It is a difficult thing to pick just one song that I would consider to be my favorite or most important in my life. That is a very specific thing to pick in the gigantic world of music. Music is one of the most important things in the world to me, and there are so many songs and artists that I can relate back to so many different memories over time. With that being said, the one artist that will always stick out in my mind slightly above the rest would be Atmosphere.

I can remember the very first time that I ever heard Atmosphere, and I did not like it at all. I was over at my friend Sam’s house, and I think we were in third grade. We were sitting in his large two car garage which was filled with several old couches and armchairs, a television, and a loud sound system consisting of two tall speakers. We spent a large amount of our time in there blasting music and playing nintendo, and on that particular day his brother had given him the Atmosphere album “Seven’s Travels.” His older brother was a hip hop and graffiti artist, and often let Sam borrow his CDs. Sam had grown up listening to hip hop because of his brother and he told me that I had to listen to the CD. He played the first song on the album, “History,” but after listening for a few minutes I quickly lost interest. It wasn’t until a few years later that I heard it again and it really had a greater effect on me.

Sometime in seventh grade I was with Sam again, and we were driving somewhere in his mom’s car. He had always complained about the music that his mom would listen to while we were driving, so he burned “Seven’s Travels” onto a CD to listen to. He put it in and started playing it, and I had remembered hearing the first song before in his garage, so I sat and listened. But hearing it for the second time was much different than the first, because I found myself really enjoying it. I guess a lot changes about a person in a few years, including the kind of music they enjoy.

Growing up, I had never really listened to a lot of music. I would sit in the living room at my house and listen to my dad’s old Eagles and AC/DC cassette tapes and I would listen to the radio occasionally, but that was really as far as it went. I never felt an interest in music, especially not in hip hop. I liked hearing music but it never really meant anything to me. I wouldn’t try to figure out what the artist was saying or what the song was about, and after hearing “Seven’s Travels” that all changed. All of the sudden music had so much more meaning to me. When I would hear a song I would try to decipher what the song meant, if anything. For the first in my life, I felt a range of emotions when listening to music. Certain songs could put me into a state of depression and others could make me feel great, and there were so many songs that I felt like I could relate to. I think that Atmosphere completely transformed me as a person. I started dressing and acting differently, meeting new people, and finding new interests. Since then I have slowly grown to enjoy music more than most things in the world, and although I enjoy all sorts of types of music, I don’t think that anything could be as significant to me as atmosphere was.