Editor’s note: The following article is an op-ed, and the views expressed are the author’s own. Read more opinions on theGrio.
Growing up overseas as a hip-hop head (well, burgeoning at the time; I lived in Germany from ages 6-14) was an interesting experience. While it was the mid-’80s, the military made sure that military families had access to all of the best of American pop culture — a lot of it was just super delayed. Movies that arrived stateside in, say, February of any year, wouldn’t hit our theaters on base until maybe June or July.
The vast majority of us relied on our stateside families to send us VHS tapes of shows and cassette tapes of music to keep us as up-to-date as possible with the latest and greatest. Then, during summer, we’d all go to our respective homes across the United States of America and be caught up for a few months before returning home to Germany (or wherever our parents were stationed) only to fall behind. Wash, rinse, repeat.
Also during this time, military families had one radio station and one television station. It’s why all of us who grew up overseas in the ’80s and ’90s can tell you the entire plotlines to “Guiding Light” and “General Hospital,” the only two soap operas that played on our TV and radio provider, the Armed Forces Network. So while most of us had an idea of what the hot groups and television shows were, especially in the early ’90s, we only saw them on VHS tapes and much later than they aired in America. The fashion trends of Black pop culture trickled over and then caught on … again, just late. This phenomenon was especially glaring when it came to hip-hop music, which was REALLY taking…
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