The FWMJ Edit Autumn 1999, I left the small Texas town where I went to junior high school and high school, for college. I attended Rice University, in Houston, Texas on a partial athletics scholarship for Track & Field. This is 1999 we’re talking about, I’m a freshman in college, overly concerned with being an academic and changing my world through the pursuit of knowledge and recognizing music’s potential to be an instrument for change, a well of inspiration, and a fanfare for one’s daily life. So you can pretty much imagine the “keep-it-real” playlist I kept those days. Pretty much swore by Company Flow’s Funcrusher, I remember when Mos Def actually chose to rap good, I’d argue Black Star was a better record than any Mannie Fresh produced opus of the day, and I was pissed when Natural Elements didn’t drop an LP. I actually bought the Afu-Ra debut, after he dropped like 12 dope singles months beforehand, and pretended to be surprised at the lack of new material. I got over that stage pretty quickly, but before I did that I was told about Rice University’s college radio station, KTRU, and the weekly Hip Hop Show, Vinyl Frontier, that was run by resident Graduate Student, Chicago ex-pat, Dennis “D.L.” Lee. Rather than do course work, or go to my 10am Wednesday seminars, I’d hang out with D.L. and began to meet some of the pillars of the Houston underground hip hop scene. I think the first person of note I met was DJ Cipher, one half of Example (the other half being Kay) and owner of the largest record collection I’ve ever seen with my own eyes. Another DJ who I won’t put on blast that had the only British bootleg of Slum Village Fantastic Vol. II on vinyl in Houston, and would cut the hell out of Fall N Love, and have silly, unfounded and ignorant discussions and arguments with CJ & DJ Soulone (now of H.I.S.D.) on whether or not Jay Dee messed up the dynamic of A Tribe Called Quest. How far off was I, would I come to find out in the following years. Some of the most important people/groups I’d met at D.L.’s show, were two members of the K-otix. They’d just had their new single Frequencies pressed up by Bronx Science/B.U.D.S. Distribution and where at the station to drop it off to D.L. and play it. Damien Randle & The ARE were there, Big Mon was absent for some reason. I met him later on, probably at the Beat Farm, DJ Cipher’s duplex in the 3rd Ward, where weekly, Sunday chill sessions would go down, just listening to, talking about, arguing about music, latest releases & old recordings alike, and occasionally, recording some songs. By this point, I’d been living in Texas for about 8 years, and outside of The Geto Boys and that groups off shoots, Big Mike, Scarface, etc, I didn’t really think or expect much of Texas Hip Hop. I had a lot of backwards learning to do over the next few years I was in college and around the crew, but found myself very impressed with the K-otix.