‘R&B Money’ podcast brings back my fangirl days of Immature
‘R&B Money’ podcast brings back my fangirl days of Immature
The podcast I didn’t know I needed — to show respect to R&B legends
Writer’s note: This post was originally published on Medium’s “We Need to Talk” on June 16, 2023.
Writer’s note on April 18: I just read all the backlash with Marques Houston and his 22-year-old wife. I can respect the honesty of a man who doesn’t want children or to deal with (possibly combative) baby daddies, considering I never wanted to be a mother, all the Chris Rock ageism comments could’ve definitely been left in his diary. I was checking out Romeo, not Batman. I still love their music and enjoyed the interview, but I could’ve done without the rest of this.
I strolled into homeroom, glanced at the chalkboard and saw my message was missing. This was normal, considering teachers used chalkboards — to teach. After dropping my backpack and purse on my assigned seat, I then grabbed a piece of chalk and wrote in big letters “I ❤ Immature.”
I sat down and got ready for the homeroom teacher to take attendance before we headed to our next class. When I saw a girl stand up and walk around me, I did not give it a second thought. That is, until she picked up an eraser and removed my message.
“I know this girl did NOT just do what I think she did,” I said, rising from my chair.
“Oh shit,” the guy who sat behind me said. (Side note: This was the same guy who got into a fight with a rival gang member on a CTA bus and later was expelled for bringing a gun to school. But somehow this moment made him clutch his pearls.)
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I walked over to the chalkboard where the girl was still standing.
“Don’t nobody give a fuck about that group,” she said. “You write this on the chalkboard every day, and I am tired of it.”
Because my brother was a huge fan of “Mortal Kombat" and we are both Scorpios, the two of us spent far too much time studying the moves of Scorpion. And I wondered how much trouble would I be in if I did the Minion Drop on this girl for erasing my Immature message.
Although three of my friends, who were almost as diehard as me, would shriek at the site of Batman and LDB, I was a lukewarm version of Dominique Fishback in “Swarm” over Romeo.
Instead, I picked up the chalk, rewrote my message and said, “Don’t erase it again. We have 15 minutes in homeroom. If you don’t like it, don’t look at it.”
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And I stood there watching her while Expelled From School Boy grinned and watched the two of us. My homeroom teacher noticed neither of us was moving and asked us to head back to our seats. I waited for her to go first, made sure she fully sat down a few rows away and then I sat down — sideways. I wanted to make sure she did not get up again before the bell rang.
We were enemies* for the rest of the school year, exchanging scowls, sucked teeth and the occasional “ugh” when we passed by each other. Oddly, that one incident made Expelled From School Boy a chatterbox, who felt the need to bring up Immature whenever he saw me just to get rile me up. By the time he was kicked out, that was my first thought.
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“Gonna miss that guy,” I thought, watching him wrestle with two security guards and curse them out. “We used to have some good arguments about Romeo!”
That one incident never stopped me from writing that same message on the chalkboard every single day, even though I had sorta lost interest in the idea a few weeks in. But now it was the principle. Nobody was going to bully me out of loving Immature. And if I had to stay up on the Knee Launch to defend my favorite boy band, then it is what it is.