hiprocksoul

Growing up as a youngster, I was influenced a lot by what my parents used to listen to…

Playas like ABBA, BoneyM, and such acts as talented as rare as Amazulu were always amusing to listen to… (ok, ABBA are not playas)

You see as a young boy with very hip parents, the record collection was always going to be a way to check out their tastes…

Of course Michael Jackson’s Thriller album, Whitney Houston’s self-titled debut album as well as Lionel Richie, Billy Ocean and acts such as Mel&Kim, ThePolice, and classics like the~man~himself Bob Marley and the Wailers always stand out…

If you can remember acts like Starship, The Jets, Dione Warwick, Stevie Wonder, and Prince, then you might be able to keep up a musical conversation with me, my sister or our parents on a late Friday evening when we are doing their old skool reminisce…

As I grew older however, it became more and more evident that I needed to find and tune my ear to my own musical tastes…

In the late 90s emerged a form of musik that was based on the late 80s type of musik…

Groups like New-Edition, Shalama, NewKidsOnTheBlock and even individual acts like Kylie Minogue and Madonna were a huge huge influence on my musical drama-tisti-kal listening..

You see, every year around about the birthday times my momz+pops would take that special interest in making sure that they buy us a present that would include a tape (cassette tape that is Princess) which would surely be of the hottest artist on the TV and radio

When Hammer couldn’t touch this, we were slowly but surely waiting for the tradition to keep rolling on, until Momz turned up with Vanilla Ice’s BabyBabyIce, or was it IceIceBaby, alright stop????

And when Momz dropped BlackBox’s everybody for my sister, we was surely tearing up the house with our classic Toshiba Radio….

When me and my sister attended boarding schools, we were sorta kept outta touch with the goings on in the musik world, as her school was not in the habit of allowing young students like herself to entertain themselves instead of reading books in the school library. But as well all know, there is always that smooth and uneek person who always has the hook up with the stuff that is in red ink in the school rule book…

Her friends Babs&Eva were (and still are) amongst the most uneek sistaz I ever met…

Always turning up at home with videos of the newest and latest joints that we had heard on the radio and not even thought about on the television… You see back in the day, MTv was a privilege of the heavy-laden… aka the Babs type chics of this world, but lucky for some of us we were in the right circles by association…

Anyways, that was about the time that Shaggy was just smarting from jumping ship after him and General Schwarzkopf had a fallen out and he interested us with his excerpts of Oh Carolina. And the bombastic-ness was formed…

I at the time was hooking up with Jeff…. Jeff you see was (and still is) that chap who will always have the hook-up… you don’t believe me… Jeff had a SEGA Mega Drive even before we had seen it at the Duty Free, Jeff was bootlegging Steve Harvey before it was even on TV, and he even had underground rap recordings of MC Hammer featuring the west coast ni99az….

Jeff introduced me to Gangsta Rap… I didn’t even know what it was till I was so far gone…

Ice Cube, EazyE, Dr.Dre, and the entire Dogg Pound Crew were the way to go… Playa, I didn’t even bother with all the Shabba Ranks type German Dish Crappy Hair cuts, I was the real deal and was scoping out checked shirts and sagging jeans way before my Momz and Pops could understand nada….

I even still have Dr. Dre’s murderous The Chronic album!!!

That paved the way for my foray into listening to Hip Hop! I dabbled with peeps like Lords of the Underground (ticktock this is how we rock) , Da Yangstaz,(hiphopride and then some), NaughtyByNature….. and treacherous Treach doing his thing…. Cypress Hill and of course EnteringTheWu…..

I am telling you by the time Sean Puffy Combs and the one BiggieSmallz were blazing Juicy and shyte, I was already down with Tupac and his wessssyde (for you Kay and Jay)

I do have to give an honorable mention to Nasty Nas for his 5mic efforts on It was written and obviously Illlllllllll-matic….

For those of you not in the know of the whole 5 mics and shyte, ask Iwaya….

By the time I was finishing up my O’levels, I was so deep into the entire Poetry and shyte-ness associated with Hip Hop, I was just slowing down on RnB…

You see, acts like Brownstone, Jade, and En Vogue will always be a deep listen for me…. Don’t believe me, remember 5miles to empty, and kiss and tell by brownstone… what about don’t let go by EnVogue, and obviously everyday of the week by Jade…

Looking back at the master RnB acts, TLC were always on point…. they managed to come together and put up some really interesting tracks, like ain’t too proud to beg…. and of course the delicious, redlight special…

The re-entry of New Edition was welcomed with huge hand claps, and yes they were on point…

As you can see that by the time Dru Hill came to try and trounce BoyzIIMen, they were not really as excellent, but they did have some amazingly well written tracks…. seriously, don’t believe me….. How deep is your love, somebody’s sleeping in my bed, and the remix done by Dupri was on fire….

Man, I am failing to keep up with all the tracks in my head…

Anyways, RnB was and still is a dope list on my collection… I have joints like Anthony Hamilton, Gerald Levert (RIP), Keith Sweat, and yeah Johnny Gill..

As you can see, I was (am) a real RnB lover…

By the time I bumped into ColdPlay, and Alannis’ drama…. I was pretty skeptical and practically used to switch off the radio whenever a rock track would play!

But somehow, with the intervention of a one Rick Dees, on a certain repetitive music playing radio station, I managed to ease into potentials like 3DoorsDown, and Puddle of Mudd….. when I joined Uni, I had the hook up so badly coz Jeff had introduced me to his cronies….

Jeff somehow knew (and still does) someone who had stuff which he needed…

I had the Linkin Park joint before “in-the-end” was banging on the radio…

The hybrid theory really did mess up a few of my cronies, and when we got Dido in full effect, we were blazing really high… groups like Vertical Horizon, matchbox20, and even U2 somehow made into my collectibles….

I am still a hiprocksoul listener, and now I must admit that my musical taste has been refined a little bit to include the likes of some jazz peeps like Jonathan Butler…

The entire journey though must have some neo-soulites like Musiqsoulchild, Jilly from Philly JillScott, flo-etry, Badu…. Jaheim and yeah Sade….

I am hustling with a few words, but believe me, numerous artists are missing from this list, but hey…. help the basikness and add one or two of them in the comments…

~b2b~

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Val, i know you’ve waited for this…