So Into You by Fabolous ft Tamia

One of my best friends lost her virginity with this song soundtracking the momentous occasion and if that's not one of the most romantique things you've ever heard then you and I have very different definitions of romance.

I didn't actually know So Into You by Fabolous ft Tamia was a remix until years later — the original Tamia version came out in 1998 and rules but the 2016 live cover version by Childish Gambino on an Australian radio station is literal baby making music.

I remember the summer this song came out. I was 19 and my best friends Sheida and Nic and I drove up to Whangarei at the top of the North Island of New Zealand and listened to it on repeat along with Can't Let You Go — Fabolous' other hit song from his 2003 album Street Dreams — plus a lot of Common, Talib Kweli, Angie Stone, Dead Prez, Erykah Badu, that one song Flake by Jack Johnson, Blink 182 and Fleetwood Mac. We'd change the words of So Into You to our own last names so that when he raps, "Since you been asking our good friends how'd you like it if both our names had Jackson on the end?" my line would be, "Since you been asking our good friends how'd you like it if both our names had Hindin-Miller on the end?"

NB: I write that without cringing.

This is one of my favorite songs to play at the end of the night when there are a bunch of late-twenties-or-30-something-year-olds in the room and they want a singalong dripping in the nostalgia of their teen years spent driving around listening to soft r'n'b and rap songs that they'd burned on CDs.

I can't really explain it.

I LIKE YOU!