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The first Soviet record arrived in the same box as three Atlanta twelve-inches, two gospel LPs, an Albanian women’s vocal ensemble, a Japanese post-punk single and six copies of an album Curtis Green had ordered because customers had been asking for it all week. Curtis stood behind the counter of Street Rhythms with a pencil tucked above one ear and read the distributor’s invoice twice before deciding the problem was not in the paperwork. The shipment really did contain a pale-grey sleeve printed with Cyrillic lettering he could not read, a photograph of four severe-looking young men standing beside what appeared to be an industrial boiler, and a small sticker from the importer identifying them as a Leningrad group called Sever-9. The Albanian record was stranger only because its cover looked almost traditional: six women arranged in two rows against a mountain landscape, except the notes on the back described electric bass and drum machine alongside voices and hand percussion. Curtis lifted that one from the box, held it at arm’s length and said, “I ordered soul, rap and the Japanese shipment. I did not order Albania.” From the front bins, seventeen-year-old Tamika Warren called back, “Maybe Albania ordered you,” and Curtis lowered the sleeve slowly enough to communicate exactly what he thought of that answer without needing to waste a sentence on it.
Curtis had owned Street Rhythms for eleven years and distrusted any sentence beginning with maybe a record store should. Maybe a record store should specialise. Maybe a record store should stop carrying twelve-inch imports that sat for months. Maybe a record store should sell more compact discs because people kept insisting that was where everything was going. Maybe a Black-owned shop in southwest Atlanta should concentrate on Black music and stop wasting shelf space on records whose liner notes required three languages and an adventurous customer. Curtis had heard every variation and ignored most of them, although not because he lacked a sense of business. He knew exactly which bins paid the rent. New hip-hop releases disappeared fastest. Southern soul remained steady. Gospel sold best before Sundays and after funerals. Old funk moved according to sampling fashions Curtis could often predict by listening to what younger producers were doing. Local artists mattered because customers wanted to hear themselves reflected back from their own city before somebody in New York or Los Angeles decided Atlanta existed. Everything else occupied narrower economic territory, yet Curtis had learned that narrow territory still mattered because a shop could become too sensible and eventually find itself stocking only things people already knew they wanted.
Tamika emerged from the aisle carrying a stack of empty plastic sleeves and took the Albanian record from him before he had agreed she could. She studied the photograph, turned it over and sounded out the group’s name from the importer’s phonetic note. “Zëri i Jugut,” she said slowly, then tried it again with greater confidence. Curtis told her, “If you break your tongue on it, I’m not paying medical,” but Tamika ignored him and scanned the translated notes instead. “Women from Gjirokastër and Tirana. Started folk, added synths in eighty-seven. This says one of them played volleyball.” Curtis said, “That narrows Albania down to about half the country if you believe every sports article I’ve ever seen,” and Tamika grinned because by 1991 the country’s women athletes had been globally visible long enough that even American music-import copy sometimes treated an Olympic connection as useful decoration. She carried the record toward the turntable and asked, “Can I put it on?” Curtis reminded her she had not finished pricing the American shipment. Tamika answered, “I can price while listening.” Curtis said, “You can do everything while listening. I’ve noticed,” which was true enough that neither of them needed to argue about it.
Tamika listened continuously. She listened while sweeping, while alphabetising, while ringing up customers and while carrying cartons from the stockroom. She had begun working Saturdays at Street Rhythms two years earlier and had developed the conviction that genre labels were mainly useful for telling customers where to begin looking, not where music belonged. Curtis maintained stricter categories because shelves required them, while Tamika obeyed those categories only physically. In her head, a bassline from Detroit could sit beside a Japanese guitar record, which could remind her of an Albanian vocal rhythm, which could lead toward a local rap twelve-inch because the snare hit landed in the same emotional place. She described records through resemblance, movement and accident rather than classification. A customer asking for jazz might be handed something from Lagos because Tamika thought the horns argued similarly. Someone looking for an R&B slow jam might leave with a French record because the singer breathed between lines in a way Tamika recognised from an Atlanta vocalist. Curtis considered this useful until it began consuming blank cassettes.
The problem had started innocently. A regular named Bernard came in looking for something “weird but not irritating” to play while painting his kitchen. Tamika made him a forty-minute tape from shop stock after closing, moving from a local instrumental hip-hop track into Japanese new wave, then a Soviet electronic piece, then an old Parliament cut whose synthesizer tone suddenly made the preceding music feel less foreign. Bernard returned three days later asking what the fourth track was, and Tamika could not remember because she had written only Side A and Side B on the cassette shell. She made him another tape with a proper list. Then his sister wanted one. Then a college student asked whether Tamika could make “one of those tapes where nothing matches but somehow it does.” Within three weeks, six blank cassettes had disappeared from a box Curtis had purchased for store use, and on the Saturday the international shipment arrived he discovered another cassette in progress beside the secondary deck in the stockroom. A label in Tamika’s handwriting read FOR ALTHEA — START QUIET, GET STRANGE. Curtis held it up between two fingers and called her name. Tamika appeared at the stockroom door carrying a pricing gun and asked, “What?” Curtis shook the cassette gently enough for the reels to move inside and said, “This is inventory.” Tamika replied, “That is one blank tape.” Curtis answered, “Exactly. One blank tape that belonged to me before you developed a public broadcasting service.” Tamika leaned against the doorframe and reminded him, “Althea bought three records last week because of the last tape.” Curtis told her, “And if she buys three cassettes, you can make her three mixtapes.” Tamika said, “That’s not how discovery works.” Curtis replied, “Discovery apparently works by stealing my Maxells.”
She accepted the rebuke because it was economically unanswerable and offered to pay for the tape from her wages. Curtis told her that was not the point, which prompted Tamika to ask what the point actually was. Curtis said, “The point is I run a record store, not a free cassette club.” Tamika answered, “The tapes make people buy records.” Curtis told her, “That is the theory you have developed after using my supplies.” Tamika pushed herself away from the doorframe and said she could prove it if he let her do the tapes properly for one month. “I write down who gets one and what they come back for. If nobody buys anything from them, I stop.” Curtis stared at her long enough for Tamika to add, “And I pay for the blanks.” He said, “Half.” She asked why only half if he was objecting to the cost, and Curtis answered, “Because if I let you pay all of it, you’ll start acting like this is your side business inside my business.” Tamika considered the arrangement, nodded and said, “Fine.” Curtis pointed the cassette toward her before handing it back and added, “And track lists. No more mysteries because you forgot what you recorded.” Tamika protested, “That happened once,” and Curtis replied, “That happened enough.”
The Albanian record stayed on the counter until shortly before noon, when Tamika finally played it during a quiet stretch. The opening was almost entirely voices, women singing in close harmony with a sharp, layered tension Curtis associated more with traditional field recordings than anything he expected to find in an import shipment. Then a low electronic pulse entered beneath them, subtle enough that for several seconds it seemed like a fault in the turntable. A hand drum followed, then bass, then a sudden synthetic chord bright enough to change the room. Tamika stopped pricing and raised her head. Curtis continued sorting invoices, but his pencil slowed. Near the front door, a customer browsing gospel records turned toward the speakers and asked, “What is this?” Tamika said, “Albanian.” The woman glanced toward the sleeve on the counter and asked, “You serious?” Tamika answered, “Very.” The woman listened another few seconds and said, “It sounds old and new at the same time.” Tamika smiled and replied, “That’s why I put it on.” Curtis continued pretending to care only about the invoice, though he had already decided to order another copy if this one sold.
By one o’clock Street Rhythms had become crowded enough that the music changed from atmosphere into negotiation. Curtis put on a local rap album because three customers had asked for it, while Tamika moved between the register and the bins helping people locate records. A teenager in a red Falcons jacket wanted something harder than what his cousin listened to. An older man wanted the same Al Green record he claimed his ex-wife had stolen in 1978. Two women from Clark Atlanta University were searching for dance records for a party and rejecting anything they considered too obvious. Bernard arrived carrying a paint-stained paper bag containing doughnuts and announced that Tamika’s kitchen tape had made him buy blue paint he did not originally intend to use. Curtis said, “That is not a recommendation for her musical judgment,” and Bernard replied that the kitchen looked excellent. Tamika tried to use this as evidence in the blank-cassette dispute until Curtis threatened to charge Bernard retroactively for being Exhibit A.
The two university women overheard enough to ask what tapes everybody was talking about. One of them, a tall woman named Denise who had been in the shop several times, leaned on the counter and said, “You making secret mixes?” Tamika said they were not secret, while Curtis added from beside the register, “They are unauthorized.” Denise asked what was on them. Tamika answered, “Depends who it’s for.” Her friend Renee wanted to know what that meant, and Tamika explained that she did not make one universal tape. She asked what people already loved and then tried to find things that touched it from unexpected directions. Denise laughed and said, “So if I tell you I like Chaka Khan, you give me what, Bulgarian bagpipes?” Tamika replied, “Maybe if the bagpipes have the right attitude.” Renee bent toward the counter laughing, and Curtis told both women, “Do not encourage her.” Denise immediately asked for a tape. Tamika turned toward Curtis without speaking. He sighed and said, “Half-price blank. Track list. Customer name.” Tamika reached beneath the counter and produced a notebook she had clearly prepared earlier. Curtis stared at it and said, “You had the notebook before I agreed.” Tamika answered, “I believed in you.” Curtis told her, “You are seventeen and dangerous,” and Denise said, “I like her.” Curtis replied, “That makes two of you.”
Tamika interviewed Denise with enough seriousness that Renee accused her of conducting a medical examination. Denise liked Chaka Khan, Prince, house music she heard at clubs through older friends, and a Japanese singer whose name she could not remember. She hated novelty records, long guitar solos and men who whispered too dramatically. Tamika asked whether she cared what language somebody sang in, and Denise said, “If they sound good, they can sing the phone book.” Tamika wrote this down as though phone book represented a useful technical category. Renee wanted one too but said she preferred music with “more dirt in it.” Tamika asked what kind of dirt. Renee clarified that she meant drums that sounded human and bass that did not feel polished smooth. Curtis listened from the register while pretending not to. Tamika wrote two different lists. Denise would probably get the Albanian record. Renee might get the Soviet one if it sounded as industrial as its cover suggested.
The Soviet record turned out to sound nothing like the cover. Curtis played it after the lunch rush and expected cold synthesizers, metal percussion or at least something sufficiently grim to justify four men posing beside a boiler. Instead the first track opened with a loose bassline, handclaps and a guitar figure so warm that Bernard, still lingering near the funk section, shouted, “They lied on the jacket.” Tamika laughed and turned the volume higher. The singer entered in Russian, low and conversational, then the chorus broke into layered voices that sounded almost celebratory. Curtis shook his head and said, “This cover says they are about to nationalize your refrigerator.” Bernard replied, “Music says they’re having a cookout.” Tamika was already writing something in her notebook. A young man browsing local rap approached the counter and asked whether the group had anything else. Curtis said this was the first record from them he had ever seen. The man listened another minute and said, “Bass player likes funk.” Tamika told him, “Exactly.” He asked if they could hold the record until Monday, and although Curtis did not allow unpaid holds longer than a day, the young man produced five dollars as a deposit and promised to return. That sale mattered to Curtis more than he let Tamika see.
The shop had always functioned partly as a place where people were allowed to be curious without expertise. Curtis disliked stores that made customers feel stupid for pronouncing an artist wrong or entering through the wrong genre. He had grown up with enough men guarding music like private territory, testing newcomers with catalogue numbers and obscure personnel, and had no desire to reproduce that culture. If a woman asked for “that song with the bass at the beginning,” Curtis helped her find it. If a teenager knew a sample but not the original, he treated that as a starting point. Tamika had extended the principle beyond anything he would have designed himself. She made ignorance active. Not knowing became permission to move, and by mid-afternoon she had started Denise’s cassette using that exact logic. Curtis objected immediately because she was supposed to be working the floor. Tamika said the first side could record while she worked, and when he reminded her that she needed to change tracks manually, she said she had calculated the timing. Curtis repeated, “Calculated,” in a tone of disbelief, so Tamika showed him a sheet with track lengths added in pencil. The first side would move from a Minneapolis funk track into a Japanese electro-pop single, then the Albanian women’s group, then a local Atlanta dance remix whose percussion suddenly made the connection obvious once she explained it. Curtis examined the list and asked, “Why this order?” Tamika pointed from one title to the next and said, “Listen to the synth line here and then here. Not the same sound, but they lean forward the same way. Then the Albanian track has those women singing over that little machine pulse. The Atlanta record comes after because the drums open up.” Curtis handed the sheet back and said, “You’re describing furniture.” Tamika replied, “You know what I mean.” Curtis admitted, “I do, unfortunately.”
During a slower stretch, an older customer named Mrs. Bell came in looking for a Mahalia Jackson album and found Tamika writing track times beside Japanese titles. Mrs. Bell asked what she was doing, and Tamika explained the cassette project. Mrs. Bell said, “You making tapes for strangers now?” Curtis told her, “Please do not phrase it like that,” but she ignored him and asked whether Tamika could make one for somebody sixty-four years old who did not want to hear anybody yelling over drums. Tamika asked, “What do you like besides gospel?” Mrs. Bell replied, “Good singers.” Tamika said, “That is not specific.” Mrs. Bell answered, “It is specific enough if you know what a good singer is.” Curtis smiled because he recognised an opponent worthy of Tamika. The interview eventually revealed that Mrs. Bell liked Nina Simone, Miriam Makeba, old country ballads when the singers sounded genuinely miserable, and one Cuban record her late husband had owned. She did not care for most rock but liked an old Japanese torch singer a neighbour once played for her. Tamika asked whether unfamiliar languages bothered her, and Mrs. Bell said, “Child, I grew up in church. Half the time emotion got there before the words did anyway.” Tamika wrote that down too. Curtis watched his blank-cassette inventory becoming a small community programme and considered stopping it before the idea grew beyond the shelves. Then Mrs. Bell bought the Mahalia Jackson album, a used Nina Simone record and, after Tamika played fifteen seconds from the Albanian LP, the only copy of Zëri i Jugut.
After Mrs. Bell left, Curtis waited until the door closed before telling Tamika, “Order two more.” Tamika asked, “Of Albania?” Curtis said, “You heard me.” She reminded him that he had mocked the shipment and had not even ordered it deliberately. Curtis replied, “I mock many profitable things.” Tamika said, “You said you didn’t order it.” Curtis answered, “I still didn’t.” Her smile began forming slowly enough for him to see the argument arriving before she spoke, so he pointed the pricing gun at her and said, “Do not make that face. One sale is not a revolution.” Tamika replied, “I didn’t say anything.” Curtis said, “You were preparing to.”
The next week proved the cassette argument faster than Curtis expected. Bernard returned asking for the Japanese record from his tape. Denise came back with Renee and bought the Albanian LP after Mrs. Bell’s copy had forced Curtis to reorder it. Renee bought the Soviet record when the second shipment arrived and then asked whether there was anything from Yugoslavia with similar bass. A shy Morehouse student who had received one of Tamika’s tapes through his cousin came in searching for a local Atlanta group he had previously dismissed because he thought they were too smooth. The compilation had placed them between a Polish jazz-funk track and an old Ohio Players cut, and suddenly he heard the rhythm differently. Curtis began recording the purchases in Tamika’s notebook himself, although he did not announce this change in policy. Tamika noticed anyway.
Near the end of February, Street Rhythms acquired a small handwritten sign taped beside the register: ASK TAMIKA FOR A TAPE IF YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT YOU WANT. Curtis objected to the wording because customers should generally have some idea whether they intended to spend money, but he left the sign in place. The tapes never became a formal service. Curtis refused to advertise them outside the shop and limited the number Tamika could make each week because she still had shelves to stock and customers to ring up. People paid for the blank cassette at cost, which Curtis eventually reduced after deciding the resulting record sales justified the expense. Tamika kept lists. Each tape received a name based on the customer rather than the music: FOR DENISE — BRIGHT BUT NOT SWEET, FOR MRS. BELL — VOICES THAT KNOW SOMETHING, FOR MARCUS — BASS FIRST, QUESTIONS LATER. Customers began bringing the tapes back with annotations. Denise wrote stars beside three tracks and NO beside one. Mrs. Bell wrote BEAUTIFUL VOICE beside an Albanian song and TOO MUCH DRUM MACHINE beside a French track, then added in smaller writing that she had still listened to it twice. Marcus wrote only MORE LIKE 4.
Tamika treasured these responses. One Saturday afternoon Curtis found her seated on the floor behind the counter with three returned track lists arranged around her like evidence and asked whether she intended to alphabetise anything that day. Tamika pointed toward Mrs. Bell’s notes and said, “She likes the Japanese singer better than the French one, but Denise likes the French one and skipped the Japanese track. Same reason, opposite reaction.” Curtis replied, “That revelation will shake the industry.” Tamika ignored him and said, “People don’t actually want genre. They want a feeling they already know from somewhere else.” Curtis reminded her that people also wanted records they heard on the radio. Tamika said, “That too.” He sat on the stool behind the register and began testing her theory. “What feeling does Bernard want?” Tamika answered immediately, “Things that sound like somebody found them in a garage and made them dance.” Curtis asked about Denise, and she said, “Confidence without somebody trying too hard.” When he asked about Mrs. Bell, Tamika thought longer before saying, “A singer who sounds like she means the song more than she wants you to like her.”
Curtis nodded despite himself and then asked, “What do I want?” Tamika stared at him long enough for him to add, “That is not a difficult question.” She said, “Yes, it is.” Curtis reminded her, “I own the store.” Tamika replied, “That makes it harder,” then considered him with enough seriousness that the joke drained away. Finally she said, “You like records where the musicians leave room for each other.” Curtis did not answer immediately. Tamika continued, “Even when it’s busy. You complain if everybody’s trying to prove they’re the best person on the track.” Curtis thought about the records he had kept longest, the ones he played after closing when nobody needed assistance and no release schedule mattered, and realised she was right enough that arguing would only make him look foolish. He said, “Go alphabetise.” Tamika grinned and stood.
By spring, the international bins at Street Rhythms had expanded by one shelf. Curtis resisted calling it an international section because half the records connected more naturally to something elsewhere in the shop than to one another, but shelving required compromises. Albania sat beside other Balkan imports because customers needed to find it somewhere. Japanese releases occupied a growing area near the end of the new-wave and electronic shelves. Soviet records remained unpredictable enough that Curtis placed small handwritten cards beneath several titles describing the actual sound rather than trusting cover art. One card beneath Sever-9 read: DO NOT BELIEVE THE BOILER. Customers asked what that meant. Curtis told them to listen.
Tamika continued making tapes, and the best part from Curtis’s perspective was not that people returned to buy obscure imports. It was that they began talking to one another differently. A customer standing near the rap section might hear a Soviet bassline and recognise something familiar rather than foreign. A gospel buyer might ask about an Albanian singer because Mrs. Bell had mentioned her. College students brought in Japanese records they had acquired through friends and traded recommendations with older funk collectors. Local musicians came by specifically to hear what had arrived from elsewhere, not because they wanted to imitate it wholesale but because musicians had always listened beyond borders whenever access allowed. Atlanta remained at the centre of the shop. Curtis never allowed novelty to turn local music into background. New tapes from neighborhood artists still went directly beside the register. Local twelve-inches still received first play when somebody brought them in. Tamika’s compilations increasingly used Atlanta tracks as hinges between distant sounds rather than as proof the city had caught up with somewhere else. Sometimes an Albanian rhythm led into an Atlanta drum pattern. Sometimes a Japanese bassline pointed backward toward American funk that had helped shape it. Sometimes a local rap production made an obscure Soviet record suddenly intelligible to a customer who had considered it culturally distant five minutes earlier.
One evening, just before closing, a boy of about sixteen came in carrying a handwritten list from his older sister. He had been told to buy one specific hip-hop twelve-inch and appeared determined not to be distracted by anything else. While Curtis retrieved it from behind the counter, the shop speakers were playing one of the newly arrived Japanese records, a restless guitar track with a bassline that shifted unexpectedly beneath the chorus. The boy listened while counting his money and asked, “What’s this?” Tamika gave him the artist and title. He frowned and said, “Japanese?” Tamika said, “Yeah.” He listened another moment and said, “It sounds like something my cousin plays.” Tamika immediately asked, “What does your cousin play?” The boy named an Atlanta band, and Tamika smiled before asking, “Want to hear something?” Curtis, ringing up the twelve-inch, said, “He came in for one record.” The boy replied, “I got time.” Tamika moved toward the turntable with another sleeve already in her hand.
Curtis finished the sale, put the twelve-inch into a paper bag and watched her cue the next record. The boy stayed. Ten minutes later he had spent the remainder of his money on a used local LP he had previously ignored because Tamika had placed its opening track between two things he would never have thought belonged beside it. After he left, Curtis locked the door and turned the sign to CLOSED while Tamika began gathering loose sleeves from the counter. Curtis opened the blank-cassette carton beneath the register and counted what remained. Tamika heard him and said, “If you’re about to complain, Denise’s cousin wants one tomorrow.” Curtis shut the box and told her, “I’m ordering more.” Tamika stopped and asked, “How many?” Curtis said, “Twenty.” Her grin appeared immediately, so he added, “You still pay half.” Tamika said, “I know.” Curtis continued, “And you keep the lists.” Tamika repeated, “I know.” He told her, “And if I find one tape labelled something foolish like Music for People Who Hate Mondays—” Tamika interrupted, “That’s actually good.” Curtis said, “It was an example of what not to do.”
Tamika laughed and returned to stacking sleeves while Curtis switched off the main lights, leaving only the counter lamp and the small light above the turntable. Outside, evening traffic passed the windows in streaks of white and red. The bins stood quiet beneath handwritten dividers: RAP, SOUL, FUNK, GOSPEL, JAZZ, LOCAL, IMPORTS, categories useful enough to organise a room and insufficient enough to describe what happened inside it. Tamika picked up the Soviet record with the boiler photograph and asked, “You still think this cover lies?” Curtis took his coat from the hook and said, “Completely.” Tamika pointed out, “You like the record.” Curtis answered, “I never said I didn’t.” She reminded him, “You played it twice yesterday.” Curtis said, “I own the store. I can play whatever I want.” Tamika tucked the sleeve beneath one arm and asked if she could borrow it for the night. Curtis told her, “Bring it back clean.” Tamika said, “I always do.” Curtis added, “And don’t put it next to anything obvious.” Tamika paused at the doorway and said, “That sounds like a request.” Curtis replied, “It sounds like quality control.”
The next morning, when Curtis opened Street Rhythms, a cassette sat beside the register with his name written across the label. Underneath, Tamika had added ROOM FOR EVERYBODY. Curtis did not play it until after lunch, and when he finally did he listened from beginning to end without skipping a track. He never told her she had understood him perfectly, but the cassette remained in the drawer beneath the register long after the blank-tape experiment stopped being an experiment at all.