I usually write my posts while listening to a mix from 8tracks, and yesterday as I started writing I found this, Music is Simply Better When You Add Biggie. The fact that someone thought to marry the dulcet tones of Andrea Bocelli and Frank Sinatra with some Biggie Smalls makes me think that everything is going to be alllriiiight.
The Notorious B.I.G. always reminds me of high school, how every so often four or five of us would be rolling around in some dude’s jeep, the whitest white kids you could ever hope to find, with our MEC jackets and Adidas gazelles, yelling along to gangsta rap songs.
Biggie Biggie Biggie, can’t you see, sometimes your words just hypnotize me…
One of my best guy friends, obsessed with Tupac, once gave me a book of his poetry and we pored over the pages, amazed by the words even as I inwardly cringed at how he substituted 2 for to, u for you.
When he talked about Tupac (or Pac, as he called him) being shot he was heartbroken, it was like he was speaking of a lost buddy, a brother. I wonder what it was he was identifying with, because on the surface at least you couldn’t not find two more disparate worlds, existences, ideologies.
I haven’t thought about those nights, those friends for a long time. When this mix came on yesterday I had this sudden, vivid flashback of wind on my face, inhaling overdoses of sharp, musky cologne, being hyper-aware of the guy’s knee beside me, mouthing the lyrics alongside everyone else.
And as I was remembering this all I could think of is what the SHIT? Did this really happen? How were we able to pull this off with a straight face? For serious?
I think about everyone who saw us rolling around in my rich friends cars that their daddies bought, bass blasting from souped up stereos and I can’t stop laughing.
And I’m never allowed to make fun of teenagers again.