Aye Yo, Pass Me the Aux!
The next generation of music fans will never know the epic power of a humble cord
Setting: sophomore year of high school, May 2008—Troy, Michigan. My oldest friend, the first in the group to get his license, was driving a packed truck of five pubescent 15-year-old boys. Who knows what we were up to? Naturally, teenage debauchery.
“Aye yo, pass me the aux!” I shouted from the backseat.
Once the cord was in my possession, I plugged in my state of the art, brand new iPod Touch (remember those?) I was about to play the newly-leaked Tha Carter III. You have to understand, during these times one friend in the group prided themselves on supplying the music. Only an exclusive few had iPhones, and in a world before Spotify and Apple Music all an iPhone could provide was a shoddy YouTube connection that may or may not take three minutes to buffer.
Thus, your only option was for one of the group to bring an iPod filled with freshly-downloaded music and playlists. Otherwise you were stuck with the radio, which in the spring of 2008 was cycling through “Lollipop,” “Disturbia,” “Bleeding Love,” “Forever,” and “Kiss Kiss.”
With the power that came with grabbing the aux, you were placed in the pressurized position of making sure your DJ skills were on point. Shuffle was for amateurs. You either had a playlist to fit the mood, or you possessed the sharpened tastes and unselfishness to plan five songs ahead—while your peers basked in the glow of being able to sit back, relax and enjoy the music.
Luckily for me, there wasn’t much pressure in May of 2008, in terms of what artist to play. There was one and only one: Lil’ Wayne. He’d worked up everyone’s appetite over the previous two years with the releases of Dedication 2, Tha Drought 3, and the Carter 3 Sessions. Lil’ Wayne was undisputedly at the top of the throne.
So as I fired up the album, I felt like an amateur bootlegger, as all of my friends hadn’t heard any of the tracks aside from “Lollipop.” We listened straight through, driving down the winding roads of the affluent suburbs of metro Detroit, five teenagers with the world by the throat. Our only worries were: where can we drink tonight, what should we eat before, and have you opened the book in the class we have a final in on Monday?
It was the twilight of the pre-social media era, before teenagers had become obsessed with snapping every moment of the night. The only things we needed for an unforgettable night were a car, an iPod, and that beautiful aux.
A note about logistics. If you had one of the short cords that made the person playing music from the back seat have to lean forward, essentially sitting on the middle console, that was looked down upon. Since my friend with the brand new, spacious, blacked-out Dodge Dakota was no lame, he had the full extension aux cord, allowing me focus on the most important task at hand: playing the perfect soundtrack. It was about knowing when to switch from a laid back “I just left my house while getting grilled by my parents” vibe to “we just illegally acquired alcohol and are going to an open house with plenty of girls” bangers.
And so the aux was crucial to our group, it was the friend who didn’t speak. Without it there would have been too many sun-splashed summer drives ruined by the Top 40 radio stations beating “Please Don’t Stop the Music” into our brains. The aux granted its holder the power and accessibility to play the hottest, most in-demand tracks that exemplified the mood of our invincible, anxiety-free young crew on the cusp of summer before junior year. The memories made in these sessions can’t be exaggerated. This was when time crawled by, summer nights seemed to go on forever, and the newfound freedom of driving with your friends was euphoric.
As Bluetooth killed the need for an aux, streaming services chipped away at the underrated element of surprise created by the esoteric and underground selection of an individual’s iPod. Half of the fun was scrolling through your friend’s library and seeing the depth of their playlists—littered with singles, imported CDs, and mixtapes. Now of course, everyone has the ability to satisfy their appetite for any genre with access to streaming services.
The aux cord experienced a final triumph in early 2016, during Kanye’s Pablo listening party at Madison Square Garden. Instead of playing a finished album, Kanye simply plugged his phone into an aux and blessed the crowd with unfinished tracks. But the best part was after the Pablo presentation, when a who’s who of rappers—Young Thug, Travis Scott, and Vic Mensa—passed around the cord with the excitement of a car full of teenage boys. It was refreshing, and in hindsight, served as the nail in the coffin for the aux cord. The fate became clear with the recent announcement of the headphone jack-free iPhone 7.
Maybe I’m just the 24-year-old who is too stubborn to admit that teenagers now are fortunate enough to pick any song under the sun, theoretically creating an even more memorable environment than we experienced. And soon, when dashboard are iPads, Apple Music will stream music straight to your car.
Maybe I am remembering a better time. One that was more simple, before tweets, statuses, captions, and snaps dictated the trajectory of the night. Car rides aren’t as exclusive now, as everyone snaps every second of the night, giving their social circle a view into an intimate experience that should be kept between the people in the car.
If it comes to a point where there is no spot for an aux in the car, which is inevitable, I’m drilling one in myself, so my children grow up understanding that the king of the car is not the one behind the wheel, or the one that calls shotgun, but rather the quiet hip-hop head in the back, holding in his hand the power to choose what the soundtrack to the group’s summer will be.
“Aye yo, pass me the aux!”
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