Music has always been an important part of my life. From the time I was a little boy into my adolescence and through my teenage years, music was my companion whenever I could put my headset on and not get in trouble for listening to music. My good times were accompanied by music and just like my friends, music was there when I wasn't doing so well. In fact music does connect a time and a place for me in my life. Music I associate with my childhood: Mostly I was into hip hop as a kid. My parents were into various music, some standards like Frank Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald, and they were into some rock music from the sixties and seventies. But when I was nine years old I remember listening to a hip hop tune by 2 Pac called "Keep Your Head Up." The beat of course was what kids got into and learned to dance to. In 2 Pac's song he gave encouragement to a young boy my age: "The glow that the sun gets / Right around sunset / Helps me realize / This is just a journey / Drop your worries / You are gonna turn out fine / You gotta keep your head up / oh, And you can let your hair down, the."

A lot of my classmates and some of my friends didn't care that much about the lyrics, they just wanted to jam and dance and get lost in the beat. I loved the beat too, the rhythm of rap and hip hop, it was infectious, it was part of our youth culture; but I also tried to take an interest in what the song was saying to me. I had a good childhood and I liked 2 Pac. Later...

He went away from what rap had been doing with misogynistic lyrics that put women down and attacked women from a chauvinistic point-of-view. The violence that was linked to rap and to hip hop was confusing for a kid; we just wanted to dance, to have music that we related to -- but there is no doubt part of the rap and hip hop experience was related to the inner city and when you are talking about the inner city you're talking about gangs, drugs, violence and poverty.
Music I associate with my adolescence: When I was fourteen I got into alternative music and more hip hop. I remember very distinctly the hip hop tune by Jay-Z, "Hard Knock Life (Ghetto Anthem)." People were talking about that hip hop tune because it was different. I'm not saying it was my favorite but it was Jay-Z describing what happens when you live in the inner city, the ghetto. Jay-Z had the vision to bring a softer style into hip hop, instead of the racy, sometimes vulgar lyrics that fit well with so-called "gansta-rap," Jay-Z talked about sweetness in a sense. In fact "Hard Knock life" was amazing in that it used a nursery rhyme theme. "It's the hard knock life (uh-huh) for us / It's the hard knock life, for us!! / Steada treated, we get tricked / steada kisses, we get kicked / It's the hard knock life!!

I'm not sure if I liked hip hop more…