EAZY DUZ IT

Growing up, I was very detail oriented. Probably to a fault but I always felt it made me a little bit different than everybody else. The hat had to match the kicks and the shirt and hoodie had to bring the whole thing together. I think I was in the 2nd grade when I had the realization that I had to look fresh from head to toe. My brother was 5 years older than me and he always had the sick sports gear and music that I had never heard of. When I say he had sick sports gear I’m talking about slick Pro Era snapbacks along with the newest sports gear of the team he was into at the time.  And this music that he had that I had never heard before? His collection covered all genres but there’s one tape that singlehandedly shaped my not only my childhood, but my entire life. The tape dropped in ‘88 which made me 8 years old when it was released. The album was called Eazy-Duz-It and the rapper’s name was Eazy-E. The tape had an album cover with a dude staring at me and basically telling me that I needed to listen to the album. Eazy E was the first of many rappers to speak directly to me so it’s time I pay respect.

If you don’t know Eazy-E you’re probably not my target audience but anyway… Eazy-E was from the group NWA who had just released their album Straight Outta Compton a month before Eazy-Duz-It. NWA were huge…. And a lot of you know who NWA is and probably know a couple of songs but do you really know who was in NWA? Roll call…. EAZY E, ICE CUBE, DR. DRE, MC REN & DJ YELLA. That right there is one of the best starting 5’s you’ll ever see! You had Eazy with a voice like you never heard before, Cube as the storyteller, MC Ren aka the Ruthless Villain with bars for days, DJ Yella on the cuts and a young Dr. Dre on the beats and occasional rhymes. The fact that they were from California and represented the West Coast made it all that much better. This was my new gang.

My brother was in 8th grade and during the school year he was usually tied up with sports or with friends until late afternoon. My mom taught down south in Chula Vista so she wasn’t usually home until closer to 5. My dad was a junior high school teacher in La Jolla and didn’t come home until about 3:30 or 3:45 so if I got home around from school at 2:30, I could have an hour of unsupervised freedom. I had a Persian babysitter named Pori to help me get to and from school and look after me while my parents weren’t home. Once home from elementary school, I would quickly eat my lunch and sneak away while my babysitter watched her soap operas. From there it was on! I’d tip toe into my brother’s room and grab his case logic cassette tape case to see what was in rotation. There obviously weren’t streaming services at this time force-feeding me tunes to listen to so everything my brother had was my library. So yeah… I’m here in my brother’s room that if he knew I was in here he would probably practice some of his favorite WWF moves (DDT, Suplex, Pile Driver, Figure Four, etc.) on me so I had to get what I needed and not make it look like I was in there! That’s what got me to the Eazy-Duz-It tape.

With parents from the Midwest (Southern Illinois stand up!) and my dad having spent years in the Navy, there were a set of rules we had to abide by. My parents did not allow cuss words in our house. This meant words like dad gummit, dog gonnit and gosh darnit were how we expressed ourselves in a fit of rage. We were allowed to have 1 of 2 haircuts in our household; a clean part in our hair or a military style flat top with a finger comb to keep it up. It was annoying as a kid living with these rules but looking back I am so grateful that I had parents that didn’t allow me to do whatever I wanted. It’s so important to have structure growing up and in this present day I struggle without some form of structure in my life.

 Since my parents wouldn’t be home until 3:30 at the earliest I could now go in my room with this Eazy E cassette tape and close my door. My Sony Walkman had fully loaded batteries in place and my cheap foam headphones were ready to go to work. In went the Eazy Duz It tape taken from my brother’s room and from there I pressed play and laid back on my twin size bed and stared at the white popcorn ceiling in my tiny room. Remember… I’m an 8 year old white kid from a good family and I probably should have just been watching Duck Tales or TMNT on the couch like the rest of the kids my age. Instead, I was locked away in my room and was now about to witness the strength of street knowledge. And now I’d formally like to introduce you to the very first words of the intro of the Eazy-Duz-It album.

It was love at first listen. Cussing out the gate with words I had never heard before. Talking about things that were completely over my head but it was alright, I could do my homework to listen and learn what it all meant. My head was nodding immediately with Dre’s funky beat and Eazy’s flow and cadence were on point. As I listened intently with each rhyme I instantly knew that my parents could not know ANYTHING about this. I looked up to my brother and my parents were the greatest parents ever so I couldn’t break their hearts. If they even got an inkling that their 2nd grade son was learning life lessons from gangster rap music they might feel they were bad parents and I couldn’t put that on them. So what I listened to in my headphones never crept into my everyday life and they were never aware of it. Actually, that’s a lie but those stories are for another time.

Writing has always been a passion for me as I take that from my mom who was an English teacher. Telling these stories as an adult is great therapy for me and I think my parents would enjoy learning more about their son’s secret life as a suburban hoodlum. They are not getting younger so I think they are ready to learn more about my childhood. They will not like some of these stories and will not like the language seen here but they need to know that this is who I am. And who am I? I’m a responsible adult who grew up with great manners and a solid family life. I’ve always loved sports and rap music and now I’m going to use this Mid90’s blog as my platform to express my thoughts. Each blog will have a soundtrack and those playlists can be found on the MUSIC tab on my navigation bar. Each linked to Spotify where you can grab the newest mixtape.

 If I can start to build traffic and grow this blog I will expand it out from there. This is my first website and first blog so we’re going to take baby steps here. If you made it this far, I’d like to personally thank you! It’s because of you that I’m motivated to keep pushing to see what I can build.