My first tapes (yes, tapes, and for you youngins I mean a CASSETTE tape - look it up) I was ever allowed to buy on my own were from the gas station around the corner from us on St. Antoine in the D. I eagerly selected my choices carefully: Eric B. and Rakim, LL Cool J, Salt N Pepa and Whodini. For the better part of the year, those tapes were played on my purple Finger Hut boombox with the built-in mic whenever and wherever possible. Not only would I make my own mix tapes with the dual cassette recorder (Pause, play, pause, play. Throw a little “West End Girls” in there to show my versatility.) but I would also rewind and play, rewind and play to write down the lyrics. By the time the school sockhop or the next grade school neighborhood party happened, I was in the know. I would faux rhyme and faux beatbox and make faux music with my mouth like nobody’s business. All while rocking the ribbons my mother INSISTED on, Pre-Con gel baby hair hugging the side of my face, my  fiercest gear (a red and blue sailor top and matching pleated skirt with red socks and navy shoes - shut YOUR mouth) rocked the only way I could rock it - FRESH.

This was my special life event.

Gradually more special life events featuring hip hop came along. I mean who could forget Two Live Crew. Sixth to eighth grade I spent riding with my best friend Kerry and her old sister Kim with her friends in her mom’s car spouting lyrics that would be illegal in most countries. In her living room is where I learned the fine art of girl booty dancing and how it can be chorea graphed to flow with a nice young man behind you.

High school brough NWA and my girl Trena (the first to get a car in the group) who liked drive down Six Mile and break to the beat of Easy E and Dr. Dre. Soon that gave way to the Native Tongue movement where I forced my father to listen to De La Soul (he thought they were WEIRD with all that D.A.I.S.Y movement business) as we drove down Woodward to the NBD Bank to cash his check from Ford. He really just wanted to listen to Sir Mix Alot and would, eventually, just palm that tape from me in the end. I learned how to jump in a car to Blacksheep and House of Pain. I would feel most grown up once Cathy Kelly and I had dinner, went to see Deep Cover and immediately needed to play Dre and Snoop’s “Deep Cover” cut from the soundtrack. This is also how I learned police codes such as 187.  This would eventually lead to my addiction to Maurice Malone’s parties at Stanley’s Chinese Restaurant after hours (me explaining to my parents that their favorite chinese food place transformed into a baggy jeaned and black medallioned Maurice Malone flagship store where you could buy his latest t-shirts for twenty bucks and dance to the the most innovative hip hop in the city. They still didn’t understand. It’s a restuarant, they said).  At Maurice Malones, I would meet Darryl Dawsey, the journalist to whom I had the most respect because he was young, unabashed and the closest to temperament of these new hip hop kids the Detroit News had ever seen.  I would also keep in vague touch with Maurice group, including his then fiance whom I’d later run into in Florence, Italy of all places, joyfully recounting the dark, disco lit hot dining room where everyone danced like a Ernie Barnes painting.

Then I hit New York and the DOC had his vocal chords injured in a car accident but still made his scratchy Deep Throat appearance on Dre’s new album, Boss was the hottest female rapper anyone had ever seen, Onyx was the midget crew that everyone swore was on some kind of coke driven binge because of their energy and my college professor, Kurt Lamkin, had us study Das EFX.

As a new semi-journalist in New York, I was in heaven. My first week I saw KRS One live and not just on BET videos where he appeared with Miss Melody and kicked off the first ever hip hop peace summit video with “Self Destruction.” Then I saw the NOTORIOUS on stage in cheap windbreakers, about fifteen deep with a little bitty girl swimming in her windbreaker jacket, thick eyebrows visible from the back of Irving Plaza.

Through Jessica (the Care Moore of my life) I would eventually meet Mos Def and Talib Kweli in the EARLY stages of Blackstar when only my poet friends like T’Kalla and Jasiri were in the know at Frank’s Place in Brooklyn. There was the night that we left a small club after seeing them hold the mic down, traveling through Prospect Park and almost getting swooped up by bats, only to end up at Wood Harris’s apartment, drinking and watching crazy movies while the boy half of the living room, tried to rap to the girl half (Tyren, you remember there, right?).

Somewhere along the way, these joyous moments faded as hip hop got bigger and people did summits and held festivals about its impact on kids from Columbus to Japan. The special life event sort of became regular and not so special. There are shining moments like the first time I heard Eminem (a white boy rapping is not so odd in Detroit, FYI, especially with the infamous reputation of the drug dealer White Boy Rick who was almost more powerful than most drug dealers on the Eastside of the D. I should know. Kerry made me keep my eyes peeled for him wherever we went so she could make herself known to him in THAT way), Jay Z’s smooth and almost quiet rise to the top, Salt N Pepa maturing, DMX and the Rough Ryders hard sexy dangerous carefree lyrics, Mobb Deep really ill and dark samples, Wu Tang Clan’s storming the entire set, Tribe Called Quest quietly disbanding (but it sounded like a thud to the fans, trust) and De La Soul’s eventual rare release of always innovative musical themes (Pierre, I will always think of you when I hear De La Soul!). At some point, John Coltrane became louder to me than hip hop. Even hip hop flavored R&B got louder with Mary J. and the whole Bad Boy crew (especially when they all became Bad Boy alumni).  Eventually, it just drowned out. Sure there are moments where I hear something fresh and can’t stop listening to it (Mos Def’s “Black on Both” Sides, Kweli’s “Get By” and “Four Women” featuring the Queen Goddess herself Imani Uzuri) but all in all, it has became a sea of choices with the notable storms too few and far between.

Today I just listened to Jay Z’s “Blueprint 3″ and I think I’m back to where I was before.  I jumped in my car to some tracks. Others made me feel like that cool girl back in Detroit who drove down the block with her man in the passenger seat, leaned all the way back, as they enjoyed the crystal fresh sharpness of the Detroit sun. Some tracks made me feel like I was in that Maurice Malone club that doesn’t exist anymore where people are there for the music and the company and not the company alone.  I feel like a special life event is once again in the spotlight with the Jigga Man. I’m not saying that there aren’t fantastic underground groups or groups that are a little below the mainstream. Lupe Fiacsco is great. I’m learning to get Kid Cudi. I unfortunately am no where near understanding Lil Mama. Weezy is an epic story but in no way do I know half these kids like the artists trapped behind the plastic cash register glass at the gas station like I used to. And I refuse to believe it’s because I’m getting old. Recently Scott and I went to Power House 90, solely for Jay Z of course, and I realized that some of this music isn’t so bad if you hear it live. It wasn’t until Jay Z took the stage though that we felt like we were in a brand new LaZBoy chair. There is no mistake that there is a way things are done. And that was a return to the special life event.