My mother’s younger brother introduced me to rap music when I was about 7 years old. It was roughly 1983. He’d come around with cassette tapes filled with various songs from whoever the hell these people were, and almost immediately, I was in love. This was the most beautiful combination of sounds I’d ever heard, and that’s coming from a man who was born in the late 70s, raised in a house where Black soul music pumped continuously. Continually. So much so that my father swiftly traded in his affinity for 70s funk and disco music for a genuine love of rap in the early 1980s. His love of Hip Hop hit him at the same time as mine.

His Earth, Wind, and Fire, Chaka Khan, and Stevie Wonder albums were (sorta) replaced by Whodini, Run DMC, LL Cool J, and EPMD tapes. Some years later, we’d bump DJ QUIK…