It might be my age but all week I’ve been watchin nothin but “Old School Rap, and Punk videos”, I'd forgotten how fuckin fun that shit was back in the day. It all seemed so fresh and new. We used to go to a Punk joint back in the day called the DownLiner. It was this fucked up little bar deep in the bottom of this equally fucked up building. I got dragged there one night to hear this Punk band play. (fuck me for not remembering their name) The place was pretty crowded and we found a spot on the steps to sit, the band was about a dozen songs into their set and seemed about as warmed up as they were gonna get. The lead singer was this skinny kid with a pink Mohawk jutting up from his head. (did you know the term Mohawk comes from a tribe of Iroquois Indians who once occupied an area near the Mohawk River in central New York state. The term Mohawk comes from an Indian word that means they eat living things. In other words these cats hunted a lot. The term Mohawk we’re all used too comes from the distinctive head dress these cats wore into battle and that for some odd reason the Punk crowd adopted). Who fuckin says I can’t teach the stinkin masses. The singer had cuts and scars all over him, he was to say the least, kind of fucked lookin. I became friends with him over the years and found out the cuts came from the fact that every time he got mad at his girlfriend he would start stabbin himself and slicing up his arms. Other then that one small quirk he was the most soft spoken person around. They were playin some song when this cat felt the urge to get artistic, he grabbed one of those gourd things that you scratch with a stick to make noise. He looked around but couldn’t find his scratcher so he reached into his boot and pulled out this giant-ass switchblade. The muthafucker popped it open and started scratchin with it. For some reason over the years that one move has always defined the Punk attitude to me, doing it the fuckin way you want. If it makes you groove then a big high hard one to those that it don’t. To me there’s one sure way to enjoy punk, just let the sound and attitude envelope your ass. If you spend too much time thinking about it then it’ll scare you off. Rap was just hitting all over MTV back then, unlike Punk there was nowhere to go see Rap acts here in town. (kinda like today) So we had to make do with the shit we saw on the TV and what the records stores turned out. I never could get my hi-top fade goin but I had a pretty cool conk for a while. Rap was a whole different school back then. It was all about who had the biggest dick and the best game. A cat bragged his shit up then danced as well as he looked. Rappers back then didn’t have no ho’s in his video unless he was that lame ass Hammer. When they rapped they danced with their boyz. Yeah, them and their crew got down. Check that shit out and see if I’m not right. One thing that’s goin on now that was the big shit back in the day was these huge shed shows. A promoter got together this huge posse of talent then shoved em into a bus and off on the road they went. Rap was such a special thing back then that all these cats knew each other, either on a personal level or by rep. There was no east coast or west coast, just a bunch of kids tryin to do their thing. This was before everyone got serious and started killin each other and shit. Hell, you wanna see Old School love then check out Digital Underground’s “Humpty Dance video”, in the background you’ll see a young baby faced cat that was born Lesane Crooks dancing and singing like he’s a star. The name he died under was Tupac Shakur. Peace