"Snow White" (Spring 1996)

Side 1

Dionne Farris-I Know
Bone Thugs-N-Harmony-Tha Crossroads
The Simpsons-Do The Bartman (Bad Bart House Mix)

Side 2
The Verve-Bittersweet Symphony
snippets of Bone Thugs-N-Harmony's "Days of Our Livez" and Stone Temple Pilots' "Big Empty"
Goodie Mob-Soul Food
snippet of Bone Thugs-N-Harmony's "Flow Motion"


While listening to this tape for the first time in years, I had no idea that Bone had figured so much into it, but they were the biggest thing in rap at the time so it makes sense. I knew to expect "Tha Crossroads," but at one point I had recorded "Days of Our Livez" at the beginning of Side 2 and placed "Flow Motion," the leadoff track from their first release before they signed to Ruthless, at the end. There was only enough space left on the tape for the first verse, which featured Layzie Bone, and for years this was all I had known. Since I dubbed it from my neighbor's copy, I didn't have the luxury of listening to the entire song at my own convenience and hadn't heard it in full until today.






As was the case with my first mixtape, it was a single song that sparked the creation for Snow White, with Bone Thugs-N-Harmony's "Tha Crossroads" being the focal point here. I've always paired the Fugees' "Killing Me Softly" with "Tha Crossroads" because they were both the driving force behind me recording songs and were by far the two tracks I heard played the most during this span. For a while, I even took count of how many times I heard them, giving up somewhere around the 30's after a month or two. It astonished my young mind that radio, MTV and BET had played them so frequently and I was pretty sure that they would eventually be the songs I had heard most in my lifetime. During the making of this tape, "Tha Crossroads" had not yet reached radio, so the only way to hear it was on TV, which is how I recorded it. The sound quality was definitely below standard and you can even hear a bit of rustling as I tried to adjust the boombox, but it was sufficient enough for the moment and it meant the world to me that I was able to listen to it whenever I wanted. The quality of this mixtape overall is probably the nadir of my skill since I was so focused on capturing songs that I didn't pay much attention to the experience or flow while listening, as evidenced by the snippets from previous songs all over the place.


Aside from the Bone songs, I was probably most happy to record Dionne Farris' "I Know" at the time since it was one of my favorite songs. It's a bright piece of 90's pop/rock with infused soul that still has charm to this day.




The Simpsons was also my favorite show at the time and I still hold it in high regard to this day. When "Do The Bartman" was released in 1990, I felt a sense of pride as a kid because it felt like animation had finally gotten the recognition I thought it deserved. Six years later, I still found the song entertaining and I knew that I had to have it amongst my collection when my neighbor revealed he had the CD single. At one point, I'm pretty sure I recorded the original version, but all that's left is a remix, which is probably more rare now than it was back then. It's called the Bad Bart House remix, although I'm still trying to find where exactly the house portion of the song is. Since this tape had a running length much shorter than previous one, the song cut off before it ends, but in an act of maturity, I made sure to record the line "'Til Lisa starts blowing that damn saxophone" before the tape was abruptly over. It sounded disjointed but it was worth it for that part.




The inclusion of The Verve's "Bittersweet Symphony" was likely due to the lack of tape space I had and the fact that I had to have this amazing song at all costs. I recorded it a year after I began this tape and it was dubbed over Bone Thugs-N-Harmony's "Days of Our Livez," which I had dubbed over Stone Temple Pilots' "Big Empty." "Big Empty" seems like another one of those songs that I would have been happy to just record with it having been a big hit a few years earlier and being new to making mixtapes. Looking back, I feel kind of cruel about the whole matter of recording over songs, something I would have thought was unthinkable as I grew older, unless I had botched the recording. I mercilessly replaced song after song without regard to all the time we spent together and some parts of these tapes are far from their original form. I'd like to take this time now to apologize to the ghosts of those songs for my chop-happy ways.


My neighbor was a few years younger than me and not as bashful as I was about asking his parents for things, which is why his tape collection was steadily growing while mine was nonexistent. In those first few months, if he had a song I enjoyed, I would just simply dub it on to one of my tapes. The recording of Goodie Mob's "Soul Food" was from the B-side of their "Cell Therapy" single, two songs which we could both agree on. We found common ground on a few things musically (I was more eclectic, he was more trend-oriented), and it was not very often that I would dip into his stash, but I was grateful for the times that I was able to. One of the exciting things about "Soul Food" is that when it finally got its own video about a month later, I pretty much knew all the words, profanity and all, censors be damned. It was one of the first such experiences I had. Nowadays it's not unusual for me to be familiar with the 3rd or 4th single from an album since I've probably had it for months, but for once I actually felt kind of cool being able to recite the lines the first time I saw the video.




I'm still very fond of this mixtape since it was the second one I ever made and it instantly takes me back to that period of my life, but it's definitely the one that would be best left for personal use, since only a loving parent could deal with its incomplete and fractured songs.