The History of the 'Back in the day' song

Remember Festival Song by 360?  Remember how he said 'remember' and repeated the summer days, getting nostalgic for music festival over a slowly strolling beat with a looping piano sample?



It felt good to hear it, it felt nostalgic.  It was a great track to pop on at the bbq, or doing a cruise in your beat-up Datsun down Jetty Road, but why was it so popular?  And why do artists keep bringing these songs out, and why do we keep getting sucked into listening to them?

Ice Cubes Good Day mines similar territory to 360, swapping festival stories for a random trip through a day in his hood.  Slow, looping sample with lyrics about hanging out with your buddies and wasting time, a quintessential back-in-the-song.



Or Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince's Summertime, the granddaddy of all back-in-the-day tracks, as Will Smith fondly recalls his youthful summer days in Philly.



More recently, Indie rapper Danny Brown got on the bandwagon with Grown Up, talking with an odd fondness for his primary school days.  Or Snoop and Wiz's Young, Wild and Free, which was attached to a movie that inexplicably featured a mid-40's Snoop Dogg hanging out at a High School.





It's an easy out for a rapper.  They hear a looping piano or organ sample over some dusty break-beats and the lyrics come out too easily... remember back in the day, when you used to blah blah.  That's right, the rappers talking to you, and he wants you to think back to your own youth and the things you used to do.  Did you hang out with your friends, did you like wearing sneakers?  Of course you did, and now you're hooked because the rapper has brought you into his world, and you can't escape until he's listed all the things he used to do when he was younger, and you need to know if you did them too.

As long as there is youth, and as long as there are memories of youth, the back-in-the-day song is going to be a staple of your summer playlist.  I would tell you to be cautious about falling prey to the lure of the back-in-the-day song, but it wouldn't do any good.

You're desire for shared nostalgia, coupled with an addictive piano sample, will prove too much for your brain to handle, and you will be sucked in every time.