Forays into underground hip-hop were frequent during my youth; my older sister loved it, and thus my musical world consisted mostly of the aforementioned genre. In short, I’d committed every lyric on A Tribe Called Quest’s Midnight Marauders to memory before I’d ever heard of The Beatles.

I was 12 when Camp Lo released Uptown Saturday Night. I recall the oh-so-catchy track “Luchini AKA This Is It” blaring from my boom box and thinking three things to myself:

1. Wow.
2. What the hell are they saying?
3. I don’t care that I can’t understand them; I want more.

I had no idea what the words meant, only that they sounded perfect strung together as such, and when I thought about it further, I couldn’t imagine better sounds coming out of the rappers’ mouths. Honestly, what could my pre-adolescent mind dream up to replace “Cassanova brown levitatin’ jiggy in da shiggy’s / In la hotta Car 54 chasin’ diamond runners?” Nothing, that’s what, and I didn’t dare sing along. How could I?

Instead I went with it. I dreamt of Luchini pouring from the sky, whatever it was. I wanted it to be something delicious, cooler than hot cocoa, less sticky than lemonade. Furthermore, according to Camp Lo, Luchini would make me rich, which to my former 12-year-old self meant a boxed set of Star Trek: The Next Generation. In fact, it still does. All I knew was that Geechi Suede and Sonny Cheeba were sipping Amaretto, and that there was probably good reason my requests to follow suit kept falling on deaf ears.

That didn’t keep me from having fun, though. While my peers awkwardly slow-danced one-foot apart to Keith Sweat at school functions, I skateboarded and ollied to cats who were self-proclaimed “magnets to moolah.” And I felt cool. Hella cool.

Ten years later I’m in a band, I have a girlfriend, and my scholastic stresses will be no more in two weeks’ time. I’m getting ready to move out of my apartment of three years, and I must admit that I have it pretty darn good. While attempting to organize my belongings, I stumbled upon my skateboard, helmet, and a flashback. I thought to myself, “This is it. Luchini is pouring from the skies.”

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