I Used To Be A Hip Hop Star: Revisited

…heh, just kidding.

That's me...lead singer of now defunct Blind Men See...performing at Murray Hill Theater back in the day

But one of my BIG musical influences is hip hop. Not the watered-down, monotonous drivel that has crept into the mainstream these days, but more of the underground, old school stuff. Ya know, kind of the Dirty South stuff before it became public enough to package it up, slap a label on it and make billions of dollars off of it.

When I was in high school way back in the early 90s I used to “make beats.” That’s right. I was a scrawny, one-hundred-twenty pound mix master. I went to a predominantly black high school and the majority of my friends were up and coming rappers (or so we thought).

I had a Roland W-30, a cool workstation with some great patches and a sampler and I made mad beats. At least that’s what they told me.

That's me doing my rap thang at Ski Invasion in the very early 90s.

When I was around 13 or 14 I got to do my thang in front of about 1500 teens at a youth conference called Ski Invasion in Gatlinburg, TN. I wasn’t coming straight outta Compton or anything, but I was pretty well received by hundreds of teenagers who rocked out to concerts from David and The Giants and Rick Cua that weekend. I guess I did well enough to do it again the next year, because I did!

Anyways, back in my teens I really, really enjoyed writing rap lyrics. I think I was pretty good at it too. I wrote a song in 1991 that I continued to perform all the way up until about 2005 (different versions of course). It was always received well.

When I started the last band I was in, Blind Men See, back in 2003, we wrote a bunch of raprock stuff. We eventually wrote more melodic rock stuff, but it’s cool to hear some of our friends that still have our ringtones from back in the day.

I thought I’d share just a little of that musical history today.

And along with that I thought I’d include some of the hip hop songs I wrote last year.

Keep On Believing | Download | Wrote this one fresh in 2009.

Drowning (Rap Version) | Download | This is actually a complete rewrite (2009) of a song I wrote back in 2004.

To The Sky (Night Owl Mix) | Download | I wrote this one back in 2003, but updated it last year (2009).

What is/are some little known area(s) of influence from your past that most people wouldn’t guess about you if they met you now, that play a big part in who you are and what you do today?