Transcript
Narrator/Host (0:00)
Throughout the Fort Myers area, life unfolds at your own speed. Here, connecting to loved ones and yourself is an unhurried pleasure. Whether kayaking beneath mangroves, pausing to watch birds take flight, finding seashells along the shoreline, or walking the beach, each moment invites reflection. Fort Myers is a place to experience fully at a pace that just feels feels right. Discover a slower, more intentional way of living@visitfort myers.com.
Wesley Morris (0:38)
Last summer I went for a run and I do not run with any music. I run musiclessly. And so I get to the gym and I for once don't have headphones while I'm exercising. And I heard a song that I've heard, I don't know, 2 million times probably. This Is How We do it this Is How We do it by Montel Jordan this Is How We Do It It's Friday night and I feel alright. The party's here on the west side, so I reach somewhere at the beginning of this song. After I have gotten all of the groove establishment thoroughly in my system again, I started to hear this song in a completely new way. There's this great line in this song where he sang it feels so good in my hood tonight and the summertime skirts and my guys in Kanai and all the gang bangers forgot about the drive by. He lives in South Central Los angeles, which in 1995, when this song comes out, is well established as a particular pop culture zone. From Poetic justice and Boyz n the Hood and Menace to Society. It's a violent place where people could die at any minute. And there is just something so moving about the idea that because this party is happening, somebody is gonna live tonight. And in its way, it is celebrating life in the most subtle and, I don't know, at the same time mundane way. And I was really picking up what Montel was putting down. And the fact is that he put it down a long time ago. I was just finally ready to stop dancing and pick it up. And what I heard was that it wasn't just some like stellar piece of hip hop, R and B, it was a country song. I'm Wesley Morris and I am high on Montell Jordan because I am hearing him like I have never heard him before. I'm also a culture writer for New York Times and this is still processing. Okay, yes, I did just say that. I do think that this is How We do it is a country song. And here's what I mean. There's a kind of country song that is exclusively about where people have come from. I mean, where they Physically, actually are from. The one that came to mind for me is kind of the opposite of this is how we do it. It's Merle Haggard's Okie from Muskogee from 1969. You know, he's upset about people's negative reaction to the war, so he went and wrote a song about how none of those values have crept into the culture of Muskokee, Oklahoma. We don't smoke marijuana in Muscogee. We don't take our trips on lsd. I mean, he's already saying, like, listen, this is what's not happening here. Nope. We don't burn draft cards. We go fight in the war. Living right and being free. He has judged half the country in five bars. There are no lines to read between. He's laying it all out. And Okie from Muskogee is the sort of songs, the sort of country song that should be familiar to any country listener. It is about celebrating the place where you're from and what its values are based on, you know, the constituency of the artist. You can go as far forward as Eric Church, who is basically writing songs about where he's from that are about what you won't be doing when you get there.