Where were you the day Kanye West killed gangsta rap? Me? I was super duper drunk, propped up on a banquette at Room Service watching Kanye West, standing on a table in front of me, rap along to “Good Life.” Because, you know, life was good. It was Sept. 10, 2007, and HITS Daily Double was projecting based off pre-orders that West would actually outsell the incumbent heartless monster of SoundScan, 50 Cent. And by a substantial margin. The Earth was turning. TBH, though, it wasn’t Kanye’s improbable sales victory that I was celebrating.

I was at a party thrown in honor of my recently ex’d-girlfriend launching her new magazine, MISSBEHAVE, and was trying my best to do the cordial yeah-I’m-so-happy-for-you-and-totally-over-us thing. It had not been going well. Eight years later I don’t recall exactly what I said when I arrived, but I definitely do recall some yelling followed by some tears. Oops.

Here’s a toast to the douchebags.

So needless to say when that exchange was interrupted by my cell—with Kanye West and Plain Pat on the other end, asking where the party was at—things started to look up for the kid. To be clear, this was not a normal happening. I’d known Kanye about five years and written about him a half dozen times at that point—some of which he liked , and some of which he didn’t . We’d just collaborated on his third COMPLEX cover , an issue he’d guest-edited, but we’d never, like, hung out. In fact, at that point, we had barely ever talked on the phone, but I think I’d called him to congratulate him earlier in the day. Maybe he just hit me ’cause my number was in his “recent calls.” Who knows. Either way I was surprised.

In any case, I explained I was at the MB thing, and confirmed that, yes, there were a lot of hot hipster women there. A couple minutes later ’​Ye, Pat, Don C, his publicist Gabe T, and the entire crew slid through the Manhattan nightclub BAPE’d out. I intro’d him to my ex, explaining that MISSBEHAVE was her thing, and watched her smile as they nerded out about fashion. PHEW. I was redeemed.

Then, as the clock struck midnight ushering in the day of Kanye’s album release, the party exploded. Roxy Cottontail’s DJ set turned into a Kanye medley, and the man, loose off the Goose, happily pantomimed his hits for the audience. Kanye was so fucking happy. Proud, really. Both of his previous albums had sold remarkably well in their first week (College Dropout topping 400K and Late Registration a whopping 860K), but something was different this time around. Kind of like when Eminem dropped 8 Mile, Graduation was the moment that Kanye transitioned from “successful other” to legit king status. And tonight was his coronation.

I was feeling very regal myself, having appeared to have just delivered the biggest rapper in the world, on his biggest day, and gone from pretty much ruining the event—embarrassing my ex and myself—to getting it written up in Page Six. Stunt 101.

So that’s where I was on Sept. 11, 2007, the day gangsta rap died.