Anthony Grant On Music And Growing Up In The '80s.

Most days I’d play outside until the sun went down. My friends and I would find things to keep ourselves occupied throughout the day. The Bronx in the 80’s was wonderful, difficult, and at times, downright dangerous but somehow us kids knew how to steer clear of trouble. That’s not to say we didn’t make our own trouble on occasions.

In the summer the streets were always action packed. That smell was definitely coming from the piles of garbage that may or may not get picked up on their scheduled days. That smell was compounded by every car puffing exhaust into the air. The sounds were layered with kids playing, that one lady who yells at everyone and everything, and the older kids always blasting their boombox at the top of the block.

Even though we weren’t “supposed” to be up there—mainly because we were annoying, we would find a way to just hang around. My friends all had older siblings that were up at the top of the block so we had a flimsy excuse to be around. We’d watch them practice their breakin’ routines. The cardboard would be drenched in sweat, the skid marks from shell tops, and sprinkled with tobacco and weed when it would fall out of someone’s pockets.

Us little “muthafuckas” (as we were called) couldn’t breakdance for shit. The muscle bound kid would make us get off the cardboard and give us quarters to go buy Icees. We’d go, but we always found our way back to the top of the block to be annoying.

The music made the summers come to life. My first crushes were Blondie and Sade. White Lines had such an insane baseline. I’d never heard anything like it at the time. It’s one of the first songs that made me understand that songs had deeper meanings beyond the words I could hear. It also had this duality where it was clearly about a popular drug but it was also the soundtrack to a time where young men were dying by the dozens and no one was completely sure why.

Whodini’s FRIENDS was one of my favorites. I’d listen to WBLS and KISS with my finger hovering over the record button. I was making mixtapes before I really knew what I was doing. I tried like hell to learn the words to UTFO’s ROXANNE ROXANNE… I was not successful. Also the Roxanne Wars didn’t help. There were dozens of copycat responses to that hit. Late night, it was still fun to hear them all when Red Alert would drop’em on us.

During those early summers in the 80’s us kids played stick ball, threw ninja stars (which we shouldn’t have had access to), blasted our mixtapes, and did our best to process the workld around us. By ’87, ‘88 and ’89, the music changed and so did our crew.

We all ended up in different middle schools. Our short walk to elementary school as a crew became longer walks on different individual paths. We weren’t out on the block as much because school was more demanding, or at least our parents were making damn sure we did our school work first.

Those last summers were still driven by music. MARRS’ PUMP UP THE VOLUME, Erik B and Rakim’s PAID IN FULL, Biz Markie’s MAKE THE MUSIC WITH YOUR MOUTH, and, of course, the inescapable IT TAKES TWO by Rob Base & DJ EZ Rock made it onto the golden Maxell cassette tapes I’d “acquire” from Mom’s job.

The music was changing. It was more aggressive and more vivid. Us kids were changing too. Some of the kids from the crew go mixed up with drug dealers. Some got pregnant far too early. Some of us moved away unceremoniously—sometimes not even knowing it until the moving trucks showed up.

I was practically raised with Hip Hop, R&B, New Wave, and the early sounds that would later be known, to me, as House. While the 80’s had a bittersweet end, the 90’s had its own twist on those genres that would shape my summers as well. But as Sade says, “It’s never as good as the first time.

| Anthony Grant is a designer and artist.