Day, glow. The other side of seasonal affective disorder is da inner sound, yall. Well, it depends on what your meaning of the word 'is' is. Defining existence and nonexistence as codependents in direct opposition has always been the move for those of us who, consciously or not, preoccupy ourselves with what's next. Think ahead. Hence, "'If yall stop then Dave stops,' and that wouldn't be the sure shot." De La Soul—and one might argue Hip-Hop—has always operated a larger collective of friends/collaborators making/doing art/science that reflects/refracts popular music/culture. It might blow up but it won't go pop, baby, baby, baby, baby. Their second album has a skit consisting of tea time melodies interrupted repeatedly by thrash metal mayhem. De La Soul take "no biting" to such extremes they rarely ever repeat themselves between projects, to the extent that the most common threads across their catalog are continuing insistences on reinvention and variety. Self-referential motifs recur with flipped meanings and function. Frequent guests arrive with new mixed company.
When I was a kid going to Wantagh Summer Rec, we took regular trips to United Skates in North Massapequa. I can't remember what songs used to play at the roller rink, but I know Boyz II Men and Mariah Carey were in heavy rotation. Between their hits aired a fair helping of what I now know to be freestyle, house, new wave, and new jack swing. Again, I don't recall specific tracks, but instead a feeling of summery joy. Cabin In The Sky has that same energy. And I don't mean genre-y. Seasons change. Mad things rearrange. It's an album of presence from the hitherto for the hereafter.
Hobbies and interests as clothes, some days feel like movie days, some music, others books, others still writing. Or, is a trap there lying? Where does over-compartmentalization begin and extra shelf space end? A budding sports and lifestyle podcaster once said, "I don't really look at movies, I make 'em." Really was the operative word there, I'd venture.
As this video from 20!8 illustrates, Simon Vailes is a fashion icon, Fashion is a Simon Vailes icon, and Fashion Stay Trending. Today, Simon Vailes is also a Quarter Finalist in the Elton John AIDS Foundation's Style Icon competition. Hence, she's in the running for a Flaunt Magazine appearance, $20,000, and a trip to the Versace show at Milan Fashion Week. Voting resumes November 17.
Imagine the original recording of INI's "Step Up" floundering in the studio master obscurity of legal label limbo. I bet you can't. You know it couldn't.
Experiences haven't been added via Beta Features replacing teachers and even thinking with the latest and greatest in automated language sequences. Meanwhile, it's on/off grid like Woody Harrelson with utility bills sans any semblance of celebrity. Celery was an underrated snack (and it still is) especially eaten out of a crack. Action! When parody suffices for fact, parity is an even more divisive act than what's happened. So, you know, what's happening?
AWOL da Mindwriter hit me with a video off his upcoming album with August Fanon, and now there's another. Another video for an AWOL track produced by August Fanon? Yes, plus the song features Planet Asia, and the video was made by Johnny Storm! (Another album produced by August Fanon? Technically, yes, that too, but not featuring AWOL da Mindwriter, so not really what I'm talking about here, though that reinforces an earlier point about syntax perhaps however pedantic.)
This one hurts so many we can only hope it inspires as much. Chilo started sending me music back in 2016. It was usually a friendly greeting followed by a link to his latest song and then a little promo blurb. We exchanged emails back and forth a few times, but never really got into a full-fledged conversation. In writing about his music over the years and following him on social media, I came to learn that in addition to rapping and doing spoken word poetry, he was a teacher. I imagine he was a great one. Though we never spoke, I like to think of my writing about his music as engaging with it as closely as I could, especially in the cases of Faces of the Meek and Fearless and No Such Paradise and "Come Get This Humanity."
Chilo was a regular at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe and a resident of Riverhead. We're from different communities. I don't know how much life experience we had in common, but I do know that whenever his music struck a chord with me, it had sustenance on a level I don't often get from music. That's not a knock on music, which is a huge part of my life, or a plug for poetry, which I don't read much at all. I think it's more about language and love and freedom being equally powered, interconnected entities at the center of the human experience, being the best that civilization has to offer. I think that's what I got from the Chilo performances, songs, and albums I most enjoyed.
He never sent me this, but apparently, just a few months before he died, he performed at Carnegie Hall. The piece is called "We Fight Hate With Love."
Sunshine blessed the community
In a unity of togetherness He says he remembers it Hearing the horns in the background when he was born How the people all gathered around to offer their well-wishing Blessed by the clergy, his parents swore To always keep him and his siblings safe They had such high hopes for the places he would go The people he would meet The family he would raise
And the communities he would empower
And a child will play as children do The music and the melodies they made him move He felt the grooves
The lows and the highs
And it all came together with the notes and vibes
He loved to explore, love to go outside
When the sun hit his face, smiles open wide
In a type of world where the weak don't survive
He greeted strangers in the streets and socialized Socialized
His aura attracted others Yet some parents told their children not to play with his kind
Because he was "different" And that hurt him inside Being "othered" Yet his mother always told him to be a kind, sincere person of honor And he obliged Still at times he found bullies on the playground
Called names, teased, and shamed
Until one afternoon unexpectedly saved By an elder whose experienced words proclaimed
We are only as strong as our weakest link Our strength lies in collective unity And no matter where it is that you call home Nobody out here can make it all alone
And there is something to be said about assisting
Communicating with, and considering the village as a whole Responsible in our roles
So that the members are always respected
Cause in community, we are all connected We are all connected
He was affected by the words And even believed them Ended up thinking about them that night during the evening
As well as a new word he had learned that day in school Appeasement And so he thought about how he would combat the cruelty
And the lunacy that he faced outside
Because he was not blind to how this world is not kind
And after a while, it took him some time But finally he realized
That we fight hate with love We fight hate with love And at that moment, it was as if something had hit him from above
His heart was open
He was resigned and determined to fight hate with love
"Where I'm At" begins, "Can't be going on a whim, it's getting thin for that notion. My father cannot use his limbs." Next, "Conditions/Climbing" echoes the sentiment with "Jab step on Jamal Crawford. More money in the summer, dripped out every autumn." You could read the juxtaposition as "Here's my most personal album to date, but rest assured my frame of reference remains basketball and fashion." I, on the other hand, am reading Jacques Vallee's UFO Chronicles of the Soviet Union, requisitioned tonight from the Lido Beach West book box. For curious minds, Engels' Condition of the Working Class in England should still be there along with some pamphlets written in Russian, that is, unless the couple out there taking engagement photos on this buggy evening really knows what time it is. All that being said, my favorite song couplet on The Years We Have is not the introductory set but the "Learning Curve" on "Sucka MCs" or the "Windows" past "Day By Day By Day." He ends "Learning Curve" conceding, "You knew the real me in that 05 Altima. It's gonna cost you more if I gotta get it to Baltimore. We not about to take that drive to Florida." A few bars into "Windows," he proclaims, "Since Marcberg and Glassjaw, coldest out of Nasssau. This is what I rap for. I'm about to cop that RAV4," to which I say same bro, and also, Daryl, if you're reading this, he's definitely in the running.
Sometimes, rap is all about talking shit; sometimes, the shit that goes unsaid is just as compelling. PRICELE$$ PAINT has Lakeview-raised MC Bub Rock speaking volumes even in moments of silence.
Take the skit that introduces the album’s lead cut, “The Blur.” There’s the tiniest pause between when the girl on it stutters, “It would all be one if you weren’t here and if nobody else—” and “Yes, everything is one. You have nothing to do with it. I am one with what I am.” That brief moment of turned-on introspection effectively sets the tone for the entire body of work. It’s about getting from regret to resolution.
When Bub Rock actually starts rapping, fucking forget about it. You may know him from ROCK SEASON or A PEACE OF MINE or many other dope projects. Did you know Bub Rock’s father was an S1W? KBR is essentially Long Island rap royalty. So, if the “pain” refrain on “No Invites II” sounds familiar, you’re in the right place. It’s a one-word summation erstwhile given to bloody-eyed detail, and you can’t spell paint without it.
Yet, if PRICELE$$ PAINT is one part traumatology, it’s two parts super catchy. “How you use so much introspect and chicks love it?” Rock plays you asking on “Lost Pieces.” The eight-times platinum R&B hook looping “Muse-ick” can’t hurt. But the answer ultimately lies between Bub Rock’s talent and experience. It’s how he sees whilst casting his gaze inward. It’s his ability to say a lot with a few choice words, to command language like crowd control.
PRICELE$$ PAINT is the latest cassette release from Long Island Rap Records. Pre-orders are available now via the Long Island Rap Records Store and Bandcamp. Say less.
Raekwon and Tony Starks' Only Built for Cuban Linx... opens with the album's protags discussing their mutual desire to make a clean break after completing a Killer-type final job. Every track that follows can be heard as happening between or around those two plot points. Javi Darko and Ja'King the Divine's Paradoxical Yet It Works takes a similar path with one crucial distinction. On the intro, only Ja'King is prepared to make a change. Javi says, "Faith don't look to good on us right now." It's not until the outro that he comes around. Ironically, at this point Ja'King is going on the run, leaving us to wonder if and when we'll hear from JaJa again. Quantum mechanics may also figure in.
What is artificial intelligence for if not creating a fictional songwriting couple and then producing a short film about "the death knell of humanity" called Satellite Eyes Without a Face and then assigning said duo to cover Billy Idol's "Eyes Without a Face" for a song to be released in conjunction with but not included on said film's original soundtrack? This is all the work of Dynamics Plus from the Lenzmen.
Knowledge the Pirate compares his latest plate, the Roc Marciano produced Round Table, to Elijah Muhammed's dietary instruction book series How to Eat to Live. I humbly compare it to the reality competition TV series The Traitors. Knowledge the Pirate is Alan Cumming dressed as Vincent Price in The Haunted Palace, and Roc Marciano, hopping layers of this half-baked metaphor as once he slid off through a time warp, is Roger Corman. Betrayal lurks around every corner. Each night, a faithful is murdered. Life and death are debated over the table, and only after the final vote is cast is one's true character revealed. "But Long Island Rap Records, how can a site of such refined standards, lower itself to the level of such dross?" Well, I'll tell you. Much like The Round Table, The Traitors is all about game theory. Don't dismiss it as game. It's a matter of mathematics, the application of universal laws to decision making and deceit. There's a certain strange purity in the proceedings, and the ill gothic costuming to match.
"It's purple prose when you're looking for just the facts. You want to know where I've been? Some other where nothing's mapped, lost at the Waldbaum's, faded, facing 30,000 square feet of long a/isle."
Aesop Rock is Long Island as the All American Hamburger Drive In, never in one's life calling it that. Aesop Rock is Long Island as the acne one inevitably gets working at All American. Aesop Rock is Long Island as the shit-eating grin one wears walking out of Island Rec after a perfect pool water test. Aesop Rock is Long Island as loving one's neighbor to the left while harboring complete, abject, and yet somehow still growing hatred for one's neighbor to the right (yo, for real, fuck that whole family). Aesop Rock is Long Island as disappearing off the face of the earth without changing one's routine. Aesop Rock is Long Island as leaving Long Island to achieve one's goals then quietly moving back.
What do Rakim, Roc Marciano, and Aesop Rock all have in common besides rocks in their names and Long Island in their origin stories? At some point, all of them will exist beyond compare to peers, forebears, and heirs alike. For now, though, Black Hole Superette features Aesop Rock playing posse cut with both his "alternative" (Armand Hammer on "1010 Wins") and "technical" (Homeboy Sandman and Lupe Fiasco on "Charlie Horse") rap peers. And he wrecks everyone. It's fucked up.
Black Hole Superette is on that 80s Zulu mix shit Aesop Rock does sometimes, but for a whole album. Other highlights include the lines "Anyone who disagree is a bot, anyone who isn't me is a cop," and "Short story: I once shook the Rza's hand, played it cool but could have screamed I'm going to Disney Land." It's vacillating between the verge of a nervous breakdown and feeling like you won life.
