Erin M. Routson on Crime Mob’s “Circles” (from Hated On Mostly, 2007)
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I set it as his ringtone.
It seems kind of ridiculous, but rap ringtones have had a place on my phone since a beeped-up version of T.I.’s “Rubberband Man” blared from the tiny speaker of my old Motorola in college. But this song, this was the one that effectively got this person into my life. The whole thing played out just as the Friends of Distinction sample said it would: You got me goin’ in circles. I’m strung out over you, over you, over you.
We had known of one another for close to a decade. As summer crept in and took up residence, a bunch of scattershot people with ties to Cincinnati began convening in turntable.fm rooms to play songs we loved, songs that made us laugh, songs we called heaters or bangers or whatever inside joke had come out of that day’s conversation.
Late one night he played Crime Mob’s “Circles” and I spent the entirety of the next day listening to it on repeat. I had forgotten it; Hated On Mostly never got that much play with me. His choice tied him to me forever, the same way “RX Queen” reminds me of a high school boyfriend’s mixtape and “Harder Better Faster Stronger” makes me think of a dance one of my best friends does.
He will always be that song to me. He is that song no matter how many other conversations he and I have about music, about anything. He would be that song in my mind even if it never went further than an after-midnight turntable play.
He probably doesn’t even know that this relationship between him and that song persist for me but for the fact that once when we were together, his phone accidentally called mine. There it was, blaring out of another tiny speaker, that beat and that sample responsible for me paying any attention to him. If he didn’t hear it and didn’t know then, this writing is now proof.
There’s no poetic way for me to parse this part and I don’t want to say it that way: things didn’t work out between us. I didn’t, wouldn’t and couldn’t listen to that song for weeks even though I previously couldn’t hear it enough times—typical behavior for me. If he hadn’t been responsible for its re-appearance in my life, the song itself might’ve actually been comforting on some level, as comforting as the thought of the members of Crime Mob coaching me through a break up. The interplay of anger and sadness you feel when something ends is in the dynamic between the sample and the verses. As the interpolation of the Friends of Distinction lets them coo over their minds as whirlpools, Princess and Diamond punch holes through it all with their own tales of “wishy washy kinda feelings” and disappointment.
Maybe it’s comical that something by a bunch of rappers from southside Atlanta reminds me, a white girl from the suburbs, too heavily of him, a white dude from some other suburbs. That’s the power music has over me, though. None of that shit matters when it comes to my heart. In the world I live in, DMX’s monologue before the Aaliyah “Miss You” video is one of the most heartrending speeches ever made. I have different tenets for emotionality, obviously. “Circles” is always his anthem; the two are now synonymous. I kept it on my iPod, if only because I love it as a song as much as I love trying to break myself free of feeling sad over what happened between us. I kept it on my phone, too. Even if he never called me again, that song will only be his ringtone, a 21st century memento mori. I’d want to know, immediately, that it was him calling. I’d want to hear that song and remember the time over the summer that it was the best thing I’d ever heard.
Erin M. Routson is a Brooklyn-based writer and designer neck-deep in her masters thesis on the policy and design of public housing. Follow her on Twitter.
