*taps mic*
“So, when did you fall in love with hip-hop?”
In the opening sequence of the classic film Brown Sugar (2002), The Roots’ “Act Too” builds as Sidney Shaw, played by Sanaa Lathan, reflects on her work as a hip-hop journalist. She shares that she’s asked the same question at the top of every interview: “So, when did you fall in love with hip-hop?” Real-life hip-hop artists like De La Soul, Black Thought, Method Man, Jermaine Dupri, Common, and more pinpoint the exact moment they fell in love with the genre. The question is personal for Sidney as much as it is for the artists she interviews. When she discovered hip-hop on July 4th, 1984, she was also propelled into a lifelong friendship with Dre, another kid in the neighborhood, who would grow up to be an A&R executive.
⤴️🎥 Brown Sugar (2002, directed by Rick Famuyiwa)
The film explores Sid and Dre as their relationships with hip-hop ebb and flow, but the love (between the characters too) never falters. “Love Of My Life,” the soundtrack’s lead single by Erykah Badu and Common, perfectly distills the 2-hour movie into a 5-minute song. I’ve watched Brown Sugar enough to quote it beginning to end, but this song and Sid’s question always seem to linger in my mind.
As a late 90s baby, I grew up on hip-hop. Gary Suarez aptly distinguishes between growing up on hip-hop and growing up with hip-hop in the first edition of CABBAGES:
I grew up with hip-hop… I'm about as old as "Rapper's Delight," that key recording that properly brought this music to the American top 40 for the first time. The first Run-DMC album dropped during my lifetime. I remember exactly where I was when I found out Biggie died.
Suarez, Sid, Dre, and the artists featured in Brown Sugar all came up during (or closely following) the genesis of hip-hop. They can remember seminal moments in hip-hop history. I don’t have an exact moment I fell in love with the genre because I grew up on it. As Black Thought says in Brown Sugar, “I was gonna be dealing with hip-hop whether I wanted to or not...It was predetermined.”
A month after graduating from college, Billboard hired me as their artist relations intern. Vibe magazine, the hip-hop and R&B publication founded by Quincy Jones in 1993, was at the other end of the floor. Every day, I looked at the walls covered in the Vibe archives, dating back to the original issues published in the 90s. A few weeks into my internship, I published my first article for Billboard and felt like I was Sidney from Brown Sugar.
As I write this newsletter, I feel like Khadijah James from the 90s TV show Living Single. Khadijah, brought to life by Queen Latifah, is the founder and editor of Flavor, an independent magazine servicing her urban community in Brooklyn. They lived in a different decade, but Khadijah and her three friends, Max, Regine, and Sinclaire, taught me a lot throughout five seasons. Still, Khadijah’s dedication to her craft & community and her unwavering belief in her work, despite facing issues many independent journalists experience, is as timely as ever. Who knew the impact Sidney Shaw and Khadijah James, two fictional characters, would have on a generation of emerging journalists?
⤴️📺 Living Single (1993-1998), Queen Latifah as Khadijah James
Today, publications are shuttering, freelance budgets are drying up, and music journalists are left under-appreciated and unsure about their futures. The future of this industry is unstable, but as a writer/music journalist, I oddly feel like this is still my (our) moment.
As music journalists, our words matter.
They matter on our own, independent platforms, such as this one, not only when they are published at a top magazine and attached to a cool byline. No matter what is happening in the industry around us, we have the range, and we will get the reach. Supporting my own writing and building a community of people who are passionate about hip-hop, R&B, and the music industry is most important to me right now. That realization materialized into this newsletter, A-Side/B-Side. So here we are.
Friday Night Lights - J. Cole
(0:50)
So here we are
So here we are
So here we are, it’s funny how so close can seem so far
Seem so far
Seem so far
Seem so far, funny how so close can seem so far I mean
N*gga, this is your moment
This is your moment
Damn, this supposed to be your moment, ain’t it?
This supposed to be your moment
This supposed to be your moment!
This supposed to be your moment
What good is being the one when you the only one that knows it?
Too Deep For The Intro - J. Cole
(0:56)
If this too deep for the intro I’ll find another use
But just in case it’s perfect let me introduce
A-Side/B-Side, the newsletter by Ayanna Costley
The Credits
Shoutout to you if you made it this far! A-Side issues (like this one) will feature long-form/deep dives/rants about hip-hop and R&B music/industry, while B-Side issues will focus on sections like “What’s the 411?” (music news/info), “Let Me Put You On” (a choose-your-own-song section sorta like choose-your-own-adventure games), “From the Archives,” interviews, and more. Some issues will have both an A-Side and a B-Side. Whitelist asidebside@substack.com to ensure issues aren’t sent to your spam/promotions folder.
This newsletter is free, so the best way to support is to let me know what you think and to share A-Side/B-Side with others.