Number Two Read Online Free PDF Page B

August, and maybe September if you’re lucky. Truthfully, they may just be June to August. Okay, just August.) I actually enjoyed mowing the lawn because I would throw on the foam-covered headphones, slap a tape into the Walkman, and groove out to some of the hottest hip hop sounds of the day. This being the late ’80s and early ’90s, that would include such seminal releases as Big Daddy Kane’s It’s a Big Daddy Thing ;Digital Underground’s Humpty Dance ; Public Enemy’s It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back and Fear of a Black Planet ;A Tribe Called Quest’s The Low End Theory ;N.W.A’s Straight Outta Compton and Efil4zaggin ;and Beastie Boys rivals 3rd Bass’s The Cactus Album. I was into hip hop at an early enough age to haveregularly listened to MC Hammer before “You Can’t Touch This” (the Let’s Get It Started album) and Sir Mix-a-Lot before “Baby Got Back” (the Swass album).
    When it comes to hip hop’s all-time greatest MCs, I’m often disheartened to see Big Daddy Kane fail to get mentioned with regularity. Maybe it’s because he simply faded out of the spotlight. I was somewhat disappointed in Kane’s It’s a Big Daddy Thing follow-up, Taste of Chocolate ,but there was one hilarious song on the new album called “Big Daddy vs. Dolemite” where Kane traded increasingly profane barbs with the ’70s era Blaxploitation comedian. The song was so foul that it shocked even me—and I was listening regularly to Andrew Dice Clay at the time. I once made the mistake of forgetting to eject the tape out of the deck in my father’s 1990 Chevy Silverado, which we used to deliver prescriptions to the local nursing homes in town. When he drove home that night he got into the truck, turned the key, and at full volume heard Dolemite say something about wanting to take out his shiny dick and tear up some lady’s old grey ass. I can just imagine how shocked and borderline frightened he was after a day of counting pills and dispensing advice about enemas. My father never really paid attention to the music I was listening to. He didn’t seem to listen to music at all except for perhaps the soundtrack to Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat .So I was seriously taken aback when Dad stormed into the house that evening shouting, “What the heck is that music you were listening to in the truck? Pretty foul!” He was not amused. I didn’t even know what he was referring to until the word “Dolemite” was uttered. The situation could have been a lot worse—I mean, I could have left a 2 Live Crew album in the truck.
    2 Live Crew was a four-person group started by Miami impresario Luther Campbell that made waves with their pornographic rhymesas opposed to the gangster rap world created and cultivated by the likes of N.W.A. Their entire debut album, As Nasty as They Wanna Be ,was like an audiobook for an African-American pornographic film set to programmed drum beats. Their huge debut single, “Me So Horny,”was an exercise in nuance and subtlety. Naturally, I was a big fan. So much so that when my friends and I got word that 2 Live Crew was opening for Tone Loc at the Dinwoodie Bar at the University of Alberta, I begged my father to drive us all in to see it. Amazingly, he agreed.
    The Dinwoodie was not a regular concert venue for the likes of my friends. We had pretty much been shackled to Northlands Coliseum where the Edmonton Oilers played. That’s where Edmonton hosted stars of the day like Poison, Bon Jovi, Skid Row, and yes, Janet Jackson, who busted out some serious moves in a Martin Gelinas Edmonton Oilers jersey on her Control tour.
    The Dinwoodie was an altogether different venue. It was for all intents and purposes a bar with a performance stage that often hosted improv comedy shows. The bar did host a few concerts from up-and-coming indie rock bands and Canadian acts,