Mad, Bad, and Dangerous to Know: Charting the Similarities Between Lord Byron and The Notorious B.I.G.

“I been in this game for years,
its made me an animal.
There’s rules to this shit,
I wrote me a manual”
-Ten Crack Commandments

I began writing this paper with the intention of using Biggie Smalls as a means by which to demonstrate the impact of the Byronic Hero on our culture. The more I considered things, however, the more I recognized that such an argument is ultimately erroneous and even insulting. The attributes of the Byronic Hero which so clearly apply to the creative entity known the Notorious B.I.G. (also known as Biggie Smalls, also known as the Black Frank White, also known as Christopher George Latore Wallace) all generated spontaneously as a result of Christopher Wallace’s upbringing in the grimiest sections of Brooklyn, NYC rather than through the process of cultural distillation and dilution which has brought those same qualities to something like, say, Batman. As I doubt that Christopher Wallace ever laid his hands on a copy of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage it seems only fitting that Biggie be regarded as peer rather than as a product of.



What I now propose to do is simply explicate just a handful of both personal and artistic similarities between the Bad Boy of the English Romantic movement and the Bad Boy of Bad Boy records. I will be using Byron’s Manfred and Childe Harold as my primary sources by which to examine several of tracks off of Biggie’s gangsta rap masterpieces “Ready to Die” and “Life after Death”. Ideally, this will provide us with a contemporary link to our cultural past as well as provide some footing for the creative legitimacy of Biggie Smalls and maybe even Hip Hop in general.

To pull the camera back a little bit, Hip Hop is the dominant means by which metered, poetic verse is ingested not only in the states but in the world. at large with a listenership numbering in the billions (somewhere around 3 actually). Still, there are those people both in and out of academia who seem to simply pretend the Hip Hop scene either does not exist or that it is not worthy of dignifying with any critical response other than laughter or disgusted grunts. I hate those people.

But keep in mind, I do not wish to dub Hip Hop as some sort of new Romantic movement since A)that would be as cheesy as it is pretentious and B) that would be somewhat redundant as, in actuality, everybody seems at least a little Romantic these days. What I am actually inferring is that Hip Hop seems to hold many of the values of the Romantic movement, most notably Keats principle of “Truth is Beauty” and the Wordsworthian predilection towards “common” language.

But I digress.

Biggie’s personal legacy is a troubled one. Though canonical in the Hip Hop community, academic recognition of Biggie’s poetic contributions are few and far between, his mainstream credibility is dogged by Tipper Gore-esque attacks upon his subject matter and “message” and even the self-billed “intellectual elite” of rap culture have thrown snobbish critical obstacles at Wallace which seem to eerily echo those leveled at Byron himself. I can practically hear Carlyle commanding “Close thy Biggie; open thy Q-Tip”.

To conclude this somewhat gargantuan introduction, I feel I should note that it is of the utmost importance that this piece not regarded so much as a Romantic paper as a Hip Hop paper. Such a perspective seems to me the key to keeping this joint fresh.

“All I do is separate the game from the truth.”
One More Chance

The trajectories of the two mens lives and careers seem to begin even in their modest yet disparate creative launches, with poetry relegated to mere diversion while they engaged in more profitable pursuits, Gordon studying at trinity college and Wallace selling crack.. However, the place which seems most appropriate for us to begin is the pair’s adoption of commercial personas, personas which eventually became indistinguishable and indivisible from the original and ostensibly authentic entities of George Gordon and Chris Wallace. Perhaps the only real difference is that Byron was born into his MC name whereas Biggie grew into his in the most literal sense.

The general attitude toward Byron today is that his overwhelming success came as the result of clever branding in tandem with poetic genius. People who bought Byron’s work were enamored of him or, rather, the literary figures which he would make intrinsically linked to himself. Peter J. Manning described the allure as a sort of cultural usurpation of focus in his article “Childe Harolde in the Marketplace”. Manning states that “...the intensely present Byron of 1812 and afterwards validates the fictions, making his own career the authorizing source of value, a present-day demonstration of heroic grandeur.” and then goes on to say that “Byron’s revolution thus consisted of vacating the order of chivalry and replacing it simultaneously with himself.” (180) Though Byron would downplay the relationship between he and his characters it seems clear that (as when he named Childe Harolde Childe Burun in an early version of the Pilgrimage) that such a connection was, even if unintended, still very much there.

Christopher Wallace moved through similar avenues with similar commercial success. Please forgive me as I attempt to add some context: Wallace was living in a post-N.W.A. creative space. N.W.A. had set the tone for the grimy theatrics of gangster rap and had profited immensely off of their hardcore affectations. Their most brilliant move was their creation of characters from which Andre Young or Eric Wright would never break. This dynamic has remained steady in much of Hip Hop though it has become infinitely more meta with some artists taking on multiple characters and releasing whole catalogs under these guises, for example Kool Keith’s outstanding tenure as the alien gynecologist Dr. Octagon or MF DOOM’s alternate but equally cerebral outlet Viktor Vaughn (and it boggles my mind to even consider the number of nom de plume permutations the members of the Wu-Tang Clan have.)

Of course, all of this talk about general Hip Hop history must lead us somewhere. That place is the genesis of The Notorious B.I.G. persona which had the same edge over so much of the influx of gangster rap as Guns N Roses did over the artificial hair bands of the same era. Christopher Wallace was essentially the real deal: a crack dealing, purse stealing gangsta who had excelled in school during the times he actually went and who also just happened to spit red hot fire with an unheard of flow. Whereas the gangsters before him fronted completely, Biggie was essentially the Platonic Christopher Wallace, exaggerated in all the right places to be a lyrical atom bomb and a commercial product with tremendous viability. Listening again to Eazy-E’s“Boyz in tha Hood” after hearing Biggie’s “Things Done Changed” sees the former piece rendered ludicrous in the face of reality bent to perfect fiction.

“All I want is bitches,
big booty bitches.”
Machine Gun Funk

But, the similarities stretch deeper into their creative and personal psyches than simply this readiness to commodify themselves. An example of particular interest is the pairs considerable sexual appetites which fed directly into their creative output. It always seems best to get the more lurid, fun things out of the way early and this topic serves another, more selfish purpose as well: The cries of misogyny leveled at Biggie’s verses are overpowering, earsplitting and often very, very true. This being noted I feel that when his sexual consumption is placed into context next to Byron’s we might be able to move past politics and address the art itself. Art first, politics second, etcetera, etcetera.

Though I fear creating a straw man to batter, we might begin with Biggie’s much maligned embrace of the “bitches”. However, his use of the word and concept might pale to some in comparison to the use of the word in the boy’s schools of the eighteenth century as David Sprague Neff details compellingly in his article “Bitches, Mollies, and Tommies: Byron, Masculinity, and the History of Sexualities”. During that period, a common sexual practice was the adoption of the more beautiful, younger boys by the older students for sexual satisfaction. These younger boys were known as “bitches”. While it was unknown as to whether Byron was himself ever one of these “bitches”, there has been plentiful evidence to demonstrate that he himself was something of connoisseur of bitches. He would go on to employ and enjoy the same sexual power dynamic when we he traveled abroad to Greece and then continually throughout his life.

Now, let it be recognized that there is no judgment being made in regards to EITHER man’s sexual proclivities, his bitches or otherwise. And let it be further recognized that the last sentence was not some Seinfeld-esque copout. I wish only to establish recognition of culturally acceptable sexual practices and terminology which have found disfavor. And, also, to demonstrate that both Byron and Biggie were very fond of the bitches indeed. Yes, both men were cut of the same libidinal cloth, their appetites excessive to the point of a sort of dazzling ferocity and only differentiated by the common practices of the day. It also seems safe enough to link this sexual veracity with their creative output as Byron claimed to have slept with over 200 women within the same year and half in which he completed Manfred, Canto 4 of Childe Harold... and began what is widely considered his masterpiece, Don Juan.

Though Biggie never placed a number on his conquests, his own sexual proclivities were on display for everyone to see and experience. Anyone at all could realize that when Smalls, the man who claimed to have “the cleanest, meanest penis”, crowed “I don’t chase ‘em, I replace ‘em” in “One More Chance” it was a safe bet not to doubt him. Such sexual claims rendered poetically have placed him in the same commercial echelon of Michael Jackson, the Rolling Stones and the Beatles in terms of sales. And that is certainly not to say that Byron’s sexual revelry was kept more subtly hidden in his work (a claim so naive might be worthy of academic battery) . In only the second stanza of Canto 1 we learn that Childe Harold, the former Childe Burun spent much of his time cavorting with “...concubines and carnal companie,/ and flaunting wassailers of high and low degree.”(618)

However, deeper inspection of the pair’s work reveals that this sexuality, when placed into the grander scope of their experiences, is regarded as futile. Childe Harold’s exploits are revealed to be heartbreaking in stanza 6 of Canto 1 where Harold “...from his fellow bacchanals would flee;” and that then “...at times the sullen tear would start.”(619)(though, of course, “...Pride congealed the drop within his ee;” ). In “Suicidal Thoughts”, Biggie places his sexual binging in the ugliest context possible juxtaposing his desire to “get his dick licked” with the image of his mother, whose love he feels is only a shadow of what it was when he was a child as she tenderly nursed him, unaware of the ruthlessness and grime the baby would become capable of it when it grew into the often malignant entity The Notorious B.I.G.

(not to mention the revelation that he impregnated a pair of sisters, a fact which is treated as gruesome and shocking, perhaps bearing a stamp of incest as it was understood around the 17th century and, as such, echoing Manfred’s relation to Astarte).

So then, the sexual avarice was not, in reality, unabashed. That the “real” Byron and Biggie would go into a sort of sexual stasis, embracing a simpler sexual lifestyle (relatively speaking) after their biggest critical and commercial successes says a great deal about the toll which such rampant carnality played on their poets souls. Both men were clearly looking for something purer and more glorious of which sex might only have been a side effect, some sort of Platonic ideal.

“Now I’m in the limelight cause I rhyme tight.
Time to get paid,
blow up like the World Trade”
Juicy

This ideal conveniently brings us to the issue of “Nature” or perhaps Nature qua Nature. One would be hard-pressed to find references to nature in the same vein of Byron in the verses of Smalls (though his work still oozes with the imagery afforded him by his modest upbringing, the hard, grimy Brooklyn streets circa the crack boom, if the Romantics created “poetry of the country” it was because such an option existed for them). Instead, Byron’s references to the awesomeness of nature are, in fact, replaced by illustrations of material success. This materialism is yet another target for though who wish to keep Hip Hop illegitimate though assertions seem ignorant to the modern social, economic and cultural conditions.

In order to explain what I mean, I feel that it would be best to leave the ouevre of both men and turn to the words of a third artist, Biggie’s unquestionable successor to the NYC Hip Hop throne and current cultural and commercial Demi-God, Jay-Z. It is simply that no one could possibly explain Hip Hop’s common, (but far from universal) preoccupation with wealth better than he did in his absolutely incendiary single “99 Problems”.

“....critics, they say he's Money Cash Hoes
I'm from the hood stupid, what type of facts are those
If you grew up with holes in ya zappatos
You would celebrate the minute you was havin' dough”

Clearly, the materialism which seems so crass to so many is really an affirmation of Power by a historically disempowered people. Once this is understood to be the underlying drive of gangster Hip Hop, it seems more than reasonable to equate something like a Mercedes-Benz automobile to a mountain or stars or strong winds or a Chamois as all are, in the context of the artists being discussed, physical representations or approximations of power. Biggie simply cannot be blamed for the either the circumstances he came from or the post-Lyotardian concept of the postmodern sublime.

And that is the concept I have been dancing around for some time now: the sublime. Both men’s work was almost exclusively concerned with the aesthetic mode of the Sublime as was the bulk of their respective artistic communities, namely the English Romantic and the 90's East Coast Gangster Rap scene. In fact, even at their most delicate, either man was still essentially concerned with the awe and power of the Sublime (The triumphant victory lap that is “Juicy” is only separated from Biggie’s grimier work by a more uplifting beat and references to Super Nintendo’s rather than Glocks and Manfred’s love for Astarte brings the reader to place of unidentifiable terror rather than a warm, fuzzy feeling)

When one considers their sublime one will realize that the pair’s major concern when employing the sublime, the aesthetification of power, was themselves. The way to Biggie’s mastery over the sale of crack cocaine as described in a track like “The Ten Crack Commandments” is equatable to Manfred’s ability to conjure spirits: Both figures essentially exerting a power that is at least the approximation of something divine through the sheer strength of will. That is to say, they make something from nothing and exert power over their surroundings.

Beyond this mastery of their environment comes both men’s claims to the exclusive right over their own souls. Of course, Byron seems to derive his sense of self-ownership from a variant-Cartesian outlook, Biggie has adopted a physical approach which leaves his perceived weakness of spiritual mandate in the dust. His disdain for the concept of the afterlife in a higher power are most expressly stated in the absolutely acidic “Suicidal Thoughts” where he declares “Hangin' with the goodie-goodies loungin' in paradise/fuck that shit, I wanna tote guns and shoot dice.”

Though the rejections of faith made by the pair end absolutely in these pieces with their own desired, self satisfied deaths, it would be unwise to count any sort of reliance on the idea of a morally righteous higher power. After all, Biggie calls himself “a piece of shit” and “the worst” with a mixture of both pride and guilt as he stares into infinity. The final lines of Manfred are not delivered by the titular character himself but instead by the Abbott who “...dread[s] tp think”(669) where Manfred’s soul might be going. When one considers that the schematic of the piece relies on the presentness or lack thereof of a higher power or powers in tandem with these last words, the spiritual picture is complicated immensely. It seems that Byron and Biggie will only pray at their own altars.

Fuck the world, fuck my moms and my girl,
My life is played out like a Jheri curl
I'm ready to die.
-Ready To Die

And, since they are the sole proprietors of their souls they are also the custodians of their deaths. Death is constantly on either’s mind, most typically their own but in that inspection of their own mortality they see and paint a larger picture of the infinity of death. The endings of Manfred and “Suicidal Thoughts” the Biggie track I feel best serves as the plays counterpart (though by no means being the only track from Biggie’s catalog which deals with the same concepts and reaches the same conclusions. It is only that this particular track employs a more elaborate set of dramatic tropes) end with uncanny similarity: Byron’s stand-in Manfred sneers his way out of his mortal coil (or whatever) shouting “Old man! ‘tis not so difficult to die!”(668), a line immediately followed by the stage direction [MANFRED expires](669). The rejection of life seems almost petulant. Smalls seems to asserts that he has come to a logical conclusion as he spits “I reach my Peak, I can't speak” three lines before his final line of “matter of fact, I'm sick of talkin'”, cutting off the friend he called, exerting ownership over every element of his life including his own demise. We then hear the gunshot which blasts him to perhaps the same eternity as the Notorious B.Y.R.O.N.

That question leaves us with my final point: Either man seems to essentially accept the possibility of eternal torment in the afterlife. Biggie even went so far as to open “Suicidal Thoughts”with the lines “When I die/fuck it/ I wanna go to hell.” Their mastery over their own fates, their taking responsibility for their own grimy action and their willingness to destroy themselves in order to create themselves all seems to prove they were two of a kind separated by a measly couple hundred years, two of the hardest G’s poetry has ever seen.

And if you don’t know,
now you know nigga.
-Juicy

Works Cited

Gordon, George. "Manfred." Ed. Stephen Greenblatt. The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Volume 1 The Middle Ages through the Restoration and the Eighteenth Century (Norton Anthology of English Literature). New York: W. W. Norton, 2005. 635-68. Print.

Gordon, George. "Childe Harolds Pilgrimage." Ed. Stephen Greenblatt. The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Volume 1 The Middle Ages through the Restoration and the Eighteenth Century (Norton Anthology of English Literature). New York: W. W. Norton, 2005. 617-635. Print.

Manning, Peter J. "Childe Harold in the Marketplace: From Romaunt to Handbook." Modern Language Quarterly 52.2 (1991): 170-90.

Neff, David Sprague, “Bitches, Mollies, and Tommies: Byron, Masculinity, and the History of Sexualities” Journal of the History of Sexuality, Volume 11, Number 3, July 2002, pp. 395-438

The Notorious B.I.G. Life After Death. Sean "Puffy" Combs, 1997. CD

The Notorious B.I.G. Ready To DIe. Sean "Puffy" Combs, 1994. CD.
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sketch book

My sketchbooks are very important to me and they are also a great source of personal entertainment as well. I love to just doodle and laugh at the things i draw. these are some of my better drawings from the past year. Hope you enjoy.
-luke



























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Welcome the Death Hippie: What the 60's Counterculture Means to Weed Metal

Weed Metal is some secret handshake shit. Its the kind of thing where the genre's mention alone is like skipping past all the forced drinking, ass paddling and shit eating right to the magically complicated high-five part of becoming a Delta Kai or rugby player or whatever other bullshit club you're trying to get in to. DNA type shit. If you fire an Electric Wizard torpedo and it collides with another figurative submarine in spite of the worlds balls-to-the-wall silent drive then you and that submarine will be like two peas in a little underwater pod, no Alec Baldwin required.

I love it.

But the genre has a dirty secret, though it isn't a particularly hard one to sort out. Even a minor glance behind its mud speckled veneers reveals its true origins: hippy shit. The patchouli scented fingerprints of the 60's counterculture are all over modern Sludge. The relationship of the genre to hippie culture is like America's relationship to slavery: as repulsive as one might find the latter in both situations it is only because of them that the former exist as we know it today. Keep in mind, I don't necessarily consider either America or Weed Metal as flawless in practice. The States have always had awful problems with racial relationships, gender politics, class structure and censorship. Just as horrifying is the treatment of Sunn O))) as a legitimate musical endeavor. Still, when an aspect either entity is really running on all ideologically foundational cylinders it is some truly breathtaking shit.

The historical circumstances of Weed Metal are tied inextricably to the ethos surrounding the genre. Basically, a schism in rock music occurred. There is nothing particularly new or interesting about that since new sub-genres have been burping out of rock and roll's guts forever. From rock to punk, punk to hardcore, hardcore to whatever unlistenable bullshit is being shat out today by guys with makeup on who are not Gorgoroth or Faster, Pussycat. And this is just one of the maaaany chains of genre change out there. What is particularly interesting is the ideological dynamic of the two groups in question here. You see, the original archetype was the "hippie" and from that archetype’s body came the Death Hippie (a term I did not make up but am claiming ownership of NOW), an entity which orbits around the same desired stimuli (rock music and weed) as hippie culture but which is, at its core, its opposite number. Weed Metal is the musical extension of the Death Hippie and in being this the genre succeeds at what hippie culture as a whole tried and failed to do then (and now) without really meaning or even wanting to.

Sonically speaking, the WM anti-culture could not help but come from the hippie rock sound just as all rock cannot help but have crawled out from the same greasy womb which was Robert Johnson’s Devil Blues and, since rock and roll was still a relatively new phenomenon, the sixties counterculture was able to adopt it in its entirety. Eventually the inescapable psychedelic influence molded the genre into a self-consciously cerebral near parody of itself with its intended esotericism (I’m looking at you Strawberry Alarm Clock). Now, I’m not saying that the entire generation was musically flaccid because there was a ton of awesome music which came out of the period. The MC5 could indeed kick out the jams motherfucker, Hendrix played like a dirty fucking animal and the Stones were always great so long as they weren't dumbly aping Woodstock. Its just that all of it was too focused on the external, an issue which I promise to address eventually.

Some WM groups now even borrow certain psychedelic elements of the hippie rock sound (lots of fx, janglely guitars, a distinctly Asiatic flavor, and jazzy bullshittery) but never is it used as a means through which to offer homage or to create the illusion of importance (which is what the intention of "mind expansion" certainly was and is). Instead it is a blunt instrument to rock with, another stone for the caveman to throw at the moon. For example, the Japanese murderophiles Church of Misery have embraced the sort of fuzzed out, occasionally shreddy, fx-ical reverberations of the hippie scene. This should not be held against them as is it not a cultural endorsement or a means to add pretentious depth but rather just a tool with which to ornamentate the key technical components of Weed Metal: Girth and Rhythm.

What am I talking about? Huge fucking grooves, that's what. Correction: huge fucking blues grooves. The huger the better, both in terms of aural density and sheer volume (how big it sounds) and internal intensity (how big it feels). The quality of recording isn't important either so long as the grooves are big and dirty. And slow too, at just the right moment where speed is definitely not a virtue. When perfectly applied, a groove can make all the wanky chops in the world be understood as nothing more than the math problems and jerk off sessions they are. Chops have their place but too often emphasis is thrown more on technical ability and not on the actual human aspect of rock music which is that soul power, brother. Soul, soul, soul, sell yours for rock and roll all you want but don’t you dare try to scam rock out of its own.

Vocally, Weed Metal works with a wide palette of approach from the melodic subtlety of Pete Stahl in Goatsnake to the horrifying sounds that itty, bitty former junkie Mike Williams somehow makes come out of his Creole throat for Eyehategod. Each and every technique aims to enhance the third typical element of Weed Metal (weed consumption is considered assumed here folks, c’mon): darkness.

Weed Metal is also colloquially known as doom or sludge and this is for a reason (I only prefer the tag Weed Metal because I like to listen to Bongzilla when I get high and Bongzilla like it when I’m high listening to Bongzilla and Bongzilla like to be high while being Bongzilla and in this web of stoner recognition is the ever present shadow of total hopelessness amongst the resin). Facedowninshit aren’t completely right when they say “Nothing Positive, Only Negative” but they are close. This shit is dark man, but that don't mean we can't still kick some ass, y'know (if you don't know I hope to make you know soon).

Of course, none of this explains anything about the history except what any dummy could already see and I know that you're no dummy and this shit needs to get crackin'. So let us take a crack indeed at the first archetype in order to understand the second:Today, the hippie movement has aligned itself with the practically useful idea of “sustainability”. I've heard it applied to everything. In class I have sat through presentations on Sustainable Composition or Green Comp and I have groaned at the cooption of another sensible idea made more political than it needs to be. Unfortunately the idea of sustainability could not apply functionally to the “hippie” lifestyle as it was dreamed, mandated and then popularized. Though drugs were not necessarily intended by the architects of the initial movement to be foundational they would move into alignment with that very movement and eventually become synonymous with it. A culture that is not only in a static state of drug ingestion but also seemed to suggest that being high could go on indefinitely without consequence allowed the uglier elements of community and reality to wreak some serious havoc on the anti-institution movements own institution.

The pseudo-collapse of the of the Haight-Ashbury mecca in '67 is a good example to start with. Of course, the H-A has since reestablished its cred by fostering the illusion of it still being a forest of Bohemian delight. Ben and Jerry’s have done the same thing in the way they approach the public and I view that company as well as both Ben and Jerry individually as morally culpable for the kid outside of my Great Western Works class playing that goddamn acoustic guitar beneath a tree as though that is a place where a guitar should be played (“Yeah, I was just walking around campus and suddenly was gripped by the urge to play guitar right here where you girls were coming out of class. Fate is so crazy. May I lick your nipples?”). That’s not really fair I guess. Their Oatmeal Cookie ice cream is some good shit.

BUT ANYWAYS, the illusion of sustainability of the drug utopia was coming to a close due not to political machinations but rather because of things like addiction and homelessness and the problems that come with them. Heroin and speed did a pretty good job of gutting the area for a while what with the crime and the rape and the people supposedly eating stray cats. ( I heard that last thing from VH1's The Drug Years which I actually just turned on in the midst of writing this and don't really believe it. Actually, that whole program irks the hell out of me me because they discuss some of the key figures of the Death Hippie archetype and now I feel like a Johnny-Come-Lately. The one thing I do have on my side in this is that I don't operate from behind the rose colored glasses that the modern retrospective view of the 60's takes. ) All of this was contrary to the overly intellectualized, entirely politicized idea of the sustainable hippie lifestyle which was purported to be the ideal lifestyle.

To demonstrate the scene going crazy, going insaaaane, and flying off the rails The Diggers even committed a glib act of symbolism. A parade! called Death of Hippie. What FUN! They also closed their soup kitchens and homeless shelters it what seemed to be the symbolic act of being a bunch of assholes. And so concluded 1967.

Then in 1968, as if on cue, there emerged a symbol for the radical paradigm shift towards the natural human capability for ugliness, a figure who dramatically illustrated the reality of the situation. Charles Manson was only a Death Hippie in a literal sense. Charley was a crazy fucker who convinced others to kill for him but he was not the Death Hippie as an ideologue. He was not an agent of counter counterculture (thank you Charlie Dub). He believed in the typical hippie gibberish but spiked it with piquant insanity. And he was influenced by drugs. Was he created by them? Nah, but they sure didn't help.

What he was was just a bigger version of the effect of drugs on the human psyche. Drugs exaggerate experience and distort them, that's why we take them. Is it so ridiculous then to assume that people knew what was to be expected when drugs are taken? Weed certainly wasn't some new invention. As for the psychedelics, what should one think will happen when you put a chemical compound into your brain with the intent to make it malfunction? These substances are not vitamins but so often in the murky recollections of the 60's the subjectivity of drug experience is ignored. The one I'm talking about most prevalently here is weed. Weed can make you feel bad. When the high dissipates in rolls the ennui and the depression. It makes decisions seem easier than they should. It makes couches feel like destinies. Don't get me wrong here, I love weed but I also understand that everything that goes into your body has a consequence.

And that is what Uncle Charley represents. The confrontation of ideals and reality where real human experience dwells. He is a figure of depressing compromise for the drug culture. Weed Metal gets that today and old CM has always been a symbol of some sort to stoner metal society to one degree or another. Eyehategod used a Manson sample in one of their songs and when I listened to it when I was high I got the shit scared out me both by the crazy motherfuckery of what he was saying and the authentic feeling truths he used to illustrate the mad schematic. So, while Manson should not be regarded as an actual Death Hippie or even as the prototype he was one of many signifiers that counter-cultural ideology and reality would not coalesce. He was a switch that was already being thrown anyway and who ultimately meant very little while simultaneously representing everything. (here is another Church of Misery gem about Mr. Manson)

Hunter S. Thompson, on the other hand, was a Death Hippie. He was counterculture but also acutely aware of the power of violence and the ugliness of behavior. He wrote anti-hippie pieces and, interestingly enough still has become exalted by the entirety of the drug culture including the modern and vintage arms of the hippie forces who would have us believe that everything done was pure and universal. I mean, c'mon, of course all those old bastards recall those days fondly. They were the cool kids who were actually getting laid after they sparked their dirty little j’s rather than the rest of the R. Crumb types (God bless his honest, filthy heart) who showed up for some of that free love stuff and got promptly shut down for not adopting a uniform. But that can be discussed later.

The writing of Hunter S. Thompson lacked beauty. He seemed to have no interest in the stuff. What is was chock-full of (besides dirt and blow) was reactionary bile that came from a place of radical honesty and, if Keats has taught us anything, it is that Truth is Beauty. I’ve heard critics (ahem) say that he was only interested in shock but that a little too simple. Yes, he liked to massage those visceral emotions out of us but that too is in keeping with the Death Hippie archetype: humanity at any cost. The dude also liked to get party and then run amok preferably with sick cars or guns but he was aware of the consequences, of the practical reality of doing this.

"But, Jesus Christ, what does it all mean to rock music already?" Well, these two figures illustrate physically the intense aural paradigm shift that was about to blow out the worlds proverbial asses.

Rock Music has always had its receivers tuned to the abject darkness. For the longest time it was all based around the little tricks Robert Johnson picked up from the Devil himself. But since rock musicians are typically young and often (and more importantly) total fucking dum dums, they get everything all wrong. Zep understood the nastiness of their surroundings but really wasted the potential of those negative vibrations by playing with ouiji boards, singing about hobbits and fucking girls with fish. The Doors seemed to get it but were ultimately proved incompetent and ignorant by their posture as “artists”. That was a common problem well into the 70's. I love the Who but I certainly don't want to have to regard an opera made by them as having some kind of real value.

And there is the straight dope of the issue (get it?). Rock musicians thought they were artists. Haha, nope, sorry guys. Wanting to be taken seriously as something other than a provider of purely visceral experience is a copout to be made by wusses and frontin’ ass bitches (so to speak). This was the same problem of the hippie counterculture movement and it continues to be a problem today (for rock, for all those self described hippies). They wanted to matter soooo much that they even tried to make their partying to have political consequence. That is pure narcissism and the 60's stunk with it. I mean, everyone understands that there is nothing at all funny about peace, love and/or understanding but to have those sentiments artificially attached to every piece of life, even our escapes from life, is unbearable. Today we have the dubious privilege of listening to the old timers talk about the purity of what they were doing and how they stopped the war and as a result of that the new breed can’t compromise their shallowness and their ideals with their assertions that the fossilized bastards were right in thinking that by trying to levitate the pentagon they actually made a difference.

It is for this reason that Black Sabbath (or Black Fucking Sabbath or Sabbath or Fuckin’ Sabbath or whatever you want to call them) got it so, sooooo right. Their music reflected the immediacy and selfishness of youth without all of the sociopolitical hangups that were jumbled up with being a kid back then. For them this was art in the same way Doyle regards his trucks interior in Sling Blade: It is art only because it kicks SO MUCH ASS that it could not be anything else. This new attitude represented a certain degree of devolution. Sabbath were responding to music that was prevalent, impotent and a little too sure that it was the good guy.

While making it okay to rock just to rock again they infused their jams with a strong sense of blue collar values. Sabbath were not college kids. Ozzy’s parents were factory people. Tony Iommi got his goddamn fingers smashed off working as a machinist at age 17. He had to pay the bills. People always got to pay them bills. They push down on us constantly and are certainly not limited to the dough we got to pay just to stick around. This is not meant to mean that they were stupid (they might have been, I dunno) but rather that they were not sheltered from a life of hustlin’ to survive that the counterculture had with their universities and manifestos and Alan Ginsbergs dressed in white beating on sets of bongos.

But still, one must always keep in mind that they were a bunch of friggin’ longhairs at a time where there was approximately zero distinction between long hairs. They liked to party but rock music had been subverted into the counter-cultural movement to the point where separating the two entities was nearly impossible. Basically, if you liked weed and rock music you had no choice but to subscribe to the political pretense of the genre. Rock as a whole was all caught up in gears of the hippie machine and because of this ALL metal is essentially indebted to it.

But still, those bills had to get paid so Sabbath worked. They had thicker necks and with them more natural, human desires. For them rock music did not have to be tied up with political pretension all the time. I mean, they still had feelings about that shit but they also like Boris Karloff and the blues and were real enough in their desire simply to kick ass that they were able to transcend the pretentious intellectual baggage that came with music in the late 60's. Other bands had rocked (I mean, someone had to) but were too self-aware in their rocking and had spawned the generally terrible flower power sound which dominated the late sixties. So Sabbath became sonic Death Hippies. There was no other option really except for buying in (which would be selling out).

So then, did Black Sabbath consciously channel their surroundings? They may say that they did these days but now they are rich and have bought into their own mythology. This happens all the time and while money isn't necessarily a catalyst to swallowing the public’s proverbial load (get a load of the broke ass punk dudes who think they are some important motherfuckers in the doc American Hardcore) it cannot be argued that the monetary attachment of value doesn't discourage someones head from getting bigger. I mean, Ozzy is selling World of Warcraft with Verne Troyer and William Shatner and calling himself the Prince of Darkness while the rest of Sabbath are touring with Dio like his time in the band were the good ole days for Chrissake. Its all very disturbing stuff and proof of the highly theoretical “Mo Money, Mo Problems” equation. When one takes this into account along with other peculiar anomalies like an earlier lineup of Sabbath having a saxophone player then the question of consciousness becomes even more suspect (kind of).

But intent should ultimately have no weight on the issue. If they meant it means the same thing as it would have had an ancient and evil god of Rock possessed their minds and hearts and made them create something as magnificently UGH as Sweet Leaf. I would believe something like that more easily than a full awareness of action. I mean, the story goes that the reason those crazy bastards tuned down in the first place was so that Tony could play easier with that gimpy hand of his. Environment and experience were everywhere and with that came a more traditional idea of what constituted a “good life”. On Faeries Wear Boots they tell it like it is:" [the Doctor] said son, son, you’ve gone too far./cause smokin and trippin is all that you do." BOOM Enter consequence and the awareness thereof. With this in place they could be irresponsible rock stars who got laid and paid and stayed high all the time and still have more soul than Country Joe with or without his Fish.

The only other place you’ll see such a remarkable understanding of personal dilemma which stems from getting high all the goddamn time and generally acting like a debauched asshole is the South. Southern Rock is a mutt formed from country and blues heavy rock music and has informed a unique personal perspective on rock music. An easy label is morality which stems from the core values that every Southern Renaissance writer from Faulkner to Maddox to Warren has assured us is a key in the grand Dixie scheme of things. I am sure Lynrd Skynrd considered their mothers feelings at some point during their partyin’ and that why they play with such soul (as if I need to illustrate the connection, here is Weedeater covering “Gimme Back My Bullets”). Only recently have I come to understand the cultural significance of “Free Bird” and, even though I can not listen to it because of Guitar Hero and Ryan Allen Droney I understand how much pure soul power is in there. The best Weed Metal still typically comes from the South (Weedeater, Rwake, the entire NOLA scene) and it still generally embraces the unique combination of working class weariness, moral confrontation and the desire to just get fucked up and party.

And thanks to the rock star status and pure listenability of Sabbath and the new, true blue crop of American rock bands we had the incubation of modern Weed Metal. Imagine all the kids who grew up listening to Sabbaths grooves and Black Oak Arkansas' bluesy ass riff fests and now imagine those kids moving those elements through the intense filtration of the underground metal and punk scenes as they developed. While the sounds got bigger the approach got smaller. The rockstar element dropped out of the bottom (though it was somewhat rekindled in Pantera) and the music became even more working class because of it approachability.

Weed Metal is for the people by the people so the people can get dirty and rock. This extends even to gender relations. In the hippie culture of the 60's I would wager that very few ladies signed up for the free love action. The drugs maybe, but getting laid was certainly not reason number 1. Women tend to be purer in their ideological intentions. But, as Robert Crumb asserted in “Crumb” and the old hippie square in my grad class asserted in grad class, the boys wanted to get some play. And from this a bizarre gender dynamic developed in that scene where the larger concepts behind free love acted as bait to draw in the girlies to the dudes who probably just acted deep to get some. I am willing to argue this intensely.

In Weed Metal, a culture that exists outside of the schematics of a culture no such sexual dynamic exists. Why is this? That’s a great question which has a great answer: While Weed Metal dudes want to get laid, they have consciously created a space which is, for the majority of ladies, about as unsexy as it gets. Scratch that, the majority of people are not going to regard Weed Metal as baby makin' music unless they are some weirdo that gets off on nihlism. So the genre is a boys club but only ostensibly. By consciously eliminating the sexual element from rock and roll they have created an even playing field where the ladies can and do play a pretty damn vital role. Tons of doom outfits employ the fairer sex: Liz Buckingham in Electric Wizard, B. from Rwake, Wata from Boris, Lori S. from Acid King and Amber from Jucifer are just a few off the top of my head. There may be more females involved in jam bands or whatever now but the girlies in Weed Metal are not regarded as a sideshow built from a place of self-aware meaning. Nobodies bats a fucking eye because it is entirely understood that they just want to rock.

And that is truly the crux of the matter. The desire to rock for the sake of rocking (even as shadow of death crowds our fuckin' space) is what makes Dragonaut, a song ostensibly about dragons flying to Mars, a trillion times more meaningful than anything the Mamas and the Papas ever produced. I mean, yeah, there was a schism in rock music. It’s happened more and more as rocks history has progressed like punk from rock and hardcore from punk. This is one of the only cases where the new entity was about a devolution. Weed Metal is about the old soul of the blues, rocks true father combined with the dirt of rock and roll and the intensity of heavy metal. And, unlike the place from whence it came, it offers no solutions, only consolation and that in itself is comforting.

I mean, seriously man...Weed Metal knows you got them problems. Its got problems of its own. Can’t nothing be done but, still, its there for you. Welcome the Death Hippie. Get high and rock.
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Metal designs

Here are just a couple projects I did that are made out of some fuckin' metal. I took a jewelry class last year even though I'm a graphic designer. It was probably one of the best choices I've ever made as it really taught me to be more patient with my work.

The book and the pill container are both made out of copper. The bracelet is made out of pewter and the pillow ring is made out of silver.

-Luke









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Rockumentary Featuring Junius, Circle Takes The Square (click "continue reading" for dl)

So this is a documentary I made with a friend a couple of years back for an undergrad radio course. The idea was to put together a sort of starter kit that would help people intelligently deal with the baggage of being in a "real band", i.e. the bullshit. We did a bunch of interviews with local outfits (some of whom were cool and got their name put in there and some of whom were douchebags who just got made to sound like anonymous dum dums) and heard all the goofy things they had to say. But, then we also did longer sessions with Mike from the always super-rad Junius (who are ba-LOWIN' UP these days) on the day their van broke down and he sounded like he wanted to end his Beantown life right there in that Texas mechanics garage, Drew from the fierce Circle Takes The Square (a band that recorded one of my absolute favorite albums ever and since then have become creative hermits) and Christian from potential pop-punk supah-stahs Everything And You.


Now that I'm a little older I feel the whole thing was a little misguided and a lot rushed. We did all the editing and mastering in two nights and the writing was kind of on the fly. As such the narration suffers to some degree, getting a little cheeze at times (but its not so bad). Also, there were some definite misconceptions regarding the value some aspects of music culture, particularly that of myspace which seems to become less and less relevant every day...I dunno. And a lot of the other ideas that went into the project feel distant to me now too. A means of making money is a pretty stupid, shallow way to think about music but whatever: the angle we took don't make the shit we heard less interesting. F'real.

It's stayed in hibernation so long because we couldn't submit it to different festivals and junk because of some Bjork related copyright issues and the pair of us sort of forgot all about it. I don't think we even titled it. Ain't no thang though, its still some pretty decent shit and the editing and overall sound design is reeeeeal tight.


So...
DOWNLOAD IT HERE YOU FUCKING JERKS.


-Bradley
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Robots in Central Park

I made these robots out of mac keyboard packages that I found in the dumpster at my school. It took me a couple of days to get them all finished up and come up with different compliments to put on them. The idea behind these robots was a sort of a way to give everybody in New York a compliment (which is weird because almost everybody in New York pisses me off). I thought it was pretty funny as I placed them in various spots in central park and watched how well people responded to them. People went down right bananas for them.

-Luke










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Some Real Talk: R. Kelly and Culture

I like to get drunk and listen to R. Kelly by myself. Doing it with other people there is cool but, more often than not, I just do it alone. It's better that way. I get my hands on a twelve pack of the cheapest ice beer available or maybe a bottle of Chymes whiskey (if it's a special occasion) and then sit down and listen, really listen, to R. Kelly. Why do I do this? I think it has something to do with genius, importance.

This importance is cultural and very difficult to translate into words. When I try to talk about Kells or, rather, IT (the attraction towards and value of R. Kelly in our culture) with my friends I want to speak exclusively in youtube videos, to make everyone in the room's brain communicate with ultimately pertinent, archetypical images rather than linear language. I guess, when it comes to Chocolate Factory, I am dyslexic.

As such, the discourse usually breaks down pretty quick ending with me pointing at the screen of a lap top, a lukewarm 40 in my hand, eyes bulging, a sort of blissed out retard-grin on my face and then the word "SEE?" spraying out of my mouth over and over. It's communication at it ugliest or, perhaps, it's most idealistic. I want people to understand through osmosis or respiration rather than any kind of structured Saussurian operation. Because, ultimately, R. Kelly's genius is beyond reason, beyond logic and beyond sanity because it is, in fact, INsane.

You see, R. Kelly is Vinny Van Gogh powered by nuclear fusion: his act of self mutilation didn't just happen one time but is a constant process, like the earths rotation or the Catholic concept of the crucifixion. Of course, that way of looking at it excludes the galaxy of nutty shit Van Gogh must have (MUST HAVE) done without us finding out about it. But then, even this adds to the overall mystique of R. Kelly: He is living like an animal inside of a self-imposed Zoo and perhaps it is warping (or further warping) his mind. He is dealing with the super modern concept of celebrinsanity but even in this increasingly common phenomenon he is unique. His asceticism the constant self-infliction of triumph.

When you look at other famous pop cultural/musical lunatics they are pretty boring in comparison. People like Michael Jackson, James Brown, Elvis Presley or Brian Wilson created incredible (commercially successful) music in the beginning and middle of their careers but then went totally nuts and had their subsequent output not only marred in reputation but also become noticeably inferior. They all have or had a "They're fun to laugh at but now their music is shitty" atmosphere stinking up their artistic space. R. Kelly, on the other hand, belongs in the same echelon as someone like a Daniel Johnston or an Ol' Dirty Bastard; guys whose mental instability not only left their musical output unscathed(ish) but whose art benefited from their tenuous relationship with reality. In a sense, their separation from "reality" (by which I only mean cultural standards of value) allows these artists to create their own reality where their core values are the only thing that matters. I am referring to artistic creation at its purest and most awesome: the reshaping of perception.

And these personal universes, captured or reflected so elegantly through art, are indeed "real" (both in terms of legitimacy and comin' straight correct). Where others posture in their feelings and become enamored of their own pretense, R. Kelly is actually "about" something even if it's just nailing girls and smoking cigars.

But then there's the question of "How can you tell he's crazy?" and to that I direct you to his music, his videos, his live appearances and everything else. It's like Justice Potter Stewart's description of pornography: I can't define it but I know it when I see it. And as soon as I saw "Trapped In The Closet" I knew I had seen madness. But, let me take a moment here to address TITC: it's fucking nuts but I hate talking about it because it has become worn thin by an almost inexhaustible stream of hack jokes. It's entered the realm of cheap Jesus and Hitler zingers that any dum dum can (and will) make. In terms of sheer hack-itude, "TITC" is the tops.

That aside, I know it's a pretty silly piece of work. But it's also kind of a masterpiece. Some of the rhymes he uses are truly amazing and the whole thing is deliciously ornate and sits above all those stiff, antiquated rock operas (except maybe Tommy) in terms of sheer vision and clarity. But neither it's overwhelming goofiness or its musical achievement can hide the fact that its friggin' crazy.

Real Talk is another prime example. He's distilled the essence of an angry conversation and combined it with...R&B. It's not that he attempted this harrowing feat that makes me think he's disconnected with reality but rather its his assertion than there is tremendous value in him doing it. Everyone gets into fights, we know what they're like. But Kell wants to do us one better because only HE can bring out the true realness of the situation; by singing one half of an argument. To heighten the realness, there's a fake fight at the end of the video. A FAKE FIGHT FOR YOUTUBE TO COMPREHEND THE REALNESS OF THE SITUATION.

But, I feel like Faulkner now when he admitted the ultimate failure of his novels (or so he says). I recognize that I was unable to communicate Robert Kelly's insanity to you. It's just so hard. But you can't watch the last 40 seconds or so of the "Step in the Name of Love" video and tell me its not fucking bonkers. Because it is. Consider what might have been going through his mind as it was devised and filmed. I cannot begin to understand. I want to but I cannot.

Some might call this kind of behavior "balls", but balls insinuates that somebody is doing something they know is shocking or brave or contrary to the standard practices of whatever culture or subculture is in control of the situation. When it comes to R. Kelly balls are not an issue, cannot be an issue, because he belongs to a one man culture: The Robert Kellians, the Great Kell-Lee; an itty bitty society that is somehow completely unique from the standards and practices of America or even planet Earth. If Antoine de Saint Exupéry's Little Prince visited R. Kelly's planet he would surely find that it was strange and maybe that it was scary (you know, to like, a little French astronaut) but not in any respect SAD because sadness is an emotion for men not completely confident in their own being (there would also be fur coats there). R. Kelly is a furnace of confidence. Scratch that, it's not even confidence. For him it is simply the way things ought to be.

You think he thought twice before beginning to wear a mask everywhere? Certainly not. What about releasing a single titled "Heaven I Need A Hug" in response to his indictment for child pornography? Not even for a second. Or how about creating what is, perhaps, the single most ridiculous song ever to be played in front of a crowd numbering in the tens of thousands: "Sex In The Kitchen"( for the sake of brevity I will here omit all the reasons the video I posted for SITK blows my mind. I invite you to watch it and see if it does the same for you, note how it does and then maybe try to figure out why I find it to be simply bananas.)

In this sense he is representative of us becoming the people we want to be. I envy him immensely for existing exactly how he thinks he should exist. That fact that he exists the way he wants is almost an artistic statement in itself or is at the very least one about cultural being. So then if he is, as I say, important the key to the overall cultural value of Kell's mere existence is this: though he may be deranged he is also a fabulously talented vocalist and (even more importantly) one smooth motherfucker. His every act is peppered with a sort of magnetic pull that supersedes even the greatest politicians and cult leaders in terms of sheer smoothness. I WANT to hang out with him so bad and that's because he is so inviting; so cool. I've seen enough of his music videos to know that not only are awkward white boys accepted into the pied pipers parties (something he calls himself in "Step In The Name of Love" and a reference so blindsiding that I nearly shit myself upon initial aural contact) but that, once there, they will have a good goddamn time. And, beyond that, I know that anyone who says they don't want to party with Kell says that only because of political reasons, be those reasons based on a set of anti black, anti hip hop, anti pop culture or anti peeing on underaged girls values.

People really dwell on those sort of things, particularly when there's an easy punchline in them like urinating on a 16 year old girl's face. I suppose for that particular instance its OK to get a little stuck. The act did not just break two cultural taboos, it smashed them to fucking smithereens. Of course, the age of consent issue's value is a debatable, relative concern. The girl in the tapes age was disputed being 14 or 16 but when it was 14 and the girls identity supposedly revealed she and her family said it wasn't her beneath the golden arch (so to speak). So, considering her nebulous age (probably 16), perhaps an appraisal should be made about the malleability of values. In Canada the age of consent is 16. In Greece it's 15. In Hungary and Italy and Iceland its 14. In Spain it's 13. In about a billion other countries its' between 16 and 14. And then, in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Maryland and a bunch of other states it's 16. Are these places all underdeveloped shitholes? No, they're just places.

As far as the peeing thing goes, its gross but it doesn't hurt anybody (unless maybe its gets in their eyes or something, but buy the ticket take the ride).

I suppose the reason I bring this up is that I'm just tired of fielding the argument at all, particularly when you acknowledge the extremely ugly histories of other famous artists: H.P. Lovecraft was a racist, T.S. Eliot was an anti-Semite, Ezra Pound was a propagandist for the Fascists, Ayn Rand hated homosexuals and so on and so forth. Hell, look at more recent shit if you want. Keith Moon ran over a guy's head and he's a bonafide legend. All those hippies drove VW's that were built on precise, dependable Nazi engineering. Nobody tells Wavy Gravy to eat shit and die. So was what R. Kelly did wrong (and yes, he did do it. even though he was acquitted the jury said they knew it was him in the video which doesn't exactly make sense. also, he married Aliyah when she just 16)? More than probably yes. I'm of the camp that believes that age of consent laws function to protect girls who may be emotionally unequipped to handle intercourse and all the baggage that comes with the act (but then of course opinions are like assholes, bablee babloo bablah) but I for one still do not believe that this whole incident takes anything away from his cultural significance. In fact, it even elevates my previous point about his allure.

What I mean is that I have no doubt in my mind that when R. Kelly pissed on that girl's face he did it in a way that was more romantic than your parents last anniversary. The boy can't help it: he is a fucking chick magnet. The girl was certainly more than game, not coerced and the entire thing was not only consensual but maybe even heavenly for her. Keep in mind, after all of his bullshit, he is still "...black, handsome, I sing plus I'm rich and... a flirt." Oh, and a lot of his songs are absolute, total PERFECTION. He could have added that too.

Now, as much as I hate for you to have to think back aaaaaall the way to the beginning of this increasingly overwrought essay, I need to ask you to do it now. Earlier I discussed my attempts to not so much convince my friends of R. Kelly's value but rather convert them. For the most part people resist. Their resistance is, like I've already mentioned, a political posture. They'll say "They're not into this kind of music" (by which I assume they mean R&B, the genre of which Robert proclaimed himself the king of in the outstanding single "I'm A Flirt") and to that I have to say "Well, fuck that dude, neither am I...BUT..." Then they'll laugh and think this is all a big joke.

The people who I've learned are actually my best friends get Robert Kelly's importance. It's because they're smarter than my other friends, have an aversion to pop cultural pretense and are generally more soulful (I mean soulful like Robert Johnson or James Brown rather than Saint Augustine De Hippo). They are more in tune to whats "real", the genuine value of cultural phenomenon in relation to life, and this means that they are ready to acknowledge the value of other cultures contributions and feelings more easily. So it's here I point out the big, mask wearing elephant in the room: black culture.

This may be some extremely touchy stuff for a 22 year old white boy to try to and sort out but I'm going or give it a shot. The generally terrible cartoon The Boondocks acknowledged the black community's proclivity to Kell so now I'm going to in an awkward, PC sort of way.
It's no secret that R&B is generally "Black music". The majority of R. Kelly's audience is African American. Before I even liked Rob Kelly's music I was on a trip to Washington DC with a group called the National Youth Leadership Forum, which was kind of a scam that claimed to be grooming America's future politicians or elite or some shit. There was a black kid there who I usually ate lunch with even though we never really spoke to each other. Nothing racial about that, we were just equally quiet and shy. One day on the bus a black girl (Christ I wish I knew what the appropriate, prescribed means of discourse for this was) saw that he had the then fresh out da kitchen Chocolate Factory record and they talked about how awesome it was for 15 minutes. The former statue blossomed while talking about how hot the album was. THEN one of the chaperons came over, a guy who was mid-to-late forties (maybe even in his fifties), black, tough as nails and also a former Major in the army and HE started talking about how awesome it was. This was not an artificial display to cozy up the kids either. This guy knew the jams.

So what the hell does that even mean? I dunno, that I am a disconnected cracker I guess. That I need to do more to connect to other ideas of cultural value to eliminate misunderstanding and, in doing so, eliminate hate and fear to boot. The supreme worth of Robert Kelly is that perhaps somewhere in understanding him or rather his phenomenon we can make this country a more bearable place to live for everyone. Am I suggesting R. Kelly is the key to world peace? No, that would be retarded.

I'm suggesting that we just be real, drink a Beast Ice and listen to Ignition.

Please.


-Bradley


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