The answer is kind of yes to both, but I don’t think my other friends who are major rap enthusiasts see me as a GOD of hip-hop knowledge; we’re just NERDS about it, you know?  I roll with a clique of respected peers, but all of us are invested enough in our own sagacity to get into vicious arguments over the finest points of trivia rather than defer to one another on any but the most clearly defined regions of relative expertise.

Uncle Fester and I get into heated arguments about KRS-ONE almost every time we speak, haha.  Actually one of the main things that bonds the disparate members of Backburner, even more than any artistic commonality, is deep and lifelong enthusiasm for rap.  We all grew up as liner note aficionados, people who looked for clues to everything in the shout outs, in the sample clearance language, in the credits and studio information.

Even Nolely Nole, who turns twenty TODAY, bonds with me by being an intensely broad font of knowledge on the topic of rap from the 1990s.  It’s frightening how thorough of a rap education he packed into his life, beginning as it did the year I bought a SuperNES on paper route money.  He turns me onto bits of history all the time - hell, if not for him, I never would have dug out all the Deadly Venoms albums, and they’re amazing.

In summer 2009, Backburner was on the tour that included all of the planning, beat-picking, and initial recording of Heatwave.  We had dipped into the US for shows in Pittsburgh and Portland, ME, and my homegirl K-L was with us because she got stranded in the states, so in the van was me and her (middle seats), Timbuktu (driving), Chokeules (shotgun), and Fresh Kils (Bernie Lomax’d in the jump seat).

I made some passing reference to how Q-Tip’s verses on “Get It Together” by the Beastie Boys were freestyled, thinking it was a non-controversial statement - because, in my defense? COME ON - and the whole truck ERUPTED in flames!  My dear friends, Choke and Timmy, were at my throat from the front like, “You can’t KNOW it’s a freestyle! Where did you read that? Who says it is?  What PROOF do you have?” and I guess I could have been like “yeah you’re right I don’t know for SURE” but instead I was like “MOTHERFUCKERS LISTEN TO THE SONG HAVE YOU EVER HEARD FREESTYLING BEFORE BECAUSE IT SOUNDS LIKE THAT.”

Kils would wake up from his vegetative state about every forty-five minutes to fan the flames in his inimitable way, just yelling out “OHHHHHH!” or “WHAAAAT?” when someone screamed an insightful remark that was particularly hurtful or personal.  When you looked back at him though he was always asleep like a mean, hairy baby.

In the end, I said something uncalled for and Timmy jerked the wheel in rage and flipped the SUV into a ditch somewhere in the deepest, mistiest woods of New Brunswick.  We lived on the land for months before rescuers found us.  Our Lord-Of-The-Flies-type neo-tribal existence was made livable only by an immediate resolution to never discuss “Get It Together” again (until we were in Halifax and could ask Fester to settle it), strict adherence to the conch rule (instead of a seashell we had a fuzzy hammer from the gas station that I dubbed the “WackHammer 40k” because it made a glass shattering noise when you bonked it off anything), and of course matching “neo-tribal” lower back tattoos.  Choke’s was only half-finished when we got rescued, and he never finished it, because he’s not a team player deep down.  Which is fine because it looks a fuckin’ mess and if he could JUST ADMIT Q-TIP IS OBVIOUSLY FREESTYLING ON “GET IT TOGETHER” THEN NONE OF THIS WOULD BE NECESSARY.

So I guess if any of my friends see me as a god of hip-hop knowledge, it’s in the Mount Olympus sense of incessantly warring, childish and short-sighted gods who cause mayhem for themselves and one another by constantly fucking everything around them and then crying about it and getting vindictive.

Which is pretty hip-hop, you gotta admit.