The first time I ever got my head really, REALLY right, I went and laid down and listened to Moment of Truth in its entirety.
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
RIP
The first time I ever got my head really, REALLY right, I went and laid down and listened to Moment of Truth in its entirety.
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Alright, quick digression on the increasingly less recent "album that shaped me" tip: Late winter 2000, senior year of highschool, and I am driving around a lot, drinking too much coffee and staying up until 5am all the time, skipping as much school as I can, and blowing lots of my meager, mostly-for-gas income on CDs, having exhausted the in-print U.S. Aphex, Autechre, and Skinny Puppy back-catalogs and really needing some new shit. In the same month, I came by Gang Starr's Moment of Truth, ยต-ziq's Royal Astronomy, and BOC's Music Has the Right to Children. Had to borrow a lot of gas $$$ from my parents that March. Bought Moment of Truth on the strength of a half-remembered Alternative Press write-up (don't hate, they also put me onto Autechre and Tortoise when I could've just been listening to KMFDM or worse) at a time when I could account for my hip-hop collection on prolly one hand (3 Public Enemy albums, Dr. Octagon, maybe Mystikal? and some less masturbatory DJ Spooky). Guru's voice entirely became the voice of my own internal monologue for months, kind of like after reading an Irvine (Trainspotting) Welsh novel, or the first time you saw a Borat skit. Buying Royal Astronomy right after and finding it littered with Gang Starr samples just cemented my perception that I had really coincidentally found my "thing." I mean, the whole 5-Percenter crime-anecdote boom-bap thing is basically the bedrock of my taste in hip-hop, if not all beat-oriented and/or excessively verbose music in all genres, and everything I like is still kind of measured against the first time I heard Gang Starr. Yesterday was a big deal for me, and now I wanna go to my highschool reunion, just to make amends with anybody I was callous towards when 9th grade health class turned into an impromptu Biggie memorial service and I didn't even know who they were talking about.
ReplyDeleteMystikal was so the shit back then.
ReplyDeleteOuch, that was a low blow to the sqrt nutz . . .
ReplyDeleteI bought the new Mystickal album back in college (the shake your ass one), and I remember Gray tried to get me into some sort of bad rap AA program cause of it. If I recall, he asked me if I ever heard of Wu-Tang, and if so, how could I listen to that shit, and then he tried to get me taken in by the people in white coats.
It took a while and about three two track chop remixes for him to understand how the sqrt ear filter works.
Jsan introduced me to Cash money BTW.
We used to bang Cash Money, Jay-Z, DMX, and the first Ruff Ryders comp while we cleaned up at night when I worked at Dairy Queen, because it was the only music all the employees under 35 could agree on. The ones over 35 we pretty much knew we'd never satisfy unless it was Skynyrd, Shania Twain, or Glenn Miller, so they didn't count.
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