Music is an important part of our culture as it helps to define who we are and what we believe in. Our taste in music helps others to understand what appeals to us, what we’ve been through, and in some cases, maybe it even defines where we are going. There’s so many different artists and genres to listen to nowadays that for many people -myself included- taste varies from one end of the spectrum to the other. But no matter what, we never forget the artist/band/musician/group that first made us fall in love with music. For me, that group was Destiny’s Child.
Being a 90’s baby, I was a little too young to appreciate the work of other girl groups such as TLC or EnVogue, (although I LOVE the music now), so Destiny’s Child was it for me. The idea of a group of talented women getting together to form a group and live out their dreams seemed like a fairytale idea to me. As a young girl, all I could see was four (later three) pretty girls who could all sing and dance and have a good time all day everyday. I wanted that life too. Me and my two friends, Khiana and Kevonda used to pretend that we had our own group and were going to be big stars one day.
We used to blast our Destiny’s Child cd’s singing and dancing along to the tunes. I remember one time in particular, we were practicing our routine to the song “Jumpin Jumpin” inside of Kevonda’s grandmother’s backyard. We spent hours out there trying to perfect it.We were so serious about our makeshift group that we even had a name for ourselves and planned out our careers. We called ourselves Xpress (modeled after the group Xscape) and decided we would name our cd’s “On the Xpress”, “Xpress Yourself”, “Xpressive”, “Xpressions” and “Free to Xpress” respectively. It never occurred to us how silly it sounded. All we knew was that we wanted to be the next Destiny’s Child.
In fifth grade, the three of us were separated in a sense because Kevonda was in a different class, but we still were all bestfriends. With that being said, me and Khiana’s teacher, Mrs. Smith, decided to have an in-class talent show. Of course, me and Khiana signed up. The in-class talent show became a weekly thing that I believe was held on Friday’s. Although she couldn’t be in it, Kevonda always helped us practice throughout the week. Khiana and I did several Destiny’s Child numbers including “Independent Women” and “Bootylicious.” Our “Independent Women” number had us standing on tables while copying the dance moves from the video, while “Bootylicious” saw us throwing our sunglasses and bandana’s into the audience. We were too much.
Eventually, as time went on, we got over our dreams of performing and decided on careers that were more suited to us. However, our love for Destiny’s Child never died. To this day, I can still honestly say that they are my favorite girl group. And one of the things I love the most about them now is that my love for them opened the doors to me finding out about other girl groups and becoming more familiar with their music.
My taste in music has certainly changed over the years. I went from only listening to Destiny’s Child, with a few other R&B acts thrown in the mix, to now listening to just about anything -except Opera or that Heavy Metal stuff. No matter what though, Destiny’s Child was the group that changed my life.
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Images Courtesy of:
Latimes.com
Ibtimes.com