Like many African American girls, my music base or the music that I've been listening to since birth... or probably even before that, like when I was baking in the oven, is Gospel music, R&B , and you guessed hip hop. Those genres are my base, which means I can get down to and with almost any of it, and I can recognize the differences between them all and whatever and what not.
The music that I was introduced after that was like kiddie elementary school songs, classical music, and Disney.
The weird thing about the elementary songs and chants, is that I know there were a lot of them, but I only remember the Spanish ones.
"NO LIBROS! NO LAPIZ! NO PAPEL! NADA!"
"Can you name animals? Can you say their names? Can you name the animals, in this animal in this animal naming game?"
"BATE! BATE! CHOCOLATE!" (insert accent marks at your own discretion)
Stuff like that. but nothing for math or reading. Anyway So from Spanglish chants and Beethoven during naptime or a test, I began to watch Disney, I can't really remember how it happened or how I started watching Disney, because before that Cartoon Network was my main. I think PowerPuff Girls got cancelled or something, so ditched CN. But here's the thing about "Disney music", it's literally watered down popular music. So that's what I was listening to from like 3rd to 5th-6th Grade.
I had my cheetah girls and Raven being all sassy and watered down R&B for me. And then I had High School Musical being all watered down Pop Music for me. Then I had Miley Cyrus being all watered down country, then the Jonas Brothers came and Disney went full fledged watered down rock. Like Miley Cyrus started rocking and then new girls Selena and Demi came in and started rocking.
It was just a big watered down musical party on the Disney Channel from 2005-2008 (?), but it was great. I loved it. While that was going on I was listening to pop music every morning on VH1 or MTV depending on which channel had the music video I liked the best. And I also listened to like the TINIEST bit of Pink Floyd in the 6th grade.
My brother did this thing like ALLLL of the time were he would blast trap music (as in rap, not dubstep house, dance music) at the highest volume our tv could reach, and I hated for the longest time. I would go turn down then tv, and then he would turn it right back up, then yell at me for turning it down. Looking back it's pretty funny. But towards the end of my first year of middle school,(for reasons you'd have to ask me personally about) I began to love it. Gucci Mane blasting from the tv was the most calming thing coming from a dramatic day at the Middle school. Then 7th grade happened and I got into dance, and because of dance my music taste was broadened. I had began to develop my own opinion of music as well. Music let me dance, so I loved it.
That was all there was to it, until..
I refound Lauryn Hill, and discovered Regina Spektor.
Lauyn Hill turned me into a Rastafarian for a short moment of my life. I was looking for who I was at that age, and some documents to my dad's family in Nigeria that I had were lost, so I gave up on that and went full blown Rasta. Couldn't get dreads though, my hair was always pressed and permed during this era. Lauryn Hill made me feel something heavy and spiritual that I didn't even feel with gospel music. I knew she had sounded familiar, apparently my mom had her album when I was younger. So I thought it was fate, and I began to listen to reggae a lot because her husband was (is?) Rohan Marley, and it just fit for a while. Well thanks to Lauryn I was drawn to more music so I would go to the public Library and check out CDs. And I picked up these two CDs, one was of a lady with lights all around her (I still cant remember who that was) and the other was a lady with dark hair drinking from a bottle. So I checked them both out. I had a feeling that the lady with the bottle's music was going to be amazing, so I put the other lady's cd in. It was nice, I liked some better than others, ya know, it was normal. Them I put the other CD in and I was blown away. It was AMAZING. Song after song after song, and all of them were great, unfortunately I was interrupted from listening to the whole album because my best friend at the time knocked on the door. I was in a trance before she knocked on the door, so when I saw who it was, immediately ran her upstairs, and I only said "Listen." And she stopped and listened for a while, and after a short second her response was...
Now Playing: Turn Your Lights Down Low - Bob Marley and The Wailers
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