It was the Fall of '96 and my very good friend's birthday was coming up. I had gotten him a gift but wanted to do something other than the traditional card. Since we both were (are) huge fans of hip-hop music, I decided I would write a stupid little parody to a track we both knew and give it to him as part of his gift. Weighing in at only 18 lines long, it wasn't anything particularly exciting, and as parodies go it was pretty weak. Still, it was something different and I thought he'd find it funny. What I didn't realize at the time was that I was starting a tradition that would last for seven years.

"The Birthday Rap", as it soon became known, was one of the highlights of the year for both of us. As the impending birthday grew closer and closer, the inevitable question was asked, "Have you started working on it yet?" It was a source of pride and excitement for us both--we'd spend long hours coming up with the perfect idea, the best rhymes, the most obscure in-references, etc. The Birthday Rap was sometimes started many months before and for the writer it was difficult to wait for the actual day to unveil the latest masterpiece. Usually, the writer had to drop a couple of hints, or mention a couple of things, just cause he was so proud of what he had done: "I don't want to spoil it, but let's just say that _____ plays a roll in this years rap." The anticipation was great, but the final product was even better.

Though The Birthday Rap had humble beginnings, it quickly took on a significance far greater than the simple novelty of its first appearance. Each birthday, the raps got better and more complex. It was a continual game of oneupmanship between he and I, with every new effort raising the bar. Not only were we competing with each other, we were competing with ourselves. Each year we tried to do something different, better, and unique. The verses got longer, the parodies (if they were parodies) more complicated, the whole production just grew and grew. As the years went by, the birthday present became secondary to the rap. The physical gift was just a vestige of the American birthday tradition--The Birthday Rap became the real present.

Almost immediately, The Birthday Rap had a particular format. It was nearly always accompanied by instrumental music of a popular hip-hop joint from the past year or so, as a beat was necessary to write and rap to. The lyrics were presented to the recipient so he could read along while the presenter rapped the piece for him. The subject matter followed a pretty standard routine with several key themes (which even ended up parodying themselves in later years). One tradition was that the rapper talked about having a hard time finding a gift and pondered what he might be able to substitute as a result of either being broke, starting his shopping too late, or suffering from a poor selection of goods. A huge part of the rap was that it had to include numerous references to popular culture, news, people, and events of the past year, and even previous birthday raps themselves later on. It was never a serious affair (other the occasional genuine expression of friendship), didn't take itself too seriously, and more often than not poked fun at the recipient. As the years went by, The Birthday Rap became more and more self-referential to the point where sometimes the theme was simply how hard it was to come up with the rap itself, especially considering what the other guy did last time.

The presentation and preparation surrounding it grew more and more elaborate with each passing year. At first it was just a verse or two rapped without accompaniment. Then we started doing it to instrumentals. Then the verses got longer and more complicated. In the seventh year, I received not one, but three different song. In addition, the lyrics came with a written question and answer session with the artist (i.e. my buddy), a look at some of the deleted/rejected verses from that year's Birthday Raps, and a chronology of previous efforts highlighting influences, important pop-culture references, and notably lines. It was a magnum opus, the pinnacle of the tradition thus far, and an incredibly tough act to follow. In response, I had to come up with something even better. For his birthday, I took a page from his book and created a binder of all the previous raps, complete with a letter from the "Birthday Rap Preservation Society". For the main event, I wrote several verses and recorded them, and then burned the resulting track to a CD. The combined package was many, many hours of work, but the result was a truly unique gift for someone I've now known for almost half my life.

Unfortunately, the real world has a way of interfering with some of the things in which we take the most joy. My buddy entered medical school after undergraduate and as such has nowhere near the free time he once enjoyed. I too have found that working all day leaves me with less time than I'd like and nowhere near the energy I once had to devote to such projects. Two years ago was the last time I received a Birthday Rap, and as I celebrated this year I sorely missed the tradition that spanned almost a decade.

It's funny, in one of the last rhymes I wrote for him, I rapped: "And seriously, who wants to keep on doin’ this shit until they’re eighty?" But now, seeing what I'm missing, I guess I know the answer.

I do.

Tags: Life, Rap, Reflection