Back II The Future: Race To Save Hip-Hop — The Love of my Life

June 16th, 2009 | By Alejandro Ford

I used to believe Hip-Hop was the love of my life before I caught her creepin’ with a Ring-tone-deafened Anti-Genre seething with sacklets of venereal VOCO-puss and S(wag)TDs. At that moment, my once warm blooded cardio beat box shriveled into a splinter infested heart shaped holding cell forcing my love for beats, rhymes and life to fade to into an unsightly shade of black.

There didn’t seem to be any hope for my severely fractured relationship with Hip-Hop, who after inspiring so many people, developed a deadly obsession with college credited mini-goons, delusional rappers turned tone-less vocalists and major artists who routinely fed the public overhyped drivel stamped as freshly baked greatness.

Damn this Hip-Hop! She was so amazing, yet so unbelievably slutty, unfocused and two faced. Even when I attempted to replace her with Pop, Reggae or Rock, I realized nothing could ever give me butterflies like she did.

So I vowed to save her from her doom — even if she didn’t want to be saved — by reuniting with Doc Brown and Marty McFly to travel back through time in the DeLorean and save Hip-Hop from the diabolical clutches of the Anti-Genre aka Urban Music.

After finalizing our master plan, Doc set the date to Sept. 7, 1996 and location to Vegas where we helped Pac slip away from his assailants after the Tyson/Sheldon fight before landing in L.A. on March 9, 1997 — after the infamous VIBE party — and saving Biggie from being swiss-cheesed in his vehicle.

On Feb. 15, 1999, we touched down and nabbed Big L before he was offed in front of his apartment and whisked Aaliyah back to the states before she boarded her awaiting aircraft after the “Rock the Boat” video shoot on Aug. 25, 2001.

In order to save J. Dilla and Pun, we traveled to the distant future and acquired advanced treatments for Dilla’s Lupus and Pun’s obesity. By doing this, we were able to help the sickly rappers overcome their afflictions and accomplished our seemingly impossible mission.

However, when we returned to 2009, Hip-Hop’s mind, body & soul had been brain washed into believing she could make millions if she created a marketable gimmick and image. But I still was determined to convince her that what we had was worth much more than millions.

And with Hip-Hop on my mind we zoomed to N.Y. — Hip-Hop’s birthplace — where we posted on the block near a mob of Brooklyn’s finest who buzzed about the Biggie, Jay-Z & Mary concert at Madison Square Garden that night.

While in Queens, we hit a corner store to cop a few quarter waters and asked the dude behind the counter about Hip-Hop. His name was Curtis, and it felt like déjà vu whenever he spoke, especially when he blabbed about how he would be a big-time rapper one day.

Curtis hailed Biggie as the hottest MC in the world and mentioned Big’s recent collab with R. Kelly called “The Best of Both Worlds,” that he was promoting on Ellen earlier that day. With Biggie on top of the game, Bad Boy flourished under the watchful eye of Diddy who held onto 112, Total, Carl Thomas, Lil’ Kim, Faith Evans and Mase over the years.

Apparently, Diddy was so occupied with Bad Boy that he never pitched his cutting-edge reality show ‘Making the Band’ to MTV.

Because of Biggie’s influence on the game, Faith blossomed into a major crossover artist whose resume boasted several multi-platinum albums, high-grossing films and a classic duet album with her husband Biggie. Shockingly, Lil’ Kim escaped jail time to become the hottest female rapper in the game and starred in her own successful show called “Kim.”

In addition to gloating about Bad Boy & Biggie, Curtis gushed about the dominance of Jay-Z, Big L and the rest of the Roc-A-Fella roster that included Beanie Sigel, Freeway, Nas, AZ, The Clipse and T.I.P., with Kanye West and Just Blaze behind the boards.

Kanye’s emergence as the hottest producer in the game seemed inevitable, but never fully satisfied the Chicago beat maker who pestered Hov for a shot at solo stardom. However, Biggie felt Kanye’s whole steez was wack, talked Hov out of giving ’Ye a solo deal and enlisted ’Ye to produce their upcoming Hov & Big project and new Junior M.A.F.I.A. record.

Curtis later revealed that Hov had married the gorgeous triple-threat Aaliyah, who rocked the crown as the hottest chick in the game after her leading role in “Dream Girls,” #1 smash “Umbrella,” and multiple seven-figure endorsement deals.

I could only say daaaaaamn homie before dapping up Curtis and scuttling to the West Coast, which was littered with life-sized 2pac billboards and polluted with Dr. Dre’s sinister soundscapes spilling from every lowrider jerking past us.

Everyone was on the move except for a random schlub slumped on the curb with his face buried in his hands. Next to him was a CD case with MARSHALL’s DEMO scribbled on it and a bus ticket from Detroit to L.A.

Something was familiar about this pale faced sap, who traveled to L.A. countless times to deliver his demo to Dr. Dre only to be clowned by Pac who felt “white rappers” were a joke. And that’s when we started talking about Hip-Hop.

Even though Marshall despised Pac, he confessed that the rapper was a living legend on the West Coast, which led Pac to squash his beef with Biggie and the East Coast. Eventually, Suge Knight was pinched for his role in the attempted murders of both rappers and sentenced to 50-100 years in prison.

Over the next few years, Pac achieved mega-success with the films “Waist Deep” “Baby Boy” and “Transformers,” wifed an upcoming songstress from Oakland named Keyshia and dropped his new Dre-produced single “In The Club” from his new highly-anticipated album “Get Rich Or Die Thuggin.’”

As a powerful executive/producer, Dr. Dre molded the West Coast into a legitimate musical powerhouse and brought Pac, Snoop, The Dogg Pound, Crooked I, Nate Dogg, Warren G, Lady of Rage, Marshia Ambrosius and piano player Scott Storch with him to his Aftermath imprint after dumping the now defunct Death Row Records.

Even though Dre handled multiple projects, he was able to drop his opus “Detox” and banged out tracks for Jay-Z, Biggie, Pun, Jadakiss and Nas to name a few.

Marshall also dished on the music scene back in his hometown of Detroit and bragged about how J. Dilla had catalyzed abstract rap music and a new movement called Nu-Soul.

With his Lupus behind him, Dilla rocked as one of the dopest producers on the globe while enjoying platinum status with his group Slum Village and crafting classic backdrops for artists like Common, D’Angelo, Jill Scott, Dwele, Lauryn Hill, Erykah Badu, Floetry and some new soulstresses named Jazmine and Chrisette.

Before darting down south, Marshall told us to always lose ourselves in the moment when we’re presented with everything that we’ve ever wanted, which seemed profound coming from a loser like him. But somehow his words of wisdom stuck with me as we descended into dirty south airspace.

Unfortunately, we crashed through a billboard of some famous Barnum & Bailey Circus Clown named Teddy Pain and landed in Dade County where we were busted by the MDPD for wreckless driving and booked in the South Florida Reception Center.

While there, we met a larger-than-life prison guard named Roberts who barely fit in his uniform and often battled many of the inmates during his lunch break. Fortunately for us, he was mad cool — even though he insisted on telling us about his everyday hustles — and very familiar with Hip-Hop.

During recess, Roberts admitted that the southern musical movement wasn’t as major as the West or East, but acknowledged that Outkast & The Dungeon Fam, the Hot Boys, Trick Daddy, T.I.P., Ludacris, Scarface and Bun-B kept the region on the map.

According to Roberts, there was no opportunity for southern rappers to shine because of the dominance by the other coasts. At the time, West Coast music was very commercial and the East Coast artists catered to the streets, which left the south with no true identity or direction.

Basically, there were socially conscious groups like Outkast dropping classic records and hood poet collectives like the Hot Boys releasing commercially viable records, but no major southern artists captivating the hearts and minds of true music fans.

As one of the hottest young artists in the south, Lil’ Wayne appeared to be ready to put the south on his back until he was destroyed by Biggie in a Brooklyn battle in front of Jay-Z and dismissed as an overhyped S dot Carter-scrotumizer.

The only other MC gifted enough to save the south was Outkast’s ill spitter Andre Benjamin who eventually pressed *pause* on rap music and *play* on his burgeoning acting career after snagging an Oscar for his role in the major bio-pic “Hendrix.”

After weeks rotting in the joint, we dug a tunnel leading out of the prison and hid the escape point behind an old Toni Braxton poster. Before escaping, we left Roberts a note that read: “Get Busy Living, Or Get Busy Dying,” slipped into the DeLorean and the rest is history.

At the end of our amazing journey, I realized that no matter how much I tampered with the past that the Hip-Hop I once loved would never love me like I loved her because she was much too selfish and would always love money more than me.

Ironically, Hip-Hop was destined for doom even if Biggie and Pac had never died. She would’ve always been on the paper chase even if it meant losing every shred of self-respect permeating through her 30-year-old bones.

Honestly, Big and Pac needed to move on in order for everyone who knew Hip-Hop to truly appreciate her for what she brought to the world … That’s why I’m going to stick by her side hoping that the madness stops. ’Cause who I’m talking about ya’ll … is Hip-Hop!

This has been another Alejandro presentation.

“Do you ask a Dolphin how it swims, or an eagle how it flies … That’s right you don’t! Because that’s what they were made to do!” — Willy Wonka