"Peter Piper" by Run DMC

During the summer of 1985, the black music of inner city New York had found it's way to the white, middle class suburbs of Connecticut. My best friend Jay had received a cassette of Run-DMC's masterpiece "Raising Hell" for his birthday, and the rest of the neighborhood was in awe. We had already been listening to local pop radio, so we were already up on the dance and R&B hits of that era, but this was something new. It got into us and we couldn't let go.

Jay had also received a dual cassette boombox and so we all immediately made copies. I would sit in my room wondering what exactly "Adidas'" were, and why it was so "tricky to rock a rhyme on time".

Every Saturday morning for a few months we'd put on the first track "Peter Piper", lay out some cardboard in a driveway of a neighbor down the street, and would attempt to break dance. Badly. I think some windmills were done, but all most of us could really master was "the worm".

But that was the introduction to hip-hop for Cody Ave, and it's still one of my favorite albums, and songs, to this day.


Download: "Peter Piper"