Lost Boyz

18.01.03

My last year of high school, my best friend's brother made a mixed tape. We listened to that tape more times than I can count, and it became somewhat of the sountrack of our first summer as high school graduates.

A year or three later, in college, I started investing a lot of money in my CD collection. Randomly, I found I was rediscovering the songs bit by bit that had been on the tape. It was always by coincidence. There had never been a case attached, never a list of songs or artists. Just the tape. So each time I heard a song from that infamous tape on a new CD I had bought, I rejoiced at my slow, steady reconstruction of one of my favorite mixes.

I had forgotten a lot of the songs, and would only remember them upon hearing them years later. There was one song, however, which I would hear tidbits of repeatedly in my head. Never the whole song, mind you. Occasionally, I would try and spurt out a line or two to anybody I knew that showed an even slight interest in hip hop. To no avail. I searched for this song for years.

Six years after last hearing the song, I was in Boulder visiting that same friend that had once been the proprieter of the long-lost tape, Laura. We drove into Denver for me to catch my flight, which I missed by about seven minutes. I scheduled a 6 am flight for the next morning. Together, we all decided (there was a third member there, Pam) to go out to a long, nice dinner, and at midnight or one, I would work my way back to the airport and sleep in the lounge. We ended up partying up the town, randomly running into a mysterious character in one of our pasts, and giving away cheesecake from a doorway in downtown Denver.

Around 4.00 am, one of our cheesecake-eaters had been conversing with us for quite awhile when yet another pimped out car drove by blasting some bass-heavy song. But this time, I stood up in disbelief and said, "Holy shit! Laura, that's the song!! They're playing the song!" and I quickly told the cheesecake-eater the story. He was a friendly, talkative, slightly drunken guy, but in that happy and outgoing way. He listened intently and said, "I'll be right back." He ran up to the car and asked the boys in the big, scary car who the artist was and what the name of the song was. And then he gave them some cheesecake.

So here's the song. It's been a long road, but it's a great, fabulous, wonderful song that I have listened to at least three hundred times since that fateful Denver night.

It's by The Lost Boyz. I admittedly don't know anything about them, other than that I have heard their name several times in various American hip hop circles. I don't think they're of the MTV variety, thank God...they seem a bit more underground and media-shy (I couldn't even find a web site for them!). I bought their album. But this song, "Renee" remains my favorite. I still recommend the album.

Anyway, check it out. Great stuff.

Download it here: download no longer available, contact me to find out how to get it.