As I have told many, my mother has been the greatest musical influence in my life. When people notice my 27,000+ (I am shameless) song iTunes Library, I consider it a reflection of the wealth of knowledge that my mother gave me at a young age. What must be understood about my life is the fact that as a child we did not listen to the radio. Instead our car was inundated with the sounds of Donny Hathaway, Marvin Gaye, Roy Ayers, and Donald Byrd. Even as I grew older my mother introduced me to Lauryn Hill (Miseducation Tour with my mom was my first concert ever…), Erykah Badu, Jill Scott and Mary J. Blige. Being a musician herself, my mother understood sounds and harmonies on a level unbeknownst to the average listener. This translated into the musical selection that she passed on to me.
Because of this, I first heard that familiar piano cadence without an accompanying drum loop. When I first heard those notes, smooth yet aggressively stroked piano notes, they were then Ahmad Jamal’s “I Love You” from his 1970 classic The Awakening. However, many of my contemporaries would understand the piece in question as Nas’ “The World Is Yours” produced by legendary producer Pete Rock. It’s moments like these that I cherish in life—I listen to a hip-hop record to find a song from my past; from music’s elongated history
“Hip Hop is like what you would call the bastard child of a lot of different forms of music…” ~DJ Jazzy Jay of the Universal Zulu Nation on “Rock and Roll (Could Never Hop Like This) Part 2