Pause, record.

I promise to answer your questions from last week's post, but I need to decompress after an intense weekend of work and travel. In the meantime, I was compelled to write about a fantastic documentary I watched last night called,
"Beats, Rhymes & Life: The Travels of A Tribe Called Quest." 

{Flashback time!} It's funny to think that a bunch of (mostly) white people in Alaska (about as far away from the scene as possible) could be so into it hip-hop, but it was a huge part of my high school culture. Rhymes and beats filled the soundtrack of our lives; including first kisses, school dances, hanging with friends, and house parties. And as hard as it may be to imagine, I spent many years making my own pause tapes, attempting to mix beats with funky loops.

Ours was the second wave of hip-hop with favorites like: De La Soul, A Tribe Called Quest, Beastie Boys, Leaders of the New School, Black Sheep, 3rd Bass, MC Lyte, Cypress Hill, Wu-Tang Clan, The Beatnuts, Digital Underground, KMD, Souls of Mischief, Everlast, Nice + Smooth, Schooly D, Erik B. & Rakim, Slick Rick, The Jungle Brothers, Run DMC, LL Cool J and Public Enemy.

I found this film to be so inspiring and highly recommend it to anyone that was a fan of the "Golden Age" of hip-hop. Watching A Tribe Called Quest's story unfold gave me butterflies as it brought me back in time. To this day, I am still enamored with sampling and the true art form of collaging old, forgotten tracks with clever rhyming. Frankly, I miss that era. But... I also feel pretty lucky to have lived through such a creative and unique period of musical evolution.