The 30 Day Song Challenge: Day Five- A Song That Reminds You Of Someone
side note: I encourage you all to participate with me, by all means leave songs that remind you of someone in the comments.
A Song That Reminds Me Of Someone: Common- "The Light"
Nah, this isn't an instance where I talk about that special someone & get all mushy. I'm about to throw myself under the bus. Come hither, gather round & let me tell you a tale...
The year 2000...my sophomore year in high school. I remember skipping my 6th period to go cop Common- Like Water For Chocolate. My man Alex was a huge hip-hop head so every Tuesday we'd go to a local mom & pop shop in Colorado Springs called Independent Records to get the latest albums. While Sam Goody in the mall had new CDs for $17.99, Independent would sell the same joints for $6-7. At this time NOBODY knows Common, at least not in Colorado. At the time, Com was a rappity rapper, rapping his little heart out for his rappity audience.
I'm playing the album in my huge DJ headphones & Discman (with the duct tape around it because I dropped it too many times & the spring that kept the lid closed popped out) & "The Light" comes on.
To this day, it's a TRUE love song. It's honest, vulnerable & strong. He places his queen high without demeaning & belittling himself, which is rare nowadays. At the time, I had a crush on this chick...I won't say her name but if you knew me back then you know who it was. Her senior year I finally got the courage to speak to her, not even holla. We had a journalism class together, so I laid my little corny 16 year old mack down. In the class, we would submit articles, poetry, reviews & editorials to national publications to see if we could get published. And that semester my poems (now my rappity raps) were published by 3 separate publications. No other student that year achieved such a feat. So you couldn't tell me nothing. As a result, she starts giving me play cuz I gained a little fame (which should've been a red flag, but I was 16...whatever) & she asked me to write her something. So I did......
The Light
I went to ohhla.com, which back then was like the mecca of hip-hop online (along with tha-real.com & hiphopsite.com, but I digress) & pulled the lyrics up. I had to listen & read along because ohhla was NOTORIOUS for butchering the words to songs. So I hand wrote the entire song & gave it to her the next day. So I'm IN THERE!!! I even got to 2nd base (which for me was a home run) but nothing ever materialized. She ended up going out with this Trap Or Die dude (commonly referred to as a "thug"...red flag #2) & we went on our separate ways.
A few months later...the song blows up. To this day it's Common's biggest hit.
She never confronted me about it, she never "exposed" me (although she did go on to tell some of her homegirls that she used me...I gave her my hot fries from McDonalds one lunch period, did I get "gamed"?) but anytime I hear that song I always think of that girl, and my introductory lesson in Sucker For Love 101...smh
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