I’ve known Tara a little while longer than most of you.

yet, since we started chatting

and comparing music notes,

I began trying to put my finger on what it was she had.

‘moxy’ made her sound outdated.

‘hip’ would give our present zeitgeist too much credit…

and then it hit me:

girl’s got soul.

-

I’ll come right out and say it: I’m white bred. I’m so white-bred that one of my favorite room mates ever (who happens to be black) affectionately refered to me as his “little cornapple”. I don’t actually know what a cornapple is, but it sounds country.

There’s just no denying that I am the result of a middle-class middle-American upbringing. I was a cheerleader. I played soccer on a team called the Panda Bears. And like most suburban teenagers, I was as self-absorbed as humanly possible.

Well, that all changed quick fast in a hurry in 1989. There were three men (actually, one a boy) responsible for that bubble burst:

Clay Masterson, Spike Lee, and Chuck D.

Clay was a neighborhood buddy. He and I established a trio one summer along with his best friend, Wesley.

Wesley and Clay had an interesting friendship. You see, Clay honestly couldn’t understand why he had been born white. He felt black inside. He felt completely alienated from his white family. No one seemed to take his feelings seriously, either; except Wesley. Wesley actually is black, something Clay was very jealous of. So I guess you could say that Wesley adopted Clay in a way, taking him under his wing and allowing him to express his hidden blackness. I didn’t really get it. Nobody did. It was just “their thing”.

Clay and Wesley unwittingly changed my life that fateful summer. Clay called me and asked if I wanted to go see a movie that afternoon. It was rated R, so we’d have to sneak in, but Wesley knew a guy who worked there, so he figured he could get us in.

That movie was Do the Right Thing. And that movie knocked my teeth out. It felt like Spike Lee put his hand on top of my head, looked me dead in the face and screamed, “OPEN YOUR EYES, GIRL!” It was unrelenting. I think we sat through the whole thing bug-eyed and slack jawed, barely breathing.

Then Chuck D entered the arena. “Fight the Power” felt like getting jacked in the stomach, full on. That voice may well have been the voice of God or Buddha or Mohammed for how it affected me.

We stumbled back out into the daylight and it seemed forever before any of us could get a word out. We had all been stunned in our own ways. The point is that that movie, and that song, had burst our collective bubble. I don’t think any of us felt like kids anymore. We felt we had seen too much.

Clay was the first to buy It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back. He made Wesley and I each a tape of it. I listened to my copy until I had memorized every single word and nearly driven my parents insane.

The funny thing is that for the longest time, my love of rap was a dirty little secret that I shared only with Clay and Wesley. My other friends were all punk and goth. I never would have admitted to liking Yo! Mtv Raps more than 120 Minutes. (gasp!)

Public Enemy was just the tip of the iceberg, as it turned out. The following years would bring me to L.L.Cool J, Eric B and Rakim, Gang Starr (Guru!), KRS-1. Later there were my East Coast brothers De La Soul, A Tribe Called Quest, Jungle Brothers. Later came Das EFX, Black Sheep, Wu Tang Clan, Nas, Black Moon, and 3rd Bass. By the time I hit university there was the West Coast explosion: NWA, Dr.Dre, Too Short (“Life ain’t nothin’ but bitches and money”), Notorious B.I.G, Tupac.

I would like to point out that the reason I kept my love of rap hidden was pure teenage cowardice. I was afraid that people would think a middle class white girl who listened to rap was playing at some kind of game. And because it was precious to me, I didn’t want anyone to take that away.

I later learned that music is a place where you can truly be yourself, with no regard for what others might say. It can also be a place that brings us together and therein lies the magic.

This track takes me waaaay back and I think this is what it was meant to do. David Dallas grew up on hip hop and R and B. But he always thought that nobody would care about a white rapper from New Zealand. I’m glad he finally changed his mind. I hope this brother blows up.

Somewhere, Biggie is smiling.

David Dallas – Indulge Me

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

-

volume one

volume two

volume three

-

about tara