30 to 30: 1
The official countdown has begun - if we wanted to be technical about it I've got 29 days and a few hours before my 30th birthday but looking at the calendar I've got 30 days to mark off before the big day (August 4th, if you don't want to do the math).
I've been feeling played out/wack of late; going to bed before 11, drinking a lot of decaf, and driving under the speed limit. I'm also making some grim realizations: most of the professional athletes I'd be inclined to admire are younger than I am, if I did go to grad school I'd be considered an "old" or "nontraditional" student, and a lot of comic book fiction has stopped working on me.
But one cool aspect of growing older is that you get to do it with your favorite artists. I think it was circa 1990 when this chubby kid named Steve I knew in Nairobi first acquainted me with De La Soul; in the days before "Rip, Mix, and Burn" I boosted his copy of 3 Feet High and Rising and fell in love with New York urban life.
I got a "dubbed" copy of De La Soul is Dead from an Ethiopian kid named Dawitt during high school and they still sounded as fresh and clean as when Steve had played their first album for me on a tape deck in one of Nairobi's housing estates, Golf Course.
As a freshman in college one of my first musical purchases, a show of autonomy, was Buhloone Mindstate, their third album. The next album, The Stakes Is High, was another of my favorites and even though it wasn't designed for mass appeal, it seemed to do well.
But after that, things definitely took a turn. They were getting older, just like me. By 2000, they were too old (and intelligent) to "drop gangsta hits" and their record label, knowing that this wouldn't play well with the masses, mistreated and finally dropped them.
It felt like I'd been dropped; I grew up with De La Soul. They spoke my language in a way that the glossy "gangsta" motif could not. I stopped trying to be cool in a world where De La Soul wasn't*.
But.
They're back again, and this time with a different recording label and a fresh sound. After more than 15 years of bopping my neck to some their beats, not only was the music compelling but lots of people got it. They got De La...
And the moral of the story is that 30 doesn't have to mean played out. It's something I hear a lot of (from older, tired people who wear fanny packs) but entirely different when it's the De La Soul I grew up with, bugging out in my headphones. 30 represents major changes for me: a new geography, a new job, and new motivations in life. Kind of like a new label -
*I can't quote the lyrics, or any other street sounds here, but email me and I'll send you some.
9:57:16 PM 
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