Editor’s note: GABEROCKKA is the Addict’s Field Correspondent. Peep game from one of the young, up and coming[ll] legends in the making.
I was trolling some of my streetwear/fashion geek forums this morning, and some of the posts I read got me to thinking about the Branch Discovery Process. The BDP is not real; it’s something I just made up, but it works for me and it’s a novel way of examining the processes through which we go to increase our knowledge.
In the beginning of 1998, I was chilling at a party at this skeeze named Asha’s house. In my crew, Asha got passed around more than triple honey dipped oo-wop, 2wap, 3wap, or whatever you call a blunt rolled with multiple Phillies. True story is after the Marijuana Parade in 97′, my dudes Tech and Malice and I rolled a honey dipped quadrop that took an hour and a half to burn, and had to be held with two hands, but I digress. An hour into the party Tech showed up with a new Mixtape by Babu and J-Rocc of the Beat Junkies, called ‘Bumrush Brothers Vol. 2’. I had been listening to hip hop since the late 80’s, but I learned from this mixtape that their was a whole new movement in hip hop going on right under my nose. This tape had tracks by cats I had never heard of before such as Jurassic 5, Dilated Peoples, and Lootpack. I fell in love with underground hip hop the first time I heard it, and the very next day I brought the mixtape to Fat Beats with the instructions ‘I want shit like this.” They hit me off with a grip of Eddie Ill and DL mixtapes, and I was off the college.
At school I was selling E for my dude MOVES back in the City, and there was only so much money I could spend on chronic and ordering food every day. My starting to collect records came about mostly because of money surplus (I wasn’t into sneakers like I am now at the time). I noticed a link on one of the tapes to a website called Sandbox Automatic, and I checked it out. Turned out all these dope indie hip hop records that I had assumed were so obscure as to be impossible to find were all available for purchase at this site, and for a measly $6 apiece. I started ordering records from Sandbox, using the playlists of the tapes as shopping lists. Eventually I developed an email friendship with the owners, and when I went back to the City that summer they offered me a job. As a newcomer to the hip hop vinyl scene, this was the best educational experience I could hope for. When I started out I didn’t know anything about the artists, but the way I expanded my knowledge was intuitive; I knew I liked the artists on the mixtapes, so first I copped everything I could find by them. Then I copped records by artists who had guest features on the mixtape, then I copped records by artists on the same record label, and so forth. This type of organically branching out research, coupled with the fact that I’m a neurotic obsessive nut-job who eats, breathes, and sleeps my fixation du jour, is what brought me from being a clueless n00b getting clowned on forums, to being who I am today (slightly less naive – still getting clowned on forums.) Oh I also wrote record reviews for YRB Mag. and ran my own ‘Zine for a while, but that was later.
When I was in high school, I was into sneakers, but nothing like I am now. I had the Air Max 95 Classics, and the Air Max 95 Comets. I had a pair of Air Humara’s, and a pair of Air Terra Humara’s. I liked sneakers but I wasn’t a sneakerhead; I was into fashion in general and putting together dope outfits, but back then I was more of a Polo Raver type, so it was all about designer menswear like Polo, Nautica, DKNY, etc. I stayed up in Macy’s and Bloomies. One time, my crew ended up all owning the same pair of Air Max’s in different colorways (unintentionally) and we met up at my crib all wearing our new kicks, stood in a circle, and formed sneaker-voltron. I actually took a pic, which is sitting somewhere in my apartment (I will hunt down and scan). At the time of course I didn’t realize how teh ghey this all was, but it’s all gravy. In 2003, after beating my Air Max’s and Humara’s to death I went out to get a new pair of kicks, but I didn’t like any of the general releases I was seeing in the stores. This was before I became a sneab (sneaker snob) – now I wouldn’t even bother going to Foot Locker and looking at General Release Nikes, because my sneabishness has consumed me and I’m convinced that all of the GR Nikes are ugly. Back then I had no idea what Quickstrike or Tier 0 meant; indeed I wasn’t even aware of a hierarchy of exclusivity of Nike releases. If I was I probably would have hit up a sneaker boutique like DQM, but back then I didn’t even know such a thing existed.
Anyhoo, not being able to find any new models I liked, I decided to search Ebay for some of the older models I used to rock. I found some Terra Humara’s in an obsidian/engine colorway and I copped. I liked the way it felt to wear TH’s again that the very next week I went back on Ebay looking for more colorways and found an all brown premium leather edition called ‘HTM – Paul Brown’ – I copped. The fashion nut in me had been dormant for a while but this was definitely when things started shifting. Just the very fact that I saw nothing wrong with buying the same pair of kicks in multiple colors was very telling as I had previously taken a more practical approach towards footwear. One day while doing Google searches for more pairs of Terra Humara’s, I stumbled upon a treasure trove of information in the form of a sneaker and streetwear blog, and a website called Flight Club. I started reading the blogs, and frequenting Flight Club, expanding my tastes past Terra Humara’s into Air Max’s. When I’m fixated on something, I tirelessly research it and immerse myself in it; with sneakers and streetwear, as with records, and before that, comics, my goal was to develop an encyclopedic level of knowledge in as short a time as possible. Getting into one brand led me to another; getting into one store led me to another.
I tell these stories to illustrate my theory of the branch discovery process, which gets its name from the way that each discovery branches out to another. It’s a process I take for granted, but I’m not sure everyone goes through the same steps when trying to learn about a new thing. Or maybe it’s one of those things that everyone does, but no one stops to examine. Now that I’m aware of it, it’s always interesting for me to watch it happen. I’m on autopilot so I don’t even consciously do things that are part of the BDP, but if you’re not lucky enough to be an obsessive weirdo like me, you can always try to follow the instructions and see if you can’t implement the BDP in your own quest for knowledge.
But when it comes to BDP, Knowledge always Reins Supreme.
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