I Was A Tower Records Employee: Dart Adams On Sept. 29, 1998 - Page 3

Many will write about the 15th anniversary of the last great release date in Rap history. But few truly overstand why it earned that designation and why after it there may never be another great day on par. Since they can’t, I will. Not only do I remember the day well and what it signified but I was actually working at Tower Records on the video floor and I was involved in preparing the store for this epic event, working a register on the music floor during the midnight sale. The following is my account of what many who currently write about Hip-Hop never got to experience: September 29th, 1998, Rap music’s last great legitimate release date.

The store was preparing for the final Tuesday of September for about two weeks. Our Tower went as far as to set up a plan as to how they were going to set up the cash drawers beforehand & count them while the midnight sale was still going and they had the four fastest cashiers on the 2nd floor scheduled to work that shift. They’d established these guidelines after seeing how slammed the video floor was the night/day of August 31st/September 1st when the Titanic VHS & DVD went on sale. It took supervisors from all three floors to count & input all of the sales from that 36 hour stretch. They didn’t think it would be that bad but they did estimate a line down the block at midnight was a fair expectation based on how Rap albums had been outselling Country CD’s since late 1997. Good call.

Back then I’d acquired a gang of friends on the 2nd floor (Tower Records Boston’s music floor) due to the fact that on the weekends and covered for the Emerson, New England Conservatory Of Music and Berklee College Of Music students who either had schoolwork, practice/rehearsals or prior engagements and couldn’t work. While monitoring the releases and their release dates closely I knew enough to know September 29th, 1998 might’ve almost even more epic if not for one probable release being pulled off the board entirely. Paula Perry’s Tales From Fort Knox was in the Tower database with an initial release date of 9.15.98. Next week, it  showed up in the computer with a release date of 9.29.98.

However, there was no unit order number next to it so I asked the Rap buyers Dave Piekoz & Mike Krupp what the deal was. They both told me that they expected for the album to either get pushed back again or shelved. For those that don’t remember, Paula Perry’s DJ Premier produced lead single “Extra, Extra” was one of the biggest songs of Summer 1998. There’s a jewel that no one else could’ve provided about September 29th, 1998…

CONTINUED ON NEXT PAGE

The boxes for the key releases had box cutters put to them and extra space was made in the Rap/Hip-Hop section. In addition, there’d be extra boxes of Jay-Z’s Vol. 2… Hard Knock Life, A Tribe Called Quest’s The Love Movement & OutKast’s Aquemini available behind the counter upon request just in case demand called for it and the bins went bare. It got so serious that  after a gang of Tower employees got $100 advances on their next paychecks from the store’s key supervisor to pay for their future midnight sale purchases that it looked like they’d have to do a post midnight sale sale just for the Tower folks.

At around 10 p.m. everyone from each floor was called to come to the 2nd floor & get copies of all the albums they’d be buying later on tonight and set them aside just in case they ran out of stock. Everyone was getting excited for midnight. An informal line began to form outside at about 10:45 PM. That’s when we knew that night was about to get mad real…

Now let’s examine why this particular Rap release date was so huge and such a monumental event that can never again be re-created or synthesized. The players involved are Jay-Z, who’s about to launch his Roc-A-Fella empire off the back of this album and become a legitimate superstar. A Tribe Called Quest, one of Rap’s most beloved and respected groups calling it quits which will bring out a wide cross section of fans.

OutKast, the same group that proclaimed that “The South’s got something to say” had become one of the biggest groups in all of Rap and amassed a diverse fanbase over their first two albums and their lead single “Rosa Parks.” Brand Nubian reunited with all of it’s original members for the first time since their classic debut LP back in 1990 on Foundation. The last piece of the puzzle was the long awaited album from the underground’s favorite duo Mos Def and Talib Kweli, collectively known as Black Star. They were regarded as the “last hope” to save Rap from it’s overly commercial leanings at the time.

The Fall of 1998 was very special in the timeline of the eventual decline of both box stores and music sales numbers. It was just before sites like Amazon.com would rule it’s first ever holiday sales season and cut significantly into the profits of brick & mortar music stores like Tower Records, Strawberries, HMV, Virgin and electronics stores like Tweeter and Circuit City. It’s before P2P sites like Napster and sites like mp3.com would result in more CD-R’s being sold than actual CD’s just a few months later. To further put things into perspective, only 5% of all American homes possessed DVD players. That dreaded “Titanic” sale I mentioned previously? We were selling out of pallets of VHS tapes. People couldn’t  even comprehend the concept of “widescreen” back then.

September 29th, 1998 was the perfect storm. It was before the Internet could affect physical album sales. It was also the right blend of nostalgia in A Tribe Called Quest and Brand Nubian’s respective swan song and resurrection coupled with the rise of the underground’s new champions Mos Def & Talib Kweli (Black Star) and the hope they represented amongst the young people and the backpackers that regularly copped Rawkus, Fondle ‘Em other indie  Hip-Hop vinyl combined with the exploding popularity of both Jay-Z and OutKast.

You also have to keep in mind that Rap music is now the #1 selling genre of music and retailers are well aware of this fact so they pulled out all the stops. We have holdovers from the 1st Golden Era releasing records the same day as the new “hot” rappers and  some backpackers the college kids love and all of their fans are lined up down the street and around the block. Many were in line to buy all five albums because they recognized the significance of this event and they all waited for the day Rap finally ruled the sales charts. It will never be like this again. We have the iTunes Store and Google Play plus cars drive by playing the leaked albums a week before they hit stores.

CONTINUED ON NEXT PAGE

We were all up on the first floor looking out the window marveling at the line forming down Newbury Street in anticipation for the midnight sale. I had my 5 CD’s all bound with a rubberband just waiting to cop them all after the smoke cleared. It finally hit midnight and we rolled the release cart out to our customers on the video floor so they could include them in their final purchases of the night. I can’t even remember what came out and I remember damn near everything. The phone rang and my supervisor Betsy picked up. She looked at me, smiled then hung up the phone. Betsy walked over to me and said “You’ve been called up to The Big Show, kid!”. My dumb ass stood there for about 5 seconds in silence before she said “Get your ass upstairs!”. Guess who then ran up the escalator to the second floor in less time than it takes for Max & Nev to discover you’re not who you claim you are online on an episode of “Catfish”?

The store’s key supervisor Gardner & the 2nd floor’s senior supervisor Sean were having an intense discussion near the registers when I arrived. It’s almost impossible to stress enough how many scars that damb “Titanic” sale had on our collective psyche. It was like surviving 36 hours under continuous fire in the jungles of Vietnam. They turned to me and said “Good, you’re here. Emily needs to go home at 12:30 so we’re pulling her drawer & putting you on for the rest of the sale on her register because we need the fastest people possible up here”. This statement prompted me to look at Sean because there were at least two other people in the store who were as fast as or faster than me. Gardner interjected “Abe & Quirk are gonna be helping us count drawers. That leaves YOU, Adams”. OH. That explains it. “Until your shift you can make sure to assist Em until she leaves. If the drawer gets full, bundle the cash & stick it into the safe”. “Big bills too? Face everything?” I asked. Sean nodded his head then looked at Gardner and said “I’m glad you called down for him!”.

Behind the counter we all waited as they finally let the crowd in enough where the line went all the way down the first floor’s escalator, out the door & halfway down the 300 block of Newbury Street. Everyone on the registers began to arrange everything, crack open change & place open boxes of CD’s within arms reach (or tell me where everything was). The announcement was finally made and the midnight sale was on. Customers flooded the sales floor as we had a few employees out to help direct them to product & expedite the process. CD’s were flying off racks and out of bins at a furious pace. On average people were buying at least 3 different albums at once. I’m behind the counter bundling 20’s up, dropping 100’s in the safe and facing bills the whole 30 minutes with the speed it takes for a dude to curve a chick he found out is really overweight after Nev & Max showed him his Internet girlfriend’s real pictures on an episode of “Catfish”.

Once Em’s 30 minutes were up Gardner showed up and asked Em to log out, swapped out her drawer with a fresh one, snatched all of the cash out of the safe then told me to log in. “Kill it!” Gardner said as he took the drawer up to the 2nd floor countout room. I looked up at the seemingly neverending line of excited customers with their hands full of CD’s, took a breath then yelled “NEXT!”. It was on like a condom in a Bangkok brothel. Your boy scanned, demagnetized, gave back exact change, flirted with cute girls and even convinced some people to buy MORE CD’s at the counter. Alicia Keys would’ve sang that I was on fire. The kid was ringing people up faster than it takes for someone to change the channel from MTV when “Nikki & Sara Live” comes on right after the end of an episode of “Catfish”.

Everyone came out. Adults, college students, teenagers, kids with their parents, casual fans, diehards and backpackers alike all came out to buy CD’s and participate in this event. It was almost as if each of them had come out to vote with their individual choices.

We’d already decided an hour into the midnight sale that we’d be playing all five of the albums the next day in the store as it was the only way to wash away the shame of when corporate ordered that we show nothing but Titanic for 48 hours straight on every video screen in the Boston Tower Records. It’s been 15 years now and I still haven’t watched Titanic since. After 90 minutes the crowd thinned out enough that we could close the store doors. Now it was time to swap out the last two drawers of the night to sell to all of the Tower employees.

This was such a huge day that the line of Tower employees stretched from the register into Hip-Hop/Rap section. Employees that weren’t even working that day showed up to cop their albums of choice. The top sellers were Vol. 2… Hard Knock Life, The Love Movement, Aquemini, Mos Def & Talib Kweli Are Black Star followed by Foundation. I believe that was also the order we played them in the store the next day. It was probably the first time after the separation between the mainstream Rap industry and the indie Rap industry that I saw underground Rap fans really come out in force and rally behind an album. It was imperative that they did it given it was going against Jay-Z and OutKast but they bought at least 3 of the 5 available projects that night on average. It was all Hip-Hop and there were no wrong choices. I don’t think we’ll ever experience a day like that ever again.

By the next Summer, that very same Boston Tower Records would realize that it was at Ground Zero of a new digital revolution as Napster spread from Northeastern University to Emerson College, Berklee College Of Music, Boston University, Harvard University and onto the campuses of over 50 colleges and universities in the Metro Boston Area. Boston had a thriving independent Hip-Hop scene so shows at The Middle East, The Western Front, Harper’s Ferry & Bill’s Bar always gave underground Rap fans a refuge from the mainstream Rap on TV and the radio.

CONTINUED ON NEXT PAGE

In addition, there was a wealth of diverse record stores in and around the area to cater to all kinds of music fans. As the sales numbers dropped and the quality of the music suffered that led to more CD burning and rampant music piracy. Before you knew it, not only could you not generate that same level of excitement for commercial Rap releases but the whole bottom also fell out of the Pop group/teen act/boy band wave beginning in 1999 so it soon began hard to generate excitement about anyone outside of a few choice individuals. There were no more clusters or multiple acts that generated similar buzz or interest in a post P2P site world thus no more big release dates like September 29th, 1998.

Every time there’s been a big music release date since they’ve been synthesized or strategically formulated in hopes of getting an apathetic fanbase of underwhelmed music buyers excited. In some cases it worked out but there will never be another purely organic release date that draws in Rap fans of all types into stores to buy physical product again. Especially albums that represented what these particular five did. The beginning of a dynasty. The end of an era. The promise of a new day. The ascension of new legends and the reunion one of Rap’s most influential groups. I still have all of the CD’s I bought that same night 15 years ago and I’ll never forget the genuine level of anticipation, eagerness and excitement exuded by the fans that came out that night. It saddens me this generation won’t experience this.