“Thanxs Ma”

I’m from uptown. 

The Bronx to be exact. Fordham to be precise. While they try to gentrify we still ain’t nothing nice. The birthplace of Hip Hop and the Culture at large, till this day of you step incorrect you risk them boys pulling ya card. All the while these truths remain, there’s always been an allure to Brooklyn I can’t quite explain. 

Maybe it’s the magical essence instilled from the eye of Spike Lee films, or the shimmer of hope Shirley Chisholm spread in love, like they say - The Brooklyn way. Most notably for me it’s the emcee from Marcy himself, Sean ‘Jay-Z’ Carter - or affectionately known as Hov. 

I like things that come in 3’s. Hov’s third album was my first acquisition of his work - I was in 3rd grade. Yes, upon its release I owned Jay-Z’s ‘Volume 2. Hard knock Life’ (as always, shout out my Dad). Though, I was familiar with his sophomore release ‘In my Lifetime, Vol. 1’ from catchy singles like “Always Be My Sunshine” featuring Foxy Brown and Babyface and “Who You Wit” these days the latter and “Imaginary Players” is amongst my favorites. 

I mentioned in a previous write up that I have the natural yet dramatic habit of gasping out of excitement. It was while in Brooklyn visiting a friend that I perused his bookshelf and pulled out this signed copy of Hov’s ‘In my Lifetime, Vol. 2’ signed and dedicated to his sister back in 97’. I gasped, and in a panic he ran down the hall to find me jumping up and down in excitement in his living room holding the CD (lol). I’m fortunate to own my own piece of signed Hov ephemera but this right here is special. I instantly imagined the buzz and excitement swarming around this release as it was his sophomore offering following the now classic “Reasonable Doubt”. To catch Jay in what may have been a causal setting in Brooklyn is now virtually impossible as he’s gone on the achieve milestones of gargantuan proportions. This story is not complete, as I hope to get the full story from Tanya on this experience. Stay tuned…