365 project:"1,2,3,4, get your woman on the floor"

63.

album:hip hop party playlist
artist:various

i wasn't sure if i was going to do various artist albums or not, but i decided today that I'm cutting out a large portion of my record collection if i don't do these, so here goes.

you know that scene in the beginning of office space? the one where Michael Bolton is in his car listening to the gangster rap and he keeps having to turn the radio down every time he passes a black man because hes embarrassed? i felt a little bit like that today while driving around listening to this CD.

picture this: me, in my orange Pontiac. hair back in a headband and dyed black. black alkaline trio hoodie on and zipped up. car jar hanging from the rear view mirror. i have one hand on the steering wheel and the other is holding a water bottle.

i come up to a stop light and have my volume turned WAY up. O.P.P. by naughty by nature is pumping out through my car's stereo. a black man sitting on the stoop at the house on the corner just looks at me funny. and kept looking. and kept looking. he watched me the entire time i sat there as i sang along and was dancing in the car. i just smiled at him as i drove away.

I'm always amazed at how different my town seems to be. i mean, i feel like everyone thinks that their town is special for one reason or another, but when i say that race was never an issue growing up, i mean it was never an issue. i don't remember when i first learned that people out there actually took issue with the color of a person's skin, but it surely wasn't due to a situation in my life. I'm sure it was from TV or something. everyone in my school was just a person. we barely broke off into the stereotypes of geeks and jocks, much less black vs. white. i guess that's what happens when you live in such a small town, but that's how it was.

this CD brings me right back to middle school, when all of these songs were on the radio and we would listen to them in the car of whichever of our parents we begged to drive us to the mall or movies that night. i had honestly lately been so lost in the world of "indie" culture that id totally forgotten about these songs, but a commercial prompted the renewed love affair with young m.c.'s catchy little hit "bust a move" and even more recently, bel biv devoe appeared on jimmy fallon's show and busted out a little "poison" action, which i could NOT get out of my head for days.

other fantastic throwbacks to my childhood on this album include "summertime" by DJ jazzy Jeff and the fresh prince, "Tennessee" by arrested development, "regulate" by warren g and Nate dogg, and "wild thing" by tone loc. there are 17 tracks of ridiculous good times here and the only thing i could think about while listening to this CD (besides how silly i looked dancing to it) was how badly i wanted to throw a party so that we could all listen and reminisce about days gone by together.