People that follow me on Twitter (shameless plug) might already know how I caught myself singing Big’s hook to Puffy’s ‘Been Around The World’ when I heard Lisa Stansfield on the radio a few days ago. This got me suddenly reminiscing about the ‘No Way Out‘ album and the stupid reason I sold it years ago when I hadn’t yet become the level-headed fellow I now am. History is written down to let humanity learn from past mistakes so follow me after the jump for the top 5 stupid things I did as an adolescent HipHop head.

5. ‘Schooling’ uninterested people on MC’s that do matter

I’m an (early) 80’s baby, which means I hit puberty in the 90’s during HipHop’s golden era, and a golden era it was. I don’t wanna get all ‘everything used to be better’ like a grumpy senior citizen on here but I do feel a bit sorry for kids growing up on the turds the record industry keeps churning out nowadays. That being said, even the golden era had it’s fair share of turds which naturally became huge hits as well. As the ‘true underground rules everything backpack wearing keepin’ it real kid’ I was I felt the need to constantly remind classmates, co-workers, nieces and nephews or even teachers innocently humming along to a radio that this wasn’t true HipHop (see how I still write that with capitals…) and they should just check out Liquid Swords. Needless to say it’s not and advice many followed up on.

4. Carving the ‘W’ everywhere / Buying anything with a ‘W’ on it

When I was a kid I used to listen to De La stuck on repeat, later on Ice-T became a mainstay, followed by Snoop. But the Wu really dropped a bomb on me. I guess to me they’re like the Beatles are to people from the 60’s. I wrote their lyrics on the covers of my schoolbooks and backpack, I had the Wu-Wear fitted cap (even if it was too big) and I wore Wu-Wear shirts. Besides that I had the urge to use my keys to carve the famous ‘W’ into every toilet door or desk at school. Later on in the 90’s the Wu became less and less flawless, mostly due to a slackening of the bonds between the original members and a slew of lackluster albums by third string Killa Bees. Who remembers the semi-bootlegged Royal Fam album? I do, it had a ‘W’ on it. Sale garanteed! As I got older and was dissapointed more oftenly I started demanding more of the records I bought than just a certain logo. Without my rampant Stannism this might’ve happened a bit sooner though.

3. Publicly rapping along with every rap song (including crazy arm gestures)

Back in this era in HipHop was still seen as alternative music where I lived and hadn’t penetrated pop culture in the way it has now. So whenever I was out in town on a saturday night or at a party and the DJ spun a rap record I just had to express my knowledge of HipHop culture and rap along to the whole thing and wave my hands like I was that MC on a stage somewhere. Sometimes accompanied by equally inebriated friends (alchohol laws are a lot less strict in most European countries), but probably always looking pretty dopey.

2. Buying an Anti-Pop Consortium album (for the wrong reasons)

There’s nothing inherently wrong with buying an APC record, it’s just that I barely listened to it. Anti-Pop Consortium was a group of MC’s on Warp Records rapping over experimental electronic bleeps and crazy drum patterns long before it became trendy. They were famous enough to pop up on my radar but unknown and weird enough to not become mainstream. I bought the album and only played two or three joints on there, it was just way too early in my record collecting days to actually appreciate anything like it. But the name Anti-Pop Consortium sounded like the best group name ever to a kid ‘keepin it real‘, next to Wu-Tang Clan of course. Tip to the grasshoppers on here: Just listen to the stuff you dig now. If you keep listening to music seriously you’ll grow to genuinely like enough weird songs to annoy your girlfriend with.

1. Selling my copy of Puff Daddy’s ‘No Way Out’

Remember record stores? Remember used record stores? That’s where my copy went when I felt a true blue underground HipHop-Head simply could not own a Puff Daddy album. When keeping it real goes wrong (©Dave Chapelle) with a white Dutch kid in the 90’s, so to speak. Granted, I have never bought another Diddy album since, and I’d take any of his ghostwriters over his own mumbling any day, but I’d kinda like this one back. Nostalgia for one, but ‘Victory’ is still a monster of a track, and so is the original ‘All About The Benjamins’. It boasts some of the last genuine Biggie songs (the less said about most remixes or ‘duets’ the better) and even though that Grammy wasn’t deserved by far (I got you, Ol’ Dirty!) it has a decent amount of entertainment value. ‘I’ll Be Missing You‘ is still a crappy song though. Tip to the grasshoppers on here: If you start to hate on your Weezy records in the near future please fight the urge to ditch them, you’ll redevelop your love for them over the years, trust me.