http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-O6-Pvi27o

In the late 90's, I exchanged tapes with this kid in Reno, Nevada. I think I met him in an AOL chatroom for hip-hop or something. His nom de plum was Diatomaceous. He's probably the reason why I ever heard of people like Sixtoo, Living Legends, Scienz of Life, and Siah (... that is until I heard of Sandbox Automatic).

Tangent: Do you remember Sandbox Automatic, and how they used to write great descriptions for their new releases? I guess that's kind of the direction that blogs operate under now.

Back to the story: So this kid that goes by the name of Diatomaceous, sends me this tape that has this one particular song that blew my mind. It was by a rapper named Buck 65, and the track sounded like nothing I ever heard before. It was called "Wildlife".

As a product of a fairly conservative household, I listened to a lot of my first cd's and tapes with headphones. Regardless of that reason, I probably would have still listened to Buck 65 in headphones, because of some symbolic need for self-preservation or to keep myself untamed from compromising criticisms. To this day, I play this song for people, and they think its simply wack or weird. Oh well. It is called the Wildlife. And in a sense, we are our own elected council of nature conservation.

-Carryoutreassessment