Listen to "Inventor" while reading the story.
"Inventor" is my first song ever. In October, 1992, when I was 13, a friend of mine named B.J. was walking with me to the University of Central Florida to play basketball with college students because we felt like we were better than the high school players. We weren't really, but we thought we were. B.J. had already been rapping for a while. I don't know how long, but he was a pretty good freestyle rapper at the age of 14. He told me to "kick a rap." I replied "I can't rap man." "Man, just kick a rap!" "O.K." I paused for just a moment to find the right line to start with, "Turn on the stereo, kick up the bass, as I dunk in your face...4 of a kind, don't mess with my mind, 'cause I got you beat every time." I memorized that 30 second freestyle, and it is the verse in "Inventor." B.J. helped me come up with the chorus, "Inventor is the thing, that you like, uhh yeah, damn right," and even had a verse of his own, but that verse got lost. It may have gotten recorded on my cheap boombox with a mic built into it, but if it did, I have no idea what happened to the recording.
There's really not much to the lyrics themselves, as they were freestyled, but I thought I'd touch on a couple of things, just as I did at my show at Hole In The Wall on Friday February 18th, 2005. First, I've hated Shaq for his duration in the league. He's always been way too cocky for my tastes, and not skilled enough. Even when he was on the Magic, I was torn between hoping the team did well, and not liking him. However, B.J. had me believing, for about 2 weeks, that Shaq was his uncle and he could get me free tickets to games and meet the players, etc. so it popped into my head to rap about Shaq. The other thing I have to mention is my reference to House of Pain. There's a line in the song where I say "I came to win, battle me that's a sin." It's the only line I've ever ripped off from another song, but it was freestyled and rhymed with what I was doing already.
Oh, to this day, I don't have a clue what the chorus means. It just fit with the beat, and sounded cool.
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