Hello Nasty

I am currently listening to this album:

I don't know if any of you listened to this record, as a whole, but I am 98% certain that 61% of you have heard the track Intergalactic. It was a relatively successful hit in the year 1998 when I was 14 and still thought I was a bad ass rebel for buying a "rap" album. If you listen to this in its entirety you will see how uninformed I was. I did not understand what rap was. My dad's criticism, "If you want rap, why are you buying an album from three Jewish white boys?" rings a bit too true. Uninformity aside, this album had an interesting story that parallels my adolescent experience. I bought this record because I had recently seen VH1 and had the epiphany that it was bringing enlightenment to my backwater village. It just so happened that one of the videos played on that episode of the “Top 10 Countdown” was Intergalactic. So, I bought the album because TV told me it was cool. It then sat around for a couple months before I got the courage to get out an album with an “EXPLICIT LANGUAGE” sticker. Eventually, I did and I subsequently listened to this record for some months until it became apparent (or I thought it was apparent) that this album was not considered cool. Cool Beastie Boys was the 1986 album, License to Ill with the iconic track No Sleep Till Brooklyn. As it happens, I hate that song. In fact, I hated it then but could not admit that fact, lest I be ridiculed and perceived as "out of the loop." So, in a misguided effort to seem cooler, I gave my Hello Nasty album to Jordi Steenstra, presumably because he liked it. After all, he told me he did.

However, I think he was lying. A few weeks later I found the album lying in the grass of his yard, cuddling the porch like a hobo cuddles the pillars of an overpass. This album was released right around the time marketers realized they didn’t have to put all CD’s in the same crappy plastic box and could use more traditional packing materials like card stock. And I found it in the grass. Weeks without a home and the fancy new packaging fared about as well as a Hallmark card. (Are you still listening to this record?) So, I secretly rescued it, bringing it home to my bloated CD collection. Despite the case being in the early stages of decomposition the actual disc cleaned up nicely and I moved it into my regular rotation. I loved this record. In fact, I still love it. It is a funky fusion of hip hop, rap, jazz, and whatever else they feel like. And it’s good. To be fair, I am speaking only of the sounds. I have no idea what any of the lyrics are. 14 years later and I still don’t know. I may have a condition that prevents me from learning lyrics. But anyway, I was talking about how this paralleled my adolescence. But, in the interest of promoting cognitive development in our (make sure you listen to track 14, at the very least) society of lazy brained tech addicts, I am going to leave it to you to figure out how my life is like my relationship with this CD. Please leave your thoughts in the comments section below. If you do, I will send you a special gif. Thank you.