"Past Flavas"

It's life's little treasures that bring a cheese grin to my face. At least twice a day, I visit my trusty online domains for downloadable albums, hoping to either see something new that wets my whistle, music wise, or unearth some old hip hop gem. The latter just happened, as I've happened across Ali Vegas' unreleased Generation Gap album. And boy, does it have my nostalgia in high gear.

For those who don't know, Vegas was a (well, he still drops an occasional mixtape, so "is" may be more fitting, but his days have passed in my eyes, so "was" it is...how's that for a tongue-twister, eh?) teenage Nas-light back in the late '90s or so. Flow sounded like an Illmatic-era Nasir, without the same level of lyrical panache, of course. But what made his pseudo-Nasty Nas sounds so endearing to me was how he even rapped over beats that sounded like DJ Premier-light, Pete Rock-light, Large Professor-light, etc.....and listening to Generation Gap as I type this up, song after song is bringing me back to the days when I'd stay up 'til about 1am every school night back in late-grammar/all-of-high school, recording songs off the radio by holding down the Play and Record buttons on my stereo's tapedeck. Songs like "Queens," "It Ain't Hard to Tell," "The Specialist," and "One World" really have me in that teenage zone again. Thank God for it, too. Oh, and Vegas' "Narcotics" remains one of my all-time favorite songs, I remember how I'd play it nonstop in the good ol Arthur Buick whip, back when my tape deck actually worked.

I was pretty crafty, too, having never been caught by my parents. See, the trick was, I'd hook up some headphones to the stereo, so I could record the tunes at full volume and it wouldn't be waking the neighbors up. And just for good measure, I'd put the one headphone which wasn't placed in my eardrum under a pillow, totally covering my tracks.

I must have over 100 or so cassette tapes full of classic hip hop back at my parents house, stashed away in the attic somewhere, immersed in dust and forgotten memories. This Ali Vegas album has me wishing I could time travel back to when Sunday nights on Hot 97 FM consisted of Pete Rock & Marley Marl's "Future Flavas" show at 10pm, followed at 11pm by Stretch Armstrong's two-hour extravaganzae of underground rap nirvana. I can still hear those drops: "Lay some treeeats on usssssss....."

I've frequently voiced my disinterest and disgust with the majority of modern-day rap, so I won't do it again. But today, I've realize that, as long as forgotten gems such as Ali Vegas are still accessible via the Internet, I'll never totally stop loving H.E.R.

It's a rocky affair, but one I wouldn't give up for anything else.