Thursday, September 23

I See So Much Funky Shit Aboard The Train

Two years ago, in a spurt of experiencing the life of urban youth via public transportation and ipod; i formed a strong love for Jungle Brothers.
If you've ever been forced to use public transportation, you understand the importance of an ipod. The stiff silence and awkward staring-fixation with random things such a screws or the fuzzy weather-proofing on the train/bus doors in order to avoid eye-contact is alone, enough to drive anyone insane in absence of musical comfort. The only pauses happen when the loud, ignorant asshole steps aboard because, lets not lie to ourselves, they're pretty good for cheap entertainment.
My love for hip-hop and it's associated genres came in to my life shortly before my move to Dallas and exploded in my chest when my truck decided to take a trip to automobile hell and leave me at the mercy of DART (Dallas Area Rapid Transit).
I cannot explain the feeling of naturalness in listening to ATCQ, Jungle Brothers, Fugees, Mos Def, etc... on the train. You'd swear they were made for each other like heroin and Nick Cave.
There's one song in particular that really brought it home for me though and that was "Brain" by Jungle Brothers. The first time i ever heard the song was sitting on the floor of my apartment in Fort Worth before moving to Dallas. I had asked my brother a few days before, "What's good hip hop? I'd really like to learn more about it." To which he gave me a laundry list of artist which i chose Jungle Brothers from due to memories of looking through his CD collection when we still lived at home and seeing 3 pgs. worth of sleeves dedicated to them at 4 slots per page.
The first song i heard was, "Brain" which was as random as pushing buttons on a jukebox to songs you've never even seen. The entire room exploded in colors and "i've got so much funky shit inside my brain/i couldn't explain/couldn't explain/you wouldn't understand/i couldn't explain" as it seemed to fit perfectly in to the awkward square of my life at that time.
It still happens, when i feel overwhelmed by thoughts and lost in the shit of our soceity that we all find ourselves in, in deep thought.
All apologies as i realized yesterday that none of the links work to the mp3 downloads (not that anyone is actually reading this), so until i find an alternative, i'll just post videos.
Enjoy :)

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