On Picking Up the Phone: The Lost Romance of Communication

I dream of the version of myself who looks cool taking a phone call. That suave type of effortlessness, a little lean in my stance that would cause an onlooker to think, “That’s a guy who knows how to talk on the phone.” Maybe it’s a desire rooted in a bygone era, when leaning at a payphone or coiling the wire of a landline was an easy signifier for attractiveness, but damnit, I still think it translates. Part of me does suspect that the version that I’m dreaming of is out of reach, that I just don’t have it in me to give off the devil-may-care facade through the sound waves.

While I love talking on the phone, and I want to do it as often as I can with the people I cherish, I don’t really take it all that lightly. The people I love have a certain number of precious moments in a day, week, month, or year, and for them to use any portion of that motherlode speaking with me is a gift. That doesn’t mean that each conversation has to be earth-shattering or revelatory—I’d hazard a guess that 99 percent of them amount to the normal talks we’d have in person. But the calls are underscored with the latent pressure to convey that I love them once again, that I am thankful for them picking up the phone, that there’s nothing else I’d rather do at this moment than talk to you, that I’d give anything to hear their voice again after the call drops.

The Poetics of Rap and Romance

For all the posturing that happens in rap, my favorite genre of song is when the best emcees in the world get romantic and wistful. Everything turns into a love poem, a love song, a love letter, when written with you in mind, no matter the beat of the drum underneath.

The best acolytes for these emotions have always been The Pharcyde, with the ‘90s Los Angeles group avoiding the trap of sappy and simping when regretting missed connections on “Passin’ Me By” and “She Said.” These tracks never felt rushed, or like Slimkid3, Bootie Brown, or Fatlip were embarrassed about the realities of their lovestruck bars. They crawled along with an easy swagger, sometimes letting themselves loose with crooning and humming, always remaining true to what they felt.

Slum Village and the Art of Connection

A month ago, a dear friend sent me a grainy video of Slum Village performing “Call Me” in front of a sea of nodding heads. It took me a second to realize what was going on in the clip. The moment it snapped into focus, a smile snuck onto my face that stayed for the entire walk home. No soaked shoes and drenched hair could dampen the sensation sparked by the return of a warm memory that was thought to be forgotten.

I don’t want to boil down Slum Village’s impact to just their soothing romanticism, because I think that’d be a disservice to their evolution as an ever-changing outfit. The three-man weave of rappers Baatin and T3 and producer J Dilla felt like they rose from the depths of the earth when they emerged into the public sphere during the late 1990s. With chemistry and understanding forged in high school and Detroit’s Black Conant Gardens’ streets, Baatin and T3’s relaxed delivery, intentional and measured, over the earliest iterations of Dilla’s brilliant compositions fit like perfect puzzle pieces.

Even as solo careers were launched and Slum Village’s lineup changed—Dilla left in 2001, Elzhi arrived in 2003, and Baatin departed—the collective’s core tenets remained. There’s something magnetic about the way that T3 and co. kept the lights on as the credits fluctuated, always maintaining the tenderness and lightness that made Slum Village so alluring.

Maybe the point is that you aren’t meant to look cool when talking on the phone with the person that you love. It’s normal to teem with anticipation and positive anxiety when you look forward to every moment that you get to interact with them. There’s no need to betray the truth of how much love I have for you with feigned apathy; why not let you know how much my love for you is the reason for my next move.