1989 came around which means I was in the 3rd grade. The rap music that dropped in ’88 opened my mind to different walks of life which gave me a really good foundation of who I would become today. Outside of the rap world, collegiate and professional sports were really good in ’89. In college hoops you had the Runnin’ Rebels from UNLV smashing people on the court with a swagger that hadn’t been seen before. Off the court, Tark would be on edge just gnawing on that white towel. In the NBA you had the Jordan, Magic, Bird, Hakeem, Clyde, Isiah, Stockton, Malone, Dominique, Barkley and Ewing era. Just read that back a few times and realize that everybody there was in their prime. I probably missed a few too. The Bad Boys from Detroit were scrapping with everybody on their way to back-to-back titles just before Jordan and the Bulls would dominate the next decade. Speaking of Jordan, does it get much better than his playoff game winner in ‘89 over Craig Ehlo? The Bulls were the underdog and on the road in the final game of the series. Down 1 with 3 seconds left….. Jordan already had 42 in the game but proceeds to work to receive the inbounds pass, drive to his left to the free throw line and just hang in the air for what seemed like forever and drop the ultimate dagger with that jumper. And the celebration?!?!!? Does it get any better than this? The flying fist pump is legendary. Game over, series over on the road. Jordan.
In the NFL, Joe Montana and the Niners were dominating and beat John Elway’s Broncos in the Superbowl. Let me actually rephrase that right there… The Niners ABSOLUTELY SMASHED the Broncos in the Superbowl. I was a big Elway and Broncos fan back then and I remember how devastated I was after that horrific loss. In fact, I cried myself to sleep before the game ended and took what was probably a 3 hour nap on the family couch. Hit the pic below where you can see your boy was nice with the gear. And before I hear it about repping the Broncos, it’s alright. I was simply a fan of good players back then. Exactly how it is now with the Chargers having bolted for LA recently. Back to 1989 in the NFL, you had a young Detroit Lions rookie by the name of Barry Sanders turning 5 yard losses into long runs and a dynamic QB named Randall Cunningham revolutionizing the quarterback position and paving the way for the types of creative QB’s you see all over the league today. Randall would scramble outside the pocket avoiding would be sacks for a loss and then jump and huck the ball in the air to a receiver down field. Nobody was doing this! Then Randall could punt really well. I’m talking like, Reggie Roby good. That’s a baller move that never gets talked about. We always get to see that same video of Andy Reid doing punt, pass, kick as a monstrous 12 year old beasting but can’t we get a 91 yard Randall Cunningham punt highlight every few years? Oh yeah, and in case you were wondering, 9 year old Timmy weighed about 25 pounds and was a mix of Randall and Barry on the football field with the swagger of Ickey Woods. Every Wednesday at elementary school was a half day which meant we were hitting up the park for some tackle football every week after school. We lived for this!!! All the homies each week playing ball. Doesn’t get much better than that!
Baseball was and has always been my main sport. Not even me, it was our family’s sport. In ’89, Ken Griffey Jr. aka The Kid made his debut and stood out as a potential 5-tool player. You just knew he was special when you saw him. Speaking of special, Bo Jackson was exactly that for the Royals. That Bo poster was a must buy and you know we had it on the walls at the pad. The A’s beat the Giants in the World Series (aka the Battle of the Bay) and any sports fan around that time will remember where they were when that Earthquake hit. Crazy stuff to see if all go down on live TV where we were watching as a family on our couch. The A’s team, from top-to-bottom, was exactly what you wanted in a baseball squad. Rickey, Big Mac, Canseco, Carney Lansford, Dave Stewart and Eck with a great supporting cast and Larussa at the helm. You had several mega superstars on that team and collectively it was just unfair to have all that talent on the same squad. Aside from the A’s, Vince Coleman and Tim Raines swiped a ton of bags to quietly match Rickey on the basepaths, Kevin Mitchell had a monster MVP season for the Giants and Kirby Puckett and Tony Gwynn won batting crowns in their respective leagues. And don’t forget that ’89 also saw the debuts of Ricky Vaughn, Willie Mays Hayes and Pedro Cerrano for the Indians.
Over at our household, I was getting ready for my first rap performance in front of a live audience. I had rehearsed in front of the mirror in my bedroom with the door shut for a long time so in my mind I was ready to open doors to a bigger venue. At the young age of 9, I had the charisma and style where I felt that nobody could touch me on the mic. My radio was freshly loaded up with batteries which meant I could go without the radio’s power cord to the main stage to press play on my cassette. My tape was all queued up where I needed it to be and my gear was on point so I brought all that confidence out of my room and strolled down those stairs to the lower level of our house. My dad liked to watch TV on the couch down by the garage in what we called the blue & green room because of the blue and green shag carpet. By the way, my parents’ carpet game was on another level. Yellow and brown carpet upstairs and then the blue & green plush carpeting downstairs. And yes, the carpet absolutely matched the drapes. Down where my dad was this afternoon were his precious mint condition million piece model ships as well as my parents’ antique heavy wooden coffee table. When in this room, you had to really watch what you were doing so that you didn’t break or damage anything. So on this particular late afternoon, my dad was there resting watching TV and probably trying to get some peace and quiet from the fam. Lil Timmy was oblivious to this all and had no idea how to pick up on these social queues. As I get older I have learned to appreciate my alone time but as a 9 year old I just wanted attention. On this day, I walked with the family Panasonic tape deck in hand and proceeded to block my dad’s view of his Andy Griffith Show reruns. Speaking of the Andy Griffith Show, I think a rap song sampling that iconic whistle in today’s age would be an absolute banger. I’m sure Quavo is reading this so Huncho, holler at Metro Boomin right now and let’s get in the studio. I got 5 on that Earle Hagen sample clearance and have some fire on deck. That’s the Biggest Alley Oop right there kid. Instant banger.
Safe to say, in ’89 my dad wasn’t a fan of rap music and how could he be? In 1989 you had NWA all over the nightly news for the media hoopla from “F*ck the Police”. The new music genre called “Gangster Rap” was a threat to our society and especially all of us white kids in the suburbs. To quickly summarize, white America hated rap music and the media loved to cover the story. This means my mom and dad were absorbing content nightly about the ills of rap music. Well…. the problem here was that their 9 year old boy absolutely loved rap music but had to keep his love hidden. I had caught the rap bug at a very young age and rap, along with sports, were truly my main passions as a youngster. While my brother was turning into a stud baseball player every Saturday in Little League, I was secretly recording Yo MTV Raps! on the family VCR and trying to emulate my rap idols with each week’s episode. From the clothes they wore to the lyrics they rapped I wanted to grow up to be one of them. So it was only right that my debut rap performance would occur right in front of my dad with the strong Midwest roots and a Navy background. The song? “No More ?’s” from Eazy E. To be more specific, it was the 2nd verse of “No More ?’s” and that little detail is very important in this story. Below are the lyrics from that verse.
We’re going back 30 years with this memory and I can still vividly remember the look on my dad’s face from that Saturday afternoon. I lip-synced Eazy’s entire 2nd verse to him about robbing a house when nobody was home. I was 9 years old and knew every single word and acted out every single rhyme. A few bars into my performance it was apparent that home robberies weren’t my dad’s favorite subject matter in music. I somehow made my way through the verse without getting my radio kicked across the room which I think is a real accomplishment. When I stopped the tape before the 3rd verse my dad sat up on the couch with steam coming out of his ears and snarled, “WHO GAVE YOU THIS?!” I don’t remember if I snitched on my big bro that afternoon but I probably did because I didn’t want to feel the wrath of my pops. And my dad should have been pissed and reacted the right way! How could I think that my little concert was alright? My little nephew is around the age I was in this story and if I heard him rapping about home robberies I personally would shove a bar of soap in his mouth. Speaking of soap in the mouth, is there a better punishment for kids with foul mouths? I’m not even a parent yet but know that will for sure be in the arsenal if my wife and I have kids. Back to my first rap performance, other than the obvious trouble I was in as a result of my actions, the preparation for my debut verse along with the execution helped put me on the map in the gangster rap world. It also taught me how powerful rap music could be in the right context.
For the record, that 2nd verse from “No More ?’s” didn’t have any bad words. My parents have to give me some credit for being resourceful enough to find the one verse in gangsta rap at that time that didn’t have a cuss word. Do you know how hard it is to find good rap without any cussing?! Well I did and in my mind, I wasn’t breaking any rules with my parents because the verse was not only fresh but clean too.
If you have young kids and are a fan of old school rap music from the 80’s and 90’s, check out my clean rap playlist on Spotify which can be found via the music page of my blog under the title CLEAN RAP MUSIC. I’ve listened to thousands of hours of classic rap music over the years to finally curate a good rap playlist without bad words that you can listen to in your car on the way to take your kid(s) to soccer practice. You could even throw it on at work on a Friday afternoon at the office. No more Will Smith Pandora radio for those edited rap music summer pool parties yo! Respect the classics!
