As a Black Kid, AMVs Taught Me To Appreciate Teen Rock Music

Art Credit: YoungLinkGFX You probably don’t know the first person who took highlights from an anime and put music on the track to create the first Anime Music Video (or AMV, for the initiated). And I don’t know either. But God bless them. I mean that sincerely, from the bottom of my heart, may God bless them with riches and happiness, because they unexpectedly changed my life. And while they live in anonymity without the accolades and Grammy category deserved to them, the least the rest of us can do is celebrate what they’ve given us. You might remember the first AMV you ever watched. If I had to guess, I would say the year was around 2003 and it was a Dragon Ball Z montage with either Linkin Park or Rage Against the Machine. And yo, they went hard. I wasn’t introduced to rock bands until I transferred to a school outside of my hometown of Detroit that had White people who knew squat about hip hop but much about tracks that scream violently to its audience, and I had no idea how to appreciate this new music. [quote_right]we slipped through the cracks when it came to loving what most of us called “White people music.”[/quote_right]My earliest foray might’ve been the same as yours – the ending credits to The Matrix, where you undoubtedly turnt up at the credits before knowing what turning up was, and then you lost all memory of the moment because banging to rock music made no sense in your life. How could it? Who was our closest analog? Probably Mystikal, or maybe DMX, but even…