Speaking of hip-hop and DJ Premier, Gang Starr became a favorite along the way as well while I was at WRSU. [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jseZP4K6rkg&w=560&h=315] It was an interesting time; there weren’t many DJs of color on air outside of weekend specialty programming, so most of the world music, hip-hop, jazz, and…

I mentioned discovering Wynton Marsalis’ other musically inclined relatives after digging into his discography. However, I came to know his brother Branford from a different path. The name Buckshot LeFonque goes back farther than the group B. Marsalis put together to Cannonball Adderly. However, as my love of hip-hop continued…

Speaking of jazz, it has played a major role in my life since … likely since before birth. My dad was a big jazz fan and he and I spent a lot of time together, listening. Have you ever heard a piece of music and immediately understood the time and…

It’s interesting the things we do to ‘survive’. I might have told part of this story before, but when I was an undergrad, I found myself rather bereft of cash monies to put food in the fridge and eventually, when I got one, gas in the car. Someone hipped me…

There’s a verse in the Bible that suggests ‘When I was a child, I thought as a child …’. It’s true. When I first heard Horace Silver (it was the Doin the Thing album though), laying in the middle of the living room floor of my parents’ house, reading the…

I remember hearing this song before seeing the video; it intrigued me. [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9i0rSWRSREs&w=560&h=315] I was fortunate enough to participate in a student exchange program in high school. I spent about a month in England. I was a bit older in years than my exchange partner and as an only…

A friend and colleague posted a thing on social media called ‘20 Albums That Made an Impact on Me’ and I thought I’d use it as a topic for this space, which has been feeling rather neglected of late. As Elisa said, not every post will have a story with…