best experiential music experience of 2006

It’s in the summer at the Empire Skate — “the birthplace of roller disco.” I go with Nick for Chioma’s birthday party. The rink is lit exclusively by neon palm trees. It’s adult night, so the DJ is cursing, getting progressively drunker, and shouting the “25 and overs” everytime he drops a record that came out before 2002. We are the only amateurs on the rink. But where some people have routines and crews, I’m killin em with my razzle dazzle. When that fails, I get em with determination. Neither of us falls not even once. The night’s all Biggie and “Roll Bounce” and ’80s house and it’s Brooklyn in summer, the best time and place to be I think in the world, ever — redeemed and free, we are sweating from humidity and work (my ass will feel it a day from now) but everytime we round the corner to the left to the left, the wind whips through our hair. We are ponies in syncopation.
Then the DJ stops the music.
“I know this next song’s not a roller jam,” he disclaims, “but THIS IS MY FAVORITE HIP-HOP SONG OF THE YEAR.”
The alarm-like, not-Jon synths of the froggish Yung Joc’s “It’s Goin Down” bang thru the system. That song is deceptively simple, but it’s got like four different counterrhythms going, in disguise as synth changes or “Ay”s — I have a theory that if you recomposed every element to “It’s Goin Down” on marimba it would become a complicated percussion piece for Xenakis heads and regular readers of [UK music magazine] The Wire. I have not tested this theory.
But more importantly, have you ever tried to rollerskate and do the snap dance at once? So many ppl hated on snap this year, complaining about everything from its topical simplicity to its thinnish lyrical acumen, and while I understood where the complaints were coming from, I thought they often missed the point. (Course, some of those complaints were sour grapes — i mean, rappers are worse than bloggers and/or 8th grade girls when it comes to gossiping and back-stabbing (not to summarily shit on 8th grade girls but, having been one once, I am drawing from experience). The most gossipy rappers are over 30.))
Anyway, snap music was most-hated of all Southern music and while it certainly didn’t blow my mind-slash-change my life-slash-invigorate my behind and/or brain in the same way other Atlantans did this year (Polow da Donnnn), I enjoyed snap’s life purpose as canny party-music with little to prove but the weekend. And also, if you think I’m gonna be mad at any song that namechecks the MALL, you are sorely mistaken. (Mall as communal public space, that is, not just Mall as “where i cop my bed bath and beyond.” That said, meet me at Atlantic Center, it’s goin down.)
As the DJ, possibly drunk, gushed on Yung Joc, we whipped around the corners, with the flow of roller-rink traffic. If you are not a roller-skating pro like T.I. or Jessica Simpson, the best way to dance on skates is to bounce. The bass thrum came up through the wheels and snap’s pure visceral impact hit me, feet first. That song has motivational qualities beyond the tired “we run this.” Sure Yung Joc is no Ciara when it comes to life coaching but I wouldn’t refuse an invitation to his pool party, you know? That night, I felt like I experienced that song the way I was meant to — sweating, stunting, rolling by a neon palm tree and trying not to fly into Nick, and trying not to flip into long trails of everyday-practicing, hands-holding dancers who were snaking round the corners like caterpillars. Just flexing my calves and hoping my face didn’t hit the floor.