Retrospective

In 2001/2002 a lot of us Oak Harbor guys dabbled into rapping. The rise of MP3s, broadband, and rapmusic.com helped us grow deep into the hobby. We’d spend weekends making songs together. “Summertime. Love at first sight. Sin 6 anthem. Back in the day.” Those were just awesome times.

Of all of us, Curt and I probably dove the deepest into it. With that said, I’ll be the first to tell you I was absolute garbage until the summer of 2002, but curt and all my friends were absolutely supportive up to this point.

I made about five or six one minute long songs, experimenting with my rhyme scheme, voice, breath control, and flow. One of my biggest life regrets is throwing away the CD that had all these songs and reformatting he hard drive that held them. Only curt and maybe Paul heard all of these. I wish I had them just to hear my progression. It was beautiful, each week becoming more and more in command with my voice. From struggling to stay on beat to feeling like I was becoming a part of the music.

This culminated in my sole three verse song “seed” and a collab with curt, “rise to the top”.

“Seed” was, and still is, my proudest creative achievement. I hold it close to my heart and don’t like sharing it, except with those who I feel close to. It’s a part of me, i really believe in my heart it’s a good song, and I just would be crushed by criticism of it who doesnt understand.

“rise to the top” was a bragadocious song by curt and me. We intermingle our verses throughout the song. It took about two days to turn make the track. Sometimes, I think curt and I are the only ones who ever have heard it. He didn’t like the production and quality job, so it never got sent ot massively. I still think the songs a damn good one and am proud of it. I listen to it every now and then. I don’t know if I’ll ever be as “hungry” and self confident as i was when I wrote my verses for that song.

At the end of that summer, I feel like I was just beginning to unravel my potential in the rap game. Others outside my circle heard the garbage I put out prior to that summer and it makes me sad that that’s probably what they’ll remember of me, and not those two songs.

After that summer, life happened and my mic collected dust. I’ve yet to shake the dust off. It’s surreal listening to all these tracks eight years later. The best songs were the ones you could feel the emotion in our voices. “love is”, “seed”, “rise to the top”, “summertime”, the one minute piece i made in 05, “back in the day”, “I didn’t mean it”. Our voices captured our hearts, minds, thoughts, joy, pain, during that period in time. They were songs we, all us oak harbor guys, did just enjoying being together. We made a song with a theme of looking back at being kids just having fun. Looking back, we were still those kids having fun.