If You Know, You Know

2/2.

My birthday.

This year, it landed while watching the 67th Grammy Awards, where Pharrell Williams walked on stage to receive the Dr. Dre Global Impact Award. And there was something about it that slowed me down.

Maybe it was the crisp hairline.

Maybe it was the perfectly tailored baby pink velvet suit with the bell bottom flare that felt intentional, not nostalgic.

Maybe it was the simple truth that Pharrell is 52 and somehow looks untouched. An unblemished, black don’t crack, still curious, still joyful Black man. Even Trevor Noah couldn’t help himself. He saw it too.

Or maybe it was the way the night kept folding time in on itself.

Photo credit: Pharrell Williams at the 67th Grammy Awards, via Just Jared

There was the tribute. The roll call of names. The quiet realization of how many people who shaped the soundtrack of our lives are no longer here, yet still everywhere. Their absence present. Their impact undeniable.

Lauryn Hill stepped in with intention. Timely. Unrushed. Paying homage to D’Angelo with an ensemble that felt less like a performance and more like memory surfacing. Wyclef Jean. Raphael Saadiq. Tony! Toni! Toné! Names that don’t need explanation if you know. And if you don’t, you still feel the gravity.

Even Jamie Foxx, smiling and reflective, seemed caught in that same in between space. If you know, you know. Some moments live longer than the moment itself.

All of this happening while, earlier in the day, I was hosting a fairy birthday party for my daughter Vivian.

February 2.

Wings. Glitter. A cupcake. One candle shaped like a six.

And somehow the math landed strange.

Vivian turning 6.

Pharrell at 52.

Me at 43.

Six feels expansive.

Fifty two feels settled.

Forty three feels unresolved.

Not bittersweet. Just honest.

There was no sadness in it. Just the clarity that this moment deserves attention. That the now is not something to rush past or romanticize later. It is something to sit with.

The now of spending time with my family.

The now of teaching my kids who the Fugees are. Where Lauryn Hill fits. Why D’Angelo mattered. Why some music carries history in its bones.

The now of realizing that legacy is not only something we look back on. It is something we live inside of.

As I step out of my Jackie Robinson year of 43 and into whatever comes next, I smile. I look at my family and see the story unfolding in real time. Grayson. Vivian. I thank my wife Lauren for the life we’re building. And I hold gratitude for my late parents, Sheila and Stanley Lee.

Forty three doesn’t feel like an arrival or a departure.

It feels like standing in the middle of something worth paying attention to.