BILLY X. SUNDAY says, “Tara Henley stand up!”
Me and my lady took a long weekend to visit Montreal. The rail fare was pretty damn cheap and you can’t beat the view on the train as you ride alongside the Hudson River due north. I kind of forgot about my cares as I peeped tiny upstate New York towns with farms and horses and the what not. The bucolic scenery had me in a daze until we arrived at the Canadian border. I was questioned by several customs officers about my business in Canada. I thought this was a joke on some “We already have enough Black people” type shit. Truth was that these niggas were holding a passenger manifest and on that printout it displayed my arrest record.
Damn. I thought these dudes were gonna send me back to NYC, but they figured that since my last conviction was in 1993 that I wouldn’t be too much of a problem. Shit done changed since September 11th, 2001. Everything done changed. The way we travel abroad, up to the music we listen to on our iPods. I was on some Native Tongues shit while walking around Montreal. It’s a backpacker city so I figured that I’d let some backpacker music be my soundtrack.
Montreal is an interesting city. It’s a lot more like America than its counterpart Toronto. Montreal is a lot dirtier than Toronto. You could eat off the ground in Toronto, not so much in Montreal. It felt like a college town, except niggas spoke French, and there weren’t any niggers. There was a handful of mulattos, but I didn’t see any real Black folks. You know, the kind that have DNA from two Black parents. The biggest rapper in Montreal was one of these halfBlack dudes (is anyone keeping score because lightskint is in the lead?). His rapper name is Cadence Weapon. I fucks with dude because he is on some Kid Cudi rhyme style. Like KanYe West and most pop rap acts nowadays you need to listen to sonn with shades on and a disco ball over your head. Still and all, this nigga rhymes better than Lil’ Wang every day of the week.
Sometimes I fucks with rap dudes that don’t live in America. I got into this Nigerian cat from Brixton, England several years ago. Dude’s name is Ty Chijoke (score one for brownskin brothers). His album ‘Upwards’ featured live instruments played by Africans that used to tour with Fela Kuti. I know what your thinking. “But Sunday, don’t you HATE Africans for selling your great-great-grandparents to the white?” Yes, I do hate the Africans, but I love African music. Go figure. Fela Kuti is a fucking giant, and if you don’t know who he is you are definitely part of the problem with the world today. So as I was saying, I fucks with this cat Ty. This dude spits some real shit. Peep the track with him and Bahamadia on it.
I know I always speak of bringing a change to how we listen to rap and then becoming the change we want to bear witness to. There are artists that can give us that good food for our earlobes without preaching to us. Fuck with this cat Ty. He gets deep with his shit and the fact that he comes from Africa which is the most hardbody island next to England says a lot to me.
