Ear Hustle’s Antwan Banks Williams Goes Deep on ‘Like Father, Like Son’

This essay is part of Redemption Songs, a limited-run newsletter that spotlights one song each week by incarcerated artists. Sign up now to get a new song each Sunday afternoon until September. Listen if you like: Blu, Anderson.Paak, J. Cole While working on a podcast over the last year, I listened to a lot of the Ear Hustle podcast made at San Quentin State Prison. Aside from the good storytelling, “Ear Hustle” makes you feel like you’re physically in the prison because of the immersive sound design. This is the work of Antwan “Banks” Williams, who co-founded the show and brought his microphone around San Quentin so we can hear the slamming gates and dripping water. Williams is a polymath: After getting out in 2019, he began quietly releasing rap albums alongside paintings, photography and, most recently, films. This is all on top of working a day job at a Bay Area high school and raising a young son. For Father’s Day, take a listen to “Like Father Like Son,” a song from “Chapter 36 the Tribute,” the album Williams made while grieving his own dad’s death. It’s got a quiet intimacy that reminds me of Ear Hustle, and it’s a testament to what happens when you give people in prison high-level tools like music production software to develop their craft before they get out. “I really, really wanted to be that artist who signed a record deal from prison,” Williams told me. This didn’t happen, and his Ear Hustle co-creator Earlonne Woods said it might have to do with his style: “In this culture, everyone wants the person who is the most gutter. Antwan can do that, but he’s done work on himself so he has something uplifting to say, and not everyone is interested in hearing it.” When Williams got out of prison in 2019, he was drawn to other mediums. Music became less a route to fame than a form of therapy and a way to connect with his dad. Williams said his father was a pianist and guitarist who set aside his own dreams of stardom for the steady paycheck of a post office job. He became his son’s biggest fan: “Every single underground album I put out, he was like, ‘I need it first.’” But their relationship had never been simple. Williams grew up in South Central Los Angeles, and says his dad struggled with addiction. When Williams went to prison for a robbery he committed at 18, his father couldn’t handle the emotional strain of visiting him. “I only got one letter from my dad during my entire 13-year incarceration,” Williams said. “I’m his only boy — the baby — and it was too hard for him. He was as supportive as he could be, but he was never taught to emotionally regulate.” After Williams got out, they reconnected and listened to Stevie Wonder and Earth, Wind & Fire together. When his father died two years ago, Williams decided to make an album he could imagine his dad loving, full of the soul and funk references of his own youth. “I remember finding samples and thinking, ‘Oh, man, my daddy would be on this,’” Williams told me. “I would close my eyes and try to tap into his energy.” The point was not to turn his father into a saint. Williams learned in prison that it was more healing to see his dad’s full complexity and make the choice not to stand in judgement: “I don’t know everything that was put in front of him, what it’s like to be addicted,” he said. “Who am I to shame him? I give my father grace.” Williams said that he would cry while working on the album. And then his own son, who was 4 at the time, would console him with a hug. “He’d say, ‘Daddy’s sad. It’s OK, daddy.’” Williams’ father never cried, he told me. So in this moment, he was honoring his dad while simultaneously breaking a cycle of emotional unavailability for his son. But other times, his son would sit on his lap, and Williams would remember sitting on his own father’s lap and decide that “some cycles shouldn’t end.” Liner Notes: Song: “Like Father Like Son” | Album: “Chapter 36 the Tribute” | Artist: Antwan Banks Williams