By Dave Andrusko
The language and anger rippling through rapper J. Cole’s new video, “Lost Ones,” may preclude most of us from watching the video (actually filmed in 2008). But what the viewer sees and hears in less than five minutes is a story that runs the gamut of emotions felt by both the father and mother in an unplanned pregnancy–from anxiety and concern through abandonment and excuse-making, ending in a life-and-death decision still hanging in the balance.
First, the father, Cole, asks the mother of their child how she can expect them to raise a child when they are barely older than children themselves. At the same time he tries to assure her he is not just using her, nor is he looking to abandon her.
She angrily responds to his suggestion that she think about her “options”—abortion—and reminds him that her own mother had raised her without a father. And in a line that combines tenderness with understanding, she recalls all the conversations they’d had where Cole told her how he hated his own father for abandoning the family.
During this time, to distract herself, she slices an apple, cutting her hand in the process. The blood is, of course, a reminder of the reality of what an abortion would mean.
Without seeing his face—just listening to the lyrics—what follows next is classic evasion: who knows if the baby is really his, or even if she is really pregnant, Cole says. But all during the video Cole is seeing young children on swings and on slides.
At some level—probably very close to the surface—he knows the child is his. Also that all this rationalizations he offers won’t change the knowledge in his heart that if she has the abortion–or if she has the baby and he leaves them—he risks repeating the very behavior he loathed in his own father.
The video is expletive-filled, which makes it hard to watch. But as a story that repeats a sad, sad reality that takes place hundreds of thousands of times it year, it touches a chord that we cannot ignore.
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