Double Negative People is a conglomerate of like-minded old heads that love hip-hop. Period.

This is a place to share information, analysis, and discussion about hip-hop music, sports, politics, and everything else circling the world we live in. Our goal is to be informative and critical, but also to have some fun along the way. This is simply a place to share what we encounter traipsing across the landscape of the Net and hopefully make some sense out of it. But to understand what you may see in this blog, you have to understand me a bit.

First of all, my name is Rod Wallace, also known as Mr. Wallace (we’ll get into that later), and formerly known as R-Wall, Tangle, R-Tillery (thanks DJ Outlaw aka Big Buford), DJ Sausage, etc. Eventually, I just became Rod Wallace. I have lived and breathed hip-hop like few others I know.

My dad told me that when I was three, I used to read Jet’s Top 20 Singles and Albums to the guys at the barbershop.

At four, I tried to scratch a record by Skyy at my great-grandmother’s house in Columbus and got in trouble.

I remember my next-door neighbor, Paul Kennedy putting my brother and I up on everything.One of my first distinct memories about hip-hop involved Paul calling my brother and I through the bedroom window on one of those days that we couldn’t go outside. He said, “Listen to this:”

I was hooked.

I also remember my cousin Cookie showing my cousin Quentin and I her scrapbook. Cookie had done some promotion in Flint and had been all over working with hip-hop groups. She had pictures with UTFO, Whodini, The Real Roxanne, etc. The chains. The Kangols. The style. Even the style that they wrote the autographs in. Sidenote: In 1990, she had a son named La’Reonte, moved to Las Vegas, and eventually began cultivating his career in entertainment. You may recognize him.

For the next four or five years (or until he was too old to hang with us), Paul would sit on our backstep and bring his box. He was the first person who had Raising Hell, had me blasting Ice-T’s “Pain” on my bike, and showed me how to put paper in the cassette tabs to record over my dad’s Tyrone Davis tapes.

The first tape I bought with my own money was Queen Latifah’s All Hail The Queen.

Over the next ten years, I filled up a whole chester drawer with tapes I bought with my paper route money, and could tell you anything about anybody related to hiphop. I knew who Wendy Day was, followed Biz Markie’s sampling case, and even found the time to make some hiphop myself, but we will save that for another post. I made Vic at Serious Sounds alot of money.

Throughout college, we were the cats that was blasting the newest ish in the dorm hallways and in the apartment complex. So many classics came out during college, and they truly provided the soundtrack to our growth as young black men.

After graduation, I began teaching in northwest Detroit. I was the teacher that DJ’ed the school dances (or suggested the DJ), advised the school on the purchase of audio equipment, and was playing J Dilla instrumentals just above a whisper so my 6th graders would have to be quiet while they worked in order to hear it.

Soon after, I went to Recording Institute of Detroit to become a better producer. There, I met Michael Moseley (@micnotes), and Double Negative was born. We ran a studio out of the crib during the 2000’s, and many nights I would work on music till late and then wake up and teach. This blog will incorporate critical analysis of artist discographies, producers, and actual albums, and we are looking for your views on what we discuss.

So, enjoy the blog. We will revisit your memories of hip-hop, laugh, and hopefully learn some things too. It is important to give this culture the critical and scholarly respect that it deserves, and it starts here. Welcome to doublenegativepeople.com.