I’m spending this morning in research mode, working on an angle for a piece I’m writing about Snoop Dogg in the upcoming week. I’ve made a few seemingly sarcastic comments about how this is “kind of a big deal” to me, but to get a little bit earnest for a second, it kind of is.

I realize it probably looks strange that I’ve got magazines like Ego Trip and VIBE on my CV, and yet I can’t say that I’ve ever actually been paid to write a hip-hop feature story. On some level, I felt like I was always perceived as “the rock guy” who could write in a way that was sympathetic to urban readers; I was the guy who could interview Gwen Stefani about her ska and hip-hop forays or Rancid about their collaboration with Buju Banton, but not the guy who could talk to Pharrell Williams or Buju Banton about their rock excursions. To some extent, I resented that.

Because, hey! I grew up in Queens at a time when Run DMC released their first album and LL Cool J was an egocentric teenager. I took my first “girlfriend” — we were in fifth grade, but still! — to see Krush Groove. I wore Le Tigre polo shirts and bootleg Adidas sneakers because my family was too poor to afford real ones. I even started a little schoolyard hip-hop group with my friends Stephen and Lamont in 1985. It was the first style of music that really spoke to me, and truthfully, my engagement with hip-hop has both preceded and outlasted my active involvement with punk rock. Despite its ideological shortcomings, I still care about it.

Snoop covered Slick Rick’s “La-Di-Da-Di” on his first album, and that always struck me as a point of connection to his music. “La-Di-Da-Di” was something of a unifying reference point for anyone who grew up in the ’80s and had a schoolyard hip-hop group of their own; it was the one song we all knew by heart because we all had our own cover versions of it. There are no expensive instruments on this record, no professional studio tricks, and no sense that this is anything more than a street rap on vinyl. In other words, “La-Di-Da-Di” made it possible for young dreamers with limited resources to believe that making music was within our reach. It’s an anthem for kids who can’t afford real Adidas everywhere.