Welcome

I was born and raised in the Bronx, New York, home of the New York Yankees and birth place of Hip Hop. I’m now mature enough to admit that as a kid I used paper towels, aluminum foil, and plastic wrap bunched within rubber bands to simulate a baseball, then performed my best Dave Righetti imitation, standing ten feet from my mothers’ multi-layered canvas on the wall as my target. Even being the tried and true New York Yankee fans that I am to this day, basketball is the sport that captured my imagination. Although I can go on for days about my fondness of the music that my parents and grandparents grew up listening to such as Al Green, Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin, and The Temptations, I’m a proud product of the generation that established Hip Hop culture, for I could identify with Slick Rick, Big Daddy Kane, and L.L. Cool J.

My first memories of watching a basketball game were in the mid-eighties when Reggie Williams starred at Georgetown University and the Los Angeles Lakers battled the Boston Celtics for NBA supremacy. Magic Johnson became my basketball idol and the Lakers my favorite team. Nevertheless, it was not until the 1987 NBA all-star game when I watched Tom Chambers come off the bench to win the game MVP award that I declared I wanted to be a basketball player. Immediately following the game I dressed in enough layers of clothing to meet my mothers’ approval, dashed out the door and into the freezing weather with my basketball. I practiced alone on the icy court until it was absolutely time to go home.

The first Hip Hop record I recall listening to on the radio was Jam On It by Newcleus. The first Hip Hop video I remember seeing was Basketball by Kurtis Blow. However, coming from the borough that produced Boogie Down Productions featuring Krs-One and the block where the now world famous Kid Capri once dee-jayed block parties while producing his citywide respected and demanded mix-tapes, every moment of my life was and is now somehow stooped in Hip Hop. Hip Hop had such an impact on me that I never dreamed of being the next Krs-One or Kid Capri. Having been enamored and honored to experience Hip Hop performed in its purest form from a first hand perspective was more than self satisfying to me. My name is Khalid Williams. I love the game of basketball and I am Hip Hop.

Khalid H. Williams