text: In 1998, my rap CDs started to go missing. Here's why.... My step dad was a rapper. He was a 55 year old white Italian cop at the time and I'm not sure where he went wrong or if he acquired brain damage I wasn't aware of. In 1998 he assumed the rap name of ‘Merk’ and got golden grills with pink diamonds in his mouth. He used to liberally call me the n - word around the house, for things like me not picking a pen up off of the floor or uneven grass cutting. At first he used the racial 'er' ending but quickly replaced it with n***a. Other nouns he preferred (forced) me to address him as were “sir”, “sire”, and “lord". He took his pension from the PD and launched his rap career (which wasn't much of a career at first but a reason to blast Jay Z in his car and slow down around 16 year old girls I went to school with). In 1998 he dropped his first EP 'Disco', followed by his second EP 'Disco 2', both with only 4 tracks each. They were fucking horrible. I think the titles to the albums either referred to him being a disco dancer in the 70s or often telling me to “discoagulate” (not a real word) Dawn dish soap nozzles (picking out the hardened soap). Prior to his retirement from the force, Merk borrowed a hearse from a friend. He hired a marching band from a neighboring high school (actually, more like bribed by paying around 20 of them $200 each) to march in front of the vehicle playing the theme to 'The Godfather’ through my neighborhood with fat black strippers twerking on the roof while driving in his rapper getup, displaying a wreathed portrait of himself as a young police officer on the back windshield, emblematic of the demise of his former self, with “RIP” spray painted across both sides of the vehicle in pink. Not having established himself in the slightest, and with only mild interest from an amateur record producer from the Munhall, PA projects (a skinny half and half guy who called himself 'Step stone'), he up and disappeared. What catapulted him to his 15 minutes of fame was when he absconded with my car (a 1995 Ford Escort GT, despite owning his own Cadillac) and snuck into the 2000 Grammys behind DMX, Drag - On, and some Ruff Ryders groupies and while getting ejected from the event by the authorities, he began screaming “GLASS HOUSE, N ***A! GLASS HOUSE!” while throwing his 'Disco 2' mixtapes into the crowd. Consequently actress Regina King passed it on to an executive at Warner Bros who sought to capitalize on the incident, allowing for $150,000 to record and release an 8 track long LP for my step dad which came out in 2002 titled 'The Derelict'. People initially thought the title was Merk referring to hinself, but I know that in reality it was a word he often called our neighbor Gene along with “neanderthal” because his bushes on the property line extended about 2 inches onto our side. In 2005, after low -end moderate record sales (he earned enough to build wooden stairs from our deck to the yard), he moved back from LA to rip on and continue to berate and oppress me (still calling me n***a and making me do useless and arduous tasks like cutting our entire front and back lawn with scissors). At the same time he changed his persona to an over sexualized character named 'Jason Stetson’ where he released album 2 titled “Appullella Cowboy” (a reference to what I found out was a non - existent street block named Appullella Square in Jersey City, NJ, contrary to his claims that this is where he grew up and gained “street credit”.... Liar). Step dad began wearing a cowboy hat and started singing in a low baritone Barry White sounding singing voice, heavily emulating Everlast. He recorded the eponymous title track to the album with Step stone and a local prostitute with a mildly good voice named Lady Lux. He was briefly signed to Interscope through one of his LA connections who found it tasteful and a “nice change up” from his pompous rap persona. His tour was cancelled when, in his first show, without permission from his agency, he sodomized a prostitute at a cerebral palsey charity concert (unfortunately). He came home in 2006 and went on a hiatus. In this time, while shooting me with a taser he had from his police days and in the other hand spraying me down with a hose while I was planting tomatoes for him that spring, he electrocuted himself when his 14 gold chains were caught in the crossfire of both at the same time. The year 2008 would be his swansong with his self - released finale 'Theft Equity'. One particular track that received praise was titled 'Summiz', where he interwove a story about young and old love, and spraying girls with a fire hydrant and the pain of loss in his youth back in Jersey. This never happened. In reality he grew up in Homestead, PA when he was a kid, where his devout Catholic mother forced him to kneel on corn kernels for saying “oh jeez". Despite some in the music community who were secret fans and were able to obtain copies of the mixtape, it made no money, and my mom and him finally divorced. He took the house and at the same time won $500,000 in the lottery, but blew it on coke, gambling, and lawnmowers. Last I knew he was having sex with a 101 year old lady from down the street. There were rumors that he'd been sleeping with Lady Lux (he came home with herpes and the crabs from time to time) and some other prostitute. In 2018 he dropped some garbage, cheap -- sounding mixtape called 'Faif' (as in 'Faith’), but I've never seen or heard it.