See also: Cassette Tapes Are Awesome Until You Actually Have To Listen To Them

The guy who sells CDs and DVDs in the corner store parking lot near my house? That guy is the tits.

I mean, our relationship can only ever be that one way. I don't want to know him in any other context than The Guy Who Sells Stuff in the Corner Store Parking Lot Near My House. Like, I'd never want him to be The Guy Who Sends Me An E-Card On My Birthday or The Guy Who Watches My Kids. I can't be certain, but I'm pretty sure he hates me (he ALWAYS gives me the side eye), and he'd probably burn my house down if given the opportunity.

But damn if he isn't a good debater. A master debater, even.

Trust that I know that I don't hate him because when he's gone for more than a few days (bootleg salesmen can be unreliable, believe it or not), I start to get a little worried. I remember he was gone for a week one time, and I asked a cashier inside if he'd seen him. He said no.

Reminds me of when the boys and I found this gigantic spider living in a web on a tree a few houses down from ours. We named him “Steve the Spider,” and went to see him maybe three days straight. We showed up the fourth day and he wasn't there. And it made me sad. IT MADE ME SAD THAT A FUCKING SPIDER WAS GONE. I started picturing these horrible scenarios where Steve had been eaten by a hawk or gotten kidnapped and forced into spider prostitution. That was the worst day. Total pussy.

But the CD/DVD guy, he's the tits. I got to see him earlier this week when I went to the store to get candy and soda, because I'm still eight years old.

His stock on this evening was particularly impressive. If you've ever purchased bootleg CDs or DVDs, you might know that good salesmen arrange them in albums that you flip through; you just turn the pages, find something you want, point to it, then he digs it out of one of the shoeboxes in his trunk.

I got Future's album. I had it already because I got it from iTunes when it was released but since it's impossible to smash MP3s into a million pieces (the album is really bad, see) I grabbed a hard copy. I also got an unofficial mixtape that had several key Gunplay verses (“Bogota” still goes supremely hard). And I got some rinky dink “new” Z-Ro tape that The Bootleg Man assured me contained songs I'd never heard, a claim that was as wrong as anything that's ever been wrong.

The one tape I was looking for, a leak of Rick Ross's God Forgives, I Don't, which is suppose to release in about two weeks, he didn't have yet. We spoke for a minute about it.

We agreed that his last album, Teflon Don, was a monumental effort, and perhaps the best that anyone has ever rapped about opulence (paraphrased).

Beyond that, we disagreed on nearly every Rick Ross-based point.

Points of contention, also paraphrased:

I said that at the onset of his career, Ross was little more than a reboot of Young Jeezy, who's career had begun to fizzle around that point. He argued that Jeezy has never been capable of Ross's delivery, and that he has never written anything as transcendent as Ross's “B.M.F.”

I reminded him that in his best song ROSS RHYMED “ATLANTIC” WITH “ATLANTIC.” I was glad he didn't remember that Jeezy once started a song with “Patty cake, patty cake, microwave.”

I said that Port of Miami, his debut album, was great, and that it was my favorite of his tapes, but that Teflon Don will age to be more important. He said 2007's Trilla was his favorite, and that was the first time I suspected that he maybe didn't graduate high school.

I said that when Ross was revealed to be a former correctional officer, it was devastating to his reputation. He said that it wasn't, that nobody really cared, otherwise why is he about to be the biggest star in rap, and that was the first time I suspected that maybe he'd graduated magna cum laude from Yale.

I think the entire conversation last maybe eight minutes. It was fun and it was interesting and only marginally uncomfortable.

When it was over, I collected my tapes (“1 for $5 or 3 for $10” will always be the best) and left.

I guess I still don't know if he hates me, but it probably doesn't matter.

Fuckin' Trilla? C'mon, man.

See also: Cassette Tapes Are Awesome Until You Actually Have To Listen To Them

Top 60 Worst Lil Wayne Lines on Tha Carter IV

Why Is This White Girl Allowed to Use the N-Word?

Top Ten Rap Albums For People Who Don't Know Shit About Hip-Hop

Top 20 Greatest L.A. Rap Albums Of All Time: The Complete List

Odd Future Member L-Boy's Column

Syd the Kyd on Odd Future, Her Sexuality and Why She Hates the Word “Lesbian”

Top 20 Worst Bands of All Time: The Complete List

Advertising disclosure: We may receive compensation for some of the links in our stories. Thank you for supporting LA Weekly and our advertisers.