Medium Reader Appreciation: Part I Love & Hip Hop Edition
Poems, pieces and Salt n Pepa song lyrics brings an “ol’ man” and an old school hip hop fan together
Revised 5/23/2020
Thank you for taking the time to read and comment on 3 of my pieces Chris Custer! I’m not sure how I started following you either, but your Food Pyramid piece is on my reading list. I have over 400 pieces saved, I add stories and try to read as many as I can daily…
I’m happy you learned more about Go Go and rap music’s connection. Salt & Peppa’s “Shake Your Thang” was based on a sample from the Isley Brother’s song, “It’s Your Thing” and EU just made it magical.
I’ll conclude my formal thank you by saying that I love how you lovingly spoke about your wife with such tenderness and appreciation. Your love and admiration shined through… Your response to my work gave me hope that there’s love even for a grisled old soul like myself (lol).
God bless you and your wife and be safe this Memorial Day holiday.
And thank you, again for reading my work… It’s greatly appreciated!
A last (long) note on my love of old school hip hop
Based on your response to my playlist in Part II — I don’t think you’re a “newbie” but just in case you or someone else wants to explore more rap/hip hop, I’m partial to old school hip hop on Youtube. I search for “clean versions or radio edits”. I like finding the old videos because old school hip hop, and Go-Go were the soundtrack of my high school and college days — from drill team practice, parties to Saturday morning clean up music.
I LOVE hip hop, but I don’t know if it’s my prudish church girl/hypocrite sneaking out, but I often prefer some of the radio edits over the original versions. The radio versions are also the most familiar. Back in the day, music was expensive and tangible. An album was either on vinyl records, 8-Track or cassette tapes. You couldn’t download or “burn” music to a CD — heck we didn’t have cell phones back then.
I got my first boombox and first tape in 1984, New Edition’s self titled album. I cried that Christmas I was so happy. I played that tape so much it snapped. From that point on — I was the mix tape QUEEN perfectly recording songs and fade transitions from the radio which were mostly remixed and (in my opinion) the best versions of the songs. For instance, I didn’t hear the original version of “Dolly My Baby” by Super Cat until this year. I only knew the Bad Boy remix with Mary’s sample and Biggie’s verse which to this day is STILL fire.
The clean radio edits keep me dancing…Where as the uncut versions can be rough and require a deeper dive especially as a parent…So like the young people say, I think it’s best to “stay in the (family-friendly) lane” until my college-age “baby” bird turns 21…
Old school hip hop sampled a lot of great jazz and funk music from the 60’s and 70’s… This made me go down memory lane and an old school hip hop rabbit hole. So I’ve added a Part 2 that has a curated list of my favs.
You sound very open minded, but I’ll offer this final piece of advice for others who’ve given hip hop “bad rap” over the years (forgive the Big Pun):
Please remember rap music is lyrical poetry. Like most poetry, we may not always agree with the word choice, or even like the poem — but we should respect that the writer is sharing a piece of their soul…
Here’s the playlist in Part II: Hip Hop Playlist For Newbies
