ME. CASSETTE AND THE 90s

Wole, my lil’ cuz hit me up on the chat today askin’ if he could get somethin’ from my room, well, former room (former, cause I’ve been away for more than two years now, so technically, the room ain’t mine no more but I still got some stuffs in there), I told ‘him to go ahead and help himself, son. I asked him if my CDs, novels and cassettes were safe and he said yeah. I let out a quiet sigh of relieve and told him to protect them wit his life if possible.

“Ah ha, uncle!” he typed

“It’s a question of world security, son” I replied, “The world would be in grave danger if those tapes should go missing. Parallax, The beast from the lost planet will invade the world and it’ll all be your fault”

He LOL’ed and wrote, “Uncle, you’ve been watchin’ a lot of Green Lantern lately, huh?

Even though I was jus kiddin’ about the world security and the alien bit, lil nigga knew I was dead serious about him keepin’ my music collections safe. And yeah, whenever we chatted, I always end convo the same way, “y’all better take care of my shit”

Huh uh, am protective of my 90s music stash like that! If you grew up in the late eighties and the early to mid nineties you’d get fussy over your shit too. Those who were there (in the 90s) know what I’m talkin’ about, alotta good music was made. I got shit ranging from rock (started liking those in the mid 90s), country, rap and R&B but, R&B definitely takes the cake.

See, I grew up in an era of cassettes, just between vinyl and CDs…cassette was king! Back in the day, everything was hard copy but today, things have gone soft and that sense of ownership you get from having your favorite joint on something is no longer there.

Admittedly, music are easier to come by today, just throw an artiste name or the name of a song into Google, iTunes, YouTube and the likes and everything you’re searching for will be gotten in the blink of an eye but that same ease that the internet provide has eroded the sense of achievement I used to get when I get my hands on new joint after sweating for it for weeks. If you were the first among your friends to lay your paws on a record, you automatically become king. Everybody would beat a path to your door with their Maxwell tapes or some cheap cassettes in hand, begging if you could borrow ‘em or at least make a copy for them!

I used to be the to-go man for the latest jams in those days (am still am, by the way), when my boys would hear some’ fresh on the radio, they would come askin’ if I’ve heard it and eight times outta ten, I would have. What my friends didn’t know back then was that I get 90% of my shit from the radio! Yeah, I’d spend hours sitting by pops AIWA stereo with my cassette in there ready to press that red record button. Getting’ song clean without interruption was always a mammoth task cause those inconsiderate On-Air personalities and DJs would usually throw in their tag-line or speak while a song was playing; they knew folks were sittin’ by their radio tryna record!

Getting collections made for a lil nigga like me back in the day was a labour of love and dedication, I’d steal some of my pops tapes, wipe it clean and jus fuckin’ record on it!

The larger chunk of those tapes weren’t just any collections; they were good 90s R&B shit. Am talking Boyz II Men, Silk, H-Town, Shai, Guy, R. Kelly and the Public Announcement, Immature, Blackstreet, Jodeci, All for One, Profyle, Intro, Portrait and the list goes on and on. If you look again at the names I mentioned, you’d notice that they are all groups, makes you wonder, what the fuck we don’t have good soul/R&B groups anymore, huh?

For me back then, Boyz II Men and Jodeci gods, but Intro was not too far behind. intro one of my best groups of the 90s, so I’mma play out with one of my favorites Intro joint. “Let Me Be The One” with the late Kenny Greene doin his thing on lead vocals

“Let me be
Let me be
Let me be the one you come running to
Whenever you need it”

I got that shit on cassette, dammit! Lol