In 1996, you couldn’t walk two blocks in Morningside Heights without hearing rap or hip-hop. It was the heyday of Bone Thugs-n-Harmony, the summer of “California Love.” Of the three CDs I owned—along with Mariah Carey’s Daydream and TLC’s CrazySexyCool—my favorite was 2Pac’s Me Against the World. I listened to it on repeat when I was alone; something about the syncopation of the rhymes and the density of the lyrics helped anchor me to the ground.
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