Growing up with a brother who was basically Black Matt Pinfield, and how a doo-wop record and a Fugees CD shaped my entire musical DNA.
There’s something sacred about your first music setup. Not the sleek Bluetooth speaker that lives on your nightstand now—not your AirPods, not your Spotify Discover Weekly. I’m talking about your first real music player. The one you treated like it held the meaning of life… because honestly, it kinda did.
For me, it started with two things: a Fisher-Price record player and my big brother who was basically a Black Matt Pinfield before any of us realized how talented Matt Pinfield was when it came to music facts.
My brother wasn’t just a casual music lover. The man was a walking, talking Discogs database. He had every CD, every artist fact, and every random B-side you forgot existed. He didn’t just collect music—he curated it like a personal museum of sound.
So when I turned 13 years old in 1995 and got my first CD boombox, it was a moment. Think: Radio Shack flyer dreams coming true.
That boombox became the centerpiece of my room. I treated it like it was made of diamonds and NASA-grade technology. And the very first CDs that became mine—officially handed down from my brother’s untouchable collection—were The Fugees and Faith Evans’ first album, “Faith” (1995).
And both of those got played to death.
Faith Evans, with her buttery vocals and heartbreak lyrics, felt like she had personally read my 13-year-old diary… which, to be fair, was mostly dramatic poetry about my first love, but still. Her song “Soon As I Get Home” became an anthem for no reason other than it sounded like pain and longing and beauty wrapped in a melody.
The Fugees? That was a whole different kind of obsession. This was before we were all casually quoting Lauryn Hill lyrics like Bible verses. This was when The Score sounded like nothing else on Earth. “Killing Me Softly” was an immediate classic. I didn’t even understand half the bars, but I knew it was genius.
And before I graduated to CDs, let’s talk about vinyl. Before there was “RanjiRoo Radio” and my endless Spotify playlists, there was my Fisher-Price record player.
My sister and I owned exactly one record together: “Under the Blue Moon” by New Edition (1986)—their doo-wop covers album.
Yes… I said New Edition… singing doo-wop. You read that right.
While other kids were playing with Barbies or riding bikes, we were in our room spinning “Earth Angel” and “Duke of Earl” like we were at a 1950s sock hop. It was random, it was retro, and it was everything. I know a handful of doo-wop classics and this is why. Well, this and being obsessed with Grease.
I remember placing that thin, crackly record onto that chunky plastic Fisher-Price turntable like I was handling an ancient artifact. Needle drops, static crackles, music starts… and boom. Instant time travel.
And because my brother was the household’s unofficial music professor, he taught me how to clean CDs with a microfiber cloth, how to avoid scratches, and why lasers were the future (sounding like some kind of futuristic Jedi of audio).
That music—those moments—built the foundation for everything the Ranji Room is about to become.
It’s why my playlists today are 90% throwbacks and 10% underground gems that no FM radio station would play.
It’s why I still prefer emotion over algorithm and soul over streaming trends.
And it’s why I’ll always remember where it started:
👉 One boombox.
👉 One Fisher-Price turntable.
👉 One big brother with a better music collection than most record stores.
Stay tuned… more memories loading.