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  • » Name: Amanda Bassa
  • » Location: VA
  • » Member Since: 09/21/07
  • » Bio: student, future change maker, and everything you wouldn't expect me to be.
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The Undisputed Truth

All I See Turns to Brown


February 25, 2008 | Tags: none

It was a cold, February night when one of the friendliest people I ever encountered in life was taken away. I won’t go so far to say that he was ever a great friend of mine – we weren’t that close or anything. See, I had the (dis)pleasure of going to a high school with a reputation for diversity. It sounded great on the surface, and the word was a great media tool, but the students knew it didn’t really go down like that. Every little racial clique pretty much kept to themselves, so there wasn’t a lot of cultural mixing going on. Just a nice little façade that the faculty liked to brag about (although that changed when they had to start breaking up gang fights that undoubtedly were racially segregated).  I, being mixed and all, was always presented with a bit of an identity crisis. The Arabs found me too non-Arab for their liking (except the guys…hm, go figure), and the white people found me too non-white for their liking (especially that preppy Abercrombie jock crowd. I may have been a cheerleader, but there was no way in hell I was down with that crowd). So I just kind of hopped between cliques befriending anybody who I found to be cool.

One of these people was this guy Aaron. I had known him from middle school, so I was a bit familiar with him anyway. But to this day, only one truly vivid memory of Aaron remains in my brain. I had some kind of honors Biology class that I couldn’t stand at all. It was full of that uppity prep crowd, and I stuck out like a delinquent sore thumb*. Before I got into a little (ok, large) verbal squabble with one of my many prepster enemies and got a permanent seat in the front of the room, I sat directly across from Aaron (the room was laid out so the seats were in a circle, so I faced him the whole class). And I remember him sitting there in his black Metallica shirt, long hair hanging, with the most sincere smile on his face. You couldn’t not smile back at him – it was one of those truly contagious smiles. On the surface he looked nothing like the kind of guy you’d expect a hip hop addict cheerleader to associate with, but that was one of the cool things about him. He’d hold a hand out to anybody that needed it, and that’s part of the reason I feel his death hit the local community so hard.

On February 25, 2006, Aaron was shot and killed by an off duty police officer. He was 18 years old, an Eagle Scout, and in his first year of college. Somebody you’d never expect something like that to happen to. I remember hearing that at the funeral so many people turned out that they couldn’t fit in the church, and the overflow was directed into another church nearby where people could watch the service live on TV. He had just simply touched that many lives. And perhaps the thing that touched me the most about Aaron was his inclination towards all things having to do with music.

Aaron would have made an excellent producer of rap music, as crazy as it sounds. Just a post or two ago I mentioned sampling. See, rap samples sounds from so many various genres of music. Without previous forms of music like soul, rock, reggae, p-funk, jazz, classical, etc., what would rap be? Aaron knew so much about so many different kinds of music (although rock was his obvious favorite), and I wish he had been able to be around longer so that I could have learned more from him. If you know somebody like that in your life, learn what you can from them while you still have the chance. You never know when that opportunity will be taken from you. And anybody looking to get into rap, take a lesson from Aaron and expand your musical knowledge in all aspects. That will help you tremendously. Or even if you just have nothing better to do with your time – learn about other forms of music. You’ll amazed at how different rap sounds to you when you recognize the samples a particular song utilizes, or relate the message from the original sample to that of the song that uses it. Open your mind.

And that’s how I’ll choose to remember Aaron. With the smile on his face, his Metallica shirt, and his chucks on his feet – a reminder to never limit myself. A reminder to always give people a chance. A reminder to open my mind.



To honor that t-shirt and the guy who wore it, I present to you my favorite Metallica song, “Enter Sandman”. Turn it up to 10 and go nuts.

 


This has to do with the title of this post which you guys seem to love taking ever-so-seriously. It may not make sense to you, but it does to me, dammit. Classic song, and so much better than Diddy’s version.






*I never took another honors class in my life after that year. Yeah, it was that bad. And even without those damn honors/AP/IB classes I still turned out fine. So for all you kids still in high school, don't believe that bullshit that the administration and your PTA-type parents feed you about how those classes will help you get into college or any of that. You're better off taking "regular people" classes and getting better grades with less stress, than busting your ass to learn no more than anybody else will, only to get a shittier grade. Not to mention you socially alienate yourself on all sorts of levels when you take classes like that. Save yourself, seriously.


The views and opinions expressed in this blog are those of the writer and not necessarily those of HipHopDX.com or Cheri Media Group.

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