Wayne, are you a vetenerian?

Pharell & Weezie – “Yes”
You can check my watch, I been rich a long time ago.

——-
Further proof of excessive exuberance. Further proof of freedom.

Copywrite – Get Busy (Off Marco Polo compilation)

ladies n gentlemen, you aint gotta stay in your element
my staff chuckles while brass knuckles scraping your melanin
you claimin it was an accident, an uneven settlement
you sayin you wasn’t having it, I gave it and you yellin’ ‘Quit!’
Cuz on the lo tho’, I stuff cigars, with stuff from jars, above the stars
To enter drums this hard, I shoot my load 10 feet, and they askin if I ever thought I’d come this far!
Look, I knew I’d do it, the question is: who was stupid to mess with this
he would lose in a second, his music’s looped in a weapon,
it’s doing Screw, and the message is: Don’t Push Me!
You so puss, either you’re oozing with estrogen
strait jacket’s heightened by my psycho ward
and he straight up forgot to lace up my Michael Jordans
I don’t write no chorus, my alter-ego writes those for us
Fuck a tree dawg, I light whole forests
I got the flows to toast most approaches
and got the toast, so foes don’t approach us
Jakki brought the shotty in the case, check it
Nigga will make’em drop Shells, quicker than J Records
and the crown’s mine, I’ll outrhyme your hood
I’m outside with about nine guys that’s good
While you peasants crowd by my foot
I’m rhyming up dumb without saying you’re trying to get outshined like Suge
Look, you pussies either all 8 or 1
tryin’ to gel me but still can’t to hate on son
They’ll get their money jacked and see me in the span of a few years
do shit that they see me on Jack, Petrone and a few beers
Listener of Big L, Big Pun, and Biggie
with an attitude like Jigga, so if you come and get me
bring 8 people, a spiked bat, and a gun to clear me
and if I got you for money, wait until im drunk to hit me, you pussy
Matta fact, you aint even a pussy
you would leave when … cleanin her pussy
C-O-P, your freestyle will see no fee,
I am the C-O, bringing it to you C.O.D.
Cash On Delivery, And No One Can Do It Better
Shit, I’m the D.O.C. with O.C.D.
Spit heat like a creole feast, is what I d on beats
Big to the point I don’t see my own feet

Tom Waits Videos

1. “Take Me Home”

take me home
you silly girl
put your arms around me
take me home
you silly girl
all the world’s not round without you

I’m so sorry that I broke your heart
please don’t leave my side
take me home
you silly girl
cause I’m still in love you

Ghostface

1. “The Game” (w Pete Rock and Raekwon on Soul Survivor 1)

[Ghostface]
MC Ultra high-brolic bank roll alcahol vulture
Garlic balls dice the shield of ocre
Tally ho pitty-pat backgammon pro
Pink salmon five spring rolls know me, you love my intro
Half a face wig sewed together like Manhattan Chase
Lookin like statue of praise, check behind the drapes
Castor Troy layin for Travolta mic gun pump
Layin on the floor Clark’s bleedin watermelon chunks
Hold up… sprinkle the hash, Tony Chapstick
Snatch RZA last piece of fish right off the glass dish
Butter roll beats bagel tracks wavey hair decks
Lay it down straw hat style, Butterball crown
Time life investments, when broke I wrote the old testament
Crashed domes now perform excellence
Words with the President, brunch with Yeltsin
Gorbachev under Meth’s nuts, he out in Belgium
Six and a half monkeys, twelve nazis
Four disappear, three eight two one flash to thin air
God’s replica no wheel drive motionless mind cresica
Tilt the hat like Esther…

On Gentrification

Some notes:

1.The shift in much of the Western world from a manufacturing-based economy to a post-industrial, service-based economy.
2.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freeter

Recent Fascinations (May 2007)

Greenaway: frameworks, structure story around framework (story subservient), more weight in the idea so that parts of the story are inferred (such movies become those we can carry within us: Medem).

Lewis Carroll: Kaballah, Thomas Harriott, Mathematical Logic, Tarot

I Am Jacob Wren

I say I am Jacob Wren because I have read his book “Unrehearsed Beauty” and it seemed like something I could have written.

I happened to meet Jacob Wren shortly after and was surprised at how we were different. For a while I thought he was an impostor, someone who posed as him during personal encounters or public ones. The Real Jacob Wren was and still is probably writing short paragraphs about the minute things of the mind (and sometimes of the soul).

Alas, it will remain for now a veiled truth who the real Jacob Wren is. But I can tell you that the one I met is not him. No, this particular man was more like a briefed version of Jacob Wren, someone who was well aware of Wren and his internal life, his writings, possibly his taste, but stood only as a representative, like say a customer service agent who is the company when you call in to complain, a Jacob Wren for hire.

The trouble is in coinciding your written persona with the one of your social presence. I figure Jacob Wren has trouble doing so, so he hires these mercenaries to war in the urban jungle for him, but unfortunately these men are not competent enough. Well, I will admit, it is a hard leap to live in the world of your art and to develop according behavioral characteristics and to later carry that self around in public. It is easier to live in other’s people art, specially when these men are for the most part lonely writers.

Is Jacob Wren not a social man? Is his exuberance subdued? And who are these bored timid actors who pretend to be him? I’m not so sure, but when I read “Unrehearsed Beauty”, I become Jacob Wren, I infuse my being with my synthesis of his written being, and I can choose to be him, or be an enhanced version of myself through him. I guess every reader of “Unreheased Beauty” is walking around today with a little of Jacob Wren within them. I guess it can be said: we all are Jacob Wren.

-Taken from “Unrehearsed Beauty” (CoachHouse, p. 55)

Grafh – Autografh (New Limited Download Album)

Donwload the album here

This here is an invitation to download Grafh’s new album. For those who don’t know him, he’s probably one of the best rappers in the world at the moment. This album is better than Jay’s latest, “Kingdom Come”, which many people found disappointing. It is also better than Nas’ “Hip Hop is Dead”, which many people also found disappointing.

Let’s face it, Jay-Z can’t be bothered to be inventive at this point. He does not need to make that effort. He is so many miles ahead of every other rapper that he can evolve at a snail’s space and still maintain a steady lead.

Now Nas is a tricky one. He eschewed technical rhyming for something which he believes is more poetic, or purer. He thinks rap is a lot of poetry, and when it deals with crime and guns, it’s street poetry. So when he raps, he tries to evoke cinematic visuals and punctuates the verse with simple aphorisms. But his flaws are obvious, he is an internal rapper, he cannot project any essential charisma, his ‘presence’ on a song is low-key. That’s fine. But this is rap music, the kind of music with the most cinematic potential, the most textural and the most in which the vocal presence of the artist has the potential to have many dimensions. In this game, Nas is a preacher, a quiet poet, with apparent insights. Not enough.

But Grafh has what Nas lacks in terms of presence. And he has what Jay-Z has in terms of verses. If he’s better or not, we’ll see in the long run. But for now, his hunger is apparent. He displays skills undoubtedly. If you’ve heard him before, and followed his mixtapes, you know he can be funny, serious, and clever, in ways that hint at an interesting depth. This depth is probably the biggest reward we get with this album. It is clear his skills go beyond the simple act of rhyming words, and evoke a unique insight into the literal and visual capabilities of the kind of unique vocal performance rap inherently is. This man will blow your mind.

The Essence of Things

Something that happens with time is the re-investment of substantial discourse in something previously trivial and empty. The fast-paced multi-angled editing of an MTV music video finds a new richness in the context of contrasting Iranian cinema to its Western counterpart. The multi-dimensionality of stories through narrator stances is suddenly symbolized by this kind of rapid-editing.

Those remarks are dangerous because they are as empty as what they refer to. Their main utility is to work as filler in a process of avoiding the essential. Why is there avoidance of the essential? Because there is an inability to translate it. I believe the essential is always experienced, but most often badly translated.

I heard an expression once: les phrases creuses. It’s French for empty phrases (sentences). Most texts I come across, essays on films, are full of idées creuses. You can recognize one of those when you’ve experienced the essence of something and later reading about it you sense a great divide between the communicated thought, and the recalled experience.

Deleuze and Thinking

Reason is always a region carved out of the irrational—not sheltered from the irrational at all, but traversed by it and only defined by a particular kind of relationship among irrational factors. Underneath all reason lies delirium, and drift – Desert Islands, p. 262.