When I was a kid, I used to want to be a rapper. The older kids called me Tiny Tim, so when I started rapping they called me MC Tim. I had another name as well and that was DC, which stood for Devastating Chris. Me and my friends would be at school putting on little shows at recess and such. We had a few groups, one was called FIE (Fresh In Effect) and as we got older (read:12-13) we went by NIC (Niggas In Control). We even made dis songs about Another Bad Creation and Kris Kross. One of the funniest thing I remember was us talking about wearing our pants backwards, but inside out as a sign of disrespect. Yeah we had issues, but we were ambitious…to a point I suppose. As we got older, I ended up going to a different junior high school than everyone else and things started changing around that time. One night, one of them called and wanted to hear me flow over the phone with somebody else on three way, but my dad was right there and I couldn’t say the stuff I’d normally say…so I kinda froze up. They were a bit upset about that, but they ended up moving away shortly after that anyways.

Fast forward maybe a year or two and I’m just going to the corner store like any other day and there’s a big crowd. Being the nosy colored person that I am, I go to see what was going on. As it turns out, my former neighbors and partners in rhyme have formed this group and landed a deal with Def Jam and are shooting their first video. I go speak and everything, but they are kinda busy and such. It was a good feeling though, to see them work towards a goal and actually achieve it. That was something we’d always talked about. Even though I wasn’t really a part of the final stage, I’m glad I was around to see things develop. I even managed to get into the crowd. If you watch the video below and pause it around 0:49 or so, in the center…to the right, you’ll see a dark oil spot with a messed up tapered afro standing virtually still–that’s me. The YouTube video (link) was a bit clearer but Universal Music Group prohibits any embedding of their clips. Bastards

Funny stuff. Anyways, I went on to make my own album a couple years later when I was 17. No one has ever heard it, but if I can get the stuff to transfer the cassette to my computer I may share a few tracks with y’all. Maybe. I just might make that for registered users only. I’m not sure yet. But yeah, it’s interesting what happened to them since then. The first guy went to prison for 10 years for kidnapping and drug trafficking. He was due to come out this past summer, but I’m not sure how that has worked out. The second guy also went to jail, but had a shorter sentence. The last guy (and the person who prompted this whole flashback thing) lives in Indiana now and does a bit of promotion and real estate. He sent me a message on YouTube and called me Tiny Tim. I found that to be hilarious.

Ahhh, memories.

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The Ruff Ryders compilation album had just come out a few weeks prior to my high school graduation. I drove my dad’s truck up to the school and I bumped this most of the way there, along with Juvenile and Drag-On’s “Down Bottom”

Anyways, graduation goes on without a hitch. Afterwards, I went around taking pictures with folks and laying kisses on all the ladies. Hmm…I guess I was a little nasty boy. Perhaps I just figured that I’d let it all hang out since I probably wouldn’t see many of them again. I kept in touch with a few of them and I’m reconnecting with alot of folks through our high school reunion site.

But yeah, there was this one girl. I really liked her. I think that when I first tried to write poems and such, I wrote about her. I never really made a play for her though. She had an off and on boyfriend so I just kept my feelings to myself for the most part. It was funny, sometime during my first year of undergrad, I sent her an email just saying hi and all, then the boyfriend writes me back and tells me to back off. I wrote back to tell him that I was just speaking and he needed to chill out. I got nothing after that.

I wonder what she’s doing now

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This song came out when I was in the sixth grade. That was me in the sixth grade. I think this song was one of the first songs were I started to notice how the girls were developing and all.

Yes, I wanted to grind.

Such a young pervert I was. Anyways, alot of things happened during that school year. Karl Kani had just come out and I was so mad that I couldn’t get one of the shirts from the guy in the mall. Thinking back, those shits were probably bootlegs anyway. Street Fighter II had come out for the Super Nintendo. I had some bad lasagna and threw up towards my classmates. I think Malcolm X came out that year as well, and everyone was wearing the X hats..it was crazy.

I am Malcolm X!

Sorry about that…I remember setting a couch on fire by accident with some roach spray and blaming it on a kid named “Brandon”. The couch was on the front porch and we were messing around with the spray..making a torch and all..then the couch just went up in flames.

This crackhead that was walking down the street helped us put it out and asked if we had any money. I had a dollar so I gave him that. My mother came home and called the police because she wanted “Brandon” charged and all. When the cops came, we told them that “Brandon” lived on the next street over and we didn’t know his last name. I’m sure they knew we pretty much made that up.

They had to.

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I believe I was either nine or ten years old when this song came out, and they premiered it right after The Fresh Prince of Belair went off (I think). I think it’s just one of those feel good songs that never really gets old..to me anyways.

Anytime I hear the song, I think about summers as a child..no cares in the world except having to worry about what games we wanted to play next. No bills, no responsibilities, nothing at all. I miss those days.

We had these games that were basically variations of hide and seek. One was called Ninja Hide and the other was called Manhunt. In Ninja Hide, people would try to be all stealthy and such. With Manhunt, when you caught someone…you basically beat the hell out of them. We used to race in the streets and I was the fat boy who could run fast, especially if I took my shoes off. Yeah, it was a wrap. I used to disobey my parents all the time and have everyone in the house for what would probably amount to miniature parties while they were gone, and then I’d have to sneak them all out when someone came back. I could go on and on about things, but I’ll spare you all.

Fun times.

As I got older, the summer became more about playing basketball and football against people from other streets and trying to get laid. With me never really accomplishing the latter. I was (and might still be) terribly shy, so I never really had a way with the young ladies. I’m still learning though.

I wonder what this summer has in store for me. It should be interesting.

Perhaps I should have done this yesterday for a two for Tuesday kind of effect, but hindsight is 20/20.

Anyways, back in 2001..I met this girl and we hit it off pretty well. Around that same time Usher had a song off of his 8701 album.
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Perfect timing.

That song pretty much summed up our entire situation at the time. We both really had it bad. It’s funny just listening to a song and being able to relate to it line by line. I’m sure there were plenty of people who felt the same way as well.

Fast forward about three years later to 2004 and things went from having it bad to just being bad, and wouldn’t you know it..Usher Raymond IV had just the song for the occasion.
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I was pretty flame resistant for the longest, but eventually that broke down along with everything else around me, and I had to hurt for a bit. but I bounced back fairly well from it a few months later. I’ve since had to let it burn once more, but I’ll live.

(FYI, I’m purposely not going into details and such..but if you’d like to know a little more about what happened, feel free to take a gander at the AHH Interview that’s in the site header)

Perhaps this most recent song by Usher is a sign of things to come. I can see me making love in a club somewhere. Ok, maybe not. I doubt that anyone wants to see all that.

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I believe I was around 11 years old when The Chronic came out. I begged my mother for the money to buy the tape (yes, tape) when we were at the mall. I never really stayed with my mother though when we went to the mall. I usually would go to the arcade, the bookstore, and then the record store before meeting her wherever she would be at.

Anyways. I had the cash in hand, got up to the register and didn’t know a damn thing about sales tax..so I didn’t have enough to buy the tape. I was probably fifty cents or so short, so I went to go get the extra money from my mother who was down at Sears. It took forever to find her, but when I did catch up with her, she gave me one more dollar.

Now, when I left to go find her, I had left my money on the counter and told the guy that I’d be back. Of course when I got back to the store, they guy says that the person behind me said that it was their money and took off with it. I was pretty upset and also probably had a pretty perplexed look on my face as my mother had now made her way down to the store.

The manager decided that in an attempt to rectify the situation that they would give me ten single cassettes. The majority of them were crap that no one would ever buy. Like Tisha Campbell and Dr. Alban. I did get a Monie Love single out of it though, and also the first song by Akinyele. I was lucky enough for my mother to spend the cash to actually get the tape for me.

I wonder what those bastards spent my money on.

I figured that a good way for me to get back into writing is to do a short Mood Music series. I plan to have a song for each day this week(Monday through Friday anyways) and reflect on a moment in the past and think about what the song makes me think about.

First up:

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Sister Nancy–”Bam Bam”

The picture above was taken sometime during my freshman year of undergrad. I look all sexy and skinny. Ok, maybe not all that, but still. Back then, I wasn’t really as outgoing as I can be at times nowadays. I didn’t really do too much dancing or anything. Not that I do now..but I did even less back then. However, if I had a good amount of liquor in me and I found an opening..I would be all over the closest female that looked like she may be interested in having my hands all over her waist, hips, ass, and thighs in a sultry manner while she danced with her back to me as this song played. I loved to grind from behind.

Nowadays when I go out and they play this song, it doesn’t have the same effect anymore. I’m still the same horny bastard that enjoys that feel of a warm body next to mine..perhaps I’m just not as desperate anymore (yeah right) and a bit more mature.

Or maybe I just need to drink more.

I get into these moods from time to time. I’ll feel lonely, discouraged, unappreciated, upset angry, and essentially any other adjective that can be used to describe that feeling of “blah”

I seem to escape them, by either sleeping, eating, playing around on the internet or talking to a few folks on the phone (about other things). I usually just keep my hangups to myself and deal with them in one of the aforementioned ways. However, I’m starting to notice that the intensity of those moods and feelings is growing. I’m even becoming more lethargic in my day to day activities. Almost as if I’ve adopted some sort of “fuck it” attitude.

Not good.

I think most of it stems from my personal belief that I’ve grossly underachieved in my life so far. I feel like know I could be doing so much more with myself than what I’m doing, but for some reason, it hasn’t quite worked out like that yet. I’m well aware that I’m not the only one who feels this way and I also know that people endure things that are far worse so I’m not attempting to organize a pity party.

Someone once told me that I’m fully capable of changing things if I wanted to do so and that somewhere inside of me I must be afraid to do so for whatever reason. They may have been right. I don’t know for certain.

I’d often listen to this song by Devin The Dude called “Anythang”. It really helped to put things in perspective for me and let me know that my issues aren’t shit compared to others:

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“You ain’t the only one who got problems
You ain’t the only one who knows pain
Get up off your ass and just solve them
You still got a chance to try to change – try the shit again…”

“Really ain’t no need for self pity
Cryin when there’s no one else around
Life I know sometimes can get shitty
Even shittier is sleepin on the ground – no need to complain..”

Another thing that used to make me feel better was neck and shoulder rubs. I think it was the warmth and both the figurative and literal feeling of having someone behind me that helped to bolster my mood and allow me to think that I could accomplish anything that I wanted to. I haven’t had one of those in a long while. Yeah, that’s what I need.

Maybe someday

So I like taking pictures and all…I have these two personal photo projects that I’m working on over at Flickr where I have to take at least one picture per day. They call them 365 Days (or in my case 366). One project is self portraits and with the other one I can shoot whatever I want. Anyways, when I first started, would try to take songs that I like and try to match them up with a picture that told the story of the song. This O’jays tune was one of my favorites, but I don’t think too many people got the correlation betwixt the two. And of course it’s been sampled a few times.

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“What Am I Waiting For”

Oh baby, yeah, oh baby yeah

What am I waiting for
Well, she ain’t comin back no more
What am I waiting for
I know, she ain’t comin back no more

Well, well, well well

I’m about to lose my mind
I been waiting such a long long time
As I stare out the window with the tears on my face
Will there ever be a lover to take my woman’s place

What am I waiting for (waiting, waiting)
She ain’t comin back no more (I’ll be waiting)
What am I waiting for
She ain’t comin back no more (no no, no no, no no no)

Sitting in this house alone
Reading the note that says you’re leaving home
Well well, the only thing you left me was the dog and the cat
When I looked in the bedroom I knew she wasn’t coming back

What am I waiting for (waiting, waiting… and I know)
She ain’t comin back no more (somehow, I don’t believe)
What am I waiting for (baby baby no)
She ain’t comin back no more (And I cry, late at night, I cry)

On another note, I’m not sure how many more children Eddie has, but I’d be getting close to them. I couldn’t fathom having to mourn the loss of a child, let alone two.

My title comes from the name of a music store that I went to when I was back home.

Anyways, at the risk of sounding too recycled, I’ll be brief. I really enjoy listening to music. We all have our own likes, dislikes, guilty pleasures and so forth. More than likely we all have those songs that transport us to a place in the past…a childhood memory of sorts, or perhaps a certain milestone in our lives.

At other times, music can remind us of a loved one that is no longer with us. It can be that motivation during a workout, a tool to set the mood for the evening, or just a companion to help get us through the work day. Lastly, I think that music can sometimes help put into words the feelings that we can’t seem to grasp on our own or have the courage to make public. And with that said…

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