DJ Crunchwrap Supreme – I think I familiarize most with the
DJ because I’ve always been interested in how different genres can combine to
create new sounds. This is essentially what a DJ embodies in that they incorporate
varying sounds together to make it one solid groove.
During my first few years in grade school, I attended an
afterschool program in Los Angeles on days when my mom couldn’t get out of work
on time, which ended up being very frequently.
During my year as a second-grader there, I was one of the youngest kids
in the program and at that age any kid who is older than you are the ones
you’re going to try and impress, particularly a group of boys who were three
grades ahead of me. So I would try to
tag along with these kids. I’d follow them around and do whatever they did. I
felt honored that I was allowed to hang out with these boys and I thought I was
definitely the most mature eight year old alive. That was until the first time
I heard hip-hop. Somehow one of the boys had a CD copy of Dr. Dre’s 2001. Within seconds of hearing that I
had to leave the room. I don’t really understand why I acted the way I did
looking back on it, but at the time I was horrified. I remember feeling really
guilty for having heard what I had. This was a music that I had always
affiliated with murder and drugs, probably due to my ultra-Anglo parents
interpretation of it. And hearing this music made me directly involved with
these horrible actions. At the time I remember thinking I would never ever
listen to hip-hop again.
It wasn’t until I was twelve that first got into hip-hop, when a friend burned me three CDs: OutKast’s Stankonia, The Roots’ The Tipping Point and primarily Kanye West’s The College Dropout. For several years to come, hip-hop would be my main musical interest. When I finally got my own computer, I installed Limewire and I moved on to hundreds of other hip-hop albums. It was the most important thing to me. I spent over eighty dollars to see Nas once, thought the intro to the Wu-Tang track Method Man was the funniest thing ever, I even went as Flava Flav for Halloween one year. Since then I’ve been able to curb my hip-hop obsession and now listen to many other musical genres, but I am still an avid hip-hop listener and I’m proud to say it really has shaped my life.
It wasn’t until I was twelve that first got into hip-hop, when a friend burned me three CDs: OutKast’s Stankonia, The Roots’ The Tipping Point and primarily Kanye West’s The College Dropout. For several years to come, hip-hop would be my main musical interest. When I finally got my own computer, I installed Limewire and I moved on to hundreds of other hip-hop albums. It was the most important thing to me. I spent over eighty dollars to see Nas once, thought the intro to the Wu-Tang track Method Man was the funniest thing ever, I even went as Flava Flav for Halloween one year. Since then I’ve been able to curb my hip-hop obsession and now listen to many other musical genres, but I am still an avid hip-hop listener and I’m proud to say it really has shaped my life.
The following is a playlist of my favorite hip-hop songs in the last 10 years(in no order)
The move from visceral rejection to fan of hip hop is super interesting to me. Do you think there's something in it that is about the move from childhood to youth? And some way in which that changed the meaning of hip hop for you?
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