The Journey to Find and Buy a Underground Hip Hop CD Back in the 90s

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. For me back then, this was The Wherehouse, Tower Records, Zia Records, Sam Goodies, Music Trader, and maybe Eastside Records and Stinkweeds and that record store on campus at ASU.

Back in 1999, CD’s had fully taken over the cassette world and while vinyl had its audience, everybody wanted CD’s. The silver compact discs were so sexy and the fact that if you scratched the other side of the CD, your CD might not play was kind of cool. Cassettes were still being listened to by a lot of people but those cassette racks got smaller and smaller at physical media stores. CD racks expanded. So in April of 1999, if you had 20 bucks crumbled in your pocket, you were in business to buy yourself a new CD that you could listen to in your Sony Discman as you walked around the city with your backpack on.

Add some giant headphones on my head to go along with the skate kicks and the backpack with my Sony Discman on and you couldn’t stop me. Maybe I was on a BMX or a skater or maybe I was back in San Diego where I had my ‘91 Volkswagen Fox I could mob around with that included the Pioneer single CD player but I had the connecting to my 6 disc CD changer in the trunk so at any given time, I had 6 CD’s in the trunk and the option to flip out different CDs in the detachable face plate CD player in my dashboard. Playing music in your car was always an experience but so was listening to music as you walked around. CD’s and music as a whole gave you a way to stop thinking about everything else and zone out to the music in your ears.

When you bought a new CD in 1999, it was added to your collection. Maybe you had CD’s stacked at your parents’ pad or maybe you had a phat Case Logic CD booklet in your car where your friends or a lucky young lady could flip through your CDs and see what music you were listening to. CD collections were always such a good flex… And being able to play songs or artists that people had never heard and you thump them with a slumper and you instantly had some street cred on the music scene. Whoever is driving the car controls the radio and back in the day just being quiet for 20 minutes as you drove around town with your homies BUMPING new music it was just something really cool. We all connected through sports for sure but music added a whole new layer to it all.

While you had your music that you would bump with your homies in the car, you also had the albums that just you would bump in the car by yourself. Then to take it even further, you had the music that you would bump in your portable CD player and nowhere else. Let’s not forget the boomboxes at the time either. I had this this huge red and black portable radios that was so loud and gave me the opportunity to listen to both CDs and cassettes… dope. Back in 1999, 2Pac and Biggie were already dead for a few years but if you were a rap fan, you were still absolutely shook that 2 of the BIGGEST rappers in the world were just gone by the way of the gun. As a rap fan, 2Pac died and it crushed you and then Biggie died and you were just deflated. I needed something else out of the music in my headphones at the time.

I found community in the 90s underground rap scene where I had a crew of 5 - 10 music head friends that were always down to go hit up a show even if we had work early in the morning. Our music crew would talk about new music, let homies borrow a CD or cassette as long as they gave it back, go to shows, go to record stores, some of us made music while others were just a fan… But there was a community…. It brought likeminded people together to share their passion in a space where nobody would be judged and your love of the culture was encouraged. We liked a lot of music that came from California and we loved underground hip hop but also the scene back then was so lit. The energy that would be at a Living Legends show or an Abstract Tribe Unique show or a Freestyle Fellowship show or a Hieroglyphics show was just crazy.

In 1998, a new album dropped from an artist that was maybe the most respected amongst likeminded peers of mine at the time. He was an artist from Los Angeles, CA and if you got the chance to see him live, you would watch in awe and then turn to the homie next to you and just give him the look like… whoa…. He had dropped an album on a major label in 1995 and was also a part of a notable rap crew out of Los Angeles that dropped in the early 90’s and had a couple of projects that were gems to the community. His debut album was also a gem but it was pretty hard to find back in the late 90s. So now this artist had a new album so surely I could just buy it at a local record store right? Riiiiiiight????

Aceyalone is easily on that Mt Rushmore of west coast underground hip hop legends. He might be one of the best emcees to emcee if I’m being totally honest. Well I had heard that he had dropped a new album and looking back, how did I even hear about it? Was there an ad in a magazine like Urb? Was it from the message boards I was on where others would talk about new hip hop to go buy? Was it from one of my friends? All that I knew was that I needed this album. I didn’t just need it in my collection but I wanted to hear the album. So back in ‘98, I would go to all of my favorite record stores and go right to the “A” section and quickly find out if they had any Aceyalone… the answer was always no. So from there I started to go up to the people working at these record stores and ask them if I could special order the album. They would then pull out this catalog and look through it and let me know what’s up. It was on that day that at the Clairemont (San Diego) The Wherehouse music store they told me, yes, we will special order it for you and it’ll be here in a few weeks.

I would go into that store every week and go up to the front and ask them about my special order… Hey guys… Just wanted to see if you had received Aceyalone’s new album, A Book of Human Language that I ordered yet? Each time it would be a different clerk and they’d have to look through physical paperwork trying to find an answer and then ask their coworkers and bottom line, they were high-key annoyed by me. I could care less… Where’s my Aceyalone CD? I bought a lot at that store and they’d still see me walk in and kind of shrug a bit because they knew what I was there for… I was a straight up feign looking for a hit… I needed that Aceyalone. All I had of Aceyalone in my collection was one track off a compilation that was maybe the dopest song I had ever heard? I listened to “Fortitude” off of Beats & Lyrics on repeat every day… Have you ever heard that track?!?!?

I would go to other record stores and still keep asking if they had the Aceyalone CD and they’d be like, nah dog… quit asking… I couldn’t just buy this CD online and I couldn’t just stream the album and none of my friends owned this project right when it dropped so literally nobody had the music. But once one of us got a copy, it was on. I waited and waited for that damn CD. It was no widely distributed and the CDs that did get sent to stores were in small quantities so it would get gobbled up quickly or maybe your local stores didn’t order them. So just to get a rare album it would be an adventure. There are still albums I was chasing back then that I still chase now! That’s why collecting music is so much fun. This is why listening to music is so much fun.

And then one day it happened… I went to The Wherehouse and wanted to press them about my special release but instead I went to the used CD racks where I’d find albums to buy for cheaper than it they were brand new and still had the plastic seal. But on this day I was also flipping through the new CD racks so I could see what was new. And I always knew what was new because I have a photographic memory when it comes to flipping through racks… it’s weird… can’t remember what you told me yesterday but I can remember digging in the crates in ‘96 at Tower by the Sports Arena. So here I am in 1998 just graduated from high school flipping through the new Rap and Hip Hop CDs and within a few seconds, there it was. Wait… What??? THERE IT WAS! It was Aceyalone’s new album, A Book of Human Language. These guys at the record store literally put it in the racks instead of holding it for me?

The album cover was so cool! I bought it probably the fastest I’ve ever purchased a CD and I ripped that plastic off so fast and got in my car and turned it on and ejected the disc currently in my deck and then put that Aceyalone CD in and then boom…. I had finally arrived to the Aceyalone album, A Book of Human Language. That first song came on and I just sat in my car not even moving. Windows all rolled up and me just sitting in my car and looking at the liner notes of the CD while this instrumental played.

It was a 10 minute drive to get to my house and start the album all over again while taking the listening experience over to my Sony Discman and my big headphones where I’d shut the door to my bedroom and just zone out… As I let each of these songs play in their entirety I would walk around my tiny bedroom and just really get into the music. I might lay on my twin sized bed, close my eyes and just listen and be taken into another world outside of mine. As these songs played I realized that this was an entirely different listening experience for me. This totally took me out of my mind. The beats… The lyrics… The interludes… The chapters of a story… This was a literary masterpiece in CD form and I experienced it through my ears.

I remember playing this album for other friends of mine who were mostly gangster rap fans but they heard this album and were like, what was that? “The Guidelines” is one of my favorite tracks from the 90s and if you listen to it now I know you’ll agree…. It’s just a special song… and this is a special album.

So when I pull this CD out of my collection today and press play I don’t just hear the music. I honestly think of the adventure I had to take just to be able to hear this album. I think about ripping the plastic off… I remember the trash can I threw it away in… I remember putting the CD in… I remember my listening experience to it and I remember the conversations I had with my hip hop crew where we all shared the same opinion… This album is amazing. So when I pull out this artwork in 2026, I go right back to 1998 and remember a younger me loving this album so much… Talk about core memories… music creates core memories. or the music helps bring back core memories at least for me which is pretty damn cool… aight… enough talking… go listen to the Aceyalone album, A Book of Human Language wherever you listen to music. I guarantee if you can zone out for an hour and just let the music hit you it will be good for you…