When I was roughly 14 years old I had delusions of grandeur about one day becoming a world-famous rapper. An MC, if you will. My nom de plume was A-Train. I know, not the most original name in the world, but I was 14 and fat, and thus thought I was fit to associate with locomotives. My partner in rhyme (wordplay, check it) was my friend Chris AKA KaRazz.

I don’t know why he chose that name and I don’t think he could tell you for certain either. I like to tell myself it originated from his mother, a VERY Filipino woman who made the word “CHRIS” sound like “KARAZZ” any time she yelled at him.

Regardless of origins, the “Oakland Park Posse” that was A-Train and Ka-Razz consumed quite a bit of my Middle School experience. The two of us would spend our money buying cassette singles with instrumental b-sides and our time recording in my room through the microphone connected to my stereo while I told my parents to stay downstairs. Looking back on it now, they probably thought we were gay. But they never said anything. Thanks mom and dad.

We wrote and recorded two full length tapes: “Blood Money” and “Blood Money 2: The Wreckaning.”  Again, I don’t know whose blood or money we were after. All I know is that we were two spawns of suburbia in the nation’s richest county, and “if bitches didn’t come correct they were bound to get wrecked.” Naturally.

We even had a rival “crew” that we “beefed” with. The Midnight Riders: comprised of Joe “Shades” Mannato, John “Lyrical Bullet” Shope (I called him the Lyrical Bullshit because my skill was that ill), and Fat Tony. They were three years older than us and supposedly had a record deal with something called Nitram Records. I saw the business card once and if memory serves correct the address was in a trailer behind what is now a Kohl’s. Death Row who? They were a legitimate threat to our crowns of “Kings of the Mostly White and Affluent Suburban Virginia Hip Hop Scene.” We only had a demo tape. They had a record deal and had performed a live show at Burke United Methodist Church in between an adolescent Guns N Roses cover band and a middle school Punk Rock Quartet. Eventually we “squashed” our “beef” and even made sporadic guest appearances on each other’s “mixtapes.”

Still, after all of that, all of the hours of writing and recording, all of the creating and squashing of beefs, I can only remember one line from one song:

“This game is my castle. I’ve graduated, thrown the hat, and flipped the tassel.”

I’ve often wondered:
Why the hell would I flip the tassel after I already threw the hat?
What did I graduate from? I was only 14 and our middle school and high school were one-in-the-same.
Why did I wear so much FUBU?

Clearly I was not as good an MC as I thought I was.
Probably explains why we never got that deal with Nitram Records.

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