The Myth and the Magic: The “Get the Draws [MiniMix]Tape,” Pt. 1 by Shana Redmond

There are few things as awesome in the academy as getting a cool new colleague who knows how to think, drink *and* dance. This year, KT is the benefactress of Shana Redmond's arrival at USC in the Department of American Studies and Ethnicity. Shana was kind enough to take time out from her first semester in "Troy" to give us some mythical, magical, draw' droppin' jams. Take it away SRed...

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In the 2002 film Brown Sugar, Sydney (Sanaa Lathan) and Dre (Taye Diggs) are best friends whose lives and loves are bound and entangled by the music that they share. Upon reuniting in New York City after many years on opposite coasts, Dre announces that he is in love and ready to propose marriage to his girlfriend, Reese (Nicole Ari Parker). Sydney is shocked by the announcement and hesitant to believe that the ultimate bachelor is ready for commitment. To prove the honesty of his claim, Dre tells Sydney that he is going to retire his “slow jams deluxe get the draws tape,” the one with “Lutha [Luther Vandross], Sade, and the extended mix of Prince’s ‘Adore’.” As he speaks this line, we somehow believe that his claim is true: by giving up this tape, Dre has released himself from its attachments of philandering and womanizing. His tape is a relic of a bygone era, a time when he needed the music to get him laid. Monogamy now meant that both the tape and his lascivious demons were defunct.

While it would be ridiculous to believe that the tape ‘made him do it,’ its proxy as Dre’s desire is feasible precisely because this scenario is not unfamiliar. Traditionally, these tapes were the ones that your perpetually single, ‘I-love-the-ladies,’ uncle talked about. He kept the cassette in his 1982 El Dorado and allowed its sounds to waft like perfume from the car’s lowered windows while it idled in the church parking lot—a custom that made it impossible for anyone to miss his fashionably late Sunday morning entrance with his new ‘friend’. This association serves the myth of the tape well but is not particularly appealing for those of us post-soul babies who hope to tap into the magic of the tape in our own lives. While the sexually explicit purpose behind the tape has stood the test of time, the contents of the tape deserve and demand reinvention.

The resurrection of the “slow jams deluxe get the draws tape” for a younger generation became my obsession in my junior year of college. That fall I added to my extracurricular resume a radio show, The Drop Your Draws Show, on WMCN 91.7FM in St. Paul, MN. I developed the show out of necessity; there were no Soul/R&B shows on the station at the time and, as my favorite genres of music, I was determined that they should be represented. Beyond this intellectual compulsion however, I had at least one other motivation: sex. I was not striving towards the physical act itself—although, necessarily, that was never far from my mind; I rather was seeking the aural representation of sex, the sound-essence that compelled the act. These sounds, for me, are in some ways more powerful than the act itself because the sensations that they invoke are not dependent on a partner—they simply exist in the most portable of forms. To what ends these sounds are used is up to your discretion. So sit back, relax, and enjoy this updated minimixtape but be forewarned: these sounds may have unexpected consequences. - (SR)



And good to the last drop...Track #7