Reflections on Rap
This may surprise you, but I didn’t fit in the dominant culture as a young teenager. At school dances – aka, social self-flagellation in the cafeteria to bad music – I didn’t know how to dance to the popular songs. I knew how to rock out. Popular music in the mid-90’s was terrible, just to fill you in. The alternative music scene that had seemed so revolutionary in the earlier part of the decade swelled to a crescendo of icky, corporately manufactured rock, including Hanson. Yep, Hanson. Any other argument you have in favor of mid-90’s music is invalid. But in my neck of the woods, hip-hop held supreme over…
“Get Boys to Like You and Be Popular!”
Everyone read them. The magazines, I mean. All the girls at school had them. If I was lucky, a friend would let me borrow hers during lunch or maybe, if she was done reading it, give it to me. I’d cut out pictures of Jared Leto and tape them to my wall. I’d pore over every word, from the editor’s letter to the “What’s Your Guy-Snagging Style?” quiz. Thankfully, I always fell into the middle range, neither too forward nor too shy – but only because I cheated. This is how I got my first copy, in fact. From a friend, I mean. It had already been cut up in a…
