Our rage fueled us

“Our rage fueled us.”
My cousin Lisa and I were splayed across some beanbags in the den as we watched a late-night MTV videos-of-the-year countdown. At the time, we were wildly passionate about Young MC’s Bust a Move, 1989’s comedic pop-rap masterpiece. Each count-down video that wasn’t this song provoked screaming and resentment, which was followed by a mournful silence. Mystifyingly, the song never aired that night. We were bitter, yet our rage fueled us. For reasons that remain unclear to me, we decided that the only way to properly commemorate Young MC on New Year’s Eve was to memorize all the lyrics to his song. We wrote them out on a yellow legal pad, and as we did, we had to keep stopping and rewinding the tape to make sure we got each phrase right. Candy was involved—Everlasting Gobstoppers and Nerds-and somehow, it felt like we were alone in the house. It was so satisfying when we got through the song from start to finish that we had to rewind the tape and sing along with it again and again and again.

-Sarah