RIP Christopher "Chilo" Cajigas

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

Word up

Pa'lante

RIP Christopher "Chilo" Cajigas. Per the Riverhead News-Review obituary, "Memorial donations can be sent to Nuyorican Poets Cafe, 236 E. 3rd St., New York, N.Y. 10009; and Belongo/AfroLatin Jazz Alliance of N.Y., 215 East 99th St., New York, N.Y. 10029." Additionally, there is a fundraiser accepting donations to support the Cajigas family in their time of loss.

Theravada - The Years We Have

"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.

Bub Rock - PRICELE$$ PAINT (LIRR04) Limited Edition Cassettes Now Available for Pre-Order

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.

Javi Darko & Ja'King the Divine - Paradoxical Yet it Works

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.

Lauryn Grace x David Lion - "Eyes Without a Face"

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 - The Round Table

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.

 

Aesop Rock - Black Hole Superette

"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.

Chris Proton - Initial Findings

You don't do art for anyone but yourself. Nevertheless, even the most reserved artists have to "just" put something out every once in a while. Credit such compulsions with getting Chris Proton to bring these Initial Findings out of hiding. "I really wanted to release a new project. I grew tired of keeping my creations to myself," says the pianist fka Nato Jacobs. "I'll improve the quality on the next one. I hope you enjoy the vibes." 

That name has been floating around the peripheries of this site since it launched, yet somehow turns up post-less until now. Like jazz and physics, I can't explain it, so I don't know if I really get it per se, but I do feel it, and it feels right.

You can work extremely hard on art, but you can't force it. It's going to do what it's going to do, including, when the time's right, make itself known.

Blaq Kush - The Infinite Money Glitch

"Looking for a place where money wasn't worshipped only to be reminded of how money is worshipped," begins the chorus of The Infinite Money Glitch's title cut. If money is modern society's most popular religion, Blaq Kush commits with his latest EP an act of heresy akin to writing and illustrating a Quran coloring book complete with caricatures of the holy prophet Muhammad; counterfeiting as an act of subversion. Here's something I could never get a straight answer about from my high school economics teacher: If prices go up only when people are willing to pay more, doesn't that make all monetary value imaginary? Years, perhaps decades, before digital currency, Alan Moore said something about the subject, which has stuck with me since. He said money is basically magic but not all that clever or convincing a form of it. 

Artificial intelligence has likely already cracked the stock market. That said, everything anyone ever needs to know about post-industrial capitalism can be learned from the aptly titled 1970 documentary film, Finally Got the News. At the 14-minute mark, an offscreen voice states, "They give you little bullshit amounts of money for working—wages and so forth—and then they steal all that shit back from you in terms of where he got his other things set up, his whole credit gimmick society, man. Buy shit on credit. He gives you a little bit of shit to cool your ass out and then steals all that shit back with shit called interest, the price of money. Motherfuckers are non-producing, non-existing industry motherfuckers who deal with paper. There's a cat who will stand up and say to you he's in mining, and he sits in an office, man, on the 199th floor in some motherfucking building on Wall Street, and he's 'in mining.' And he has paper certificates, which they embroidered: stocks, bonds, debentures, obligations. He's 'in mining,' and his fingernails ain't been dirty in his motherfucking life. And the motherfuckers who deal with intangibles are the motherfuckers who are rewarded in this society. We see that this whole society exists and rests upon workers." 

As Blaq Kush puts it, "You are the money." And it's here that producer Antonym begins to reveal the project's soul, an unmined rare earth mineral magnetism that can never be bought, sold, or minted. From there, Kush takes the metaphor personally. On "A Dollar Travels," he is quite literally the money. Name your price or not, we listeners get so much more than we pay for.

Swoosh God - The Missing Piece

Last night, Canelo Alvarez threw the second-fewest punches in a 12-round fight in CompuBox's 40-year history. So, don't be mad at William Scull for not getting hit. William Scull's name didn't make that list. Don't say he was the boxer in the ring who was "unwilling to fight." Was it one of the most boring PPV main events in recent memory? Yes, but is that because William Scull moved too much or because Canelo Alvarez couldn't close the distance and keep it closed? You know who else didn't stand in front of Canelo Alvarez and let him wallop the shit out of him for 12 rounds? His name is Floyd Mayweather, and last I checked he's the best boxer of the past 30 years. Obviously, William Scull is no Floyd Mayweather. Obviously, Scull lost the fight. But Alvarez lost the right to claim he'll fight anyone anywhere anytime, as has been said of him throughout his career. Last night, he could've made a legitimate effort to bring the fight to his challenger, or he even could've stood in the center of the ring until his challenger brought the fight to him. Instead, he did neither of those things. He made a piss poor effort of chasing the challenger around the ring. He threw a record-low number of punches. And then he had the audacity to tell his fans, "I hate those kinds of fighters." Gennady Golovkin wouldn't have went out like that.