Late Night Tales

I'm so serious on this blog. Hardly anything about me personally. It's always a short announcement about crap I'm doing, or it's all about politics. So ranty I am. So, with that, I'll give you something about myself.

I love music. Too much in fact. I have a lot of it. But somehow, in my memory banks, I have locked away the sounds of thousands of songs. It's weird. I don't usually memorize words, but if I've heard the song enough times, I can remember the lyrics years later.

Take The College Dropout by Kanye West for example. I used to listen to that album ALL the time. I would come home from school and I would pop that CD in my stereo and blast it until someone came home and demanded I turn that "god-awful racket" down. Now, during my junior year, I moved on, started listening to more music on my computer and basically ignoring Kanye West. I had his second album, and it was much better than the first. And besides, there are so many better rappers anyways. So, it wasn't until my second semester as a college student when I picked up poor Mr. West's first album and put it in my car CD player. After having never listened to it in nearly 2 years, I was rapping along to that dang record! I knew every word!

Many people may have this same ability, but I do enjoy thatsong lyrics are always running through my head. If someone says something that's the start of a lyric, I always finish it, usually out loud.

Another thing about my "talent" is that I memorize song beats as well. If I hear a beat on the radio or in a commercial, as long as I've heard it before, I can usually tell you the song title and artist. What's really fun about that is when you listen to as much old school soul music and as much rap as me, you'll notice a little overlap in the beats. We all know that hip hop's back bone is sampling, and it gives me a chance to have some fun. When I hear an old soul song, and it sparks up a memory of another song, I'll always try and remember what song sampled it, and vice versa. Sometimes it's very small, like The intro to "Just Like A Baby" by Sly and the Family Stone is sampled in "She Don't Have to Know" by John Legend, for all of 5 seconds, and a small snippet of the ending whistle in "Sitting on the Dock of the Bay" by Otis Redding is sampled in "Eye Know" by De La Soul. Some are wholesale ripped off like "Move on Up" was stolen for Kanye West's "Touch the Sky" and Gil Scott Heron's song "Home is Where the Hate is" was stolen for Kanye West's "My Way Home."

I love doing this, it's one of my favorite things to do. It's a nice way to keep my memory going.

Alrighty then. That's all about me for now. Later, a rant.