Through and through, no doubt about it, 'til the day I'm gone and even then—I'm a hip-hop head.

The beat caught me early, and it was and it wasn't a choice.

The not a choice part: when a track is good it's good—your body knows before you do.

The choice part: it was the early 90s and I was a little shorty scanning the twenty-five cent CDs on offer at a suburban New Jersey garage sale. I pulled two jewel cases from the pile that caught my eye: some shit by Amy Grant and Naughty by Nature's 19NaughtyIII (a banger of a name for an album that came out in '93). You know, the one where Treach is wielding a black chainsaw on the cover.

Holding the selection up to my mom, she took an unfazed look and said sure, sweetie.

The second we were home my turquoise Walkman was out and Amy Grant was in. I couldn’t tell you which album and it doesn’t matter. All her covers blur together: perma-smile, JC Penny modesty, Christian-pop chic. AG and I were destined not to work out.

Tin-producing, cheap-foam headphones on, I pressed play and tried the first song. It was melodic. It was wispy. It was the opposite of coy. I made it through less than half the track and remember a strong feeling washing over me: what the hell is this shit?

I couldn't hit the square stop button, open the Walkman, and swap Amy for Naughty fast enough.

But I did and I hit play and my world was never the same again.

From the first beat drop on track one, to the Shakuhachi flute sample opening of track two (the iconic Hip Hop Hooray), I was done for. My gateway drug, my awakening, my muse—this was what my 10 year old self had been waiting for her whole life.

***

Hip hop and rap—which is to say the full culture package of MCing, DJing, graffiti, breakdancing, fashion, and rhythmic spoken word over a beat—exist through and as the result of the art of remixing. Period.

The act of sampling is theft as love letter—you jack someone else's beat to make something new while tipping your hat to the original. It's gorgeous.

To remix and make new beats is, quite literally, to connect to hip hop's foundational culture of "digging in the crates"—searching through old (and new) records to find unique sounds to sample.

And, here in Paragraph Land, that's exactly what we're doing. Digging through posts like crates of vinyl, finding that one idea that makes you stop scrolling. That unnamable thing that urges you to respond, to flip what's there and build on it. And the coins that come with each remix aren't just currency—they're the head nod of recognition, the passed torch and the yeah, I see you and you're about to see me too.

And while yes, I'm new to the Paragraph platform, there's something about the fact that this freshly rolled out remix feature brought me in. Because now here I am, writing about the garage sale CDs that changed my life and how we all kinda sorta maybe owe how we create—as poets, painters, coders, chefs, innovators, builders—to the culture of hip hop, to those who came before, and to one another.

I don't know if this remixing feature will stick, but that's not the point. The point is that while it's here, we get to throw down with one another in a way that's fresh and throwback and beyond the confines of an algorithm.

I can't fucking wait to see what you create.