By Arik Cohen
If one were to judge a book by its cover and try to pinpoint the exact genre of music I prefer based completely on my physical appearance, hip hop would probably average out to guess number seven. If one were to try to pinpoint the exact genre of music I prefer based on my family history and upbringing, hip hop would once again be far down on the list. If one tried to pinpoint the exact genre of music I prefer based on my friendship circles, hip hop would show up a bit higher, but most likely it wouldn’t make the top ten. Yet here I am today, with an album collection featuring very little guitar.
I should have been a rock’n’roll man. I really should have. I was raised on classic rock for the first decade of my life. My dad used to put on 94.7 and classic rock is all I heard. The only albums I purchased were of classic rock, and my radio alarm was classic rock as well. I have many-a-friend who started out on the same pattern and currently play guitar and listen to the likes of Audioslave, Blink 182, and other branches off the rock’n’roll tree. I fell far from that tree. Somewhere in there I changed, and I know exactly when. People say change doesn’t happen overnight, but in this case it really did.
One fateful night in 6th grade (Fall/Winter of 1996 most likely) something happened to my radio alarm – something so small but so life-changing. Perhaps when I adjusted the volume I hit the tuning dial? Perhaps the reception changed a bit? Who knows what exactly happened, but the tuning dial moved a smidge from 94.7 to WPGC 95.5, the local rap/hip hop/urban music station. Imagine my surprise when instead of awaking to
Perhaps it could have ended there had an inferior track been played at that given moment, but from the first few bangs of the crazy drums I was hooked. It was a revelation. My sheltered ears never heard anything like this before. The beat was infectious and I couldn’t get enough.
For the next few weeks all I did was listen to this station hoping to hear this song again. When I did I would shove a cassette tape into my dad’s audio set-up and record as of much of it as I could. Of course with all this listening to one station and nothing else, the genre is bound to grow on you. It didn’t take long for rap to be my number one genre for I had a bit of experience in it with owning the Space Jam soundtrack and the Blackstreet Album Another Level, which featured the jam “No Diggity.”
It’s not too big of a jump to realize that Busta Rhymes’ album When Disaster Strikes was my first store-bought rap album, as it featured the single that introduced me to hip-hop in the first place. I owned that album for a good six days before my dad took it away after I made the huge mistake of playing it in the family room, where terms like “Mother Fucker” were said in the introduction. He took it away and bought me another album of my choosing in its place – which I guess is fair. I was very angry back then that he took the album away, of course, but looking back I can’t help but agree with him. An eleven-year-old shouldn’t listen to an album featuring such language. Was this the end of rap and me, though? It could have been.
It was after he took the album away that he told me I could no longer purchase albums with an ‘explicit lyrics’ or ‘explicit content’ warning on it. I agree with him to an extent but I feel that what he really wanted to say was that I could no longer purchase albums in the ‘rap’ section of the record store. My dad is a conservative man and I’m sure he wasn’t thrilled at my overnight turn to a predominantly liberal form of music. In the next Busta Rhymes album, Extinction Level Event, which came out a few years later, there is a skit about parents who hate their white son’s music choice of Busta Rhymes. The mother in this sketch says “If you insist on listening to black music – I got Sammy Davis Jr. records downstairs!” I’ve always felt this could very well have been exactly what my dad was thinking.
Or maybe not. Maybe he really doesn’t mind. Technically – I don’t know. I’m simply speculating. I should give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he’s fine with my choice of hip hop and that he just didn’t like the idea of me listening to explicit lyrics. I agree with the policy, but I’m not sure if the point of the policy was to just to keep me away from bad language, or to keep me away from bad language AND rap music.
If it was the latter, then he must have been pissed. Because not a few months after he took away When Disaster Strikes and created the no-explicit-lyrics rule, I found the biggest loophole possible: Clean versions. There I was, browsing through a Tower Records in
In sixth grade history I remember chiming into a conversation about rap music between two kids I recently met: Mike and Alex. Alex Scott did not believe that I had a clean version of Puff Daddy’s No Way Out and dared me to prove him wrong. I did. At the time, I assumed his disbelief was over a clean version, but looking back perhaps his disbelief was that I, some nerdy white kid, had a copy of any rap album in any form. The same thing happened with a kid named Obi who didn't believe my genre choice. He was only convinced when one day he started rapping Ice Cube’s first verse from “We Be Clubbin’” and I finished it.
I would love to go into how my affection for hip hop evolved. I could discuss the different styles I enjoyed at different times, such as the era in 2003/2004 where I would listen to mostly mainstream crunk-style rap that only a rap enthusiast could tolerate, or the different eras where I got into very experimental, underground, and emotional rap. But those could take up entire essays and I'll do that later. Instead I would like to end this essay by saying that of all my years listening to 95.5 – the rap station, I never called in to request or to give an answer in a contest that I knew off the top of my head. Why? I was intimidated and scared. I felt I didn’t fit in. I didn’t act like the artists I liked, I didn’t speak like them, I couldn’t do what they did. I didn’t agree with their lyrics or most of their ideas for the country. I couldn’t bond with the rap artists on an emotional level. Nerdcore rap is the only sub-genre I have been able to share a bond with (if you don’t think that’s actually a sub-genre, look it up on wikipedia).
Now, think about the genre of music you prefer. Think of your favorite bands/musicians. I’d bet even money you share a lot with their message. I’d bet even money that you understand their plight and perhaps lived it yourself. I’d bet even money that you share something with them – be it social status or emotions or pastimes. Well, I don’t. I have very little in common with my favorite musicians. I haven’t become a white guy who thinks he’s black. I’m still me. I grew up in upper-middle class suburbia with perhaps a bronze spoon in my mouth. What do I know about what a majority of rap music talks about?
Nothing really. It’s a very awkward feeling to live around music you haven’t lived, to be attached to music you never felt any real-life attachment with. A lot of you probably don’t even know what that feels like.
You’d be surprised. It feels good.
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