Royce da 5’9″ and Styles P both agree that it’s important to have a life partner because without their wives they might have “crashed out” a long time ago.
Many rap artists come from a background that has a certain amount of trauma associated with it, which they often share in their music. At REVOLT WORLD, the “Hip Hop x Mental Health Panel” was an open forum to discuss the relationship between rap music and self-care of the mind, featuring both music veterans, as well as G Herbo, Antonio Brown, Fivio Foreign and Dr. Jeff J. Rocker. During the discussion, Royce da 5’9″ brought up the benefits of having a great partner with him on his career journey who helped keep him stable while commending Styles P on his self-growth.
“I still can’t believe [it] … I’m proud of the evolution,” he told the northeast native. “I’m proud of the evolution ’cause it [is] a point in time in this culture when people start reaching a certain age as artists, they start to panic. They start to do things [like] trying to be young or trying to sound young or trying to make headlines and stuff like that instead of just relaxing and realizing that [there’s] longevity in anything that you just continue to put your mind to.”
He continued, “I know one thing that me and you have in common is we had a wife the whole time. I think if it wasn’t for me having that — I didn’t realize it back then — If it wasn’t for me having that, I probably would’ve crashed out. Like talk about for sure the importance of having a wife.”
The Money, Power & Respect rapper shared his perspective on why having a partner and an appropriate family dynamic is important for the Black community as many African American households in America have been ripped apart and broken since the inception of slavery.
“There’s an importance to knowing family structure and all that. Like one, I’m a hip hop baby, but I’m not one to let people or crowds dictate what I’m gonna do in my life. Hip hop has always been seen as a very braggadocious verbal sport, you know what I mean? But we’re understanding that people look at us for the future. People look and see what the whole culture’s doing and what we’re doing. It’s important to have structure for the Black family,” The LOX artist said. “And for the Black family that takes a husband, wife, kids, or not even … necessarily married, but it takes a man that’s gonna respect a woman. A woman that’s gonna respect a man or whatever … no offense to whatever it’s gonna be.”
“It takes a proper unit to be able to raise a household right and to do better than a generation that came before you, so that then the young babies you make are gonna do better than you did. And that starts with a family structure, for me at least,” he added.
This led Royce da 5’9″ to ask Fivio Foreign and G Herbo if they see marriage in their future, to which they both admitted a desire to eventually walk down the aisle.
“I wanna get married. I just feel like I don’t want to — when I get married — I don’t want to really have a moment [in] my life where I [can’t] pay a lot of attention to my marriage and my relationship. You know what I’m saying?” the drill rapper said. “I feel like with this life and then me [being] busy and me working all the time, it’s hard to really … pay attention to something and they make you feel like you really into it. ‘Cause they’ll feel like you not really into it.”
The “Dinner Time” rapper then chimed in to give his take on figuring out a relationship under those conditions.
“Take it from somebody that’s married already. Finding that balance is the hardest — still the hardest part for me, ’cause as soon as you think one thing is slowing down, you start thinking about something else. You always gonna be drawn to something,” Royce da 5’9″ told the 33-year-old.
G Herbo, who is in a relationship with Taina Williams, the daughter of “Love & Hip Hop: New York” star Emily B, shared that he’s motivated to become a husband because he watched his mom and dad’s love story flourish since they’ve been together and married his whole life.
“I definitely wanna get married. Basically, I wanna get married. I come from that type of structure, though. I come from a two-parent household,” the father of three explained. “My mom and dad been together since they was teenagers. They’re in their 50s now. It’s just, like, I ain’t gonna lie I admire that, though. Like how, Styles [P] said, I always knew he was married and he’s always been one of my favorite rappers. You know what I’m saying?”
The “Swervin’ Through Stress” foundation founder continued, “Like, just to chime in on like the younger generation and the older generation. It’s like it goes hand-in-hand. You feel me? When I come in and I see him, I’m happy to see him. You feel what I’m saying? It don’t never go nowhere. Everything that he [Styles P] put into the rap game, man, he came to me. So it’s like, I look up to that. I look up to his lyricism, I look up to him being a husband, being a father, all of that. Like all that go hand-in-hand; S**t I look up to. But yeah, I come from that type of s**t. So yeah, I definitely want to get married.”