Actually it was two CDs. My dad's best friend, Uncle Richard, handed me my very own copy of Tevin Campbell's I'm Ready... and Michael Jackson's Dangerous. In a few week's time I knew every word to nearly every song on both albums. I would sit in my room, door shut, playing each CD on my boom box that took up half the space on the desk beside my bed, switching one out for the other, making up dance routines and analyzing lyrics I was way too young to understand. I spent so much time with that music that at 7 years old I'd already discovered that I love music way more than I like people. So much that my way of saying good night to my parents was putting Heal the World on repeat in the hallway stereo and forcing them to listen to it about 6 times before I tired out and climbed into my bed.
In the 90s and early 2000s magazine's came with advertisement inserts promoting opportunities to buy 12 CDs for one penny. I had no clue that this was likely a scam and never bothered to read the fine print to find out but I asked my dad if I could place the order and shockingly he complied. I vividly remember opening the shipment when it came and staring at the cover of Mariah Carey's Daydream and Butterfly. There was also the debut albums of both N*Sync and The Backstreet Boys. Britney's Baby One More Time... was finally mine to listen to on my own time, I no longer had to borrow it from my friends. That one single box also brought me Will Smith's Big Willie Style, Janet Jackson's compilation Design of a Decade and The Best of Sade. All of a sudden I had more music than I knew what to do with. So I automatically did the only thing any sane and logical pre-teen could do, I dove in head first.
I would sit with an album and listen front to back, back to front, repeating my favorites while reading every lyric in the booklet that came inside the plastic casing. Once I had the lyrics down I'd read the Thank You's and finally I would skim the credits. I had a deeper understanding of what went into creating those shiny discs than most other kids in my 6th grade class. I understood producers and songwriters and wanted to know more. By 13 I was head over heels, lock and key, knee deep in love with music and I had a growing collection of actually purchased from the store CDs to prove it.
Somewhere between spending my last dime of Christmas money on Jay-Z's The Blueprint and offering to clean the entire house in exchange for my mom taking me to K-Mart to purchase Usher's Confessions I became a true music fiend. I didn't just want to know the music on a surface level. I needed to understand the artist, what went into them personally creating their art and what inspired it.
I guess that passion for a deeper understanding of music never left me. And now I finally have the platform to unveil the who, what, when, where, why and how of the artists, producers, DJs and music influencers I love today.
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