Last week marked the 50th anniversary of Hip Hop and unless you live under a rock, you’ve been hit with content from every angle about the big day. For me, it’s been cool to see the genre of Rap and Hip Hop being recognized and embraced globally. Hip Hop is the most popular music genre in the world now but it wasn’t always so widely accepted.
I first got hit with the rap bug in 1988 or 1989 when I was only 8 or 9 years old. My brother was 15 or 16 years old at that time and he loved music of all genres but his collection of rap cassettes was steadily growing. In the late 80’s, I was in 2nd or 3rd grade and had some time to my hands after school before my parents came home from work. I had a babysitter who watched over me to ensure I made it to school on time and made it home in one piece but other than that, I had the freedom to do what I wanted when at home without parental supervision. We were lucky enough to have an Atari 2600 and a Nintendo (!!!) on the video game tip but it was my brother’s cassette tapes that had my attention.
The final bell at elementary school rang around 2:10pm every day (save for Wednesday half day) and I would hustle to find my babysitter’s blue Toyota Corolla beater outside of the school so I could jump in and we could quickly get back home. Once I opened the front door, I knew I had an hour of complete freedom before my dad came home from work. Being an 8 or 9 year old without your parents around for an hour was dope. I got to live outside of their rules for 60 minutes and I was all about it. Every second of that free time could be used for whateverrrrr I wanted. And what did I do? I spent every minute listening to the rap tapes that my brother had because they meant the world to me.
I had no way of knowing anything about these rap and artists from these cassettes other than the name of their album, the photography on their album cover, the liner notes inside of the shell case on the j-card, the song names of the album, and most importantly, the music that was contained on these analog masterpieces. My brother’s rap cassette collection back then consisted of music from artists including Run DMC, Public Enemy, Dana Dane, Boogie Down Productions, and NWA.
It was Run DMC’s album Tougher Than Leather that first truly caught my attention as a youngster. The raw beats on that album combined with Run’s delivery had me in awe. Those first few songs on that album were the ones I first started memorizing in my Walkman as I rapped in front of my bedroom mirror in hopes that one day I could become a rapper too. On these weekday afternoons, I would grab a tape , throw it in my Walkman, and proceed to close my bedroom door and turn into somebody that nobody knew about. All of my insecurities vanished when I threw on those foam headphones and listened to this this genre of music that I loved. But time was limited each weekday so around 3:25pm, I would go put the cassette tape I borrowed back in my brother’s shoebox full of tapes and do so in a way where he would never know. My dad had no idea my big bro was listening to rap music and he would have been pissed if he found out. But if my pops knew that lil Timmy at the age of 8 or 9 was listening to rap music??? He would have flipped on both me and even more my brother so I had to be suuuuuuuper sneaky with my moves in this daily operation.
On road trips with the family back then, my brother would happily share his tapes with me as long as I promised to keep it on the hush from mom and dad. If they knew about the explicit lyrics aka cuss words we were listening to our lives would have been over.
It was on these road trips with fam where I got to look outside the car window driving all around the US while listening to music. Being outside of my home and listening to music while having great scenery in front of me gave me a whole new experience that I really enjoyed. Driving around town with hood music playing is still one of my favorite things to do today. Hop in the whip, turn on the tunes, and enjoy them while driving around the city. That is therapy right there.
On one of these family road trips, I vividly remember listening to a rapper named Dana Dane who had a dope flow and a sick British accent. Dana Dane was the first rapper I remember as a young kid show a vulnerability through his lyrics and they just hit me. Dana Dane’s track “Lonely Man” is the first time I recall following lyrics in a song and listening to a story. Being able to here his words and understand what he meant over a beat that helped me focus painted a picture for me like I had never seen in life. It was one of the first rap songs I remember that displayed vivid storytelling that I would later fall in love with even more with Ice Cube, Too $hort, Snoop Dogg, Nas, and other great rappers. I remember balling uncontrollably in the back seat of that woodgrain station wagon staring out the back of the car listening to Dana Dane while my dad drove state to state. I was maybe 10 years old and saw that hip hop brought out emotions in me that nothing and nobody else could. But I still didn’t feel comfortable sharing this about me so my feelings we’re contained in my music.
I was a super emotional kid growing up and I just never excelled in situations that came with a lot of pressure. I would always stress out so much and if I didn’t live up to expectations, it would hit me hard and I’d have trouble shaking it off. And believe me, I had to hold back a lot so I wouldn’t just crumble. Boys didn’t cry back then so I compartmentalized a ton which wasn’t healthy at all. But with rap music, I found a new outlet that helped me escape my emotions and find peace putting myself in the shoes of others through their amazing poetry and stories of their worlds right in front of them. While Run DMC and Dana Dane were some of my best early memories of hip hop, it was NWA’s album Straight Outta Compton and Eazy E’s debut Eazy-Duz-It that helped gave me an alter ego of a gangster from the streets of Compton instead of my actual realities as a little emotional white kid from the suburbs. Songs like “Still Talkin’” from Eazy E made me feel alive and made me forget all about my life as a kid.
While I was too young to truly understand the injustices these rappers were dealing with everyday in their lives, those hard beats from Dr. Dre and the angst in Eazy E, Ice Cube, and MC Ren’s rhymes were everything to me. It was the years of the late 80’s to the early 90’s where I found my first love with the genre known as Gangster Rap. Yup, a little white kid who who had never been to the hood was able to recite every bar to songs like “Straight Outta Compton” and he didn’t hold any cuss words back in his bedroom.
When the decade flipped to the 90’s, I started to find out about more rappers and rap groups I liked through Yo! MTV Raps. De La Soul’s track “Me, Myself, and I” was the first track I can remember where I first expressed myself creatively outside that closed door in my bedroom and in the classroom. De La Soul were just so damn cool and the video to “Me, Myself, and I” inspired me to express myself and start writing rhymes for school projects. As a 2nd grader, my love of rap and hip hop bled into my schoolwork. Sure my classmates probably thought I was weird rapping about national parks over the “Me, Myself, and I” instrumental with my boombox at school but I didn’t care. I felt at home over that Prince Paul production while trying to emulate Trugoy and Posdnous rhyme patterns on the classic track to get a decent grade in class.
I can’t tell you a single thing about elementary school unless it’s tied to the year a rap single or an album dropped. You might know Too $hort from his favorite word but for me it was the combination of his lyricism and the funky bassline on his track, “The Ghetto” from the early 90’s. I could never pay attention in school but when Todd Shaw rapped about life in Oakland, CA on “The Ghetto” I started to learn and understand what things were like for some of the rappers in the Compton, Long Beach, Oakland, and Vallejo hoods they grew up in. Most kids don’t get street smart until their later years, but rap music back then quickly taught me about drugs, poverty, hustling, and the ways that police treated people who grew up with different livelihoods than me. Rap music taught me so much about life.
Hip hop was also such a great conduit for fans to learn more about music history through their tracks. Sure a lot our parents were fans of jazz but in my opinion, jazz wasn’t cool until A Tribe Called Quest dropped “Jazz (We’ve Got)” in 1991. Rap groups like Tribe, De La, Digable Planets, Brand Nubian, The Roots, The Pharcyde, Pete Rock & CL Smooth, and Gang Starr showed me to have an open mind and avoid staying in just one lane with music. These influential artists gave me the curiosity to check out jazz and soul music from the 60’s and 70’s to find out more about the artists that inspired them to create the timeless classics that I still love today. Jazz Rap is easily one of the longest lasting sub-genres of hip hop and it’s cool to see music I listened to as a kid withstand the test of time.
Back in the late 80’s and early 90’s, white parents didn’t want their kids listening to rap, hip hop, or whatever you wanted to call this new art form. Stories in the news and the explicit warning stickers on all releases made parents think that this music genre only meant bad things for the white youth like me and my friends. Just listen to the intro to “Thuggish Ruggish Bone” and you’ll quickly catch the vibe back then. “We’re not against rap, we’re not against rappers…”
Being a white kid who was a big fan of rap music would get you the gas face from other kids in school back then. White parents were force fed lies in the media about rap music and black culture in general which dripped down to their children. It wasn’t cool to others that I was a little white kid enamored with an art form that generated from black culture so I couldn’t wear my love of rap on my sleeve. While I knew every word to classics like DJ Quik’s “Sweet Black P*ssy” and NWA’s “F*ck the Police” before I become a teenager, I was never out here living out the lyrics in the rap tracks I loved. But I for sure did grow up a little bit faster through the lyrics in my Walkman. And yes, I do feel a little bit bad for rapping every word of “Sweet Black P*ssy” in my living room to my Persian babysitter at the age of 11 knowing she wouldn’t say a peep to my parents. But she embraced my individuality and even if she didn’t fully understand the words I was saying or their meaning, she offered me encouragement and helped me grow and find myself as a human being without ever passing judgement at this kid figuring out who he was.
It wasn’t until after the LA Riots in 1992 when the genre of rap and hip hop gained mass appeal. After the Rodney King trial and the riots, it was right there on video how white police officers were often treating black people. That moment in history was crazy to watch right before my young eyes. These stories I heard in my headphones for years finally unfolded to the world right before my eyes. It was at that point, that the world was sick of the injustice and ready for change.
It was later that year that the world was truly ready to embrace rap music. And I don’t mean world but hip hop hadn’t crossed over yet to the masses. But that was about to change late in 1992….
Dr. Dre dropped The Chronic and introduced the world to Snoop Doggy Dogg on the track “Nuthin But a G Thing”. With that one song and that one album, rap music had officially arrived to every car radio, every boombox, and every TV that had MTV on the dial. That album changed everything and being in junior high school when it dropped was everything. Our school here in San Diego had kids from every nationality you could think of and skin color and backgrounds didn’t matter when we all vibed to the same music. It was so dope to see as a 12 year old growing up right alongside our society. I would get to bring cassettes into junior high school in ’92 and ’93 to play at lunch and when I would play the radio edit for “Nuthin’ But a “G” Thang” it was amazing seeing everybody nodding their heads. I had never seen music bring people together like this.
Dre blew up the genre we all love today with The Chronic and paved the way for Cube to carry the torch with “Today was a Good Day”, Snoop to do his thing with “Gin and Juice” and then Biggie (and Puff!) all the way out in Brooklyn with the mega banger, “Juicy” which combined beautiful lyricism with a catchy sample and an R&B hook. The look of Biggie’s eyes in the video told me that kid was determined to blow up like he thought he would. Biggie is the best rapper ever. Yeah, I said it.
Rap and hip hop exploded between the years of ’92 – ’94 and to see it all happen right in front of my eyes while I was coming into my teenage years was amazing. Yo! MTV Raps and Rap City were must watch TV every airing they had on MTV and BET back then.
I was always excited to go to school each day to talk to my classmates about the new music we were all listening to. The Geto Boys, Nas, Wu-Tang, E-40, Redman, Spice 1, Common, Bone Thugs-N-Harmony, and Gang Starr were just some of the artists that dropped between ’92 – ’94.
For my high school years of ’95 – ’98 the genre of rap music stayed on the top of everybody’s minds. Driving through that parking lot at school meant your windows were down so you could let people know what you were listening to as you slowly made your way over that speedbump trying to look hard AF. And let me tell you… When 2Pac got out of jail and dropped All Eyes on Me it was what everybody was listening to. We all went nuts with it being a double disc full of nothing but heaters.
You could tell a lot from somebody by what Pac track(s) they bumped off of All Eyes on Me. Football teams getting hype for their game listening to “Can’t C Me” was expected. “Picture Me Rollin” after school was out for the afternoon? A given… A little “How Do You Want It” meant those girls in that car were looking to party. And if you heard somebody listening to “I Ain’t Mad Atcha” you might just give them their space. “2 of Amerikaz Most Wanted” with Pac and Snoop??? Yup… That car was about to get into some trouble. Wow… Is All Eyes on Me the best album ever? Might just be.
Rap and hip hop shaped the lives of many of us who still hold the music so close to their hearts. To pay homage to the music that was the first love of my life, I had to drop some words to celebrate the big anniversary. We all carry memories from our past through this music and not many things will beat seeing house parties with everybody singing along to “Ain’t No Fun” without a care in the world.
I’m so lucky to have grown up along with hip hop. Everybody involved in this hip hop culture helped paved the way for it to be what it is today but the years of 1988 - 1998 impacted me more than anything else in my lifetime. How has rap impacted your life? What are some of your greatest memories from hip hop?
Check below for some of my many Spotify playlists that include some of my favorite rap tracks of all time. Maybe you’ll find something you’ve never heard or bump a track you haven’t bumped in a minute.