Dear hip-hop,
Happy 50th. My earliest memories of music have to be special just for the simple fact I still remember them. E-40, EMPD, Scarface and LL cool J are some of the artists I remember my dad playing as a young kid riding shotgun in his Cadillac mobbing threw town, and altho I was just a kid and didn’t quite understand the content the energy was alive and flowing. I do remember the day it all changed. Scarface-it ain’t shit to me verse two, “man hold up/ I got too much beat in my truck! “ Boom!!!!! A hard 808 after that bar smacked the energy right into my entire body. It clicked. I herd music differently after that day and I wanted to hear more. My sister a few years older then me had already had her enlightenment because all she would watch were music videos. Until that day I never understood why she did but after that day I sat right with her taking in everything I herd and saw. She didn’t like that, in-fact I remember her saying why don’t you go play with your toys, but I didn’t care for toys anymore I wanted to hear face mob. I asked my father if he had any music I could listen to. This all happened around the 4th or 5th grade and he wasn’t about to share his spice 1 tape with me ( I had to steal those) but he did hand me a few cd’s EMPD’s greatest hits, LL cool J, cool Moe dee, Nas, a mix from his DJ friend fresh cuts (my favorite) and a Pete rock and Mc Lyte promo cd which was one song and the instrumental to that song. Just the beat. ……..to be continued.