hate. such an ugly word. an ugly, overused & misunderstood word. we toss it around casually like a football whenever someone becomes vocal about their dislike of a thing.
person 1: "i don't like this ______ song."
person 2: "you're a hater."
really? it's that simple? really. it is.
applying the hater/hate tag so easily is the equivalent of thought policing. people are almost scared to form public opinion nowadays for fear of being labeled a hater.
similarly, dickhawkin', also known as "jockin'" & "ball ridin'" is a term often applied wherein it shouldn't.
since when did liking a thing & speaking favorably about it equate to dickhawkin'?
it's seen as damn near effeminate for a man to express his support for anything he himself didn't do.
man 1: "_______'s song is dope!"
man 2: "get off that nigga's dick."
really? it's that simple? really. it is.
"now, i was told/back on my block/that you don't ride on nobody's jock." - Ice Cube - "get of my dick"
i'm a Cube fan. have been for a long time. one of the greatest to ever touch a mic.
herein lies the dilema: does me liking Cube or quoting one of his rhymes equate to "dickhawkin'"?
follow where i'm goin' with this yet? at what point do mu'fuckas stop giving a fuck about what other mu'fuckas think or say about something?
at what point do dickhawkers & haters collide & become hatehawkers? 'cause, eventually, that's where the shit is headed. soon, you'll be damned if you do, damned if you don't.
man 1: "i like _____ as an artist, but his ____ song is wack."
man 2: "nigga, you's a hatehawker."
da fuck?!?!?
stop worryin' about other mu'fuckas & what they like. the beauty of having you own opinion is that it's yours. have that muthafucka & shut the fuck up.
you will get nowhere tryin' to persuade opinion.
why? b/c it's all based on subjective critique. there is nothing to argue where imperical evidence is absent.
so fuckin' what that nigga has on skinny jeans. have issue with it if he attempts to put skinny jeans on YOU.
if a cat drops a record & you just so happen to like that record, tell 'em.
this hate/dickhawkin' shit is THE main reason Black Culture is so easily stolen & discarded.
cut that weak shit out.
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
Monday, August 2, 2010
...or get out of the way.
i never really understood the phrase "hip hop is dead."
long before Nas capitalized on the saying, people who had grown up with hip hop as "their" music would mutter these words with the same certainty as saying "i live on the planet earth."
to them, it was a solemn and somber fact.
i mean, to some degree, i felt the same way. every time i turned around some new artist was coming out of nowhere with what i considered to be mediocre bars and flows and under produced beats.
don't get me wrong, i'm far from a hip hop purist. as a song writer and record producer, it's a cardinal sin to stay locked into a certain "thing". experimentation IS, essentially, what evolution in music is all about. it's never reinventing the wheel, it's simply about refining it, making it roll better.
so, the "hip hop is dead" thing really never resonated with me.
similarly, i never understood it when i'd hear younger musicians and artists say "these old cats gotta get outta the way" or "he's/she's too old to be doing this."
saying that takes a lot of balls.
especially when the artist it's directed toward has laid the foundation and paved the way for the new generation of artists.
part of the problem is intrinsic in the art form itself; hip hop has been, and always will be, an all consuming, insatiable symbiote, assimilating any and everything "fresh" in order to live.
this is a good and a bad thing; it's dope because it makes for an ever expanding form of self and communal expression. it sucks because it's appetite never allows what it is digesting to be tasted and savored.
the shelf life of hip hop is very, very brief. what's hot today is wack next week.
last week's "Young (fill in the blank)" is next week's " (fill in the designer name brand) Man".
The Stones still tour on material they cut 50 years ago. Maze tours on records our parents, and in some cases, parent's parents grooved to. not so with hip hop. a couple years difference in age could mean an entirely different "like/dislike" list.
i consider myself a "not one or the other, but both" kinda guy so i found both positions intriguing. on the right you have "golden era geezers" who don't want shit to ever change and on the left you have "new school knuckle-heads" who don't follow "the rules".
it wasn't until this past weekend (at Sheefy McFly's 'The Air Up There' @ Bob's Classic Kicks 4717 Woodward Ave.) that i saw the solution: older cats need to get in where they fit and and GUIDE this younger breed like a parent does a child; we can't expect them to be us, be like us, or agree with everything we say, but we DO have a responsibility to show them where we went wrong and help them avoid the potholes we stepped in. further, this next wave of artists need to respect their craft and study; listen to an "OG" when she/he is givin' u a bar. the knowledge they have is priceless and paying for it because that advice was ignored is bad business and tantamount to subsequent and utter failure.
at The Air Up There, i watched an eclectic and talented youngster run an all inclusive, high energy hip hop celebration, pied pippered by an older cat, DJ Primeminister, a master of the turntables, with zen-like insight.
his calm and positive disposition coupled with Sheef's angst and energy made for an experience i haven't felt personally since the days of the world famous Hip Hop Shop and it's sister, The Rhythm Kitchen.
ceremony master Ro Spit fell through and went acapella over Sheefy McFly's beat box. after handing out bars, Ro said to the next generation these words: "don't stop what y'all doin'...this shit is dope and i support y'all!"
the next night Supa Emcee was there lending his support and love.
Miz Korona has performed there as have other "OG" artists.
essentially i'm sayin' this to MY peers: we've lead, we've followed...there's only one other option.
i say we do them all.
but hey, what the fuck do i know, right?
long before Nas capitalized on the saying, people who had grown up with hip hop as "their" music would mutter these words with the same certainty as saying "i live on the planet earth."
to them, it was a solemn and somber fact.
i mean, to some degree, i felt the same way. every time i turned around some new artist was coming out of nowhere with what i considered to be mediocre bars and flows and under produced beats.
don't get me wrong, i'm far from a hip hop purist. as a song writer and record producer, it's a cardinal sin to stay locked into a certain "thing". experimentation IS, essentially, what evolution in music is all about. it's never reinventing the wheel, it's simply about refining it, making it roll better.
so, the "hip hop is dead" thing really never resonated with me.
similarly, i never understood it when i'd hear younger musicians and artists say "these old cats gotta get outta the way" or "he's/she's too old to be doing this."
saying that takes a lot of balls.
especially when the artist it's directed toward has laid the foundation and paved the way for the new generation of artists.
part of the problem is intrinsic in the art form itself; hip hop has been, and always will be, an all consuming, insatiable symbiote, assimilating any and everything "fresh" in order to live.
this is a good and a bad thing; it's dope because it makes for an ever expanding form of self and communal expression. it sucks because it's appetite never allows what it is digesting to be tasted and savored.
the shelf life of hip hop is very, very brief. what's hot today is wack next week.
last week's "Young (fill in the blank)" is next week's " (fill in the designer name brand) Man".
The Stones still tour on material they cut 50 years ago. Maze tours on records our parents, and in some cases, parent's parents grooved to. not so with hip hop. a couple years difference in age could mean an entirely different "like/dislike" list.
i consider myself a "not one or the other, but both" kinda guy so i found both positions intriguing. on the right you have "golden era geezers" who don't want shit to ever change and on the left you have "new school knuckle-heads" who don't follow "the rules".
it wasn't until this past weekend (at Sheefy McFly's 'The Air Up There' @ Bob's Classic Kicks 4717 Woodward Ave.) that i saw the solution: older cats need to get in where they fit and and GUIDE this younger breed like a parent does a child; we can't expect them to be us, be like us, or agree with everything we say, but we DO have a responsibility to show them where we went wrong and help them avoid the potholes we stepped in. further, this next wave of artists need to respect their craft and study; listen to an "OG" when she/he is givin' u a bar. the knowledge they have is priceless and paying for it because that advice was ignored is bad business and tantamount to subsequent and utter failure.
at The Air Up There, i watched an eclectic and talented youngster run an all inclusive, high energy hip hop celebration, pied pippered by an older cat, DJ Primeminister, a master of the turntables, with zen-like insight.
his calm and positive disposition coupled with Sheef's angst and energy made for an experience i haven't felt personally since the days of the world famous Hip Hop Shop and it's sister, The Rhythm Kitchen.
ceremony master Ro Spit fell through and went acapella over Sheefy McFly's beat box. after handing out bars, Ro said to the next generation these words: "don't stop what y'all doin'...this shit is dope and i support y'all!"
the next night Supa Emcee was there lending his support and love.
Miz Korona has performed there as have other "OG" artists.
essentially i'm sayin' this to MY peers: we've lead, we've followed...there's only one other option.
i say we do them all.
but hey, what the fuck do i know, right?
Thursday, January 14, 2010
it's not my problem...
...so i don't give a shit.
my kids don't eat dirt for dinner. they don't live in a tin shanty, built on the hillside with hundreds of similiar tin shacks stacked above theirs.
my wife didn't die of malnutrition. she doesn't weep at night because she doesn't watch her children play in open sewage drains during the day.
i don't give a shit if nobody in my family can read.
why should i care that there is no health care? hell, my kids aren't sick.
i could care less.
so what their country just experienced one of the worse natural disasters in it's recorded history.
they'll be alright.
as long as it doesn't affect me.
as long as i don't have to deal with it, i'm ok.
it's not my problem.
next to hopelessness, apathy is the largest crime committed against humanity. standing by and watching as others suffer. doing nothing.
life is not a spectator sport.
get it together people. get your heads out of your asses and start caring about something and someone other than yourselves.
my kids don't eat dirt for dinner. they don't live in a tin shanty, built on the hillside with hundreds of similiar tin shacks stacked above theirs.
my wife didn't die of malnutrition. she doesn't weep at night because she doesn't watch her children play in open sewage drains during the day.
i don't give a shit if nobody in my family can read.
why should i care that there is no health care? hell, my kids aren't sick.
i could care less.
so what their country just experienced one of the worse natural disasters in it's recorded history.
they'll be alright.
as long as it doesn't affect me.
as long as i don't have to deal with it, i'm ok.
it's not my problem.
next to hopelessness, apathy is the largest crime committed against humanity. standing by and watching as others suffer. doing nothing.
life is not a spectator sport.
get it together people. get your heads out of your asses and start caring about something and someone other than yourselves.
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
i'm scared of fear
fear.
i'm afraid of it.
the very thought of it scares me. it scares me in a way that wakes me up in the middle of the night...like those dreams when you're falling and you can't wake up until the very last minute, right before you smash every bone in your body.
the kind of dream where you're being chased and you can't seem to wake yourself up, although you know you're dreaming...yeah, one of those kinds of scared.
i'm scared of fear in a way that would put the Boogie Man on unemployment and cause Monsters Inc. to growl it's way to Capitol Hill and beg for a bailout.
it's not that i'm super-brave, or super-dumb for that matter. not in the least. some amount of NATURAL, REFLEXIVE fear is a large part of what makes the human being a very smart animal. if it weren't for some degree of fear, dumbass pedestrians would be walking into oncoming traffic while texting/tweeting/google mapping oblivious to the dumbass driver texting/tweeting/google mapping while driving, motoring down the way, ignorant to the cluster-f*ck waiting to happen.
neither dumbass equipped with the internal device we call "intuition" or in nerd-talk "spidey-sense".
that's not the type of fear i'm talkin' about. that's the GOOD fear.
that's the kind of fear that allows us to not fall for the "your relative died and left you a million dollars...all you need to email us back is your social security number, date of birth a scanned copy of your drivers license and two check stubs" email.
the type of fear that i'm afraid of is the one we've all been buying into over the course of our lives.
the one that mysteriously shows up in our psyches one day,like FICA and Aflac and all that other crap we don't remember signing up for when we first started at the new job yet, there it is,on our checks as a big fat "whereinthehelldidmymoneygoandwhointhehellisFICA!?!??!!!!" flag.
i'm scared of the fear that creeps up on us and locks us in to complacency.
we have no idea how and when we became such cowards.
when we were little we'd climb trees to the top, jump down flights of stairs, swing as high as we could on the swing set and jump at the apex.
now, we're too scared to get the mail.
inside we stay, safely locked away, self inflicted prison sentences of life in fear.
at some point, we have to live knowing that shit happens while not being held hostage to that fact.
we have to take risks and chances and know that if we aren't dead, we'll be ok.
we have to "find a way or make one", if i may borrow from Clark Atlanta University's motto.
if we don't, then what would our lives be worth?
what will we have lived for?
i'm planning on taking a leap of faith very soon.
stay tuned and watch me fly...
i'm afraid of it.
the very thought of it scares me. it scares me in a way that wakes me up in the middle of the night...like those dreams when you're falling and you can't wake up until the very last minute, right before you smash every bone in your body.
the kind of dream where you're being chased and you can't seem to wake yourself up, although you know you're dreaming...yeah, one of those kinds of scared.
i'm scared of fear in a way that would put the Boogie Man on unemployment and cause Monsters Inc. to growl it's way to Capitol Hill and beg for a bailout.
it's not that i'm super-brave, or super-dumb for that matter. not in the least. some amount of NATURAL, REFLEXIVE fear is a large part of what makes the human being a very smart animal. if it weren't for some degree of fear, dumbass pedestrians would be walking into oncoming traffic while texting/tweeting/google mapping oblivious to the dumbass driver texting/tweeting/google mapping while driving, motoring down the way, ignorant to the cluster-f*ck waiting to happen.
neither dumbass equipped with the internal device we call "intuition" or in nerd-talk "spidey-sense".
that's not the type of fear i'm talkin' about. that's the GOOD fear.
that's the kind of fear that allows us to not fall for the "your relative died and left you a million dollars...all you need to email us back is your social security number, date of birth a scanned copy of your drivers license and two check stubs" email.
the type of fear that i'm afraid of is the one we've all been buying into over the course of our lives.
the one that mysteriously shows up in our psyches one day,like FICA and Aflac and all that other crap we don't remember signing up for when we first started at the new job yet, there it is,on our checks as a big fat "whereinthehelldidmymoneygoandwhointhehellisFICA!?!??!!!!" flag.
i'm scared of the fear that creeps up on us and locks us in to complacency.
we have no idea how and when we became such cowards.
when we were little we'd climb trees to the top, jump down flights of stairs, swing as high as we could on the swing set and jump at the apex.
now, we're too scared to get the mail.
inside we stay, safely locked away, self inflicted prison sentences of life in fear.
at some point, we have to live knowing that shit happens while not being held hostage to that fact.
we have to take risks and chances and know that if we aren't dead, we'll be ok.
we have to "find a way or make one", if i may borrow from Clark Atlanta University's motto.
if we don't, then what would our lives be worth?
what will we have lived for?
i'm planning on taking a leap of faith very soon.
stay tuned and watch me fly...
Monday, October 19, 2009
why i don't blog...
i swore against this. i swore i wouldn't blog. thought it was or is narcissism to the Nth degree. but this past weekend, something changed for me. this past weekend, i was kinda "called" to blog. nothing "divine" about it, or "holy"...rather, it was a conversation that brought me to this place, this "blogger.com".
see, this past weekend my niece got married. beautiful wedding, great ceremony. i think the best part about it was seeing people i don't see normally...people who at one point in my life had played huge rolls in my development and evolution.
people like family.
one person in particular made this past weekend uniquely important, and i guess i could say he inspired me to start blogging.
my brother Thomas, or "T" as he is known, is the consummate liberal; an environmentalist, a soldier for racial, gender and economic equality and a dreamer.
he's also an ordained minister and has been a man of the cloth for as long as i can remember. if he has a hypocritical bone in his body, it's hidden deep beneath layers of skin and muscle and most likely, he doesn't even know it's in there.
T has always been a "good" person. kind and sincere and focused on the positive in the worse situation and the shittiest of people.
thing about our relationship, aside from sharing blood and DNA is that we don't speak often. he kinda does his thing, and i've kinda been doing mine. the last time we TALK talked was about 8 years ago...8 years and 17 days to be exact. the day we buried our father.
i remember it pretty clearly; it was September 11th, 2001. i was living in DC at the time, my father was here in Detroit in a local hospital, scheduled to come home after being treated for an illness stemming from the Parkinson's Disease he'd been "dealing" with since 1990. i got a call early on the morning of the 7th. my mother told me that i needed to get back to Detroit b/c my father was dying.
after i got my head outta my ass and pulled myself together, my young family and i were on the first thing smoking to the D, only to bury the man who raised me, taught me everything i know about anything of any importance....
he died the next day, September 8th around 3 or 4 in the afternoon.
shit like time kinda stops being relevant when you hold your dying father's hand as he takes his last breaths.
i do, however, remember that it was overcast and rainy and that for me, my mother and my brothers and sister, the world kinda just stopped working the same way it had been up to that point.
so, at the foot of his bed, i made a "du'ah" or person supplication to God, asking Him to ease my father's pain, forgive him of his faults and accept his soul to the Best of The Next Life. i begged God in this du'ah for Mercy and Beneficence for my father.
and after the funeral (mind you, planes had been flown into the World Trade Center, a field in Pennsylvania & the pentagon) my brother gave the Committal @ our father's grave sight.
shortly thereafter, he and i made our ways back to the cities we were living in at the time and eventually, life started to move again...really, we just kinda got back on the "life train".
maybe T and i didn't talk because we were dealing w/our loss in our own ways on our own time. maybe he and i didn't speak because we, though we mean well, can become (self) absorbed with whatever it is we're workin' on at the time.
all i know is, that when we saw each other at our niece's wedding this weekend, something special happened.
because so much had transpired since we'd last seen each other, let alone talked, we urgently kinda BOTH started looking for a similarity...someplace "common" to begin.
so we both went to where we both relate; the world.
we talked of the ills and problems and healings and solutions, the troubles and constrictions and the peace and the hope of this world.
really, we've had no excuse to not keep in touch. it's not like neither of us don't have cell phones or laptops with multiple email addresses, facebook accounts, twitter and the like. he's a pastor who keeps up with the "flock" and i'm...well, i'm just addicted to social networking (i know i'd much more productive if i wasn't).
thing is, we both hate (hate's a strong word) ok, dislike strongly, the bullsh!t that comes along with the miracle of the internet, mainly, the fact that we thrive on the "human factor" that the internet has made oh so "creepy".
we enjoy good convo, face to face story telling and all that good stuff the internet filters out thru the funnel that is your high speed connection.
all the online gaming in the world can't beat a good game of catch in the middle of the street or the front yard.
there's just something so artificial about "the web" that you can only find face to face.
at the wedding, he and i sat face to face and did what we used to do before the advent of the internet...we talked.
we found common ground. we found the threads that lead to the string that became the rope that held us together.
which is why i don't blog. rather, which is why i haven't blogged until this point.
which is why i am blogging now.
because, although this world is faster than it was when people actually LIVED life juxtaposed to merely surviving it, people still have a innate need and desire to come together.
it's what makes us human; the desire to come to know one another so that we may discover ourselves.
it's why we're addicted to reality tv, trash blogging and pop culture gossip. we, as shallow as it seems, NEED to know.
we need other people to be our mirror, showing us what is right and what is wrong within our own souls.
so, with this long-winded maiden blog, i say to you that it is my intention to write about that which brings us closer together because there are far too many options to chose from that keep us apart.
something is changing in the world today. something positive. believe it or not, as bad as things may seem, more and more people are starving for GOODNESS and progress.
i won't waste your time talking about what celebrity did this, or which one did that, but what i will do, God willing, is talk about the good in the world.
and hopefully, this blog will not be why i don't blog...
see, this past weekend my niece got married. beautiful wedding, great ceremony. i think the best part about it was seeing people i don't see normally...people who at one point in my life had played huge rolls in my development and evolution.
people like family.
one person in particular made this past weekend uniquely important, and i guess i could say he inspired me to start blogging.
my brother Thomas, or "T" as he is known, is the consummate liberal; an environmentalist, a soldier for racial, gender and economic equality and a dreamer.
he's also an ordained minister and has been a man of the cloth for as long as i can remember. if he has a hypocritical bone in his body, it's hidden deep beneath layers of skin and muscle and most likely, he doesn't even know it's in there.
T has always been a "good" person. kind and sincere and focused on the positive in the worse situation and the shittiest of people.
thing about our relationship, aside from sharing blood and DNA is that we don't speak often. he kinda does his thing, and i've kinda been doing mine. the last time we TALK talked was about 8 years ago...8 years and 17 days to be exact. the day we buried our father.
i remember it pretty clearly; it was September 11th, 2001. i was living in DC at the time, my father was here in Detroit in a local hospital, scheduled to come home after being treated for an illness stemming from the Parkinson's Disease he'd been "dealing" with since 1990. i got a call early on the morning of the 7th. my mother told me that i needed to get back to Detroit b/c my father was dying.
after i got my head outta my ass and pulled myself together, my young family and i were on the first thing smoking to the D, only to bury the man who raised me, taught me everything i know about anything of any importance....
he died the next day, September 8th around 3 or 4 in the afternoon.
shit like time kinda stops being relevant when you hold your dying father's hand as he takes his last breaths.
i do, however, remember that it was overcast and rainy and that for me, my mother and my brothers and sister, the world kinda just stopped working the same way it had been up to that point.
so, at the foot of his bed, i made a "du'ah" or person supplication to God, asking Him to ease my father's pain, forgive him of his faults and accept his soul to the Best of The Next Life. i begged God in this du'ah for Mercy and Beneficence for my father.
and after the funeral (mind you, planes had been flown into the World Trade Center, a field in Pennsylvania & the pentagon) my brother gave the Committal @ our father's grave sight.
shortly thereafter, he and i made our ways back to the cities we were living in at the time and eventually, life started to move again...really, we just kinda got back on the "life train".
maybe T and i didn't talk because we were dealing w/our loss in our own ways on our own time. maybe he and i didn't speak because we, though we mean well, can become (self) absorbed with whatever it is we're workin' on at the time.
all i know is, that when we saw each other at our niece's wedding this weekend, something special happened.
because so much had transpired since we'd last seen each other, let alone talked, we urgently kinda BOTH started looking for a similarity...someplace "common" to begin.
so we both went to where we both relate; the world.
we talked of the ills and problems and healings and solutions, the troubles and constrictions and the peace and the hope of this world.
really, we've had no excuse to not keep in touch. it's not like neither of us don't have cell phones or laptops with multiple email addresses, facebook accounts, twitter and the like. he's a pastor who keeps up with the "flock" and i'm...well, i'm just addicted to social networking (i know i'd much more productive if i wasn't).
thing is, we both hate (hate's a strong word) ok, dislike strongly, the bullsh!t that comes along with the miracle of the internet, mainly, the fact that we thrive on the "human factor" that the internet has made oh so "creepy".
we enjoy good convo, face to face story telling and all that good stuff the internet filters out thru the funnel that is your high speed connection.
all the online gaming in the world can't beat a good game of catch in the middle of the street or the front yard.
there's just something so artificial about "the web" that you can only find face to face.
at the wedding, he and i sat face to face and did what we used to do before the advent of the internet...we talked.
we found common ground. we found the threads that lead to the string that became the rope that held us together.
which is why i don't blog. rather, which is why i haven't blogged until this point.
which is why i am blogging now.
because, although this world is faster than it was when people actually LIVED life juxtaposed to merely surviving it, people still have a innate need and desire to come together.
it's what makes us human; the desire to come to know one another so that we may discover ourselves.
it's why we're addicted to reality tv, trash blogging and pop culture gossip. we, as shallow as it seems, NEED to know.
we need other people to be our mirror, showing us what is right and what is wrong within our own souls.
so, with this long-winded maiden blog, i say to you that it is my intention to write about that which brings us closer together because there are far too many options to chose from that keep us apart.
something is changing in the world today. something positive. believe it or not, as bad as things may seem, more and more people are starving for GOODNESS and progress.
i won't waste your time talking about what celebrity did this, or which one did that, but what i will do, God willing, is talk about the good in the world.
and hopefully, this blog will not be why i don't blog...
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