Rap Dad: A Story Of Family And The Subculture That Shaped A Generation

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Synopsis

A timely reflection on identity in America, exploring the intersection of fatherhood, 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 only 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.

“The counterculture took the place of a father I could no longer touch. Since things like school and church couldn’t get through to me, I was being trained up outside of organized institutions. What I gravitated to were these movements that not only felt redeeming, but also freeing. They were almost everything I needed.”

In Rap Dad, the musician-turned-journalist takes a thoughtful and 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 feat that transports him, a first-generation American born to Colombian parents, back to the drug-fueled streets of 1980s–90s Miami. It’s during those pivotal years that he’s drawn to skateboarding, graffiti, and the music of rebellion: hip-hop. As he looks to the past for answers, he infuses his personal story with rap lyrics and interviews with some of pop culture’s most compelling voices—plenty of whom have proven to be some of society’s best, albeit nontraditional, dads. Along the way, Vidal confronts the unfair stereotypes that taint urban men—especially Black and Latino men—in today’s society.

An illuminating journey of discovery, Rap Dad is a striking portrait of modern fatherhood that is as much political as it is entertaining, personal as it is representative, and challenging as it is revealing.

Chapters

  • 001 RapDad Open

    Duration: 01min
  • 002 RapDad Part1 Chapter1

    Duration: 03min
  • 003 RapDad Part1 Chapter2

    Duration: 29min
  • 004 RapDad Part1 Chapter3

    Duration: 40min
  • 005 RapDad Part1 Chapter4

    Duration: 29min
  • 006 RapDad Part1 Chapter5

    Duration: 31min
  • 007 RapDad Part2 Chapter6

    Duration: 26min
  • 008 RapDad Part2 Chapter7

    Duration: 49min
  • 009 RapDad Part2 Chapter8

    Duration: 45min
  • 010 RapDad Part3 Chapter9

    Duration: 29min
  • 011 RapDad Part3 Chapter10

    Duration: 33min
  • 012 RapDad Part3 Chapter11

    Duration: 27min
  • 013 RapDad Epilogue

    Duration: 03min
  • 014 RapDad Close

    Duration: 01min