The Origins of My Obsession With Music

Anyone who knows me personally knows I love… no am obsessed with music. I often find myself passionately describing the clever wordplay employed by a newly discovered artist to a friend, who I know will never seek out the song I’m referring to. And yet I am still happy to share in the hopes that I’ll spark a similar fire in them.

When someone I know can’t think of the name of a song I am suddenly treated as a sort of music search engine, that can spit out possible results with only the barest description of the lyrics and feel of the track. (I’d say 8 out of 10 times I can.) My knowledge of different genres expands constantly. I do not claim to be the most knowledgeable when it comes to music, far from it. However, there are few things I can think of that I indulge in or love more.

I did not always feel this ever-present hunger driving me to consume more and more music, or at least I can say I wasn’t always aware of it. I remember being very young listening to Harry Chapin’s- Cat’s in the Cradle with my mother, and pondering my relationship with my own absent father.

Sade’s- No Ordinary Love instilled in me a connection with the ideas of desire and sensuality, that I wouldn’t take command of until I was much older.

Bob’s Marley’s- Buffalo Soldier evoked a trance-like reverence in my older family members, though I could only subconsciously be aware of the social commentary of the song and its implications for my heritage as the child of Caribbean immigrants in America. And naturally, when you mention Jamaican music many people will immediately think of Marley, but it was songs like Tanto Metro and Devonte’s- Everyone Falls in Love Sometimes that invoked a sense of pride and joy for the culture I was born into.

Being the child of Caribbean immigrants also meant that nothing mattered more to our family than our education. We were constantly pushed not only to get good grades but to read on our own time as well. At a young age, I developed an interest in poetry and started writing my own to cope with emotions I couldn’t express verbally. Even then I did not process words, art, or even music on anything beyond a surface level. I was ignorant of their cultural and emotional weight. Until one casual afternoon, I spent listening to music with my brother.

It was around the summer of my 7th or 8th grade. My mother had just bought me a rather expensive laptop to use for school, which I mostly used for video games. This laptop also happened to come equipped with an early version of the pandora app. Once I discovered it I asked my brother for recommendations on artists to listen to. My brother, being a music encyclopedia himself, decided to introduce me to Eric B and Rakim and showed me songs like I Ain’t No Joke and Don’t Sweat the Technique. It seemed like every 30 seconds he would stop the songs and yell:

“Yo! Did you hear what he said!?”.

At first, I didn’t. I couldn’t quite understand the words, and so my brother would break the lyrics down. Suddenly, I would have an epiphany that eclipsed the grand awakening I had just 30 seconds ago. It was as if Rakim had placed some spell on me and the more I was able to decipher his lyrics on my own, the more enraptured I became. I was at the mercy of the jazzy beat, his masterfully crafted lyrics, his cool yet commanding flow.

Next up in my indoctrination was Nas’- Illmatic, arguably the greatest hip hop album ever made. I had never heard anything like it before. Inconceivable metaphors, expertly utilized samples, and Nas’ unapproachable flow flooded my mind. Tales of a high-octane street lifestyle were brought to life before my eyes. It was that day that the love of hip hop/rap invaded my soul and with it a reverence for music in general.

For the next month, I listened to Illmatic constantly. The last song on the album, It Ain’t Hard to Tell, became the alarm I woke up to each morning. I suddenly needed to be surrounded by music, to discover more, and to comprehend it the way my brother did. To this day I’m not satisfied and am on a constant quest for more. The only thing that helps sate my appetite for a time is sharing this passion with others, like how it was shared with me.

“Yo! Did you hear what they said!?”