Pop quiz…what was I doing on Wednesday, October 23, 2002? I wasn’t making pizza masterpieces at Domino’s Pizza. I wasn’t checking out my alma mater—the Huffman High Vikings—doing their thing on the basketball hardwood. I wasn’t out and about tearing up the Birmingham streets in The Deuce with my main squeeze. I wasn’t even doing Donald Love missions on GTA III. On that particular Wednesday evening, in the first semester of my senior year of high school, I was in my room listening to R&B Hits on Music Choice while finishing Honors Economics 12 homework. You couldn’t have possibly thought a nerd like me was going to be doing something different, right? On that particular night, I heard a song with an incredible beat that instantly became one of my top rotational plays of the year. That brings me to this week’s moment in the Flashback Friday series: Ms. Dynamite’s “Dy-Na-Mi-Tee”.
How I first came across this moment? As I noted in the open of this post, I came across the track on this day 18 years ago…according to Triumphs & Tribulations III.
What it meant to me then? I liked it from the start. The way the beat opened the track froze me in my tracks…like I literally stopped writing a paragraph on the difference between microeconomics and macroeconomics to listen more intently. The lyrics took it over the top. It reminded me of certain elements from my own pre-teen childhood. The track introduced me to Ms. Dynamite, her A Little Deeper album, and a new British sound.
What it means to me now? “Dy-Na-Mi-Tee” still gets rotational play from me today…though not nearly as much as it did in 2002 and 2003, respectively. Even as I’ve grown older, the track still resonates the same way it did when I was 17. When I hear the lyrics “Remember my first years of school/I was so innocent/I just wanted to learn/I never been so content”, I’m reminded of the old days of living at Grandma Sallie’s house and when I used to talk her head off with the things I learned in school. It’s definitely a sound I wished I heard more of today.
