1994, my freshman year of high school. Hip hop had recently turned super gangster, but as a teenager on the fringe of becoming a young man, I already had dreams of partaking in the hip-hop culture in any way that I could find to help sustain the fullness of the culture. It was right around this time that a homeboy laced me with a DJ Baby G mixtape entitled Bomb-Ass Mixtape 2, and my mind was blown. I knew a handful of things instantly : I needed turntables and a mixer ASAP, there has to be a Bomb-Ass Mixtape 1 in existence in order for there to be a part 2, and I needed to find out where I could cop these mixtapes and records. Some pavement work resulted in the discovery of Alien Records (then on 15th street), and the rest was history. A journey that I am still taking part in was put in motion. Here we are, almost 25 years later, and these tapes still sound wonderful. DJ Baby G still gets down behind the ones and twos. And hip hop is bigger than any of us could have imagined.
-chief















