On this day, under the weight of Charm City’s characteristic late July balm, it was time to clean up after lunch and my brother had stereo privileges. The louder we broadcast it, the more our peers and adult neighbors would know who we were and what we stood for - or at least who we were attempting to be. It was also an excuse to exploit our budding individualism, linked as it is for every teenager to choice in music. Regardless, deejaying was the motivation to knock it out - a subterfuge for the pressures of being responsible to a system we didn’t create. It was typically a toss-up between Baltimore’s premier rap radio option, 92Q, and its alternative rock offerings on the now-defunct 99.1 WHFS. Whoever washed claimed the perk of curating a carefully selected playlist of songs spanning a consistently updated assortment of compact discs each of us bought with our own hard-earned lawn-cutting cash.Įither that or one of us would tune into a local radio station of our choosing. My brothers and I shuffled through the job like well-trained line cooks. It was a thrice-daily ritual of wash and dry following every meal, fortunate though we were to have had three. We didn’t have a dishwasher back then so it was up to me and my two older brothers to get the chore done. The year was 1996 and alternative rock was on regular rotation in my - at that time, five-member - white, working-class household. When I first heard 311, I was in the kitchen doing dishes with my oldest brother. This story, a quarter century and counting, is tracked (and trekked) across 13 studio albums. Music that will place an indelible imprint on your read of the world and shape how you embody yourself in years to come.”Īs the native-Nebraskan, hybrid rock group, 311, celebrates three decades as a band with its original line-up still intact - a feat shared with the likes of De La Soul - I cannot help but pause and acknowledge the personal impact of an act whose life-affirming gospel has saved more than a few lives, my own included. Perhaps this was De La Soul saying, “You’re listening to something you will never forget. This was a way for hip-hop’s Golden Era proteges to give dap to the forebearers of the culture and to highlight how timeless music places a qualitative stamp on the most ordinary of moments - be it “smokin’ a blunt and drinkin’ a 40 down lower east side” with some cronies or the car ride to a family reunion on the Long Island Expressway.
At the outset of its 1996 classic, Stakes is High, Long Island rap trio De La Soul launches into its fourth album with snippets of interview samples detailing the first time folks had heard Boogie Down Production’s 1987 hit, Criminal Minded.
0 kommentar(er)
