The other day, I hopped in my beautiful sports car — a used, white 2010 Toyota Camry — and started driving east. I was heading to Greenville,N.C. to celebrate a friend’s 21st birthday.
To get appropriately hyped, I grabbed my phone and opened up Spotify to play its RapCaviar playlist. There was only one problem: where I had hoped to see three bars of service, a depressing “1x” stared back at me instead.
Sitting in the middle of rush-hour traffic with no cell service and no other options, I turned to my last resort — songs downloaded on my phone. While years ago my downloaded songs were a robust and well-kept list, the ability to stream songs basically eliminated the need to take up storage space with downloads.
As a result, what I was left to listen to was a motley playlist consisting mostly of dad rock and hip-hop songs I listened to intensely for a week straight before discarding.
Yet when I hit shuffle, I was pleasantly surprised. I harmonized with Fergie (I hit every note), rapped very explicitly alongside Ice Cube, and by the time I hit the Ramones, I was air-drumming so hard I startled the old man in the car beside me.
After seven or eight songs (all bangers), I decided to save it all and create my Office DJ playlist. I made only one rule: no skips. So if you’re looking for a coherent playlist, this isn’t it. It’s an unapologetic look back at various songs I’ve been into in the last three to five years. As such it jumps shamelessly from Dave Matthews Band to Beck to OutKast and many places in between.
What began as an interminable slog through I-40 soon turned into a thoroughly enjoyable, two-and-a-half hour road trip. I reconnected with with my old music and remembered why I downloaded many of those songs in the first place.
My name is Holt McKeithan, and this year I’m an assistant sports editor. Check out my Office DJ playlist and you might learn a thing or two about me. Among those things may be that you don’t ever want to listen to music with me, and if so, that’s okay.
But if you’re curious, hop in your four-door sedan, crank that stock stereo and hit shuffle. It’s going to be a fun ride.
