half man, half inappropriate

Evolution of My Musical Tastes

I first became aware of my own existence around the age of three. I know this because I actually remember asking my dad how old I was.  He told me that I was three years old, and I went back to playing Super Mario World. Though I have even earlier memories such as my mom changing my diaper, I’m going to say age three was when my consciousness became a continuous stream rather than a set of random, spontaneous memories. I became a fully functioning member of society at the age of three; I knew how to walk, communicate, and control my sphincter muscles for the most part.

Twas the early 90s. My schedule consisted of eating, watching TV, playing video games, and sleeping. (didn’t go to preschool, bitches! look at me now! in debt from student loans) Somewhere in the midst of such a busy, stressful schedule, my mother would drive me around as she ran errands in addition to picking up my siblings from school. What better way to get introduced to music than the car radio. My dad would drive me around occasionally, but I spent most of my driving time with my mom since my dad would be at work. He would listen to 94.7 The Wave—cool, calm, old people music usually with a lot of brass instruments and Sade songs in the mix. That was the only other kind of music my brother would listen to other than classical. My mother and sister, on the other hand, listened to 102.7 KIIS-FM. If I can describe how I felt about pop music in the early 90s, I would say it was definitely livelier than The Wave.

Mariah Carey, Elton John, Madonna, Blind Melon, and the voices of a bunch of late 80s musicians resonated throughout the Chevy Astro my mother drove. In a time of rock-influenced pop radio, rarely would I hear any rap tracks. When 1993 came around, I began to recognize “rap.” One of the first songs I could remember was “Whoomp! (There It Is)” by Tag Team, but I soon realized what this was. “Hip Hop Hooray” by Naughty by Nature and “Insane In The Brain” by Cypress Hill helped me recognize the genre. There was something special about this music that these other songs played on the radio didn’t have. I’d listened to music before, but this kind of music seriously made me want to get up and dance. This type of music was cool and usually performed by African Americans.

1994 happened. Nas dropped “Illmatic”—arguably the greatest hip hop album of all time. Not like that mattered to me. I was still listening to the bullsh!t on the radio. It was a new year. Ace Of Base made it internationally and All-4-One could make a brotha feel all warm and fuzzy inside. As for rap, it was continuing to evolve. Yeah, I know Salt-N-Peppa were talking about doing lewd things to men on “Shoop” and “Whatta Man,” but damn, we don’t have that kind of lyrical talent these days. US3’s “Cantaloop” was an amazing combination of jazz instrumentals and rapping. Coolio would be cool for another year or three.

I’d say 1995 is when I began to have it all figured out. There was just too much good music coming out for my young mind to handle. TLC was putting out hit after hit, so was Boyz II men, and even Mariah Carey was turning black with “Fantasy.” Michael Jackson was doing the opposite, but he was definitely putting out good music. I’d been a fan of him ever since “Will You Be There” (and that was in ‘93!)—but I digress.  I’ll tell you what really blew my mind: “This Is How We Do It” by Montell Jordan.  Man, did I think that song was cool.  It was so cool, I had to get his album on mothaf*ckin’ cassette tape, that’s how cool that song was.

Summers with my cousins in the Bay Area would further stimulate my love for Black music.  Sorry, southern California Filipinos, but Bay Area flips are more ghetto, and therefore, in the grand scheme of things, cooler.  Of course, who am I to say that?  I was the only Filipino at Deerfield Elementary other than my oreo sister.  My cousins were mothaf*ckin’ gangster (I mean that in the nicest way possible).  Baggy jeans and lumberjacks?  They were all up on that sh!t.  They didn’t listen to pop stations like I did down in Orange County; they listened to hip hop stations.  That’s how I’d hear Bone Thugs-N-Harmony’s “1st Of Tha Month.”  I also got cable that year so MTV played a whole variety of music videos.  Naughty by Nature’s “Feel Me Flow” was another amazing track.  The summer of ‘95 blackened my taste in music. I’d always love pop music, but Rap and R&B from then on got first priority.

By ‘96, I was hearing more Black music on the pop stations. As a whole, it was just good music all over the place—by Blacks or not. Seal was tearin’ it up, Ghost Town DJs got themselves a one-hit-wonder, Keith Sweat continued to be sexual, No Doubt was doesing what they do, Groove Theory was being f*ckin’ amazing, LL Cool J was also being sexual, Biggie, 2Pac—I wanna go back so badly.  I don’t think you understand how great the music was in the 90s.  At times, I wish I were born in ‘78 so I could enjoy all that 90s music at this age.  I blame it on my parents.  Laffy Taffy: that’s what I’ll remember my late teens with.  F*ckin’ sh!t…

In 1997, my sister got herself a white boyfriend who had a younger brother that was my age and was in my 4th grade class.  Most of you don’t know this, but a white man is one of the main reasons I’m so into hip hop today.  He listened to more hardcore rap than I did.  His complexion was lighter, his hair was blonder, but he had Master P’s album and could quote Biggie Smalls lyrics better than anyone else I knew our age.  One day, we spent the afternoon counting how many profanities were in 2Pac’s “Hit ‘Em Up.”  (Somewhere in the 40s)  Did I mention he taught me how to break dance?  Around this time, Def Squad released a remix of the Sugar Hill Gang’s “Rapper’s Delight.”  I got my mom to buy me the tape for “In The Beginning…There Was Rap.”  You can imagine how cool I thought I was on walk-man days at school.

I started 5th grade in the fall of 1998.  My sister and I were avid fans of MTV because of Total Request Live hosted by Carson Daly.  All the greatest hits of the day would be playing on that show.  And we’d all wonder if *NSync would beat Backstreet Boys today for the top spot.  One day, TRL premiered this new video, “My Name Is” by Eminem.  Twas a funny video that was catchy as hell.  After seeing it, I wanted to hear the song again.  There was just something special about it that made me tell my mom to get me the CD despite the “PARENTAL ADVISORY” sticker.  I wouldn’t advise any 5th grader to listen to this CD; I pretty much lost my innocence during that time listening to this album (and because of this one girl, but that’s another blog post).  I used to be a wholesome, suburban, Filipino kid.  And then rap introduced me to some wild sh!t, man.  Well, everybody’s gotta lose their innocence somehow, and “The SlimShady LP” is how I learned how f*cked up the world is.

It helps to have white friends because they like listening to music with guitars and drums in it. (That was probably the most ignorant line in this entire post.  Who says that?  Honestly?  Please don’t take offense to anything I write—but I digress.) Though I’d always love the negro music (alright, maybe it was this one), I did my share of musical exploration in 6th grade in the form of KoRn, Limp Bizkit, with a dash of Kid Rock.  However, it was hardly an exploration since they were basically rapping kind of, too.  Well, KoRn wasn’t really, but they were catchy; they had their moments.  And come on, man, who didn’t like “N 2 Gether Now”?  That sh!t was produced by Primo!  I especially like how I started this blog post all professional, and I slowly got more and more not giving a f*ck.  Anyway, I must say 1999 was the peak of how great the music was on pop stations coming from everybody.  You had TLC, Monica, Lauryn Hill, and mothaf*ckin’ Jay-Z droppin’ hits.  The boy bands were in their prime along with Christina Aguilera and Britney Spears.  All these artists defined this era so well.  Everybody was doing well.  I could turn on 102.7 at any given time and it was something good.  I can’t say the same as of today.

I entered middle school and would be there for a while (2000-2002).  I knew something was wrong when they released the “Thong Song” by Sisqo.  Weren’t we just listening to something empowering by Lauryn Hill a year ago?  Nelly would come around and make interesting hits like “Country Grammar.”  However, around this time, I became obsessed with a video game called Dance Dance Revolution.  I decided the pop music was getting too silly and that I probably wouldn’t miss much.  In an effort to find myself, I listened to nothing but smooth jazz, DDR music, and trance music (that’s only because this girl I went out with at the time was into that kind of stuff.  Feel free to correct me if you’re reading this).  I’d catch some tunes on the pop radio stations from time to time just to keep up with what everybody was quoting.  Usher was releasing some good sh!t since “My Way.”  Puff Daddy had changed his name to P. Diddy.  The World Trade Center fell, and my friends had nothing to do but play CounterStrike—you know, that game about counter-terrorists and terrorists.

By the end of my middle school career and the beginning of my high school one, I tried to get back into the loop.  Camron released a nice track, “Hey Ma.”  In the summer of 2002, my emcee friend showed me these videos of this Chinese rapper by the name of “Jin Tha MC.”  He appeared on BET’s 106 & Park’s Freestyle Friday.  After watching one video (take note that this was before YouTube. You had to download WHOLE-ASS videos) of his freestyle battle, I couldn’t find the words to describe how I felt other than screaming “OHH!”  That sh!t blew my mind wide open.  I couldn’t have loved hip hop more than I did at that moment.  Just the concept of coming up with rhymes on the spot in a rhythmic fashion to destroy your opponent was just amazing.  From that moment forward, I wanted to rap.  However, not only could I not think fast enough, but I didn’t have the time to practice my freestyling.  I swear, if you give me like five minutes, I can write something insightful.

In late 2003, some song called “Through The Wire” would be playing on MTV by some guy named “Kanye West.”  It was a catchy song that sampled the hell out of Chaka Khan’s ”Through The Fire” which I’d only know through listening to The Wave.  Once again, my emcee friend would IM me, ”kanye’s so hot right now.” After being sad to find out I wouldn’t be able to take my driver’s test this one day in 2004, I decided to treat myself to Kanye West’s “The College Dropout.”  That was a very risky move on my part.  I never listened to the album before; it could have been a horrible album.  Thank Haysoos it was not!  “The College Dropout” contained some of the greatest beats and rhymes I had ever heard.  I further increased my love for hip hop, and all it took was one album.

Junior year of high school came around and I started to get really tired of the sh!t on the radio. Lil’ Flip sucked, Eminem usually puts his weirder songs on the radio, and Chingy came out of nowhere.  The 90s were over.  I had to deal with this new brand of hip hop-influenced pop music that just didn’t feel right.  Thus, I turned to the one man who always put out nice music: Michael Jackson.  I was always a fan of him since I was a kid, but I especially became a fan of him during this time.  I also remembered that for some reason my sister had 2Pac’s “All Eyez On Me” and Biggie Smalls’ “Ready to Die” (she apparently liked rap at one point when she was in middle school).  What a PSP/mp3 player I had: 2Pac, Biggie, Kanye, and Michael Jackson.

2006 was just an awful time for music.  Nas was right when he said, “Hip hop is dead.”  I can’t even count how many awful rap tunes came out that year.  I was ashamed to turn on the radio.  Ten years ago, it would have been so much more pleasant.  Damn good thing I copped Common’s “Be” and got into his music.  I became a hip hop refugee when high school ended and college began.  The radio was pumpin’ doodoo out the speakers, and I needed to find some real music.  At UC Irvine, the administration knew about the rampant music piracy among students, and decided to partner with these people called CTrax who provided an iTunes-like service for downloading music for free as encrypted .wmas.  This helped me recreate much of what the radio sounded like in the 90s.  I was already 6 years into the new decade, and I musically wanted out.

After owning Kanye West’s “Late Registration” for a few months and actually going to a Kanye West concert, I became interested in the music of Lupe Fiasco.  He was featured on “Touch The Sky,” and he even opened for Kanye with “Kick, Push,” which was a good-ass song.  I asked my emcee homie about Lupe’s album, “Food & Liquor,” and he said it was worth the buy.  It was probably one of the best CD purchases I ever made.  Additionally, I had always known about the rapper, Nas.  Every song I heard from him for the most part was DEEP with unrivaled lyricism.  Yet, for some reason, I had neglected how cool he was until about late 2006.  I suppose he sparked my fanaticism with “Hip Hop is Dead.”  Using CTrax, I downloaded his old albums—especially Illmatic.  After listening to the arguably greatest hip hop album of all time, you’d immediately become a fan of the artist, too.  That’s really all my PSP was filled with: Nas, Kanye West, Common, Lupe Fiasco, and 2nd year, I realized how badass Stevie Wonder was.

And I made it.  I made it to right now where I’m typing these very words.  What’s changed since early college?  I listen to AZ, Big L, Rakim, Q-Tip, and Gang Starr.  I spent the summer of 2009 listening to country music; it’s deeper than you think.  I’m open to all genres, really, but I especially love my music before the turn of the century.  And there will forever be a special place in my heart for hip hop.

God bless.