in high school i would spend a lot of nights staying up late trying to get homework done. i always did things last minute and i still do. high school was a good place to listen to shitty hip hop radio. i used to just listen to whatever station was playing the new toni toni tone, 112 or jodeci. i thought i was one smooth motherfucker. my main man mike grove made me a pretty sweet jodeci mixtape. he swore it would make a man out of me. he told me to throw it on at any point i was hanging out with the women and they would be mine. i don't what the problem was but that shit would never work at all. i thought my flirting with the world of smooth would have come to an end. back in 95 the radio would get really steamy after midnight. you might just hear some forgotten classic or be introduced to a classic in the making. i can never forget the first time i heard rappin' 4 tay's song players club. i thought the smooth grooves of this song alone would send it to at least #2, but it never did. the song was somewhat forced into obscurity. i didn't know who sang the song so i was forced for weeks to stay up listening to the radio just trying to find out who this guy was. i've never heard a beat so smooth in my life. he's not even rapping loud like the singles of the day. it's like this dude was in a waiting room and didn't want the rest of the people to hear what he was saying. but in reality he wasn't even whispering, he was just smooth. he even says he's smooth right there in the song.

"by the way, just in case you never heard of rappin 4 tay, i'm on the smooth tip"

well i hadn't, and he most certainly was.

and it wasn't about the strippers, the money, the clothes..... it was just about the smooth for me. rappin' 4 tay, wherever you are tonight, your mixtapes worked.