Introducing the Octopus
What a strange title for a new blog. The Hip Hop Octopus. What is this guy all about anyway?
At first, I hated rap music.
I grew up in the late 1980s in a small town in North East LA, called Highland Park. It was a community of Asian immigrants, African Americans, and Latinos, and my only experiences with hip hop was from the street. Sometimes, it seemed to leaking out of the concrete – car systems booming like King Kong was locked in the trunk, graffiti on chipped brick walls, and the wails of police sirens as they chased speeding Fords down the freeway. What fueled my music preferences at that time was chronic childhood insomnia - I scoured the radio for anything that would prevent me from depressingly wandering around in the dark. It was so bad at times that I began to get a sinking feeling when the sun went down because it meant that I would spend the night feeling alone.
Picture of a lonely car courtesy of agira929.
The perfect beast to combat this was incidentally... KOST 103.5. If you are in LA, you know that this is a radio station that specializes in contemporary adult love songs and "soft rock" at night - a sure recipe for disaster on the elementary school playground. At first, I only listened to Elton John and Céline Dion just because they were a soothing way to fall asleep, but I would be lying if I said I didn't begin to appreciate their music on some subconscious level.
Sleep was bliss. If Candle in the Wind can grant me that bliss, than I can dig it.
Part II to follow.