I was born in 1976 in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. I started kindergarten when I was four years old, and began my schooling at Lafayette Elementary in the School District of Lancaster. My teachers quickly labeled me as “gifted,” and I joined the school’s gifted program (I was the youngest student in the program by a few grade levels). Mrs. Weaver, the music teacher, recognized my interest and aptitude in music: I started playing the violin in first grade and switched to the bass in fourth grade. In third grade, I was placed in fifth-grade reading and math classes. By the time I got to fifth grade, the principal told my parents that there wasn’t much the school could offer me, and my parents moved my younger sister and I to the suburbs where there were better schools.
My first encounters with rap music were around this time: I remember borrowing a cassette tape of the Beastie Boys’ first album, Licensed to Ill, from a friend on the playground. I listened to Tone Lōc, the Fat Boys, and Run DMC. In Lancaster, we only heard mainstream “pop” rap on the radio: at the time, there was not a dedicated rap station in town. My grandmother lived just outside of Philadelphia, and when we would visit her (almost every weekend), I’d bring my boom box and some blank cassette tapes to record music from Power 99, a Philly radio station that played mostly rap music. I have vivid memories of wearing out my tape of Eric B and Rakim’s “Follow the Leader,” a song that remains one of my favorites to this day. We didn’t hear songs like that in Lancaster.
I did well at my predominantly white, middle-class junior high and high schools. I was fortunate enough to have private double bass lessons with a well-regarded local teacher who had a day job as an elementary-school principal. In my junior year, I decided that I wanted to pursue music in college. I remember my dad telling me that they wouldn’t be able to afford to send me to college, and I was heartbroken. Both worked full-time (my father was a teacher; my mother managed an apartment complex) and were able to provide what we needed, but the cost of college was a bit out of reach. Fortunately, I was able to get a full scholarship to Shenandoah University in Winchester, VA—they needed a bass player and I was glad to oblige. I listened to almost no popular music during my first few years at college: I even sold most of my pop CDs. I figured that, as an aspiring orchestral musician, I should devote my listening time to learning the standard repertoire. (The funny thing about being a professional musician is that listening to music is work, more often than not: while many of my non-musician friends listen to music to unwind, I tend to prefer silence.)
In my second year at Shenandoah, I realized that I was not getting the instruction and opportunities that I needed to succeed as a professional classical double bassist, and I looked into transferring. I chose Temple University based on a recommendation from my bass teacher. It was comparatively inexpensive and a bit closer to home. It was also located in the middle of North Philadelphia, which was considered a very dangerous neighborhood: in an effort to claim some superiority over their Ivy-League neighbor, the University of Pennsylvania, the admissions staff boasted that Temple had the larger police force.
I always tell people that I learned far more outside of the classroom at Temple than I did inside the classroom. Friends of mine were robbed at knifepoint. There was a drive-by shooting a block away from my dorm. No one had ever tried to sell me drugs until I went to Temple, where it became a regular occurrence. People who I assumed were homeless asked for money, food, or cigarettes as I passed from class to class. When the verdict in the O. J. Simpson case was announced, we were encouraged to stay in our dorms, and told that extra security would be patrolling the area. My experience at Temple was remarkably different from anything that I had encountered up to this point, and made me start to think about how fortunate I was. I didn’t yet understand how systems of oppression worked: I just knew that these people were suffering in a way that I never had to, and had never seen up close. Around the same time, I started listening to popular music again. Most of the parties that I went to featured rap music. This was just after what many call the “Golden Age” of rap: we listened to a lot of Cypress Hill, Nas, Wu-Tang, and Jeru the Damaja. As music students, we sat around and marveled at the wordplay, talked about the beats and aesthetics of sampling, and generally used it to unwind after our classical music workday. I began to notice connections between what I was listening to, and what I saw in and around campus.
I earned a master’s degree in music theory at Temple (I had applied to two other institutions, including Penn, but was not accepted) and was fortunate enough to get a teaching assistantship. After two years, I started my Ph.D. coursework at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. While most of my studies were focused on post-tonal voice leading (ultimately, the subject of my dissertation), I did have the opportunity to take a class in popular music with Ellie Hisama, and a course on rhythm with Stephen Blum. In Dr. Hisama’s class, we read some scholarship on rap music (portions of Tricia Rose’s Black Noise and selections from Droppin’ Science), and I was surprised how little scholarly attention had been paid (at that time) to the actual music, which was my primary concern as a music theorist. I wrote two papers for her class. The first was on Rage Against the Machine and their political stance. Having lived in and around Philadelphia for most of my life, I was familiar with the story of Mumia Abu-Jamal, and I criticized the group’s support of efforts to exonerate him. Having grown up in a fairly conservative environment, my politics were—not surprisingly—fairly conservative (and I would certainly say I was rather naive as well). I remember presenting the paper with trepidation, and having a long conversation with a classmate, Jonathan, afterward. He praised my courage in presenting my ideas, but encouraged me to think more deeply about the matter. I appreciate his taking the time to talk with me, to call me in: this is the first such conversation I remember having. My views now are diametrically opposed to what they were then (in fact, I have a few books by Abu-Jamal on my shelf).
I wrote my final paper—and my first foray into rap scholarship—on Cypress Hill. Cypress Hill was my favorite group at the time in large part because I found B-Real’s voice compelling. I wrote about how their music represented Latinx culture in postindustrial Los Angeles. In Dr. Blum’s class, I wrote a paper that examined the relationship between rhythm and genre in several Ice-T songs. Ice-T remains another favorite of mine, largely due to his ability to craft cinematic stories in his songs. I presented this paper at a graduate student conference later that year.