And in the Beginning, there was ...

Where do i start from.... I have been flirting around with starting a blog for a while. Mainly on the encouragement of others. You see, I am a 'healthy' FaceBook user (okay i'm an addict) and i tend to use the allowance given to me for my 'status updates' as my personal blog. But the point is, if i can sum up my feelings, happenings, and mental state in less than two lines, WHY must i have a blog? PLUS, i really dont have the time anyway. My work takes way to much of my time for me to sit down and write to the whole world two page long inner thoughts. I really dont think anyone cares that much about my life.. honestly i dont. HECK!! I DONT.. and i live it everyday (he he)

However a passion of mine i'll always have time for is music. I wonder so many times aloud and in my private thoughts why i find myself in the industry i am in at the moment. Don't get me wrong, i LOVE Television/Film and i am grateful to make a successful living in it, but my first LOVE has always been music. Thats why i loved when i was on the radio. It was a WONDERFUL outlet for me.

Starting off from the very beginning when i could barely pronounce consonants, my parents have funny stories about me singing along to GREATS like Millie Jackson or Glady's Knight, or dancing to IPITOMBI or Chief Ebenezer Obey ("My baidaay is coming... mummy buy shoe for me... ) ahhhh those days. YUP! My parents were the cause of this all madness. If there was ever a house filled with music, it was MINE. You can't dust up crates dating back to even the 50's that i don't have a fairly good knowledge of. It was so bad (yes i am about to tell a story) that the kids in the next house while we were growing up were getting into the 'cool' music of our time and generation. They'd have their drums blaring from ABC's - Ayesha competing with the harmonizing strings from Andy William's, We've Only Just Begun, floating out OUR windows. Ahhhhh.. those days. I remember this one day, during the MC Hammer craze, standing out on our balcony, we asked the youngest child, the girl ( i wont mention names) to BEG her older brothers to 'borrow us' their 'cassette' so we could record it. She disappears into the house and reappears trying unsuccessfully to hide this grin and says *Kemi's heart be still as she recalls this random act of viciousness* "He says NO! That you should go and listen to your 'petty-petty music'."   WHAAAAAAAATTT??!!! How DARE you call Otis Redding 'petty' music. I remember that day like it was yesterday. It was a sad day for some Adetiba kids, ages ranging from 6 - 10 years old, who just wanted to listening to this baggy-pants guy that all the kids were raving about.  *sigh* So we just went back in and continued with the burden that was Al Green. YES!! We thought it was a burden! And the damn 'parental units' not only saw it fit to torture us with this 'screech' sounding voice from some lady called Aretha Franklin, but thought it best to open ALLLLLL the windows as well and play the damn thing on FULL BLAST for all the neighbours within a 5 mile radius to 'enjoy' as well. THOSE DAYS!!! 

The trip to school wasn't saved as well, neither was the routine weekend journey to Ikoyi Club. It was either, Bill Withers, UB40, Marvin Gaye, Bobby Womack, Curtis Mayfiled, Dionne Warwick, Peter Tosh, Dorothy Moore, Earth Wind and Fire, Ella Fitzgerald, Letta Mbulu, George Benson, James Brown, Groover Washington Jnr. , Lionel Ritchie, The Temptations, Nina Simone, Miles Davis, Jimmy Cliff, Smokey Robinson, Miriam Makeba, Harry Belafonte, Bob Marley *Kemi runs out of breath...* but no freaking BBD.   I HATED them, OH I DID!! But i also LOVED the way Bob James's version of Jamaica Farewell made me feel on a rainy day, my mum's horrible yet calming voice when singing along to Sonya Spence's 'Leaving on a Jet-Plane', or the way my dad's eyes glistened with this far-away look when he listened to Isaac Hayes as he made floaty cris-cross motions with his imaginary maestro's baton... ahhhhh the way the beginning piano chords off 'One Woman' made me feel. (" I fight my way through the 5 o'clock rush hour... as day light slowly leaves the skkyyyyyyyyy... i open the door to that little room we call hoooommme... her loving arrrmmmsss are theeeeree to greet me, ooh her tender lips... are allows there to meet me... ")  Isaac's baritone ALWAYS makes me feel wispy and nostalgic. If anything was to happen to my dad (God Forbid) i would never be able to listen to Isaac without breaking down. Long and short of it all, I FELL INLOVE with 'petty-petty' music, and 'petty-petty' music has taught me about what GOOD music really is. REAL music. No matter what the genre, GOOD music is GOOD music, and i appreciate it. Even if there are big butt women in thongs dancing in the video (heeeeeeyyy), or white guys in cowboy hats yoddling while line dancing * :-/ *

But the underdog were not the under-trodden for much longer homies... Its started off with the acquisition of cable TV a couple months or maybe a year later. "Wow.. TLC are waaaaaayyy cool. The way the wear their convulsion inducing fluorescent baggy pants without falling over... Some one pass me a spoon"   I remember holding the boom-box to the TV and recording Bobby Brown's Humpin' Around... Those where the days. Then the compulsory list whenever one the parents were traveling. " Mummy buy Jade... Ralph Tresvant... Naughty by Nature..." It was all down hill from there.  Now the 'petty' music peddlers not only had the knowledge of petty music, but also the new SWV album that YOU want ...now what'chu gotta say bout that, homie!! *Kemi falls into her B-boy stance* But we still listened to Rufus and Chaka Khan's 'Tell Me Something Good' on the low... heeeeeeeyyyy, after may years of consistent music force feeding , your bound to eventually become an addict; 'Kemi says as she riffles through her ipod for that Brook Benton song... FOUND IT!!!  "...it's a raaaaaaiiny night in Geoooogiiaaaaaaa..." ... STOP JUDGING ME :-(

Anyway, lets round this b*tch up. IF you couldn't guess before, well bleeding know NOW. This is a MUSIC blog. Im gonna take it back for y'all, and bring it all the way down to soulsville.  Don't be fooled by the preamble, this site isn't strictly for old classic soul cuts. Heck No! For those that don't know im a HUGE hiphop fan. And when i mean HipHop, i dont just mean 'Top 40-nusery rhymey-blonde girls in mini skirts licking lollipops singing P-diddy hooks' kind of hipHop. I mean GRIMEY sh*t. Im a huge Wu-tang fan so i know more than my fair share of beats that fit the 'strictly for the jeeps' format, son!! When it comes to music think of me as your resident EVE on this blog (pit-bull in a skirt).

We're gonna take an eclectic look at the world of music. Stuff i think you should remember, stuff i think you should get into, and stuff i think you should look out for... or maybe NOT!! I will NOT however feature posts on Nigerian music except it a favourable review. Mainly because i KNOW the artists will find it extremely difficult taking constructive criticism , so dont have time for that mess. 'Kemi (yes i speak in 3rd person.. so?) doesn't have the patience to cater to anyone's sensitivities. But one or two opinions might slip while in the course of things. I can't help it, my hands (repping my mouth in this case) work faster than my brain works sometimes. So if you KNOW you can be easily offended, PLEASE make a b-line past the muthaf*cking blog and visit Perez Hilton's. A few will be straight up lifts from posts i've already made on my facebook account, but material is hard to come by so forgive me.

And OH YES!!! there WILL be 'cussing', grammatical errors, typos, abusive use of  the asterix, bracket and ellipsis symbols, and other random sh*t.  It's MY blog... DEAL WITH IT!!!!!!

And with that said and done... i'd like to welcome you to 'Kemi Adetiba's "Out the Crate" blog.

*efx of a squeaky door and a haunting voice bellows" "Come iinnn... We have been expecting Yooouuuuuuuuu..." *thunder strike and spine chilling SCREAM from no where* 

Be Worried . . . Be VERY WORRIED!!! *HAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHA ;-)