October 11, 2022 • 28 mins
When you grow up in the church, like I did, you don’t just have one first concert. You typically have two: the first concert you saw in church and the first concert you’d actually talk about at a dinner party. Well, in this episode I’m telling y’all about both of my first concerts. If you wanna know what in the world is “Christian R&B,” how I got to see two big name artists for only $5, and why at one time in my life I used to say the word “mack” all the time…this is the episode for you!
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:38):
Hey, everybody, Welcome back to this week's episode of Her
with Amina Brown. And I've been talking about a lot
of first our last few episodes here, and my thoughts
about my first concert came to my mind, and this,
this conversation we're about to have today is a little
(01:01):
akin to the conversation we had in the episode where
I talked about that time I threw away my music right,
Because when you grow up in certain types of church settings,
a lot of times your first concert is at church.
And I do have quite a few friends that we
(01:23):
all have this story to tell. But once you grow
up and you get to be an adult and you're
on a date or at a dinner party or at
a work function, and people start going around and talking
about their first concert, and you have in certain name
of really obscure Christian band to say as your first concert,
(01:43):
you know, it makes your life a little weird. So
it's almost like for a lot of us who grew
up in sort of conservative Christian environments, you really have
two first concerts. You have the first concert you went
to that was likely at church, and then you have
your first concert that you ever went to that was
not at church. And typically when you're at the date,
(02:05):
when you're at the dinner party, when you're at the
work function, and this question comes up, you never say
your church answer, but it is fun to say it
to other people who may have grown up similarly to you.
So shout out to those of you that are listening
that totally feel me that that this is also how
you grew up. And if you did not grow up
this way, then here here in lies a window where
(02:27):
you can experience what it was like for many of
us growing up in church environments. So my first full
length concert that I can remember was a Christian what
I would almost consider to be like a Christian R
and B group called Dawkins and Dawkins, and I think
they were brothers, I think. But they had a very
(02:50):
like smooth kind of R and B vibe, you know,
very akin to what would have been Jodice or Drew
Hill or Shy of that era in the you know,
mid nineties, probably at this point, early to mid nineties.
(03:12):
And they came to our church performed as a duo,
and we had I will give the church I grew
up in a lot of props because they really try
to do a lot of things to engage us as
young people and to try to in in their own
church way, you know, like stay up on what was
(03:34):
important to us as young folks, you know. And this
was the bad boy era and the era of total
and there was a very specific kind of R and
B sound, you know, and I think, I think in
their own way, they wanted us to know that there
were alternatives I guess to the music that we would
(03:56):
hear on one oh six in part show on My
Age Now on one or six and Park or on
bt S Video Soul back in the day, right, they
wanted us to know, like, oh, there's other music that
you can listen to that has some of those same
beats and grooves that you like, but with a message
that we want you to hear. You know, we we
(04:19):
as a Christian adults, you know, want you to hear.
So I totally loved Dawkins and Dawkins as a teenager.
I probably bought a couple of their CDs. And then
I'm about to tell y'all a wild, uh, a wild
story that uses some terms from an era that if
you didn't grow up in that era, you're gonna be like,
what are you saying? So back in the day. When
(04:41):
I was in high school what what I think most
people today would call talking, right, So, like, if you're
dating someone, the phase before y'all started dating was the
phase where y'all were talking, which is sort of this
interesting time where you're getting to know each other, but
(05:01):
it's very noncommittal. No one has decided they want to
be exclusive with anyone. You're just you're just talking, but
you're you're definitely flirting. It is not a platonic scenario.
You're definitely flirting. You may definitely be talking, you know,
late at night or um, someone you're talking to when
like your day is over kind of vibes right. So
(05:25):
in high school, bless our Hearts, we call this macking.
It is just wild to think that there was a
term that you used so much and so heavily in
high school that now there's only only people of a
(05:45):
certain age that grew up in certain environments would even
remember that term now. But we called it macking then,
and a part of it, a part of it was
the equivalent of what people mean today when they say talking.
But I think another part of it was also sort
of like, uh, if you were mack and you also
had a roster of people that you were talking to,
(06:06):
so you were never just talking to like the one person,
you know. And I had a guy friend that I
went to church with, but he was a couple of
years older than me, and so he would sort of
describe to me what he was doing when he would
be making. Every time I say it, he would describe
(06:28):
to me what he was doing. And he would basically say, like,
you know, if you're really gonna, you know, be like
a good MAC. You know. This was also during the
era where pimp was used very very loosely, right that
that is not a word for various reasons today that
I used loosely like that, but when I was in
high school, you would also say you were making or
maybe you would say you were pimping, right um, which
(06:49):
has a lot of connotations that bring up a lot
of questions. But anyways, so he would say, well, you know,
if you're gonna be on the phone like doing some
MAC and you need to have like some nice, you know,
soft kind of R and B music in the background
to like set the mood. Well, the only music I
had like that at fourteen fifteen years old was Dawkins
(07:12):
and Dawkins. So I would basically be talking to boys
on the phone, you know, from school and some from
church too, and I would have Dawkins and Dawkins on
but turned down so they couldn't hear Dawkins and Dawkins
singing the scriptures. And that was how I did my
(07:32):
making at the time, you know, to Christian R and B.
That was not about making love, but was about coming
to Jesus. What a time? What a time. So I
did not go to my first concert that I would
(07:53):
talk about at a dinner party until probably ten years
after this season in my life. So we've alrea talked
that I had some eras of time where I was
sort of like in and out of listening to what
then I would have considered to be secular music. Right, so,
right around two thousand five, I want to say I
(08:16):
was having a really big awakening in a lot of ways.
You know. I realized around twenty four years old that
I really didn't know how to date. I think I
had been on a date in high school. Right towards
the end of high school, I didn't go on any
dates while I was in college. Then I worked in ministry,
(08:39):
you know, Like I wanted to say, I worked for
a church, but I wasn't getting paid, so I volunteered.
I volunteered, but it was enough hours that it could
have probably been a job I was doing, you know,
for the church. Right. So by the time I got
to be twenty four, I just I just remember starting
to sort of feel like other people my age are
(09:01):
doing different things with their time, you know, than I'm doing.
And I was starting to feel this level of discomfort
with myself and in my sexuality too, in a way,
I think because I knew that I really was attracted
to men, but I also knew that if I got
(09:22):
in a situation where a man sort of returned that
feeling to me that he also felt attracted to me,
then it was almost like I just reverted back to
like I was a teenager, and I turned into some
sort of I went two ways with it. I either
turned into some sort of giggly person who cannot even
say words that makes sense, or I turned into what
(09:44):
I felt like was my home girl persona because I
felt comfortable being around men at that time of life
when I was the home girl and there was no
attraction between us, or if it was, I could use
my home girl vibe as a cover for us to
not get involved in that conversation because that's how uncomfortable
(10:09):
it made me. Right so, around the time that I'm turning,
I'm realizing that I really want to get out there
and date, but my church environment that I was in
at the time discouraged us from dating. The church environment
I was in at the time felt that dating was
only from marriage, that if you were dating casually, you
(10:32):
were basically signing up to break other people's hearts and
get your heart broken in the process. So the best
thing for you to do was to kind of try to,
in some weird way, remain friends with people that you
thought you could marry, and through friendships suss them out,
and at such time as you and that person and
(10:54):
other people in the community decide y'all should get married,
then y'all go ahead, and maybe maybe I'll go out
on some dates, but it's pretty serious. By the time
you go out on a date, you're pretty close to
being engaged, and then you get married pretty quick after.
That was sort of like the way that a lot
of the couples in the church had had their relationships
(11:16):
before they got married, and was the way that was
sort of being proselytized to us as this is what
dating needs to be, you know. But then as a
lot of us were getting older, you know, um many
people that were in the church that were married, you know,
they had met their person when they were in high school.
Sometimes they had met their person when they were in
(11:37):
college or college age. So a lot of them by
the time they were twenty five, between twenty five and thirty,
they had been married, or they had just gotten married,
or had already been married some years. And so those
of us who were sort of getting into our mid
to late twenties and into our thirties were starting to
feel like, I wonder if they're telling us this method
(11:58):
that just actually as fall and doesn't work for everyone,
you know. And it was around that time, which I've
talked about in some previous episodes, that I realized that
I was in a church that was a very unhealthy
environment that I needed to leave. And my my church experience,
even when I was in high school and into college
(12:19):
and right up until this time that I turned, was
a very busy life. It was a life where if
I was involved in church, that's really all I had
time to do. I didn't have time to have a
separate social life. And truthfully, a lot of the people
that I went to church with would have had a
lot of questions if I had a separate social life.
(12:39):
Then they'd be like, well, why does she have that
separate social life? Why does she have those people that
she's hanging out with that we don't know what is
she hiding? That was sort of the idea, like really, like,
because God should be the center of your life, what
they were preaching to us was like, if God should
be the center of your life, then so at the church.
(13:01):
And when they said that, they really meant like, with
your time, if you're not like at your job, you
should pretty much be doing something you know, related to
the church, because that's how we're all like putting in
our our time to you know, do good in the
community or whatnot. Right, So, when I realized this church
(13:25):
that I was in, that I had been in through
my whole college career and into my mid twenties, was
this unhealthy place that I needed to leave and then
finally left, it was like I had all this free time,
all this free time, like free time too, I mean
now looking back on it, free time to be young,
(13:48):
you know, free time to have fun, free time to
meet new people. It was just that that era of
turning UM just had a lot of open for me
and a lot of learning and oh man, like that
was probably one of the most fun times in my
whole life that I couldn't remember is the moment that
(14:10):
I left church and actually, for the first time, really
felt like I was living my life. That I wasn't
just living a life out of obligation, but I was
actually doing things that I wanted to do, that I
enjoy doing. That We're helping me grow um and stretching
me as a person, you know. So my whole friend
(14:31):
group opened up because I was meeting different people. I
got back engaged in the poetry scene and got a
chance to grow in that area. I was going to
art galleries and writing sometimes just walking around the art
gallery and meeting people and going on dates. You know.
So this, you know, gives you the context of sort
of where my life was when I'm actually going to
(14:53):
what was my first concert, which was pretty dope. So
Atlanta has a park called Centennial Olympic Park, which, obviously
by connotation of the name, you can tell that this
(15:15):
park was constructed UM around n when the Olympics was
in Atlanta, and there were a lot of changes done
to the city, right, and so now, uh, the Centennial
Park is this really cool place that sometimes you can
go to concerts there, Like my husband and I saw
Outcast when they did their last like run of events
and and performances and touring. Outcast did their Outcast at
(15:39):
last show in Centennial Park. So they're just always wonderful
like festivals and stuff to do that you can go
to at um Centennial Olympic Park. So this particular summer
of two thousand five, Centennia Olympic Park was doing a
concert series called on the Bridge X and it was
(16:02):
like different concerts each week for a period of like
six to eight weeks, and y'all each concert was five dollars.
So I think I invited. I don't know. If I don't,
I don't remember if I can say I invited everyone.
I think this was around the time that Kanye West
(16:23):
had released Jesus Walks, and I want to say I
want to say it was after Kanye west first album,
College Dropout, had been released, and for those of us
who were in our mid twenties at the time that
he released that album, that album was like speaking a
(16:44):
language to us in this really particular way, just hearing
how you know in that album, Kanye is trying to
sort of break out or break away from these conventions.
You know that he was told his life at that
era had to be and it was a certain type
of production he was doing at that time that his
(17:06):
music is not doing now. But it was very particular
to that era. I remember very specifically it was my
brother that put me on to Kanye West's music because
my brother had heard the early versions of Through the Wire,
which was a song that Kanye West recorded while his
jaw was wired shut after he'd had this near death
(17:29):
accident car accident. So my brother had put me on, like, yo,
is this MC. You got to hear him and he
was telling me all this stuff, and then I actually
heard the song and was like wow. So there was
a lot of there. There are certain things about um
that era when everything wasn't streaming, that are really wonderful
memories I have that I'm glad I have because those
(17:52):
are things that just won't happen the same way now.
But back then, when someone was dropping an album, you
really didn't have a legit way the day the album
came out, to be listening to it. If you didn't like,
go to the store that day and buy it. And
I remember I went to the store the day that
College Dropout came out, and I had a couple of
coworkers who were around my same age because I was
(18:14):
I just started a job in corporate America at that time.
And when you're working a corporate America job that you
really kind of hate, uh, Kanye West, college Dropout, Kanye West,
late registration, you know, graduation like these are all in
the vibes of someone who is working somewhere that they
don't like these, these are all songs that really are
(18:35):
going to help you make it. So I remember my
co workers and I we had a rule at our
corporate job. So technically, technically our lunch was supposed to
be from noon to one pm, but we had observed
the other people who have been working for the company
longer than us that they would take longer lunches by
(18:57):
leaving a little earlier. Because basically, y'all can give me
the feedback if working in corporate is different now than
it was in two thousand five, but in two thousand five,
especially at the company, I was working at a part
of being an employee of a corporate company like that
basically meant that you needed to have the appearance that
(19:21):
you were working. The appearance of working was many times
more important than actually working. And we were watching that,
like we were considered what communications specialists at our job,
which basically was a glorified title for being writers, right,
and then above us we'd have a supervisor, and then
(19:43):
that supervisor would have a manager, and then there'd be
like a department manager, you know. So we were watching
all of the people who were in positions above us
waste time in different ways than we were, but they
were still wasting time. But we also watched them so
we could like learn the tricks of how they were
a will to pull off wasting as much time as
they did while also keeping up the appearance that they
(20:06):
were working. So part of this trick was if lunch
we were all salary, none of us were hourly, so
it wasn't like you were clocking and clocking out. It
was sort of like honor system on your own time, right.
So if lunch was technically supposed to be twelve to one,
then the key was by one pm, no later than
(20:27):
one fifteen to be at your desk looking like you're working.
At least do that until two or two thirty pm.
But you could pull off taking a longer lunch if
you left at eleven fifteen or eleven thirty. And as
long as you were walking back in the door at
one o'clock putting your bags down and gonna look like
(20:50):
you were working, you could pull it off. And we
did this all the time. So the day that Kanye
West College Dropout released, one of my co workers and
I we went and we went to Walmart because and
I'm not as much like this now, but I still
can be this way sometimes there's just some music I
prefer to listen to the clean version because I really
(21:11):
want to get like the gist of it without having
to hear too many other words that are really going
to be like distracting for me to maybe get what
could be really important about the rest of the music.
I'm not like this as much now because I like
to cuss a lot myself, so you know, it's it's
a lot of explicives for me now, but you know,
(21:33):
we'll save that for another episode. Anyways, So my coworker
and I went to Walmart, because that was the one
place you could go to buy the recent CDs that
we're coming out, and you could buy them and clean
versions because at that time Walmart only sold clean versions
of music. So we went to Walmart, left work at
eleven fifteen, picked up our Kanye West c ds, put
(21:55):
the CD in the car, and started listening to it.
Went to Wendy's because that was one of our like
go to spots, so we could get food and basically
park in the parking lot, eat our food, and just
listen to the album. So I knew I wasn't alone.
A lot of my friends my age that by this
time I sort of picked up from different places, a
lot of them still from church, and then some people
(22:16):
that I you know, it was meeting in other places.
We were all like looking forward to this album coming out,
and it was big conversation among all of us. So
when the information was released that there was going to
be this concert uh featuring Kanye West five dollars, I
I think I at least started the conversation. And then
it turned out that like a few pockets of different
(22:39):
friend groups connected to me had all been talking about
this and we all decided to do like a big
meet up, right, and the way the concert was set up,
you know, it's outside, Um, I don't think you can
have chairs. It's either like you're standing or you're sitting
on like a blanket or something. So everybody had like
different ours filled with people and blankets and towels and whatever,
(23:04):
so you could, you know, enjoy the concert. My mind
wants to say, maybe you could bring a cooler or something.
I think you could bring a cooler in and so
you could bring your own drinks or whatever. And a
bunch of us like met up and piled all in
our cars or whatever and drove down there. And that
was my first concert, number one that I got to experience,
(23:25):
my to me, my first air quotes real concert with
a group of friends in my mid twenties, when we're
all sort of at this era in our life where
we're at our entry level jobs, trying to figure out
so much about our lives, trying to figure out our spirituality,
trying to figure out how we express our sexuality, trying
(23:47):
to figure out dating and relationships, trying to figure out
career or grad school or entrepreneurship or whatever. You know,
we all had so many things that we were trying
to figure out and and part of the theme of
college dropout was, you know, here's kan young Kanye West,
you know, feeling like he has the potential to make
(24:10):
a career of music, but his parents having wanted him
to go the way that they did, having wanted him
to get his degree and get this certain kind of
job and live this certain kind of life, and him
realizing he wanted to really break a lot of the
conventions of that, and a lot of that theme and
message was so so poignant among us, you know. And
(24:32):
at that time, Jesus Walks was the big single, and
I think a lot of us I knew the knew
the rest of the album somewhat, but really knew that
song in particular, right, And so that song was kind
of the centerpiece of his performance. And he also had
(24:53):
a young singer with him, and we had no idea
who he was. Now all these years later, I know
that that was a young John Legend who was performing
on stage with Kanye West and playing piano. So a
lot of all of the sort of singing parts of
different hooks and things from Kanye said at that time,
John Legend was there. So we actually saw Kanye West
(25:17):
and John Legend for five dollars, and I just remember
when that beginning bom boom boom, bump bump bump like
beginning of Jesus Walks comes on and everybody stands and
watching everybody's hands raised and saying those words together and
(25:37):
singing the hook together. I mean, I still remember that
as one of the most powerful moments I ever experienced,
like at a show or at a concert. So yeah,
that's my dinner party story. My first air Quotes concert
was seeing Kanye West and John Legend in Atlanta Centennial
(25:58):
Olympic Park for five dollars in my mid twenties, surrounded
by so many friends that were sort of in my
same phase of life and my whispers. Actual first concert
was definitely UM Christian R and B group Dowkins and
Dawkins in a church. So there's that. What were your
(26:19):
first concerts, um, if you grew up like me, do
you have two of them? And what were they like?
And when you think about that era of your life,
you know, what was it like when you look back
on that? And I still to this day really love
live music. I think getting a chance to see to
see Kanye West and to see Kanye West with Friends.
(26:41):
I think that's the one thing about going to concerts
now that are not um separated necessarily into those categories
of sacred and secular. But going to concerts where it's music,
you know, it's music you're familiar with, it becomes this
wonderful cultural experience that you get to have, you know,
(27:01):
your connection to the music. You get to be in
conversation with the music in this way that's so wonderful.
So I'm still a big live music fan, even though
we are still in the pandemic, you know, I'm happy
there are some ways that we can do sort of
risk mitigation in a way where we can still experience
artists doing live shows and stuff. You know. So that's me.
(27:25):
That's my first concert. Send me a message and tell
me what was your first concert, and if you have
to like me, I'd love to hear both of your two.
And thanks for listening. I hope you go and listen
to some really good music after this. Talk to you
all soon. Part with Amina Brown is produced by Matt
(27:55):
Owen for Slobrifiti Productions as a part of the Seneca
Women Podcast net work in partnership with I Heart Radio.
Thanks for listening, and don't forget to subscribe, rate, and
review the podcast. H
Hey, everybody, Welcome back to this week's episode of Her
with Amina Brown. And I've been talking about a lot
of first our last few episodes here, and my thoughts
about my first concert came to my mind, and this,
this conversation we're about to have today is a little
(01:01):
akin to the conversation we had in the episode where
I talked about that time I threw away my music right,
Because when you grow up in certain types of church settings,
a lot of times your first concert is at church.
And I do have quite a few friends that we
(01:23):
all have this story to tell. But once you grow
up and you get to be an adult and you're
on a date or at a dinner party or at
a work function, and people start going around and talking
about their first concert, and you have in certain name
of really obscure Christian band to say as your first concert,
(01:43):
you know, it makes your life a little weird. So
it's almost like for a lot of us who grew
up in sort of conservative Christian environments, you really have
two first concerts. You have the first concert you went
to that was likely at church, and then you have
your first concert that you ever went to that was
not at church. And typically when you're at the date,
(02:05):
when you're at the dinner party, when you're at the
work function, and this question comes up, you never say
your church answer, but it is fun to say it
to other people who may have grown up similarly to you.
So shout out to those of you that are listening
that totally feel me that that this is also how
you grew up. And if you did not grow up
this way, then here here in lies a window where
(02:27):
you can experience what it was like for many of
us growing up in church environments. So my first full
length concert that I can remember was a Christian what
I would almost consider to be like a Christian R
and B group called Dawkins and Dawkins, and I think
they were brothers, I think. But they had a very
(02:50):
like smooth kind of R and B vibe, you know,
very akin to what would have been Jodice or Drew
Hill or Shy of that era in the you know,
mid nineties, probably at this point, early to mid nineties.
(03:12):
And they came to our church performed as a duo,
and we had I will give the church I grew
up in a lot of props because they really try
to do a lot of things to engage us as
young people and to try to in in their own
church way, you know, like stay up on what was
(03:34):
important to us as young folks, you know. And this
was the bad boy era and the era of total
and there was a very specific kind of R and
B sound, you know, and I think, I think in
their own way, they wanted us to know that there
were alternatives I guess to the music that we would
(03:56):
hear on one oh six in part show on My
Age Now on one or six and Park or on
bt S Video Soul back in the day, right, they
wanted us to know, like, oh, there's other music that
you can listen to that has some of those same
beats and grooves that you like, but with a message
that we want you to hear. You know, we we
(04:19):
as a Christian adults, you know, want you to hear.
So I totally loved Dawkins and Dawkins as a teenager.
I probably bought a couple of their CDs. And then
I'm about to tell y'all a wild, uh, a wild
story that uses some terms from an era that if
you didn't grow up in that era, you're gonna be like,
what are you saying? So back in the day. When
(04:41):
I was in high school what what I think most
people today would call talking, right, So, like, if you're
dating someone, the phase before y'all started dating was the
phase where y'all were talking, which is sort of this
interesting time where you're getting to know each other, but
(05:01):
it's very noncommittal. No one has decided they want to
be exclusive with anyone. You're just you're just talking, but
you're you're definitely flirting. It is not a platonic scenario.
You're definitely flirting. You may definitely be talking, you know,
late at night or um, someone you're talking to when
like your day is over kind of vibes right. So
(05:25):
in high school, bless our Hearts, we call this macking.
It is just wild to think that there was a
term that you used so much and so heavily in
high school that now there's only only people of a
(05:45):
certain age that grew up in certain environments would even
remember that term now. But we called it macking then,
and a part of it, a part of it was
the equivalent of what people mean today when they say talking.
But I think another part of it was also sort
of like, uh, if you were mack and you also
had a roster of people that you were talking to,
(06:06):
so you were never just talking to like the one person,
you know. And I had a guy friend that I
went to church with, but he was a couple of
years older than me, and so he would sort of
describe to me what he was doing when he would
be making. Every time I say it, he would describe
(06:28):
to me what he was doing. And he would basically say, like,
you know, if you're really gonna, you know, be like
a good MAC. You know. This was also during the
era where pimp was used very very loosely, right that
that is not a word for various reasons today that
I used loosely like that, but when I was in
high school, you would also say you were making or
maybe you would say you were pimping, right um, which
(06:49):
has a lot of connotations that bring up a lot
of questions. But anyways, so he would say, well, you know,
if you're gonna be on the phone like doing some
MAC and you need to have like some nice, you know,
soft kind of R and B music in the background
to like set the mood. Well, the only music I
had like that at fourteen fifteen years old was Dawkins
(07:12):
and Dawkins. So I would basically be talking to boys
on the phone, you know, from school and some from
church too, and I would have Dawkins and Dawkins on
but turned down so they couldn't hear Dawkins and Dawkins
singing the scriptures. And that was how I did my
(07:32):
making at the time, you know, to Christian R and B.
That was not about making love, but was about coming
to Jesus. What a time? What a time. So I
did not go to my first concert that I would
(07:53):
talk about at a dinner party until probably ten years
after this season in my life. So we've alrea talked
that I had some eras of time where I was
sort of like in and out of listening to what
then I would have considered to be secular music. Right, so,
right around two thousand five, I want to say I
(08:16):
was having a really big awakening in a lot of ways.
You know. I realized around twenty four years old that
I really didn't know how to date. I think I
had been on a date in high school. Right towards
the end of high school, I didn't go on any
dates while I was in college. Then I worked in ministry,
(08:39):
you know, Like I wanted to say, I worked for
a church, but I wasn't getting paid, so I volunteered.
I volunteered, but it was enough hours that it could
have probably been a job I was doing, you know,
for the church. Right. So by the time I got
to be twenty four, I just I just remember starting
to sort of feel like other people my age are
(09:01):
doing different things with their time, you know, than I'm doing.
And I was starting to feel this level of discomfort
with myself and in my sexuality too, in a way,
I think because I knew that I really was attracted
to men, but I also knew that if I got
(09:22):
in a situation where a man sort of returned that
feeling to me that he also felt attracted to me,
then it was almost like I just reverted back to
like I was a teenager, and I turned into some
sort of I went two ways with it. I either
turned into some sort of giggly person who cannot even
say words that makes sense, or I turned into what
(09:44):
I felt like was my home girl persona because I
felt comfortable being around men at that time of life
when I was the home girl and there was no
attraction between us, or if it was, I could use
my home girl vibe as a cover for us to
not get involved in that conversation because that's how uncomfortable
(10:09):
it made me. Right so, around the time that I'm turning,
I'm realizing that I really want to get out there
and date, but my church environment that I was in
at the time discouraged us from dating. The church environment
I was in at the time felt that dating was
only from marriage, that if you were dating casually, you
(10:32):
were basically signing up to break other people's hearts and
get your heart broken in the process. So the best
thing for you to do was to kind of try to,
in some weird way, remain friends with people that you
thought you could marry, and through friendships suss them out,
and at such time as you and that person and
(10:54):
other people in the community decide y'all should get married,
then y'all go ahead, and maybe maybe I'll go out
on some dates, but it's pretty serious. By the time
you go out on a date, you're pretty close to
being engaged, and then you get married pretty quick after.
That was sort of like the way that a lot
of the couples in the church had had their relationships
(11:16):
before they got married, and was the way that was
sort of being proselytized to us as this is what
dating needs to be, you know. But then as a
lot of us were getting older, you know, um many
people that were in the church that were married, you know,
they had met their person when they were in high school.
Sometimes they had met their person when they were in
(11:37):
college or college age. So a lot of them by
the time they were twenty five, between twenty five and thirty,
they had been married, or they had just gotten married,
or had already been married some years. And so those
of us who were sort of getting into our mid
to late twenties and into our thirties were starting to
feel like, I wonder if they're telling us this method
(11:58):
that just actually as fall and doesn't work for everyone,
you know. And it was around that time, which I've
talked about in some previous episodes, that I realized that
I was in a church that was a very unhealthy
environment that I needed to leave. And my my church experience,
even when I was in high school and into college
(12:19):
and right up until this time that I turned, was
a very busy life. It was a life where if
I was involved in church, that's really all I had
time to do. I didn't have time to have a
separate social life. And truthfully, a lot of the people
that I went to church with would have had a
lot of questions if I had a separate social life.
(12:39):
Then they'd be like, well, why does she have that
separate social life? Why does she have those people that
she's hanging out with that we don't know what is
she hiding? That was sort of the idea, like really, like,
because God should be the center of your life, what
they were preaching to us was like, if God should
be the center of your life, then so at the church.
(13:01):
And when they said that, they really meant like, with
your time, if you're not like at your job, you
should pretty much be doing something you know, related to
the church, because that's how we're all like putting in
our our time to you know, do good in the
community or whatnot. Right, So, when I realized this church
(13:25):
that I was in, that I had been in through
my whole college career and into my mid twenties, was
this unhealthy place that I needed to leave and then
finally left, it was like I had all this free time,
all this free time, like free time too, I mean
now looking back on it, free time to be young,
(13:48):
you know, free time to have fun, free time to
meet new people. It was just that that era of
turning UM just had a lot of open for me
and a lot of learning and oh man, like that
was probably one of the most fun times in my
whole life that I couldn't remember is the moment that
(14:10):
I left church and actually, for the first time, really
felt like I was living my life. That I wasn't
just living a life out of obligation, but I was
actually doing things that I wanted to do, that I
enjoy doing. That We're helping me grow um and stretching
me as a person, you know. So my whole friend
(14:31):
group opened up because I was meeting different people. I
got back engaged in the poetry scene and got a
chance to grow in that area. I was going to
art galleries and writing sometimes just walking around the art
gallery and meeting people and going on dates. You know.
So this, you know, gives you the context of sort
of where my life was when I'm actually going to
(14:53):
what was my first concert, which was pretty dope. So
Atlanta has a park called Centennial Olympic Park, which, obviously
by connotation of the name, you can tell that this
(15:15):
park was constructed UM around n when the Olympics was
in Atlanta, and there were a lot of changes done
to the city, right, and so now, uh, the Centennial
Park is this really cool place that sometimes you can
go to concerts there, Like my husband and I saw
Outcast when they did their last like run of events
and and performances and touring. Outcast did their Outcast at
(15:39):
last show in Centennial Park. So they're just always wonderful
like festivals and stuff to do that you can go
to at um Centennial Olympic Park. So this particular summer
of two thousand five, Centennia Olympic Park was doing a
concert series called on the Bridge X and it was
(16:02):
like different concerts each week for a period of like
six to eight weeks, and y'all each concert was five dollars.
So I think I invited. I don't know. If I don't,
I don't remember if I can say I invited everyone.
I think this was around the time that Kanye West
(16:23):
had released Jesus Walks, and I want to say I
want to say it was after Kanye west first album,
College Dropout, had been released, and for those of us
who were in our mid twenties at the time that
he released that album, that album was like speaking a
(16:44):
language to us in this really particular way, just hearing
how you know in that album, Kanye is trying to
sort of break out or break away from these conventions.
You know that he was told his life at that
era had to be and it was a certain type
of production he was doing at that time that his
(17:06):
music is not doing now. But it was very particular
to that era. I remember very specifically it was my
brother that put me on to Kanye West's music because
my brother had heard the early versions of Through the Wire,
which was a song that Kanye West recorded while his
jaw was wired shut after he'd had this near death
(17:29):
accident car accident. So my brother had put me on, like, yo,
is this MC. You got to hear him and he
was telling me all this stuff, and then I actually
heard the song and was like wow. So there was
a lot of there. There are certain things about um
that era when everything wasn't streaming, that are really wonderful
memories I have that I'm glad I have because those
(17:52):
are things that just won't happen the same way now.
But back then, when someone was dropping an album, you
really didn't have a legit way the day the album
came out, to be listening to it. If you didn't like,
go to the store that day and buy it. And
I remember I went to the store the day that
College Dropout came out, and I had a couple of
coworkers who were around my same age because I was
(18:14):
I just started a job in corporate America at that time.
And when you're working a corporate America job that you
really kind of hate, uh, Kanye West, college Dropout, Kanye West,
late registration, you know, graduation like these are all in
the vibes of someone who is working somewhere that they
don't like these, these are all songs that really are
(18:35):
going to help you make it. So I remember my
co workers and I we had a rule at our
corporate job. So technically, technically our lunch was supposed to
be from noon to one pm, but we had observed
the other people who have been working for the company
longer than us that they would take longer lunches by
(18:57):
leaving a little earlier. Because basically, y'all can give me
the feedback if working in corporate is different now than
it was in two thousand five, but in two thousand five,
especially at the company, I was working at a part
of being an employee of a corporate company like that
basically meant that you needed to have the appearance that
(19:21):
you were working. The appearance of working was many times
more important than actually working. And we were watching that,
like we were considered what communications specialists at our job,
which basically was a glorified title for being writers, right,
and then above us we'd have a supervisor, and then
(19:43):
that supervisor would have a manager, and then there'd be
like a department manager, you know. So we were watching
all of the people who were in positions above us
waste time in different ways than we were, but they
were still wasting time. But we also watched them so
we could like learn the tricks of how they were
a will to pull off wasting as much time as
they did while also keeping up the appearance that they
(20:06):
were working. So part of this trick was if lunch
we were all salary, none of us were hourly, so
it wasn't like you were clocking and clocking out. It
was sort of like honor system on your own time, right.
So if lunch was technically supposed to be twelve to one,
then the key was by one pm, no later than
(20:27):
one fifteen to be at your desk looking like you're working.
At least do that until two or two thirty pm.
But you could pull off taking a longer lunch if
you left at eleven fifteen or eleven thirty. And as
long as you were walking back in the door at
one o'clock putting your bags down and gonna look like
(20:50):
you were working, you could pull it off. And we
did this all the time. So the day that Kanye
West College Dropout released, one of my co workers and
I we went and we went to Walmart because and
I'm not as much like this now, but I still
can be this way sometimes there's just some music I
prefer to listen to the clean version because I really
(21:11):
want to get like the gist of it without having
to hear too many other words that are really going
to be like distracting for me to maybe get what
could be really important about the rest of the music.
I'm not like this as much now because I like
to cuss a lot myself, so you know, it's it's
a lot of explicives for me now, but you know,
(21:33):
we'll save that for another episode. Anyways, So my coworker
and I went to Walmart, because that was the one
place you could go to buy the recent CDs that
we're coming out, and you could buy them and clean
versions because at that time Walmart only sold clean versions
of music. So we went to Walmart, left work at
eleven fifteen, picked up our Kanye West c ds, put
(21:55):
the CD in the car, and started listening to it.
Went to Wendy's because that was one of our like
go to spots, so we could get food and basically
park in the parking lot, eat our food, and just
listen to the album. So I knew I wasn't alone.
A lot of my friends my age that by this
time I sort of picked up from different places, a
lot of them still from church, and then some people
(22:16):
that I you know, it was meeting in other places.
We were all like looking forward to this album coming out,
and it was big conversation among all of us. So
when the information was released that there was going to
be this concert uh featuring Kanye West five dollars, I
I think I at least started the conversation. And then
it turned out that like a few pockets of different
(22:39):
friend groups connected to me had all been talking about
this and we all decided to do like a big
meet up, right, and the way the concert was set up,
you know, it's outside, Um, I don't think you can
have chairs. It's either like you're standing or you're sitting
on like a blanket or something. So everybody had like
different ours filled with people and blankets and towels and whatever,
(23:04):
so you could, you know, enjoy the concert. My mind
wants to say, maybe you could bring a cooler or something.
I think you could bring a cooler in and so
you could bring your own drinks or whatever. And a
bunch of us like met up and piled all in
our cars or whatever and drove down there. And that
was my first concert, number one that I got to experience,
(23:25):
my to me, my first air quotes real concert with
a group of friends in my mid twenties, when we're
all sort of at this era in our life where
we're at our entry level jobs, trying to figure out
so much about our lives, trying to figure out our spirituality,
trying to figure out how we express our sexuality, trying
(23:47):
to figure out dating and relationships, trying to figure out
career or grad school or entrepreneurship or whatever. You know,
we all had so many things that we were trying
to figure out and and part of the theme of
college dropout was, you know, here's kan young Kanye West,
you know, feeling like he has the potential to make
(24:10):
a career of music, but his parents having wanted him
to go the way that they did, having wanted him
to get his degree and get this certain kind of
job and live this certain kind of life, and him
realizing he wanted to really break a lot of the
conventions of that, and a lot of that theme and
message was so so poignant among us, you know. And
(24:32):
at that time, Jesus Walks was the big single, and
I think a lot of us I knew the knew
the rest of the album somewhat, but really knew that
song in particular, right, And so that song was kind
of the centerpiece of his performance. And he also had
(24:53):
a young singer with him, and we had no idea
who he was. Now all these years later, I know
that that was a young John Legend who was performing
on stage with Kanye West and playing piano. So a
lot of all of the sort of singing parts of
different hooks and things from Kanye said at that time,
John Legend was there. So we actually saw Kanye West
(25:17):
and John Legend for five dollars, and I just remember
when that beginning bom boom boom, bump bump bump like
beginning of Jesus Walks comes on and everybody stands and
watching everybody's hands raised and saying those words together and
(25:37):
singing the hook together. I mean, I still remember that
as one of the most powerful moments I ever experienced,
like at a show or at a concert. So yeah,
that's my dinner party story. My first air Quotes concert
was seeing Kanye West and John Legend in Atlanta Centennial
(25:58):
Olympic Park for five dollars in my mid twenties, surrounded
by so many friends that were sort of in my
same phase of life and my whispers. Actual first concert
was definitely UM Christian R and B group Dowkins and
Dawkins in a church. So there's that. What were your
(26:19):
first concerts, um, if you grew up like me, do
you have two of them? And what were they like?
And when you think about that era of your life,
you know, what was it like when you look back
on that? And I still to this day really love
live music. I think getting a chance to see to
see Kanye West and to see Kanye West with Friends.
(26:41):
I think that's the one thing about going to concerts
now that are not um separated necessarily into those categories
of sacred and secular. But going to concerts where it's music,
you know, it's music you're familiar with, it becomes this
wonderful cultural experience that you get to have, you know,
(27:01):
your connection to the music. You get to be in
conversation with the music in this way that's so wonderful.
So I'm still a big live music fan, even though
we are still in the pandemic, you know, I'm happy
there are some ways that we can do sort of
risk mitigation in a way where we can still experience
artists doing live shows and stuff. You know. So that's me.
(27:25):
That's my first concert. Send me a message and tell
me what was your first concert, and if you have
to like me, I'd love to hear both of your two.
And thanks for listening. I hope you go and listen
to some really good music after this. Talk to you
all soon. Part with Amina Brown is produced by Matt
(27:55):
Owen for Slobrifiti Productions as a part of the Seneca
Women Podcast net work in partnership with I Heart Radio.
Thanks for listening, and don't forget to subscribe, rate, and
review the podcast. H
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