young and nj

further down the rabbit hole

I need to give a little credit to Big Boi, because lately I've been feeling like he just doesn't get the respect he deserves. I peeped a list over at cocaineblunts talking about how Big Boi is one of the "coldest" MCs in the game, coldest meaning generally ignored, not given enough cred, etc... Sadly, it makes sense for him to be there. It's all been weighing on my shoulders for some reason, so I'm gonna try and clear the air around this monkey on my back. Word bond.

Outkast worked because its two MCs formed a complicated, honest, and unique relationship around the music they were making. Rephrase: The complexities of those early Outkast albums are owed to neither Big Boi nor Andre 3000, but to the fact that the two were able to collaborate. ATLiens, Aquemini, and Stankonia succeeded because the combination of two artists produced a hydra far more dangerous than any individual-headed beast. Every time Andre went off on an alien tangent (Synthesizer), Big Boi was there to bring it back down to Earth (Slump). Every time Big Boi got lost rapping about drugs and rims, Andre was there nudging him to flip it. The concoction thus formed, augmented with the murderous flows of both MCs, was a radically unique and honest way of getting at Truth.

Okay, so Outkast was a joint effort, then why did Andre end up with all the shine? Basically, 3000 appeals more to a "liberal" or "white" or "underground" bloc, an audience largely responsible for rap success (meaning grammies and critical acclaim and whatnot). Andre was hailed as rap's Prince, characterized by quirky attire and an ambiguous yet flamboyant sexuality. He became that intellectual, rapping weirdo AKA the future AKA the best name to mention to your boy you just ran into at the vintage clothing store. And he put out great music. Many thanks to Andre for that beautiful music. Basically, Andre 3000 got popular because he represented a movement in rap towards something "different," something far more "intellectual" than that dirty South stuff (hope you can read the sarcasm in that). But in Andre's popularization, Outkast's history was starkly rewritten, and in the public's eye Big Boi had been playing second fiddle all along. That is, he never represented anything "new" for rap.

And that whole story is fucked, because Big Boi is a killer MC. Have you ever tried to rap along to a vintage Big Boi verse? It's nigh impossible, yet he makes it sound so smooth and easy. Better yet, listen to Speakerboxxx. His solo album (though still under the name Outkast) is track for track as moving as Andre's The Love Below. I might go so far as to say that it has the best opening suite of songs off any album I know: Ghetto Musick/ Unhappy/ Bowtie/The Way You Move/ Rooster. I mean that's just sickening. Each one of those songs is a stand-alone jam.

But this isn't about solo projects. Really, this is my attempt to refigure the Outkast paradigm so that I don't have to suffer anyone else ignoring Big Boi, or staking their claim to Andre 3000 merely because it's hip to do so. I'll say it like this: If you don't get Big Boi, you don't get Outkast, and if you don't get Outkast, you're missing arguably the greatest OAT. Rephrase: If you don't get Outkast, fuck you get off my website.

Tetrapeutic

Tetris is a classic. Developed in the 80s by a smart Russian man, the simple geometric premise of the game allows for almost infinite combinations of patterns and skill levels. But beyond the dry exterior lies a spiritual life of the game -a hidden dragon, so to speak. The simplicity of its construction could be described as elemental, and it's ever changing tiles belie its water-like tendencies. I am reminded of a quote by Bruce Lee: "Water can flow, or it can crash. Be like water, my friend". Tetris is just so elusive and unforgiving, silently molding it's shape around your state of being, and quickly ripping away any hard surfaces in its path.

To successfully play the game (and we're talking real deal marathon here), you must be malleable as well, keeping your mind pliable along with your fingers. This is state of focused devotion to your one goal: clearing away what is unnecessary. It is an endless game, just like other virtuous pursuits, and as the tiles get faster one must remain calm and centered. The chance that is involved in terms of upcoming tiles removes any focus on the future beyond your next move. The game makes you inhabit the now. From an architectural perspective, it constructs the perfect space for the exact moment you're in, reflecting your own input and the game's almost equally.

Perhaps you can tell my fascination with it. I've been playing Tetris almost every day for the past six years, and through countless hours spent numbing my thumbs a pattern has emerged: The more clear-headed I am, the better I do. Because I play it so much, I often find myself doing it without thinking about the game at all, instead musing on dreams, personal interactions, ways of thinking about them. It's therapy, in a way. And not only does it allow me to reflect, my level of clarity is directly connected with my progress in the game. If I have a calm and level-headed approach to my life, I'll look up to realize that I've beaten my high score. And when you link up with the game, the pieces seem to come at just the right moments, making the game an affirmation of thinking. Conversely, when things are anxious and undecided, my disconnect with the game seems complete, and I have no luck with block, and often make mistakes.

The resulting thesis I have about Tetris sounds more Chinese than Russian, but I think that it may very well be the greatest electronic ritual for finding one's way. The rituals that Confucius talks about in the Analects have a similar quality as this psychological massaging. As it says,
"At age fifteen I set my heart upon learning…and at age seventy I could follow my heart’s desire without overstepping the bounds of propriety”(Analects, 2:4). The way to reach such a place is through ritual and learning, training your instinct to work with your mind. Tetris is just such a ritual.

If you battle against it you may be victorious, but surrender to it completely and it gives you freedom. For me, it's always a learning experience.

Home

It's where I want to be, but I guess I'm already there

text conversation with Mom

Mom: What does goat staod for again?

Me: Greatest of all time

Mom: Ha

Stimuli Update

Sha Stimuli ft. Freeway and Young Chris- Move Back (prod. Just Blaze)

Album October 27

the beautiful decay

I guess I'll say that the best Bob Dylan songs are the sad ones. Somehow, connecting to a sad song has always been deeply satisfying to me in a way that other songs never are. This song is about using your sadness as a method of self-definition. I like it.

What up son?

Maintainin' maintainin you know...

Skyzoo- Maintain

Nothing to do with IP addresses

I have few fears and obsessions over the apocalypse, but there is one thing that I have been genuinely worried about: 2012. Maybe it's because I trust the Mayans quite a bit. I studied them a lot in the second grade - they were a truthful and intelligent people, and I surely trust them a whole lot more than the hundreds of christian seers and prophets who have predicted the same thing numerous times in the past.

The Mesoamerican calendar (given to humans by the Mayan god Quetzalcoatl, pictured above in human form) is divided into eras, and our current 13th baktun era is set to end on either december 21st or 23rd, 2012. Now, many people have disseminated this theory as "the end of the world", including at least one John Cusack movie, and one website which has finally set my fears to rest. It's called the 2012 Official Countdown, and it's just the kind of propagandist "truth" that makes me believe exactly the opposite of what it says.

The truth about 13.0.0.0.0. It has nothing to do with IP addresses and everything to do with your future... and life as we know it...

The Mysterious Planet X will shift into earth's rotational path and collide with our planet! All life that isn't immediately destroyed will be flung from the surface and into space

A meteor will hit the earth, causing concurrent massive tsunamis . The impact will make the bombing of Hiroshima look like a ripple from a pebble tossed into a lake.

Who could possibly know all of this? No professed member of one line of thought could ever claim to know so much about the future. No, it would take a much wider plane of knowledge.
The internet, of course.

Mr. Sayer is a respected Internet scholar with a concentration on the topics of history, spirituality and exposing untruths. He is known for his laser-targeted revelations on the complicated Mayan calendar system used to determine the true nature of 2012. Conspicuously silent while most of the ferver over 2012 raged... Sayer ended his self-imposed media boycott in late 2009 because as he put it... “I could no longer stand back and watch as the general public was lied to.” Sure, theories and theorists come and go... But James Michael Sayer is among the few “doyens” to stand firm and true. He never wavered from the truth no matter what kind of pressure he has been put under. And he's seen plenty of pressure.

“But... this stuff isn't in the bible. And if it's not
in the bible, it just ain't true!”

Who said this wasn't in the bible?
Which bible are you reading?
Because... I promise you, it's in there. And I'll show you where.

But when you boil it down, there is one truth to this entire tirade:
In 2012... something will happen. Because... to say nothing is going to happen, means you're just not paying attention.

Personally, I'd like to see things happen in 2012. I hope you'll be strong and smart enough to see them happen for me, too. That is, if you don't burn up the second Planet X hits Earth

circles of hell

My sophomore year at school was a dark time. I spent most of it either cooped up in my dormroom or in the darkroom trying to make pictures of walls that looked like this:

I only had a few allies, mainly two oversized Philips speakers and Limewire. So this is something of an ode to them. I felt like I was in the beginning of Clan In Da Front, when you can hear RZA's voice from some middle distance, reverbed to high hell, belting, "UP FROM THE 36 CHAMBERRSSSSS" as if he were caught in some dungeon, currently escaping. That's the place where I was: dungeon-chamber #36, surrounded by empty walls, in the ad libs before the music even starts.

Wu-Tang was something of a lifeline, so I made a project of systematically combing through Wu affiliate albums. So this is something of an ode to Wu. The further out from the Wu core I got, the darker the music seemed to get. And then I found Killah Priest's Heavy Mental ('98), orbiting in the Wu solar system somewhere out near Pluto. Priest got on the map with a feature verse on "B.I.B.L.E." off GZA's undisputed classic Liquid Swords, but it was his solo albums that really reached out and grabbed me by the throat. See I found something in those early tracks that I identified with: deep thudding bass drums, crunchy snares, and melody samples that sounded like murderers whistling in empty alleys or Egyptian snake-charmers.

Guns, shootouts and crack sales, black males in packed jails, trapped in hell, no peace, cold streets, surrounded by po-lice this whole week, buildings with no heat, low lights and gaspipes with slow leaks, dog fights, lowlifes, throw dice the whole night...

Now I'm not gonna front-- I'm a white dude that grew up in a well-off NJ suburb, in comfort. I don't profess to know the experience above. I have not been systematically oppressed based on my race, I didn't grow up with drugs on the corner, or face economic depravity in the form of an an under-cared for housing development. These are issues that Priest speaks so eloquently about, but they are not my story. And yet, I turned to these recordings when I was depressed, and found music that spoke to me.

Underneath Priest's covert politics is a raw emotion, unfiltered by notions of popular culture or what rap music "should be." Priest puts the inherent conflict and violence of personhood under a spotlight, expounding on it as a means of catharsis. His method involves synthesizing contemporary stories of plight with ancient imagery derived from mythology, history, religion, etc... This world of antiquity acts as a vector through which the MC interfaces with the present. In other words, the violence and zealotry of, say, a Mayan sacrifice, has a particular relevance to the world Priest encounters around him:

I saw Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan, and George Bush

Barefoot suckin from the titties of a wolf

Upon the brazen altar, six men

Offer their only daughter/ splashin holy water

I ran for the camcorders, now I'm plagued with curses

I roam the Earth's surface, snatchin purses

Allergic to Catholic Churches, what's the purpose?

Religious worship is worthless

I visit ancient sanctuaries, where the saints were married

But now they buried/ Cause of Satan's fury

I faced the jury

Held in court, like Christ nailed to a cross

Confront my knowledge, like Christ in front of Pontius Pilate

Days of violence, standing in a haunted palace

The government wants my wallet

(From "If You Don't Know")

And this worked for me. It spoke to pain, pressure, politics... the things that were weighing me down, and will weigh me down again. He seemed to understand the feeling of a restless desert search, pocked with mirages of success, friendship, $, love. So I turned the volume up, despite the complaints from hallmates. I shut the door. I did push-ups. I drove around with the windows up. And things started to turn, a slow viscous stirring in the soul maybe. Or just better housing and better friends. Or maybe just a little Killah Priest. So this is an ode to him.

YES

Return of the Purple Tape

If you haven't got the album yet, you are stupid. Right your wrongs.



And another.

A Social Experiment

Part of a person's particular charm are the quirks they possess - the strange-ass culinary combinations they like to eat, the little catchphrases they use that no one else does, things they enjoy or wear that you'd never expect.

But what if a person was composed entirely of said quirks?

This summer, I lost a good man. My dear friend Johnny Buccola spent the summer in Montana working at a fly-fishing lodge. He is this man, an amalgamation of quirks. His presence being sorely missed back home, we needed some way to keep his influence in our lives. So, a friend and I started a blog solely devoted to Mr. Buccola. The blog became really an analysis of him as an individual, an exercise in stating what our friend was really about, and a sensation among his friends and acquaintances. Will it be interesting to folks who do not know him? We've heard reports and rumors that it can be.

If you're at all curious, investigate
http://stuffjohnnybuccolalikes.blogspot.com/

Labor Day Verse Appreciation

Giancana the name break it down simple and plain
Went from a small chimp in the game to gorilla king pimp in the game

Know how to tempt dames to tense in the Range

Hit the block to pitch rocks, the strength of the name

Meant for the caine, lactosin, limp with a cane

We even pack toast, expend from the flames

My aim, strictly about makin that bread pop

Blocks red hot from feds and cops

Lookin for rock bottles with red tops

Tradin lead shots with dread locks

Infrared dots til the head drops, we fled spots

Word on the curb, when it came to birds we spread flocks

No tellin when the bloodshed stops

Glide til the sled stops

Copped the latest every hot flavor in them crocs and gators

Somebody clique riff, pop the bravest

Outta town whips I got from Avis

Drop knots in Vegas

My plot for paper was crockpots of wafers

KOOL G RAP- MY LIFE

Classic.