This blog is a thought long in the making that I'm finally putting into production. Let me start with the story of how this started.

It was the early 90's. I was a young white lower-to middle class kid who loved music. My mother was young, so I grew up listening to Metallica, Guns N Roses, Twisted Sister - you know GREAT 80's buttrock! Remember Columbia House Record Clubs? 300 cassettes for 50 cents. Well somehow Tone Loc, Vanilla Ice, MC Hammer cassettes showed up on our doorstep. I was instantly hooked. That was the beginning of hip-hop for me. Then lets not forget when Dr Dre's - The Chronic dropped - wow AMAZING. Welcome to gangster rap. What’s next? Snoop Doggy Dogg - Doggystyle! I was constantly listening to these two albums. 2Pac! Whoa!!! I was entranced by gangsta rap. The music was good, the stories where interesting - it showed me there was a world outside of southern rural Minnesota. I could go on and on about the great gangster rap that came out, NWA, Ice Cube, Eazy E, and Ice T - I think you all are in tune with me here. Eventually I ran across the Wu-Tang Clan and I was amazed - it was the familiar rap sound that I had come to love, but it was different, it was... dirtier, grimey, it was somehow, just a little more real. And my musical taste was different forever. Time passed - rap became huge. I got older. Then my family got our first computer. I was obsessed I had music, I had Internet, and now, I could burn my own cds. It was an amazing time, I borrowed cd's from all of my friends and made copies of the disks, I had more music than I had time to listen to it all. Once again, a new revolution started, Napster. Now I'm not sure how many of you where able to use Napster at it's peak - but it was great - every song you could ever want, search, double click, wait a while (ok a loooooong while - I was still on dial up), and BANG you got your song. All without fake songs, spyware, DRM, fear of the RIAA knocking down your door. I was in heaven. So now I'm in high school, I got the thousand dollar stereo in my $100 Ford Escort - and I had an ear for what was going to be big, and I had unlimited access to all of those songs. I remember when I heard Nelly's Country Grammar - if I remember correctly it was off of some mixtape - and I KNEW that this song was going to be huge, I burnt a disc with that song on it, multiple times, and I don't know if that cd left my stereo for weeks. Everyone in my car LOVED that song. A few months later and it was a national hit. So now I had a goal, I HAD to find the next big songs, I had to play them before everyone else. And this continued for years. I listened to what the record executives wanted me to hear. After a while I just got sick of the same shit. Rims, bling, bitches, selling drugs, drive bys, gangs, basically all the topics that commercial rap has stuck to for over a decade now. Then I got a hold of an Atmosphere CD - I listened to it, and realized that I had heard it before. It was skipped over because it didn't have the commercial feel that I thought for so long all good music had to have. So I listened to the disk. I remember the first time I listened through it, all I could think was, wow - sounds like a Jurassic Five rip off. But I told myself to give it a chance. The more I listened, the more I connected. He was saying shit that related to me, living in Minnesota, women breaking your heart - but it was hip-hop.

So that’s my story, this is how I stumbled upon the wealth of hip-hop music that Minnesota has. The moral is... listen to some Atmosphere, let the music sink into your mind, let it fuse a connection to your brain - see all the parallels and let the journey begin! If anyone would like to share there story of Minnesota hip hop feel free to leave a comment, or email me FzArEkTaH at gmail dot com - PEACE