The Soundtrack of Your Life: 1993-94

I'm currently writing a book about my extensive collegiate years. The book is called, "When I Was in College..." Each chapter is a semester. And each chapter is named after some event or song that was big during that time period. Oftentimes to jog my memory a tad, I play music from the period that I'm writing about, and it inspires me. I figured I'd share a little of what's been going on in my head lately as I've been writing...

FRESHMAN YEAR: August 18, 1993 - May 1994

Resident of: Dr. Charles Richard Drew Hall Room 402
Hung out with: Jeff Lyles, Mike Bridgeman, Dorian Daggs, Ben Dyson, Jason 'Deion' Bradley, Marcell Hillie, Dre from Barbados, James Jones, Jr., Willie Ray Taylor, Braedan Trotman, Mike Haygood, Kyle Holland, Brandon Easterling, Ahmad Lockett, Marlon Jones, Che Antoine Sayles, Marcus Oliver
My crews: CPC - The Cool Points Council, DMP - Dirty Mack Players
Fashion: The Gap, Banana Republic, Timberland, Starter
Always seen with: A Dallas Cowboys baseball cap on my head, Ben, Jimmy or Kyle
Dated: Maureen Crommie, Nicole Herring
Crushes: Denise Alexander, Yvette Drake, Ann-Frances Lambert, Lisa Prince, Michelle Marion, Heather Adams, Angie Bethea

The Jimi Hendrix Experience - Are You Experienced?/Axis Bold As Love/Electric Ladyland
Time: August 1992 - August 1993
Feeling: I got into Jimi during football two-a-days in August of 92. Not a good time to be jamming to mellow music, but I made do. Jimi spoke to me. He truly did. The guitar, the drums, the sounds, it just resonated in my head and whenever I was playing in a football or basketball game and things were going well, I could hear Jimi playing in my head. When I went to vote for Bill Clinton in November of 92, I was blaring Jimi's 'Axis Bold As Love.' On the flight home after visiting Howard, I was listening to 'Castles Made of Sand.' When I drove up to school to graduate from high school, I was listening to 'Little Wing.' Jimi's music came into my life in a period when I needed a release from reality that was not only legal, but cathartic. And fortunately, he and his music was that to me.

Dr. Dre presents The Chronic
Time: January 1993 - October 1993
Feeling: Imagine the angst that I felt when I listened to PE's 'A Nation of Millions' mixed in with NWA's 'Straight Outta Compton' but smoothed out on a G funk tip. I'd never heard anything like it before, and I must have listened to it every day of the spring semester of my senior year in high school. I'd never used drugs nor had a drink, but somehow felt that I related to the inner strife that Snoop, Dre, The DOC, Daz, Rage and countless others had on the album. When I got to Howard that fall, everyone was listening to it. It was the first thing that I heard when I stepped out of the van that we'd rented to go up there, and it made me feel right at home.

The Wu Tang Clan - Enter the 36 Chambers
Time: September 1993 - August 1994
Feeling: Imagine hearing glass broken and fingers scraped down the blackboard and liking it. That's what Wu sounded like to me. There's was a reality I didn't even fake to know. I just dug the sound, what they were saying, the ferocity in their lyrics and delivery and the fact that together, they had something for everyone. They had mastered the story telling down to a science on the first lp. C.R.E.A.M. made me want to cry that song was so beautiful. This time period was my rap awakening, before it was commercialized to its current extent and called hip hop. This was rap man, and it was real, in your face, and not pretty, but at the same time...beautiful.

A Tribe Called Quest - Midnight Marauders
Time: September 1993 - August 1994
Feeling: The first single is called 'Electric Relaxation', can you beat that? This album is a non-stop tour de force from whom I believe is one of the greatest rap groups in history. The beats on every track are together. Every song, every lyric punctuates your soul and makes you think for days. If it wasn't for, 'Electric Relaxation' "Your street poetry got me every day, you honey I gotta stop when you trot my way, if I was working at the club you would not pay...", 'Award Tour' "Houston, Delaware, DC, Dallas...", 'God Lives Through'...I can't go on. I'm rapt with emotion.

Snoop Doggy Dogg - Doggystyle
Time: October 1993 - August 1994
Feeling: It was like the party from 'The Chronic', never ended. This album is a classic in every genre, and has in some way influenced more artists across the spectrum than almost any other album of its time. After you get over the commercialism of 'What's My Name?', and really start to listen to 'Gin N Juice', 'Murda was the Case', 'G's and Hustlas' and 'Ain't No Fun' you see that Snoop's genius was evident as early as 1993. This one got me through many nights in Drew Hall.

Jodeci - Diary of a Mad Band
Time: October 1993 - August 1994
Feeling: When it was time to put the rap away and chill out, this was the only album other than my Stevie, Donny and Miles that was playing. Every track was tight. Every one. My next door neighbor in my freshman dorm played 'Cry For You' 300 straight times one night, and that song is now permanently burned in my memory because of it. But as songs go, it's a lot better than some I could think of.

Nas - Illmatic
Time: February 1994 - August 1994
Feeling: It was a great time for music, and Nas's first album, still his best, came along at the perfect time. Ten songs. No crazy production, just good music, and you can still bump it from start to finish today. With tracks like 'The World is Mine", "One Love", "Life's a Bitch", "NY State of Mind" and "It Ain't Hard to Tell" put other MCs on notice that young Nas was here to stay. This album could be heard blaring out of every room in my dorm.

OutKast - Southernplayalisticcadillacfunkymusic
Time: Right after Freaknik 1994
Feeling: Fish, grits, chicken popping in grease, yams, syrup, sunshine, heat...these are all of the things I first thought of when I heard this album. Everybody I knew that went down to Atlanta for Freaknik came back with this tape, and it truly blew my mind. To this day, they are my favorite musical group of all times; more than the Temptations, more than the Four Tops, more than the Beatles (and that's saying a lot). And if you go back to this first album and hear the clarity in what they're saying and how they say it, you can easily understand why. They have not fallen off since, and will hopefully continue to make music for the rest of my life.