ten most impactful songs in my life

Good evening both my substacks and blogger (depending where you're reading this) community.  I know it's been a little over a week since my last post and I apologize.  I've actually been working on this and a few other long form articles on my breaks at work and this was the first one I finished.  As you can tell I primarily do hip-hop related content and while I'm anonymous on the Internet if you see me in person at first glance you'd be like he's capping calling himself a hip-hop aficionado.  So how did a corny white boy on the autistic spectrum who grew up in one of the racist counties in NJ fall in love with hip-hop at a early age, just that sadly being bullied for being on the autistic spectrum in a racist county and the only ones who understand you were the black kids getting bullied over race.  Well that ended up exposing me to my first taste into hip-hop even though I'd be about 6 years later untill I was completely enameled in the culture.  This article was originally just going t be about my personal journey throughout the years with hip-hop in general, but I decided to switch it up bit.  Still keeping it about how I fell in love with hip-hop but breaking it down though a top ten list.  Ya top ten list are cliche as fuck but this is a unique one as i dive into my personal story how hip-hop shaped my life.  So here's the TOP TEN most important hip-hop songs to me on a personal level from what made me fall in love with hip-hop, to my first dive into the underground scene to songs that helped me though shit. This list is in chronological order from when the song affected me in life.  So let's start in the beginning 

1.Wu tang clan triumph 

.You see my journey starts in the 3rd grade so around 94-95 as I mentioned I was the quite kid who got picked on alot while also having a passion for basketball even though I couldn't shoot for shit lmfao.  I was always the best defender on the court though hence how I started getting respect from the kids bullied over race.  Me and the 2 black kids on my team which were the only 2 in the school use to go to the courts and practice after school with the one kid always bringing his boombox.  36 Chambers album from wu tang on repeat always and when I heard inspektah decks opening verse on triumph I fell in love.  On top of being the quit kid I was always the teachers pet because I i not only was a straight a student I use to excel in there daily word puzzles the teacher use to give us.  She'd give us a word and we had to see how many words we could make from it let's just say I had a advanced vocab at the age and I would find stuff the teacher couldn't think of lol.  Anyway after hearing the complexity in decks verse I was enamored but sadly that was my only true taste of the genre till around 8th grade.  I grew up in a pretty sheltered house hold so I wasn't hearing much music in general outside of what was on the radio and while my friends still listened to hip-hop we rarely chilled after school after basketball season and even then nothing else they played really cought my attention.

2.lord Tariq and Peter gunz dejavu

  What really got me into the doors as far as me constantly listening to rap happened around the 8th grade watching trl on MTV.  At the time I was kinda your cliche teeny bopper except I was a boy lmfao got really into the pop craze of the late 90s you know the NSYNC, Britney spears, Christina agularia type shit but one day Carson daily debuted a new track that instantly became my favorite song of my childhood lord Tariq and Peter gunz de ja vu.  The opening horne sample (that is now iconic for being the same horn sample that starts off Shakira's hips don't lie) grabbed my attention from the jump on top of the catchy uptown baby hook I couldn't get enough.  You can classify them as a one hit wonder bu(1t this song has a significant meaning to me since its the song that got me listening to hip-hop on the reg. Shit even ten years after I heard it there album make it reign was the first vinyl I ever purchased.

3.atmosphere trying to find a balance 

This was the song that got me looking into a different side of hip-hop the underground scene.  What's funny though that even though this is a underground rap song I came across this in a extremely mainstream outlet, a video game.  Not only was it a video game it's probably a top 5 selling PlayStation game of all time toney hawks pro skater 2.   I was a advid skateboarder, me and my friends even shot my skate demos and sent them to sponsors but I sucked lol so I was addicted to tony hawk because I could do tricks I could only imagine to do in real life.  This song cought my attention from the spoken word intro from slug to the more punk sounding instrumentals and slug had a way with words and the song was relatable.  Really thinking about it atmosphere might be my favorite hip-hop group of all time on how relatable they are and how personal slug (gets in his songs while incorporating metaphors throughout that keep your ears engaged.  I mean shit my youngest daughter is actually named after the Lucy Ford character talked about in atmosphere songs. (Even though I tricked her mother into thinking I wanted her named after Lucy from the peanuts because her dad works for MetLife that once had snoopy as it's mascot.

4.the notorious big juicy

I came across this song years after it's release.  I was your typical white boy hip-hop head,  I was a Eminem stan lmfao.  While now I still appreciate him as easily a top 5 lyricist of all time his content really ain't for me anymore.  That being said I heard juicy for the first time on the soundtrack for Eminem's acting debut 8 mile.  A rag to riches song where biggie raps from coming nothing to something and while this song doesn't have as much importance to me personally it's my favorite rap track of all time and the only song this 39 yo with short term memory issues knows word for word so for that reason I couldn't keep it off the list.

5.the roots break it off

As most unemployed teenagers without a computer to infect with linewire viruses lmfao did back in the early 2000s before steaming, and parents who wouldn't buy something with a explicit consent sticker on it I stole.  Not that I'm proud of it but when I heard break it off for the first time I needed more of the roots soulful style of hip-hop so the first cd I ever stole was phenology by the roots.  No that ain't the reason it's on the list but it's the song that turned me into a backpacker hip-hop head at the peak of the backpack rap movement. From Musiqsoul child's s(oul full hook to questloves guitar being the focal point to the instrumentals it was like nothing I heard on mainstream TV at the time (came across it on 106 and park.). Top it off with black thoughts impeccable rhymes and you have something special.  To this day this song's in my personal top ten favorite rap songs ever and so is the album it's on.

6.beanie signal in the air

I'm sure most people have this happen to them.  You here a song for the first time that perfectly fits the situation your in at the time.  I have a few of them that will be mentioned in this list but the first one I can remember is feel it in the air by beanie seigel.  When that song came out I was in juvi paying consequences for my actions in highschool.  That opening line "sitting in a four corner room with cameras trying not to go bananas" (which is actually lifted from a ghetto boys song) was relatable as fuck at the time since I was myself behind bars.  The actual meaning of the song as well relates heavy to life after I got out your closet friends end up being the people who break your trust the hardest, the code of loyalty shattered.  This song is probably the song I relate to and go back to the most to help me go though hard times.

7.dmx Damien 

This is the first and only song on this list I heard before it affected me.  I was 21 homeless sitting in the hospital room waiting for my first child to be born.   I was stressing the fuck out,  his mom was a drug addict who lost her rights before the kid was even born and here I am homeless with a kid on the way.  At the time ends music helped me though a lot of struggles.  It's funny Damien was litterly the only song I use to skip listening to its dark and hell is hot because I didn't like xs voice change at the time fuckin the rhythm of the album up for me.   For whatever reason I didn't skip it and noticed the reason for the vocal change.  It was a concept song about dmxs struggles with his fate talking to the Devil on his shoulder.  And while I've never been a religious person I could relate fully to a conversation with your inner demons since at that moment so was I.  I wasn't ready to be a father I was honestly close to bailing and while it took me a little bit longer to be a good father I was always around when my parents were raising him for the first 2 years till I got on my feet.   It was do to this song hence my first childs name is Damien because if it wasn't for hearing DMX overcome the devil in this track I wouldn't have done the same and 18 years later that kid wouldn't be my best friend in the world.

8.  Chino xl skin

The second half of this list pretty much falls into the category of the last 2 entries and probably the rest of this list.  Where 1 through 5 were songs that introduced me to rap music and it's various sub genres 5 on as you can tell impacted my life in personal ways.  Funny thing about this song is at first it blew my mind for it's shuttle island esque twist to end a brilliant display of story telling then over the years it helped me understand my mental state more clearly.  So for those not familiar with the song let me break it down for y/ou so you can truly understand how this song effected my Life.  When your done reading this I highly suggest checking it out since In my opinion it's a masterclass in storytelling in rap music. In my opinion it's a/ masterpiece and easily a top 5 storytelling rap record.  It's starts off with chino rapping to his therapist throughout the track him and.......... Playing the therapist dive into the phyche of a man who snapped after the death of his wife and kids.  Exactly like shutter Island it's revealed at the end by his therapist that he's in prison for murdering his wife and kids and that the therapist isn't real but another personality within chino.  Before this reveal the song lays out his childhood and there's hints throughout that section that hits at him escaping into his mind.  Chino before his death talked openly about having dissociated identity disorder and how he crafted false realitys to deal with real life trauma he dealt with growing up.  This is extremely relatable to me and while I can't say I have d.i.d and mental health experts are still on the fence if it's actually a classifiable mental illness this concept hits way to close to reality for me.  As I stated in the intro to this article í have what use to be called asbergers which for some reason is called autism 1 now.  I always had friends so it wasn't loneliness that started this it was more my creative mind flooding with ideas I should of wrote down that kinda turned into excapism realities 20ish years later when for 2 years I pretty much escaped into my false reality to mask a lot of life's bullshit I was dealing with at the time.  Ironic as it sounds since im discussing this now it's only been about 3 weeks since I stopped doing this.  So skin by chino xl has had the longest continuous impact in my life.

9.final outlaw the beautiful songs

There's a good chance this song fits into the category of lost media to a degree and I might quit honestly be the only person who remembers this song and that's including the artist maybe....lol. So I use to run a pretty successful underground hip-hop blog called East Coast underground Central (haven't posted in 7 years still averages a 1000 views a month with over 950000 total views).   One of the artists I discovered at the time was final outlaw who was a NYC based rapper.  I came across him on myspace and it wasn't until a few years of covering him did he drop the album this song is named from.  While lyrical impressive the song had a simple yet deep concept how music impacts the mental state both positively and negatively.  I was so enamored with this song at the time that I looked at every track on the album with a cinematic lense.  What if I lived the life of the story's told on every track of the album.  I wrote my first novel (never finished still have the 90 page draft saved to Evernote.).   While was a good song with how flooded music is nowadays it wasn't a stand out but because I wrote my first book draft do to this song.

10.don trip letter to my son 

This song pretty much saved my life.  After me and my daughter's mom broke up it was about 4 months till I saw my daughter again.  Mind you I pretty much raised her at this point 5 years on my own despite being with her mother.  She was always at work plus was cheating on my for 3 years and was always lying about overtime.  So I raised her on my own and until the courts granted 50/50 I was going through hell not seeing her.  This is another one of those songs I heard for the first time at the perfect time in my life.  The song is littlerly about the same shit I was going though.  Don trip writing a song to his kid about how he wanted to see his son and explaining to his son that his mother was keeping him away.  A reality alot of men can sadly relate to and I'm sure helped more than just me cope though the same struggle.

kneecap: the extacy popping Irish hip-hop trio starting who are starting a revolution

I'm a American and I'm not afraid to say this ....

OUR political climate is shit!  Not only is our president a cult leading racist pedophile, it seems both of the political parties in the US are more worried about assisting Israel in a GENOCIDE then the well being citizens in the country there supposed to help run.  When I was growing up you could always find music that spoke about the political angst people feel especially in hip-hop.  Artist like public enemy, rage against the machine and immortal technique to name a few kept music fans informed of the real political climate and issues within the country since mainstream media has been compromised by the government.  In the past decade, especially since Trump's first term it felt destined that unapologetic political criticism would make a comeback in the music industry yet for the most part it's been radio silence.  Yes artist like killer Mike have been on the campaign trail for Bernie Sanders and speaking up about the dozens of issues with America but outside of a few bars sprinkled thougout his work i wouldn't call him a political rapper.  Later last year though my yearning for true politically driven music had been cured in the most unexpected ways by the most unassuming group or sooo I thought.  I have always dabbled in freelance work and I was doing a article on the BAFTAS, which is the British film industry's equivalent to the Oscars and the most nominated film was kneecap.  Kneecap is a autobiographical film about a son of a prominent ira leader, his best friend and a school teacher who was pushing the use of Irelands native language in a country because of British invanders speaks primarily English who form a rap group who rap in both English and gaelic to fight the system.  After watching the film it was love at first sight a group fighting corruption within politics though music.  Consisting of Mo Chara, Móglaí Bap and DJ Próvaí kneecap is a Ireland based electronic rap group who's idgaf if I piss off authority approach especially in there live performances is reminiscent of acts like NWA in that sense with mo Chara getting hit with terrorist charges for draping himself in a hezbulla flag and shouting support for Hamas.  While not a American based band there extremely blunt pro Palestine rhetoric shines light on one of America's greatest flaws being a puppet state for Israel and while there music on the surface doesn't always seemed politically charged there use of the gaelic language in itself is a political stance to the British government for suppressing there identity and culture.  On top of that there constant support for Palestines freedom has opened up the eyes of plenty of people to the atrocities committed by Israel and funded solely by the US government.  No other band in  recent memory have been so controversial yet so inspiring to the majority of people who have come across them including myself.  Their set at this year's Coachella where they said "Israel commiting a genocide funded by the u.s fuck Israel free that got the British counter terrorism unit looking into them brings me back to the days of NWA performing fuck the police at a concert after being told they would be arrested if they did. The revolution will be televized and it's being mc'd by 3 extacy popping ira affiliated weed smoking degenerates and I'm here for it

roc Marciano and dj premier the coldest profession (review)

As hip-hop heads wait patiently over a decade later for the heavily rumored premier and nas album at least they got a pleasant surprise last week with the coldest profession. The surprise drop by roc Marciano fully produced by dj premier sees premiers production taking a nostalgic turn with beats heavily reminiscent of his earlier work apart of gangstar with the late guru, laying the soundscape for rocs lowfi vivid storytelling. At only 8 songs this EP doesn't overdo its welcom e and the few criticisms I have with especially the beginning of the album become irrelevant because it's short length has you like a junkie feinding for more. On a production level this is the best we have seen from premier since his master class work on group homes livin proof in 95. Yes I know that's a bold statement to make since the certified classic moment of truth as part of gangstar dropped in 98 but it could be the nostalgic vibes talking but in my honest opinion premiers production on the coldest profession is even better. At first I was worried rocs quite yet chilling vocal delivery wouldn't fit well with the smooth polished instrumentals premier laces here and while it did slightly bother me on the opening track Armani section rocs cinematic and complex rhyme schemes end up entrancing you. The second half of this EP is where I found myself less bothered by the more hushed roc over polished production with my personal favorite track on the album glory hole. Premier layers blaring horns over a sped up click track that perfectly complements rocs signature hush flow internal rhyme schemes and from there on it just clicks for me. After the album was done I wanted more and listened again immediately and my original nitpick with the first half vanished. As of now it's my album of the year and I'm pretty confident it will still be in consideration at the end of the year 

Rating 

9 out of ten

let me reintroduce myself

Just a little about me and my history to get any new subscribers caught up and familiar with me both as a writer and a person. I started taking writing seriously from a hobby to a side hustle about 15 years ago I started off as a freelancer with little success but did have one published article with the now defunct complex magazine. I was a college dropout who went for journalism and media arts after finding out I was having my first child so I never thought the journalism career path would be sustainable. I use to also dabble in music production, ghost writing and used to release rap music even though the quality was subpar lmfao it was my hobby making beats that finally gave me a in back into my journalism hobby launching the blog eastcoastunderground central on blogger after falling in love with the underground hip-hop scene in the tri state area. I used to always check out the independent rap charts on myspace since my production company Ill behavior production's always ranked in the top 5 unsigned artist in new Jersey and I always had a knack for networking always looking for new artists to produce for. I started as a hobby reviewing my favorite tracks and showcasing my favorite artist on blogger promoting myself though social media and starting gaining 2 very distinct following one I sadly didn't know about during the blogs peak. One was my local hip-hop scene. I'm from a small city in NJ called Phillipsburg which boarders Easton PA and is part of the greater Lehigh valley demographic area. r the Lehigh valley hip-hop scene started embracing me to the point my blog ended up becoming 80 percent a Lehigh valley hip-hop blog and I became a local celebrity of sorts. I was nominated for over 15 Lehigh valley music awards in 3 year's for music journalist, website, music supporter multiple times and once for local hip-hop album of the year for a mixtape I hosted featuring the best music I reviewed. The other following which I wish I knew about sooner was my blog had a huge European following failing to realize at the time Europe is the home to the biggest most loyal underground hip-hop fans. I know this intro is all over the place my thoughts scattered because of personal reasons which are also responsible for me relaunching my blog but everything connected lol. Any I didn't discover how big my blog had gotten due to overseas viewership until I had a expose on a local artist go viral locally and checked my blog stats for the first time only then realizing I was averaging around 10k a week racking over a million views throughout the blogs life that still gets a average of 1000 hits a month despite not posting in over five years. All thanks to the European hip-hop fans I truly had success as a writer but ended up dropping the blog after a few disputes with artists I covered that leaked into my personal life realizing as a fan of music it hurts your perception of good music knowing too much about certain musicians on a personal level so I backed away. So this relaunch I'm going back to my original vision of covering the tri state hip-hop scene and various other independent movements and hip-hop opinion pieces instead of taking a hands on approach planting myself as part of one particular scene. This substacks will be more than that as I will also be using it to launch and promote my debut novel free Janet fullilling a goal of mine or publishing a novel even if it's though digital outlets and posting unfinished and dropped projects I've saved over the years so I can get people familiar with my writing style and build anticipation for my novels drop so I'm hoping to regain a support and network on this soft relaunch while also networking and collabing with various substack and reddit communities.l