Downstate at Central Illinois. My folks were extremely focused on making sure my brothers and I listened to dusties (70’s and 80’s R&B) and gospel since it simply wasn’t played in our region (on a clear sky, which was rare you could get Magic 108 out of St. Louis, but when we were at my grandparents it was V103 playing dusties for weekends). You either had pop, rock, oldies and country (oddly enough our pop stations never played NKOTB). New Jack my Pops had this weird beef with. So groups like Boyz II Men, Bel Biv Devoe, Jodeci were no good despite being the then new sound but later era EWF, Commodores, Rick James and Kool and the Gang were alright.

Any rap I heard was through my parents who mostly abhorred it (this despite my Pops owning pre-Cop K—— removal of Body Count), the only places to listen to it were at places like my end of school year picnic (near the end of the year my first school would end classes early and take us to the south of Downtown park since we didn’t necessarily have a playground outside of asphalt), my older brother (born in ‘76) was into Michael and only Michael.

It’s why hearing something like say Wu-Tang’s Enter the 36th Chamber or Sneaker Pimps’ Becoming X became this dangerous thing since for me they weren’t playing in town or at home but were something I had find on my own.