All For You featuring Darien Brockington is the 12th track on rap group Little Brother’s acclaimed album, The Minstrel Show. The album itself is a form of social commentary on what have become ingrained stereotypes of Black culture in America. The group uses these stereotypes almost comically to focus their material around, making listeners laugh throughout, but also acknowledge the tongue-in-cheek humor as play on more serious and unfair characterizations of Black America.

This song in particular deals with the notion of early parenthood, more specifically what it’s like to be a young father, as well as a child whose young father, overwhelmed by his situation, leaves. In the first verse Big Pooh introduces himself as a son who finally tells his father how his absence affected his life growing up. The refrain, sung so lightly, is poignant and reminds the listener that it’s difficult, coming from a background where a parent is missing for most of one’s childhood, to express how they really feel about them.

In the second verse Phonte, now a father himself, discusses how he has begun to understand why his own father wasn’t there growing up. He also expresses his hatred for this vicious cycle and how inevitable it seems to be now that he has experienced the same struggles. In the end though, he realizes, or feels that, he can’t fully blame his father now that he now sympathizes with him, as he has nearly done the same.

The entire song is touching in it’s message, and 9th Wonder, sampling I Really Hope it’s You by Michael Franks (1977) created a beautiful sigh-worthy melancholic piece to which people can both bob their heads AND think about the importance of familial relationships.