In 5th place with 9 points
Slick Rick - Children’s Story
Okay, story time first.
In the distant era of the mid-late 90s, the only way a kid in Israel could listen to music that was not played on the radio or on MTV Europe was stealing it on the interwebz. Sadly, Napstar wasn’t invented yet, so the best way to get music was through sketchy channels on IRC. Many of you might know this, but it’s my reveal. One of the channels I used was named something like #00GoldenAgeHipHop00w4r3zL33t (I might have made up the last part).
You would get a list of songs from the bot, ask for it to be sent to you via DCC (direct client to client). You would then wait in a queue for an infinite amount of times until you get the send request and watch your internet fail 99% of the time. Rinse, repeat.
One of the first songs I can remember successfully downloading was Slick Rick. I didn’t know the song or the artist, but the name sounded cool. None of my friends heard of it and it wasn’t played on the radio ever, so for a few years I was sure I was the only teenager in the world who knows this guy.
So yeah, it’s a huge hit. It’s been sampled a gazillion times. Probably used in an Ikea commercial or something. But I still love it and it’s still my song.
Unnecessarily long story aside, Slick Rick’s flow is unmatched. The lyrics are decent and while the subject is more serious than it appears, the humor is everywhere. He even produced it himself.
This is what I considered the only story telling song. I get that others view their picks differently.
