Mixtape: Time Travel Terror

Looking back is always embarrassing. Every decade you’ve lived through feels more pathetic in retrospect than the last. The 80s had the perms and studded belts. The early 2000s were some kind of fever dream. But the 90s actually shaped something in me, which makes it harder to laugh at.

I was too young to understand The Prodigy or Daft Punk when they hit—they were just there, felt but not processed. What I actually remember is dancing around my room to S Club 7 and Alice DeeJay, completely sure of myself, then turning around and pretending I was serious about Notorious B.I.G. and Dr. Dre. That swing between bubblegum pop and real hip-hop—that was the whole decade in miniature for me.

The Vengaboys sitting right next to House of Pain on whatever mixtape I’d made, no hierarchy, no shame yet. I just wanted in on something that sounded like it mattered. Something that didn’t sound like it was made for kids.

The weird part is that I can see how corny it all was now, but that doesn’t erase the fact that it shaped me. The embarrassment and the formative part exist at the same time. I hold both without resolving them, which is probably the most 90s thing about it.