words by Kiki Fiyah
In 1981, eight years after DJ Kool Herc dj'ed a block party for his sister's birthday and Kevin Donovan changes his name to Afrika Bambaataa Aasim in honor of a Zulu chief and seven years after Grandmaster Caz, Grandmaster Flash, and Afrika Bambaataa start playing at parties in the Bronx and DJ/MC Lovebug Starski starts referring to the emerging culture surrounding this new music as "hip-hop", I was born in the birthplace of Blues(the Mississippi Delta to be exact).
I spent a majority of my childhood in Ft. Riley, KS listening to one radio station and it most definatly wasn't a "black(I think the politicaly correct term is 'urban')radio station. Hence, my love of 80s rock and pop. By the time I was 11 I knew every song that came on the R'n'B oldies channel thanks to my dad, because in the late 80s and early 90s he classified most mainstream pop music and the emerging sounds of new jack swing and pretty much all hiphop as "mess" and "noise". So, while we rode around Post basking in the immaculate harmonies of the Impressions and Dellfonics and funk of George Clinton, I was secretly changing his station READ
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