What We're Hearing

See our thoughts, originally intended for this notebook, over at the more deeply breathed space we think of as the Blue Light.

While we're at it...

...we couldn't help noticing something simular here:

It's blue. It's blues. And you can't deny it.

We don't work on fresh...

...but we call out the blues when we hear it.

Chaboy Fennesey, who earns muchlove, put some time into OFWGKTA, and you should too, so visit.

We put you up to this last month, remarking that the shit was more like Stan Brakhage or than the other homemade hiphop out there. It's as real as the 7th 8th and 9th strings on Big Joe Williams homemade axe: the realness of "I can't help myself. I need to hear that more a little more." To make it clear: this hits me up like AEC's "Barnyard Scuffle Shuffle," or Bert Williams "Nobody," or put something in that is out on the list.

In a recent exercise in tapping, chaboy Coates, who also earn his love and has the privilege of dropping science on the somewhat lacking and in need over @ The Atlantic talks about this, as he is wont, in autobiographical terms. "I am, it seems, always bidding adieu to the formative music of my youth. I am not bitter, but in the long kiss goodnight I hope to soon understand why and how I came, so powerfully, under the sway of two turntables and a microphone. Now, I am pushing past 35, and I offer these thoughts as a man who almost surely will never buy any of Big Sean's work. And this is as it should be. The music no longer belongs to me. Likely, it never did." Sentimental, but truetrue. He calls it hiphop. Over @ this house we call it the blues.

Let us be clear, though. This is not about the youth, or the fresh or any of that. It is about being displaced from what we do when we grind, and the subsequent illusory sense that we can return to where we used to be. Makes you want to holla, the they they do your mind.

What we love most about the Odd Future crew is how easy it is to see that they are taking the music away from us. And they got so much to take. We were lissening to Earl Sweatshirt @ the office the other day, letting it boom the 'buds while we ground our nose on this and that. The note is simple: blew the shit up outta the workplace. We hadda get a cup of coffee and regroup. Just took it all away w/ the holla, "It never was yours and it never was."

Get over there. Dwell in their house for a while. Pick up a few of the joints they leave around for you. Yours for the taking, right?

Got it.

Back to the Basics

A commonplace book like this one is all about the jotdown of things you shouldn't forget. There's stuff we gots to know. Here's one of them.

When life seems full of clouds and rain
And I am full of nothin' and pain
Who soothes my thumping, bumping brain, uummm?
Nobody!

When winter comes with snow and sleet
And me with hunger and cold feet
Who says, "Here's twenty-five cents, go ahead and get somethin'
to eat, go on why doncha"?
Nobody!

I ain't never done nothin' to nobody
I ain't never done nothin' to nobody, no time
So until I get somethin' from somebody sometime
I'll never do nothin' for nobody, no time

When I was in that railroad wreck
And thought I'd cashed in my last check
Who took the engine off my neck?
Nobody!

One time when things was lookin' bright
I started to whittle on a stick one night
Who cried out, "Stop now, that's dynamite"?
Not a soul!

I ain't never done nothin' to nobody
I ain't never done nothin' to nobody, no time
So until I get something from somebody, sometime
I'll never do nothin' for nobody, no time

What We're Hearing

Puts a smile on your face like utrabrite.

We're lissening through the slab close for the first time, loving "Blue Flowers," "Bear Witness," "Dr. Octagon," "Girl Let Me Touch You," "I'm Destructive," "Halfsharkalligatorhalfman," so far. Sh*t rocks.

Someday we're gonna write a post about these identity shifters, creators of new and secret identities. We're gonna hang the post on Bert Williams brilliant "I'm Nobody," and Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, and on secret names and name changing from Africa days to the Nation.

In the mean time we're just living the high life w/ the Automator, DJ Qbert, and Kutmasta Kurt on the deck. Ahh. Foot ticklin.'

Reincarnation of a Lovebird

Who's got a castle on the Nile?


It can't stop and it won't stop.

P E A C E

In Our Mailbox Yesterday

We will begin work on Bert Williams in the near future. The first to proclaim himself on the record an invisible man, the first to have a castle on the Nile, he is someone we can imagine to be a precursor, and someone we can hear after the fact if we put our ears to it.

P E A C E