WINTER RAPS

Man....It's been too long since I've put anything up here. Hurricane Ike fucked up my world for a while and now I'm about to start a new job so I've been pretty jammed up. Stress mode in full E-F-F-E-C-T.

Every winter I find myself listening to more and more rugged ass rap. The listening of the following groups goes through the roof.

M.O.P.


Smif N Wessun


The Beatnuts (although I keep these dudes in heavy rotation, I like most of it more in the winter)


Jeru


There's lots more I could post up here. Nas and Gang Starr come to mind, but I think that I move towards these types of songs every winter because when most of these songs came out, I was freezing my ass off in Minneapolis and walking somewhere I usually didn't want to go with these jams in my headphones.

If my memory serves me correctly, all of these songs were released in the fall. That meant you were going to be holed up somewhere listening to them because it was so damn cold out and if you did go anywhere, you had on the ubiquitous SONY MDR-V150 headphones on. No one had a car and those provided nice ear coverage and sound without making you look like a Herb. They have a long ass cord too.

I'm jealous as hell of the kids who have iPods nowadays. I used to have to carry like four or five tapes and extra batteries around if I wanted some sort of variety for those long winter walks. Maybe I would make a mix tape for myself but that shit took forever, just as dubbing did. Let's not forget that the sound quality of the cassette Walkman was utter crap compared to the iPod.

Now my iPod has every fucking rap tune I own on it and I'm in Texas so not only do I not get very cold in the winter, but I don't walk very many places anymore. Times change.

Sure as shit though, every September or thereabouts I start clicking on those songs to listen to and as a result get all nostalgic and shit. For some reason I start to miss walking miles in the snow because I missed the bus or something.

This comes to mind.......I know ALL OF THE WORDS to the these various songs and albums because I had to walk somewhere and listen to them over and over again. If you forgot to bring along another tape and had a long walk, you weren't gonna NOT listen to that one tape. Hell no. You flipped that thing over and over until you got home or wherever it was that you were going. I always seemed to have Cuban Linx in. To this day I can't hear one song off of that album and not think of this crazy long walk I had to take after work. In fact, if I was somehow struck blind, I bet that if you put that shit in my headphones and started me out at the place where I was working, I could totally get across downtown Minneapolis just because I usually was listening to that and always took the same route. I should try that sometime if I ever get back to that town.