The year was 1999 and I wanted to buy a new album that had dropped recently. Now keep in mind, in the late Spring of 1999, there was no Spotify or Apple Music or any kind of way to “stream” an album. iTunes hadn’t even come out yet… Napster was about to drop but nobody even knew what a Napster was or what it would eventually be. So if you wanted to buy an album, you were hitting up your favorite record store to see if they had it.
Read moreJeru the Damaja is One of the Coldest Emcees from the 90s
Sometime early in 1997, I was 17 years old and 90s hip hop had officially taken over my life. I loved going to different record stores nearby (Tower Records, The Wherehouse, Sam Goodies, Music Trader) where I’d dig through CD racks and read rap magazines to stay up on the industry.
Read moreA Tribe Called Quest - The Low End Theory Cassette
When I go back to the early 90s, I remember the music I was listening to at the time more than the actual memories from my life. In 1990 I was only 10 years old and in that impressionable time of growing up, it was the always the music that moved me most. And when I had certain cassette tapes in my hands, pressing play on my portable cassette player took me on journeys in my headphones I had never been on before. My older brother Todd’s collection of cassettes was my only source of music to listen to so when I opened that old empty shoebox full of cassettes from under his bed, it was always a choose your own adventure type of experience for me. So in the early 90s as an 11 or 12 year old, I had no idea what was about to happen to me when I grabbed that cassette for the first time.
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