hip-hop; that, indeed, is also the movie Brown Sugar. I have watched this movie at least enough to know the writer, Michael Elliot, uses Hip-hop as a metaphor for life and, more specifically, for a language that explains the intuitive gift of love bestowed upon unsuspecting lovers—be it Agape, Phileo, Storge, or Eros. Brown Sugar offers lessons concerning how friends can be influenced by hearts knowing their own intention.

Brown Sugar has given me a hashtag: Tell me “when did you first fall in love with Hip-hop?”

I have memorized what has become my hashtag when attempting to remember my first encounter with things or people I dearly love: “When did you first fall in love with Hip-hop?” The first time I consciously understood my love for Hip-hop was as I sat in the dining room of a friend’s house remembering him who taught me how to define friendship. Hip-hop told me what I already knew: Trust your heart; honor your moral compass. That is Hip-hop–even through its seeming confusion.

Right now I am experiencing this Collard Greens’ moment. Question? Is it really important to know the when or time I first realized I was in love with Hip-hop or is it more important for me to simply appreciate this: Hip-hop has entered my consciousness, and I find myself holding it in view.

Brown Sugar is sweet authenticity; it is a walk into the heart; it is a realization that Hip-hop as language provides air; it offers lessons on how to honor the heart’s request to live and breathe as it finds itself.

I came away from Brown Sugar wanting to be open to what my own heart yearns. Hip-hop has provided me an additional language from which to speak.

Now that’s a Collard Greens’ moment!