Wow, No Thank You - Samantha Irby Page 0,23

crime. “Brown Skin Lady” is maybe the first time I’d ever heard anyone earnestly and unabashedly rapping about a beautiful woman and not feeling good enough to approach her, and I am a sucker for that kind of naked vulnerability. Also, I think this ushered in my “smooth jazz with vegetarian dudes spitting rhymes over it” phase, and I haven’t left it.

“It’s Oh So Quiet,” Bj?rk

The video for this is maybe the most impactful thing I watched during my years as a sensitive teen. Okay, fine, this and My So-Called Life. They both still hold up.

“The Love I Never Had,” Mary J. Blige

I felt a kinship with Mary from the second I saw the “Real Love” video on the Box, and I immediately begged my mom to find a baseball jersey in my size, although at that point I definitely had not experienced the soul-crushing romantic pain that you could feel ripping through her vocal cords as she sang. But I aspired to! I grew up in an Al Green/Anita Baker/Teena Marie/Isley Brothers house, so I knew of heartbreak. I was steeped in unrequited desire, lost love, and romance gone bad. I performed Betty Wright’s “After the Pain,” a song about an abusive relationship, at my second-grade talent show. I’ve been riding with Mary from the jump, and Mary is her finest work. “All That I Can Say”? “Your Child”? “Let No Man Put Asunder”? The duet with Aretha Franklin, “Don’t Waste Your Time”?! ALL EXTREMELY GOOD. But “The Love I Never Had” is a real “scream-sing your sorrows in the car on the highway” kind of jam, and that is the true measure of a quality song.

“You Got Me,” The Roots (the live version from The Roots Come Alive, duh!)

Okay, so this was a tough one, because junior year, Tim Herman made me a tape of Do You Want More?!!!??! and I completely destroyed that thing rewinding “Mellow My Man” over and over and over again. But as much as I love that album and as much as it feels pedestrian to put a group’s most popular song on a mix (everyone knows that you’re only a true fan if you appreciate the deep cuts), I’m going to be basic and choose this one because I have a really good story that goes with it. After I dropped out of college and was wandering around aimlessly because all my friends had gone back to school, I started going to tons of shows because they were cheap and I was eighteen and I felt like ~interesting~ people Did Stuff At Night. At the very least, it gave me something to write about in the e-mails I sent from my freshly minted EarthLink dot net address. De La Soul and the Roots did a show at House of Blues, and I missed getting tickets because this was the old days, remember, when you had to stand in line all day and pay for a physical ticket to go to a show. But then, due to demand, they added a late show, the idea of which is against my religion, but I loved them so much that I copped a ticket anyway. Then I spent all afternoon the day of the show lying down before driving my Escort downtown at 10 p.m. and parking illegally next to Harry Caray’s because there’s nowhere to put your car down there that doesn’t cost a minimum of sixty bucks. Anyway, I’m at the show, alone, wearing an orange vest that I thought looked cool, packed like a sardine with all these dudes with sparse mustaches wearing backpacks and fitted caps. The Roots did their set and started “You Got Me,” which is a kind of sad love song that features Erykah Badu on the original. Of course, she was too famous to just tour with these dudes to accompany them on one song, so instead they brought out this relatively unknown singer named Jill Scott to sing her part, and I was blown THE FUCK AWAY by her voice. Just standing there, covered in other people’s sweat, breathing in their clouds of Cool Water cologne, dumbstruck by this woman and her incredible voice. It was one of the best nights of my life, despite the hefty parking ticket and having to drive home 75 percent asleep at 2 a.m. (Also, I would include a Jill Scott song or five on this mixtape, for