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Remember The Shop Boyz

Totally dude!

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Remember The Shop Boyz
Hip Hop Post

So as many of you know, throughout the course of history, many of those who have disclosed government secrets to the general public have been hushed or even vaporized from the surface of our society.

You all may know me as a carefree, impartial kind of guy who knows that stirring the pot only displaces the settled pieces at the bottom into every spoonful of life. But it is time to hide no longer behind the shadows of the vast knowledge I have been tormented by for the past decade or so.

Even in this preamble, I understand that I put my life at risk, so I will need your support in numbers so that this following information can find its own legs, as to raise questions when my inevitable disappearance occurs.

Alright ... here it is:

Try to recall the summer of 2007. For me, I was only a year fresh from moving to Tennessee. It was around this time that my appreciation for hip-hop really began to grow exponentially. Anyone who lives in the middle Tennessee area knows that 101.1 The Beat Jamz is the go-to hip-hop and R & B station. My contemporaries and I were all still in middle school at the time, when artists such as MIMS, Jibbs, and V.I.C had a stronghold on mainstream hip-hop. It seemed like every time the temperature rose, there was a hot new catchy yet short-lived song dominating the airwaves.

One of the most popular songs in the same vein as the aforementioned was from American hip hop group Shop Boyz, who released the rock-influenced single entitled "Party Like a Rockstar" from their debut album "Rockstar Mentality."

I know, you can hear the beginning of the song in your head.


In case you need a refresher.

The guitar strumming infused with the stock sounds from FL Studio that were characteristic of one-hit wonders at the time, along with the cartoon-y flows and ad-libs. Just another Southern rap song that was being exploited for record label profit, right?

That's what I thought.

You see, being somewhat of an art snob, I pride myself in the ability to sense otherworldly characteristics in an artist. When I first heard the fresh-faced English musician who would later be known as Ziggy Stardust back in 1967, I knew there was an approach to his musical sentiments that illustrated an outsider's perspective looking in, as if an alien actually wrote and performed the music, and the stage counterparts were a sort of Milli Vanilli.

Like many people who bear the burden of knowledge so immense that it resembles a hoax, I've kept the information behind sealed lips for fear of the public mishandling the information by way of mockery and scoffing disbelief, or with such gravity that it would result in a paradigm shift, one that would only be corrected by my sudden disappearance of "accidental suicide" (note all of our music legends that have passed away this year, not to say that I am in their ranks by any means).

It wasn't until I was on a subway train in New York City with my friend (for the sake of Anonymity, I will call him "A") overheard something that was important to not only music, but the perception of the fictional figures that we adore in pop culture, the very fabric of the world we live in as a whole. "A" and I had just finished tracking a short musical project that was to be delivered to an A & R to be used as reference tracks for a label's star roster. Between the recording studio and the main offices of that building, was 25 or so blocks. So we took the subway, naturally, as we were in New York City.

Packed shoulder to shoulder as usual, it was a year after the Shop Boyz's record was released. In a city like New York, where the purity of the hip-hop art form was deemed truer than the stereotypical rudimentary stylings of Southern hip-hop, even a song that crossed over to the pop world, landing on stations such as 107.5 in my hometown of Nashville, would rarely see play in the birthplace of hip-hop. This is an important thing to note, because the casual and candid nature of a subway conversation has the ability to weave between the intimate and guarded, to the impartial and uncaring, like a single missed note tucked behind a string of musical brilliance.

It couldn't have been coincidence that on that day we were seated next to two sharply yet plainly dressed corporate looking fellows who were discussing

Look ... however I present this information, there will be many people who doubt me.

The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were real. Spun into a fictional series and gaining a cult following could do no wrong in keeping the real-life figures from being outed. Even if you saw a real Ninja Turtle while delivering pizza in Brooklyn as the sun came down, you would just think "Crazy New Yorkers, it's why I love this place!" The Shop Boyz's were just a musical side-project for the Ninja Turtles, first uploaded to Myspace as a satire piece about cultural appropriation, the watering down of hip-hop, and the sure rise of social media to launch careers. It was merely a test of bandwidth test from the sewers that brought us that song.

When you really think about it, it's much more rational than proposed. If you were to research the Shop Boyz, you'll have a difficult time finding high resolution photos of the group. The cover art for their songs do not contain a shred of patience in them. The strength is in the exaggerated cadences and vocal style (listening to the song now, you can definitely hear Michelangelo in the background, can't you? See?) The music videos are nothing more than a few paid actors, along with the same kind of paid actors you'll see in any standard rap video. (obscured by sunglasses most of the time, to protect their identities in case of something like you're reading right now happens) It's brilliant, really. Furthermore, it's not even human.

"T-t-t-totally duuude!"

I fear that my prolonging and over-hesitancy has diluted the strength of the truth, and if that is the case, at least one day I will retire from this life free of such power ricocheting inside my earthly vessel. I am free to part this earth now, but I won't. Just as the Teenage Mutant Ninja turtles are free from their teenage years, the world is now free to ask questions.

It's not just about this one piece of truth. It's about all of the others, scattered between our daily obligations and seemingly coincidental distractions that occur during our most intense moments of focus. We need to listen more, and we need to realize that things certainly are stranger than fiction, if we remain as open as a manhole on a busy street.

Cowabunga dudes.

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This article has not been reviewed by Odyssey HQ and solely reflects the ideas and opinions of the creator.
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