I begin at the beginning (actually, not quite, but that's a different post).
By the 4th grade, I'd already found my passion in life. Music is the thing almost unlike any other that has motivated me, consoled me and inspired me. It fills me with a sense of joy unlike anything I've ever experienced. This is true now, and was true at some of my earliest childhood memories.
Ironically enough, my parents were not music lovers, at least not to the extent that I have become. While my dad had a fairly substantial record collection, we did not regularly, or even often, sit around playing records. Most of the music I encountered was whatever collection of tapes my parents had in their cars, or whatever happened to be on the radio at the time. My repertoire largely consisted of Luther Vandross, Anita Baker, Michael Jackson, etc. Basically, of the stuff my parents listened to, I pulled from that what I liked to listen to and absorbed it.
Enter Bobby Brown. How and why he came into my orbit I don't remember. Maybe my dad and I were listening to the radio one day? Did one of the kids in my class put me on? No idea. But what I do remember was finally getting my hot little hands on Don't Be Cruel for Christmas that year.
The number of times I listened to that tape had to have set a record of some sort. I played it in the morning while eating breakfast. The second I got home I popped it in while doing my homework. I brought it with me when we had to go somewhere in case I could convince my parents (probably my father, T wasn't going for that) to let me listen to it in the car. Bobby was with me morning, noon and night.
Now, I could go on about what he did for R&B music. I maintain that he was one of the critical and most influential artists on the direction that R&B took from the 90s on, even today. And I stand by that, but this isn't really about the history of music or the Ph.D. I'm getting in Bobby. This is just about what he did for a 10 year old kid once upon a time.
Bobby was the first music that was really mine. He wasn't inherited from my parents, he wasn't filtered through another source. He was just for me. That someone under 50 (as I assumed all adults were) could make this sound, could speak to me in this way, was nothing short of magical.
You might ask yourself - of all the artists in all the world....Bobby Brown? SRSLY? And, well...yes. Bobby Brown.
Why? That is a damn good question, and one I don't have the answer to. It's not like I really understood what he was talking about. While I had the misfortune of discovering earlier that year that I liked boys, despite how gross they were, clearly I didn't get why someone would be cruel, or the need to declare a prerogative, or what a tenderoni was, as opposed to a non-tenderoni. And what it says about me that the first music I truly loved on my own was the tortured negritude of one Robert Brown is probably best saved for a licensed professional and not this here internet. But no matter. The thing about the music you love, you don't have to understand it. You don't have to explain it. You just have to experience it. And feel it in your bones. As I did. With every little step I took.
