Featured Essay: How To Love

by Robby Seabrook III

I have always been thankful for the mother I was bestowed with, for the lottery I won when Randy Seabrook birthed me and my sister. One thing about my mom is she will never leave you out to dry; she always had an answer for any issue, big or small. As the shy and quiet child that I was, whenever I needed something, I was afraid to ask, despite my parents always providing for us. On a fall morning in 1993, Little Robby, had the wise idea of not telling his mother that he needed something for Show & Tell in his kindergarten class that day. I didn’t share that info until she parked in front of my school. I could feel her annoyance, but she reached into her console and handed me a cassette tape, with a woman with a hat low over her eyes, depicted in various shades of grey. My parents loved her music, and she was huge in our household. I took it out and went in to school, thinking nothing of it.

I was afraid to even do Show & Tell. What if the other kids thought the tape was corny? What if they laughed at me? My teacher put the tape in and the intro and second song played. Once the third song started, a hit song that changed R&B forever, the class went crazy. The track? “Real Love” by Mary J. Blige, on her classic album (then and now), What’s The 411? My mother played this album religiously, and I just thought Mary J. Blige was a star in my home, not all over the world. Playing that album in my class made me popular for the day; the quiet kid who always felt overlooked was now the (little) man of the hour. Up until that point, I did understand how powerful music could be, and how it drew people together. This was when I realized really how important music was to me. That day also put me on notice; my mommy is cool as hell.

Memories of that moment in kindergarten would come right back to me, at a time when I least expected it. On Valentine’s Day 2020,  my 31st birthday, I was in a Houston suburb, sitting at the dinner table of the love of my life. I was looking at the gifts she bought, which was an array of vinyl, all albums from my childhood and formative years. Laying amongst 7 records, including Clipse’s Hell Hath No Fury and Yasiin Bey fka Mos Def’s Black On Both Sides, What’s The 411? was at the end. I remember how I felt when I first laid eyes on such a thoughtful gift, and how much that vinyl meant to me. As an adult, I became obsessed with the album cut “Love No Limit,” a perfect encapsulation of the hip-hop soul sound that Mary perfected. The song, about feeling drawn to do anything for your significant other’s satisfaction, is how my love at the time felt, something that I desired for a long time. My girlfriend gifting me that album is what etched her into my childhood memories of What’s The 411?, of riding around in the car with my mom, in my eternal crush on Mary J. Blige, of youth, of how fleeting time is.

My mother would be diagnosed with Stage IV colon cancer 3 years later. Pouring my energy into my mom’s well-being and dealing with the fact that a sudden cancer diagnosis was slowly taking her away from me was hard. The same girlfriend who got me that vinyl and spent five years of her life with me, simply wasn’t up to the task of standing with me during the hardest time of my life. I left her last October, after finally getting tired of being made to feel like I was weak for collapsing while the light of my North Star slowly flickered out. My mother was ecstatic that I freed myself in that way, that I was mature enough to make a difficult decision, that simply had to be done. She had to go back on chemo that same week, and delayed telling me because she knew I was distraught over my awful breakup.

Nowadays, I pick the What’s The 411? vinyl up and hold it in my hands, thankful to own it, to have received it as a gift, to be introduced to this incredible album by my wonderful mother. I can’t really listen to it as often as I’d like to yet, because it still hurts; my mom is gone, and I ended up being wrong about what I felt would be my last relationship. In that same breath, my mother’s love and Mary’s story are both eternal; aren’t we all just trying to be loved and navigate our way through that journey? The beauty of the album and who my mother was helped me not dwell on how terribly I was treated by my ex; I don’t let her shortcomings sully the good times that we did have. They will simply remain where they are, highs that came before world-shattering lows.

What’s The 411? Is a 1990s time capsule of finding a growing with and through romance, by one of the flyest women breathing, who changed the direction of R&B in one fell swoop. MJB’s music showed that you can be more than capable of handling your own, and still want (and deserve) a deep and personal love. She changed my life with this album; I’d grow up to become a successful music journalist, partly inspired by how her music spoke to me. In the most difficult stretches of my career, my mother’s kind words and belief in me kept me on track. I can’t thank my mother face- to-face for that anymore, but I will always be able to tell the world how important that one morning in my childhood was. Love really has no limit, be it distance or anything else.

Robby Seabrook III is a New York City music journalist who has worked for Genius, XXL Magazine, Complex and more in his decade-plus career. He’s interviewed almost every young rapper you can think of. He’s @RobbyRav on Instagram and Twitter, and his portfolio is clippings.me/robbyrav.