Hey Mr DJ.....

If you had to choose 12 songs today that would represent the soundtrack of your life what would they be.  I thought about that today and I realized that music has been such a huge part of my life that I could not find just 12 songs.  I remember Mary J. Blige's My Life album. I still look in the albums linear notes for my name because I swear i could have co-wrote all those songs.  I just knew that "the sound of the rain, against my window pane..was slowly driving me insane!!" 

Another season that I remember was when Nas dropped Illmatic--from the cover with the little boy on the stoop in the projects, to songs like It Ain't Hard to Tell, The World is Yours and one of the best N.Y. anthems (sorry Jay-Z) N.Y State of Mind, that CD stayed in my DiscMan (not to be confused with a WalkMan).

I was not all hip hop though, I was so excited when the Neo-Soul genre crept on the scene.  Lauryn Hill, Erykah Badu, Jill Scott, Angie Stone, Musiq Soulchild, Anthony Hamilton and countless others allowed my generation to create that basement party, lights out, slow grind in the corner atmosphere that would be on mix tapes for years to come.



I also remember when a song in a movie would send you straight to the music store to get the CD.  Remember Boomerang?  Love Shoulda Brought You Home was the cut.  How about Waiting to Exhale, woman everywhere decided that they were "Not Gone Cry" and were "Shoop Shoop Shoopin" all over the place.  Another great movie soundtrack was the Love and Basketball soundtrack.  Meshell Ndegeocello did the thing with "Fool of Me"!  But with all those listed, I have yet to mention one of my favorite movie soundtracks--Brown Sugar! 'Nuf Said!

It is so amazing how much music is part of my life.  I remember the first time I heard Cold Play perform "Yellow", I never looked at a star the same again.  Take a moment today to remember the music that has shaped your life, the songs that got you through and the anthems that were playing when you were tearing things up.  Life is a journey full of twists and turns, valleys and mountains.

The list does not stop where I end, up to this point in my life, I have seen a lot of great artist come and unfortunately go...Tupac, Biggie, Phyllis Hyman, Marvin Gaye, Luther Vandross, Donny Hathaway and more recently artists like Teddy Pendergrass and Guru  There are no guarantees as to how things are going to turn out but I promise you one thing, someone has wrote a song about it and it is waiting to be added to your soundtrack.