If you were a teenager in 2002, you probably balled your fist and banged out the beat to “Grindin’” on the lunchroom table. If you were a teenager who lived in Virginia Beach, Va., in 2002, as I was, you likely did the same, but also on the bleachers in the gym, on your locker, on your desk, on the school bus, on the basketball court, on the hood of a car (whether it was yours or not), on a pew at church. We made that beat everywhere we went, and not just because it’s the greatest beat in hip-hop history (don’t @ me). Nah, in Virginia Beach we had a different kind of response to Pharrell announcing that “the world is about to feel something that they never felt before.” Clipse did what, to me, seemed impossible—they put our backyard on the map.

I moved to Virginia Beach when I was 7 years old, and I always hated having to say that I was from there. Both of my parents were from Washington, D.C., and that’s where all my cousins lived. They got to claim a city that people around the world had heard of, one that got discussed with seriousness, that people traveled to because of its historical importance and continued reverence. And when I told people where I was from, I was always met with the same question: "And how far away from D.C. is that?"

I hated Virginia Beach because I didn’t recognize it as having its own identity. There was no go-go and mumbo sauce like in D.C. What we did have—skateboarding and surfing—didn’t appeal to me because they seemed to be the domain of every annoying white boy I knew. We had the beach, a summertime recreation staple, but there’s nothing beautiful about the murky, shit-green colored waters of the Atlantic we swim in down there, and even less beauty in that big-ass statue of King Neptune. There are no professional sports teams in Virginia Beach. We never got a mention in the national news unless a hurricane was headed our way. For a time, our biggest local “celebrity” was a guy who competed on “Survivor.”

By the time I was a teenager who wanted nothing more than to be cool, Virginia Beach wasn’t doing me any favors. Cool people didn’t come from Virginia. Cool people came from New York, Cali, Atlanta, Miami, Philly, New Orleans… basically anywhere I could name that a rapper had shouted out on record. Rakim said, “It ain’t where ya from, it’s where ya at,” but most hip-hop I listened to made it sound like the exact opposite was true. It was where you were from that made you who you are, that gave you the authority to stand and deliver.

I would have killed to be from any of those hip-hop destinations at that time. Virginia Beach wasn’t about shit, as far as I was concerned. Granted, by the new millennium, Timbaland and the Neptunes’ Pharrell Williams and Chad Hugo were established super producers, but you don’t become a hip-hop hotbed, and therefore cool, just because you make hot beats. You need an MC to get the respect. Clipse gave us two.

It’s been 15 years since Clipse’s debut Lord Willin’ dropped on August 20, 2002, and while “Grindin’” has been properly ensconced in hip-hop lore, the album is treated as somewhat of an afterthought. Hell Hath No Fury, Malice and Pusha T’s 2006 follow-up, holds the distinction of being rap critics’ favorite Clipse album, the one heralded as a classic, and for good reason. Not many albums are more tightly constructed, simultaneously pure and grimy, while featuring multiple MCs at their peak powers of rhyme.