Anemoia
“I miss not knowing fucking anything.”
When I first started listening to music, really listening to music, I wanted to hear every song ever. I wanted to know who it was by, where that artist was from, what album that song came from, every lyric of every verse. And it seemed possible. Every song was in my phone, conveniently compiled into playlists or radio stations on streaming services. I could click on the artist’s profile and read their biography, peer over their discography, find related artists. I could read every lyric and research the entendres on Genius.com. If I heard a song on the radio or while in a store, I could hold my phone up to the music and learn all of these facts in seconds. I felt privileged to have all of this information within my reach, without even extending my hand to its full potential.
With everything available to me, I had no idea what I was missing. I never considered a world where knowledge was to be created rather than obtained. That is, until the duo of Shea Serrano and Brandon “Jinx” Jenkins, co-hosts of the podcast No Skips, made being totally arrogant sound impossibly fun. The podcast, dedicated to hip-hop’s most un-skippable albums spanning decades in releases, is arranged in categories that evaluate the entire scope of an album’s time, place, and legacy. This includes, but is surely not limited to, amicable debates about the best song, acknowledgements of flagrant material from the artist, and the best “hard as fuck” moments on the album. Unintentionally, the podcast competes with each classic album in entertainment value. It is when the hosts abandon this structure where each respective album is most adequately praised. It is the distinct memories and existential revelations that Shea and Jinx share with listeners that give context to an album’s significance. It’s the love Jinx developed for Lauryn Hill’s sultry vocals while listening to The Miseducation through the wall that neighbored his older sister’s room. It’s Shea sharing his grieving process after losing his grandmother, an internal frustration that only Kid Cudi’s “Soundtrack 2 My Life” could uncover. These anecdotes contextualize these albums in the lives of a listener, each memory further evidencing the legacies of undoubtedly classic music.
Of course, not every listener is going to have the same sentimental experiences with a certain album or piece of music to create these memories. For me, it’s the less personal experiences the hosts share that make me envy them most. They reminisce on running down to the local record store to purchase music without having heard a lead single, a practice almost unheard of among today’s consumers. Inviting friends over to listen to new tapes to make sure you were interpreting the lyrics correctly. Burning albums onto CD’s and selling them to classmates at school. I know nothing about these extracurricular experiences with music; I get my music from Apple Music every Friday; I read opinions on new music from people on social media rather than share thoughts with others in person; the only thing I ever sold at school was my soul to the system.
I regret to inform you that I haven’t accomplished my goal of hearing every song ever. Truth be told, I was never really close. Jinx and Shea played a role in this self-realization — there is a fair amount of widely considered classic albums they have covered on No Skips that, prior to their episode premiering, I had not listened to. It only took 3 episodes of the show for me to encounter a foreign album: Lil Kim’s Hardcore. In anticipation for the episode, I listened to the album, taking myself one step closer to completing my fool’s mission. (I’m going to do it one day. I’m telling you right now, I’ll be able to perform every song in history if you give me long enough. Wait on it.) In listening to the subsequent podcast, I realized that my preemptive listen was, to an extent, useless.
Before I pressed play on Hardcore, I Googled Lil Kim and skimmed through reviews of her music. I had the lyrics of each song on display while I was listening. If I didn’t understand a bar or a reference, I would pause the album and check annotations on Genius. I never thought there was a wrong way to listen to an album. Within 20 minutes of the podcast, it was clear I wasn’t doing it right.
“It makes me think of a couple things,” Jinx says when referencing the first time he heard Hardcore. “One, how you had to leave the house to do anything. If you wanted to hear music…buy music…watch movies…you had to leave your crib…You had to interact with other humans along the way.”
Already I’m outcasted. I’ve spent the last two years doing the exact opposite of what Jinx just mentioned. Any kind of media I consumed has been in the house, typically alone, and I haven’t thought a thing about it. But he’s right; there’s something about being able to position a piece of art, a piece of commentary, within the context of others. Shared experiences, even if you keep them to yourself, are always the way to go.
So, I don’t have anyone or any place really to associate some of my favorite works. That’s cool. You want to know what else I’ve never had? This, from Shea:
“The thing that I will never forget about this (album) is being absolutely, incredibly confused when I played the album for the first time and the second time. I kept going back and being like, ‘What am I missing right here?’”
The “here” he’s talking about is the sixth track on Hardcore, “Crush on You”, a remixed track that features Lil’ Cease and The Notorious BIG. The song, which was nominated for Best Song on the podcast, doesn’t include Lil’ Kim at all.
Shea: “You find out later on or as I know now that she was pregnant at the time and was too sick to record…This was 1996–97, you couldn’t just find that information out. You were just sitting there like a fucking idiot trying to find the Lil Kim verse.”
Jinx: “Do you miss that?”
Shea: “I do.”
Jinx: “I miss that feeling of not knowing and then 20 years later being like, ‘Oh, that’s kind of sick, but only because I didn’t know it.”
Shea: “When you have those blanks, its a lot of fun, especially as a music fan, because you can just fill them in with whatever you want. You can just make shit up…I do miss that a lot.”
I’ve never had that type of fun with music. Every lyric is written out for me, every intricacy of an album is on my Twitter timeline. There’s never been any blanks, no real room for interpretation. I just know these things, and if I don’t know, I’ll just as soon learn. In the ‘96-’97 timeline we’re talking about here, even understanding the lyrics provided a different kind of satisfaction. At least it was for Shea. In the Best Line category of the podcast, Jinx and Shea highlight one of Lil’ Kim’s most characteristic quotes: “Rap Pam Grier’s here.”
Shea: “When I heard it the first time I was 15 or 16 years old, I knew who Pam Grier was at that point. It was just so cool to me to hear someone reference another person I knew…like, if you knew who Pam Grier was then you know this is like the coolest person in the world, she was dominant in the movies she was making. It was really neat to hear her pull that card and also for me…we talked about how someone would say something on this album and you wouldn’t know what they were saying. It was cool to be on the other side of that. Like, when I listen to “Straight Outta Compton” or whatever, I don’t understand half of this. But to hear “rap Pam Grier’s here”, I was like ‘Oh, I know who that is and I know the sentiment she is trying to relay right here.”
And then, Jinx brought my FOMO to new heights:
“I miss the feeling of not knowing fucking anything. I miss that so much. I miss hearing one thing and being like, ‘this is the shit I’m gonna repeat,’ and then sometimes not knowing the things that went around it. I was so obsessed with that one thing and then saying something out loud and my parents being like, ‘Woah, what the fuck?’”
I didn’t know what to call the feeling this quote gave me. I was jealous, but I wasn’t sure of what. The love I have for listening to music felt corrupted for some reason, like I’ve been doing it wrong. I had no reason to, but I missed this time. A time when ignorance was truly bliss. I guess that’s called anemoia.
