Day 2: My Favorite Decade

It is Day 2 and I'm still writing. Nothing to brag about but I had packed it all in by this time last month.

Writing for 30 days is no mean feat. I have to think of what to write every day. Maybe I will open it up to you guys to ask me questions and I can post my answers on the blog for the next couple of days. We'll see.

Anyways, today,  we are going to talk about my favorite decade: 

I love the 90s. The fashions, the series, the movies, the hairstyles, everything. My favorite thing about the 90s though, is the  music.

Two days ago, I was driving with my brother when Anita Baker's "giving you the best that I got" came on, on the radio. I was happily singing along to it and then we started talking about music and the dusty, ashy,barely human looking 'young men'...a term I use loosely, but I digress...that create music these days. 

My brother is kinda "in" this generation but not necessarily "of" this generation in that he has impeccable taste in music. We were discussing the artistes of his generation and he told me about one disrespectful little turd who said he didn't know who Tupac was and that Soulja Boy was one of his greatest rappers or something like that. I'm like:

Da hell do you mean you don't know who Tupac is??? I'm not even going to address the part b of his statement about souljaboy. It is no secret that musically, my favorite era is the 90s. So you can imagine how sacrilegious this mess sounded and still sounds to me. A rapper...who doesn't know who Tupac is...

this is not adding up

 Anyways, moving on. 

After I was done being mad, I got to thinking about my love for 90s music. I love music from the 60s,70s and 80s too but the 90s and early noughties were MY era. I grew up on this music. They defined key moments of my growing up.  The song playing when I had my first kiss. The song playing when I had my first breakup. The song playing when I had my first real valentine. The way I danced. My fashion sense (did anyone else have a dragon top and/or pants and/or skirt to commemorate the Sisqo unleash the dragon movement?).  It occurred to me that this was more than music, it was technically the soundtrack of my young life. 

The music I love so much is the last thing that connects me to an era gone by...that and old pictures. Now I can totally relate when I see a group of balding, pot bellied men jump up to struggle dance when Yellow Man comes on...it is a reminder of the heady days of tight pants, trim waists and full hair. 

So the ultimate realization I came to was that , apart from mourning an era of youth, innocence and newness, I am completely nostalgic about my gone era because...I feel duped. Yup. 

this has been my "mental face"for the last 10 years when I hear new music

The future was supposed to be bigger, shinier and better in everything, including music. Imagine my surprise when instead of better music I am left with:

Na so she go denge, mo so fun tele. Gege shi gege  (Burna Boy - Don Gorgon)

And the foregoing is even a decent lyric compared to the crap emanating stateside with all these trap rappers. I feel like a greyhead, complete with glasses and false teeth with all my complaints about the "yoots"of today and their blasted music. 

So time forcibly pulled me out of my favorite decade only to dump me in a palasa decade that I do not completely feel a part of. Yeah, I can stomach some of the music. I can dab and do a decent milly rock but I always feel hella stewpid doing it. So for me, it didn't get better musically. 

The 90s was the best era for music and I will continue to fly the flag.