One genre of music I often turned away from as a musician is rap. A few of my close friends are big hip hop fans and they are always listening to it. For a while it annoyed me, but then I started to pay attention to the music itself along with the poetry, and true hip hop really takes a lot of talent to pull off, especially free-styling. I have a hard time putting sentences together let alone stringing them together in a coherent rhyming flow. My friends Nate Petersen and Charlie Creagh have the ability to do this and it really amazes me how fast they can rhyme words off the top of their heads. After countless free-style jams in my room, which is my apartment’s jam room, I decided to help The Blanket Plan, Nate’s hip hop group, by jumping on the Bass. The music (Hip Hop) is so easy to get into and dance to. I am not a dancer by any stretch and while I play the Bass in The Blanket Plan, I jump around and really get into it. We played in the 2008 battle of the bands and came in second place which was cool, but disappointing at the same time. We thought it would be cool to improvise the last song in the finals. I laid down a bass line, Matt Duddy who played guitar came in, and Nate free styled an entire song on the spot, and it sounded pretty good. However the other band had a solid last tune, and a pretty ripping guitarist which elevated them to the victory. I am glad to finally be able to accept and actually enjoy hip hop, after many years of simply turning my noise to it for no reason.