I came to bring the pain, hardcore from the brain. Let's go inside my astral plane.
Method man was my favorite rapper growing up. I don't know why. He just was. His flow always stood out from the rest. All these years later, it still stands the test of time.
I grew up listening to Hip Hop on a Sony Walkman. Mastering the art of pausing, flipping the cassette tape over, fast forwarding, and stopping precisely on the correct part of the song as I jotted down each word to the best of my coherency. See the tape players back then only had 3 buttons. Stop, Play, and Fast Forward. Generation Z will never understand the struggle.
Thats how I learned the lyrics to songs. Some words I didn't know, others were audible (or legible), but ultimately it made me a better writer, reader, and researcher as I engulfed myself in a lyrical journey to find answers. Those were the formative years. The golden era. Not only of Hip Hop, but of my life. A skinny insecure kid with a complex, sitting in his room all day writing and reciting complex and not so complex rhymes. Wu-tang, DMX, Nas, were all tucked away in the mental chamber. Those rhymes were my escape.
The Culture is my way of giving back to, well, the culture. As Method Man would say, your all I need to get by. Til next time, this was a little bit about me. Part one.
Make sure to listen to The Culture podcast. New episodes released every Monday morning.
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