For many rap fans, myself included, the ‘Only Built 4 Cuban Linx’ album represents the zenith for recorded music. It’s a cinematic tour de force that has not been matched since.
JOELL ORTIZ takes a mix pf OB4CL beats and creates this freestyle…
JOELL ORTIZ – OB4CL Tribute
I stay losing in order to stay winning…
This is my overall Libra fallacysophy. My success has to be mitigated with my failure.
I’m happier than a clam with the reception of the latest i.C.’s video. I’m excited to get more videos on the web where smart dumb shit is brought to the people. This is the most fun I have had with a job evar.
But the good times can’t last can they? Nope.
I’m here in front of my apartment building in Long Island after an over two hour commute from C.S.’s crib in Brooklyn and I can’t get in my crib because I left my keys in my pants at homegirl’s house.
AARGH!
This was the great Mexican god in the sky telling me to “take it easy mang”. I had planned to do so much shit this weekend and now I realize that was a mistake. I need to rest up and get my mind right for a hectic work week. I need to do my laundry.
I’m running out of comfortable drawls to wear. Next come the boxer briefs I call booty cutters, and after that I will have to rock swim trunks.
So here I sit again typing a blog post on my cracked screen BlackBerry that T-Mobile refused to replace even though it was under warranty. The customer service clown set me up lovely by having me call from a landline. When she asked me what color the sticker on my phone battery was and I replied red she then apologized and told me that my phone was water damaged.
I laughed my fat ass off. Homegirl set me up like a maestro. So I’m stuck with this piece of T-Mobile shit for another sixteen months. Fuck T-Mobile in the ‘A’.
It’s real peaceful out here in Freeport. I can see why my parent’s wanted me to live out here. There’s shit you grow accustomed to living in the city that you don’t have to suffer for in the suburbs. Quality of life isn’t simply any electoral slogan. It’s about real shit like fucking litter and prostitutes and fucking dog shit. I encounter these things in the city on the daily. I basically ignore them because I accept the dissonance as part of the city’s fabric, but it is cool to be able to have your own thoughts.
So here I sit now and its 4am and my superintendent is asleep in his apartment now I’m sure so I won’t even bother ringing his bell. I’ll just sit outside until 8am or something like that before I ring his doorbell.
I am a total loser since I brought shit of mine from C.S.’s apartment out to Freeport to stash away but I forgot my effing keys. I have my Foamposite 1’s finally getting placed in the archive. I don’t have any idea when I am taking these joints off ice but when I do you are going to hate me. That day I will be a winner all because today I am losing.
I had grandiose plans for today. I was going to pay some bills I am behind with. After receiving an e-mail from the exec director of Brooklyn Bodega I was going to definetly fall through that Brooklyn Hip-Hop festival. My lady and I even planned a double date with some friends to see ‘Wall-E’. Speaking of Wale, I was going to see him perform at S.O.B.’s on Sunday night after I left the Afro-Punk block party in Fort Greene that was earlier in the day.
As it stands now, I ain’t gonna do shit other than pay my bills. Maybe. These mosquitos is eating my ass like I said something about their momma and I am more tied than fuck.
You read that right – tied. I R tied!
I’m sorry for holding your eyeballs hostage while I talk about my situation. I just wanted something to talk about instead of being angry with myself. Even though its a quarter past 4am and I am having my ass eaten by bugs as if it were a sport I need to remind myself that this is the process of winning for my life.
So I stay losing…
Click on the iNternets Celebrities link to the right.
I posted a drop discussing what our summer plans might be.
Weigh in with your thoughts.
History is a motherfucking trip. You can learn some shit that just freaks your mind. You will walk around madder than a motherfucker for the rest of the day if you have a brain. That is how I felt after leaving the Weeksville Heritage Center. The site contains so many memories for me it’s hard to enumerate all of them.
Megatron was shot in the head on Buffalo Avenue and Bergen Street.
On Bergen Street and Ralph Avenues is this well guarded complex for poor kids with mental disability. The shit is clearly a prison.
A few months back when I was visiting Rumble and Headstrong, we were accosted by police officers, all Black and all younger than we are, directly across the street from Weeksville in the Kingsboro Houses. As is my custom I let my smart mouth reminisce with these officers about the story passed down from my elders that it was greedy Africans who delivered the Blacks to the shores of Goree Island, and it was equally greedy Blacks who upon arrival to this land would act as whipcrackers to the plantation owners. The idea was that some Blacks couldn’t wait to get the whips in their hands as opposed to their hands on the whips. The cops weren’t impressed. I’m lucky I wasn’t arrested.
Weeksville resides on what was the border of “civilzation” for the occupiers settlers that came to the Americas. Blacks were encouraged to settle these tracts of land because they provided a buffer between the indigenous people and the Europeans. The Dutch needed the Blacks to make the area safe and habitable. The idea was that the Blacks would deal with the savages until a time when the land was cleared and arable. Then the Europeans would have the Blacks evicted and forced to settle elsewhere.
Fuck around and the 1700’s has become the 2000’s. Blacks are being evicted from the lands again to make room for the European(and midwestern) settlers. When people tell you that history will repeat itself they ain’t never lie. The photo above is of the high rise portion of the Kingsboro houses. Twenty five stories positioned on less than acre of land. Forty acres and a mule has become a New York Housing Authority apartment and a Cadillac Escalade. Just like the land agreements granted to Native Americans were surreptitiously altered I won’t be caught sleeping when these deals are changed as well.
Now, more than ever, I am determined to find a homestead in Brooklyn. The historical relevance at stake is too great. Freedom was never for free. Thanks to Dr. SHERILL D. WILSON for her history lesson of New York City that preceded the GAME Rebellion concert.
GAME REBELLION gets focused on the job at hand.
Family always comes first. GAME REBELLION is for the kids.
These dudes rock.
GAME REBELLION will be part of the Afro Punk festivals Wednesday night stage show and you can still copp their mixtape ‘Searching For Rick Rubin‘ online at iMeem.
In only their fourth year of putting shit down as a festival the AfroPunk movement has emerged as the premier Brooklyn based music, films and arts festival. This is prA’li due to the AfroPunk organizers being part of the community they promote themselves to. Other music festivals in Brooklyn seem to just appear when it is convenient for them instead of maintaining their community ties all year around.
Let’s be clear, the Afro Punk festival doesn’t get as crowded as say, the Brooklyn Hip-Hop Festival, but the Afro Punk festival is over a week long of events featuring cutting edge bands and filmmakers that are up and coming, as opposed to a single day event featuring dinosaur boom bap rappers that you saw perform for free last summer. Suffice to say it, I am fucking with the Afro Punk festival this summer. Hardbody.
When I fell through the festival yesterday at the Brooklyn Academy of Music they had the skate ramps on and popping. I couldn’t get too close to the stage so my pics of JANELLE MONAE are more artsy than accurate. What they do describe is the energy that homegirl brought to the stage. She was dope.
Go to AfroPunk dot com to peep the calendar of performances scheduled for this week. My pick hits are the main stage on Wednesday and the Afro Punk Block Party on Sunday 7/13.