c.r.e.a.m.

C.R.E.A.M. by the Wu-Tang Clan

If you know what it stands for, you can probably still hear Method Man’s gravelly hook in your head:

💰”Cash rules everything around me CREAM, get the money…dolla dolla bill y’all…”

This was 1993. I was 13 years old.

I’m pretty sure I bought the tape at Sam Goody and played it endlessly on my Aiwa double-cassette stereo with the CD changer. Maybe I had the radio edit dubbed onto a mixtape. I definitely didn’t have the CD—that was expensive. There were no Bluetooth headphones back then, so I had a long wired connector (thanks, Grandpa + RadioShack) running to my spongy headphones. When my mom was out, I unplugged from the world and rocked out.

That year was unreal.

C.R.E.A.M. landed alongside A Tribe Called Quest’s Midnight Marauders, Souls of Mischief’s 93 ’til Infinity, Cypress Hill’s Black Sunday, Snoop Dogg’s Doggystyle, and Tupac Shakur’s Strictly 4 My N.I.G.G.A.Z—all in ’93.

I was being educated by young Black men ten-plus years my senior about a world far beyond my comfy, white, suburban Southern California existence.

And here’s the thing—we had more in common than people might expect: single-mother upbringings, father close by but not in the house, grandparents stepping in, poverty-line living at times, bagged lunches, basketball, nappy hair, and eventually being labeled “potential superpredators” by Hillary Clinton in 1996.

Yeah, there was plenty of misogyny, sexism, violence, and sex woven through the lyrics. No denying that. But this music became my first real lesson in separating signal from noise.

The noise sounded like gangster posturing, objectifying women, drug dealing, gun talk.
The signal lived in C.R.E.A.M.
The signal lived in Tupac’s Keep Ya Head Up.

I learned that I could hear the signal—and still enjoy the noise if the backbeat was right.

Back to C.R.E.A.M.

And here’s the part that took me decades to fully understand: C.R.E.A.M. was never a rallying cry—it was a warning. It wasn’t “go get the money at all costs.” It was this is the water we’re forced to swim in. A diagnosis, not a celebration. An observation of how scarcity, capitalism, and survival logic warp priorities and relationships. Cash rules not because it should—but because, for many, there was no alternative offered. Cash corrupts until it does rule everything – so we must seek something else.

Raekwon and Inspectah Deck dropped wisdom, but one line has aged better than wine for me:

“Ready to give up, so I seek the old Earth

Who explained workin’ hard may help you maintain

To learn to overcome the heartaches and pain.”

As a 45-year-old Black man—husband, father of two, friend to too few (and learning, a little late, how badly I need community)—with a career and years of hard work behind me, I feel this line in my bones. I get exhausted. Sometimes I’m ready to give up.

Give up what?
Not life—I love life and its potential.
Give up caring? Yeah. That part.

Caring—being empathetic—exposes your heart to people who aren’t mature enough to hold it, let alone care back. Exposes you to those caught in the cash and power chase that are willing to exploit you. I cannot show the physical toll of being empathetic like bruises or broken bones, but my greying beard, bald head, and deep breaths are signs of fatigue.

So what’s the solution?

Seek Old Earth.

They meant Mother. The origin. The source.

Since my mom passed, I’ve had to go beyond her—beyond my maternal grandmother—back to the dirt itself. The trails I walk. The ground beneath my feet.

That’s where I find solace, guidance, and support now.
A source that never tires.
A source that never runs dry.
A source that’s always ready to listen, guide, and offer a place to sit.

The harder I work in alignment with Old Earth—the more focused, grounded, and honest that work is—the more capable I am of overcoming heartache and pain.

So what did I learn as a kid, listening to rappers, R&B crooners, and hip-hop heads?

That life is beautiful.
That life is hectic.
That you shouldn’t blindly trust “the man.”
That you should seek Old Earth.
That you must learn to separate signal from noise.
And that, in this culture, cash rules almost everything around us…if we let it

But cash can’t take away Old Earth.

These were Black men giving me first-hand lessons in behavioral economics, shaped by what they lived through and learned in the ’60s and ’70s. They were setting me up with an empathetic wisdom that many people around me dismissed, refused to take seriously, or purposefully ignore.

Lyrics and melodies as life lessons.
Midnight marauders leading me back to Old Earth.