Seriously, how cool is Uncle Rapi*?
—Rapi

Nobody that spends as much time as you do in Springfield, Ill., can be cool. Even the legislators don’t kick it there after sundown. And if you try to get me to refer to you as my uncle again, I’m gonna have you registered.

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So the crew and I have just returned from our third official Weekend World Tour…

This, dear friends, was our itinerary:

One of the many, valuable lessons we learned on our excursion is that itineraries and Tahoe don’t go together. In fact, there are several things that Tahoe apparently doesn’t tolerate:

1. coloreds
2. safe driving
3. leaving Tahoe
4. fun

I’d fully intended to give a brief report on our weekend adventure that included bits about all the places that we visited. Yes, that was the plan… but the strange and awful events of the latter half of our outing bear telling in their entirety.

The first two dates can be summed up simply:

Delightfully acceptable.

San Jose is a cool place. It was my third rap-related visit there and things there never seem to get worse than slightly annoying or better than “we’re not broke.” It’s a good place to raise kids.

The Eureka show had a fork stuck in it by the time we left L.A. (sorry, folks), so we ended up spending an extra night in good old lukewarm San Jo…

The next morning, our trip tries to drown itself in lake water and Pabst Blue Ribbon.

The four-hour drive from the Bay to Tahoe went as well as a four-hour drive can go. The first thing I learned about Tahoe, however, is that it’s 5,000 feet in the air. It’s like a little slice of Scandinavia nestled in the middle of California and Nevada. And what happens in Scandinavia? It snows too much.

There were snow banks on either side of the highway that reached seven or eight feet in the air. Fortunately, the road was clear. Had it not been, we were well equipped with $70 snow chains that none of us knew how to install.

After about an hour and a half of chilly air, nervousness and awe, we reached the Tahoe Inn and with it our first nemesis…

The driveway of the Tahoe Inn.

In an act of civil disobedience to rival Thoreau, the good people (person) at the Tahoe Inn neglected to shovel their driveway, disallowing easy entrance to anyone unlucky enough to not be driving a Subaru Outback. Since none of us hunt crocodiles, we had one hell of a time getting unstuck from the half-melted snow in the driveway. It took three grown men pushing down on the hood while reversing to back the car out into the highway with little to no warning of on-coming traffic. We survive long enough to back out and try it again with more speed; we make it all the way up to the top of the driveway and get our silly asses stuck again. It would be another twenty minutes before we made it to the front desk.

We end up with all of fifteen minutes to get un-car-stinky and burn set CDs for the show. So while we’re tearing up the highway on the way to the venue at a brisk 45-and-a-half miles an hour, we hit a turn and spin out of control. The car does a one-eighty and lodges itself ass-first into a snow bank.

Damn.

We were all surprisingly calm for having nearly died. Had there been any vehicle headed in our direction during the spin… we would have tested the safety rating of the Volvo in the least desirable manner.

We hop out of the car… mind you, it’s about 17 degrees and I’m probably the only member of the group with a closet full of winter clothes (thank you, Lake Michigan). I’m on the phone with Triple A (wish I had Triple H’s number, he could have given us steroids) while the homies are trying to flag down help. Some ultra-helpful Tahoe lady (in a Subaru Outback) pulls over and nudges us out of the snow bank. I hang up mid-sentence with AAA, and we all agree that its time for the damned chains.

We unzip the bag; the chains look like a bundle of robot bones with a bread tie at either end. Applying them is comparable to putting a neck tie on a grizzly bear. We get them on with two caveats:

1. you cant go faster than 30 m.p.h.
2. it sounds like you’re driving a washing machine filled with nickels.

We pussyfoot down a two-lane highway to the venue and five miles in we hear a loud pop. Nothing seems to have changed so we continue driving. Three miles later the right-washing machine gets louder, then silent.

We lost a damned chain.

F-it, Tahoe hip-hop needs us, so we carry on… ’til we lose the other one. At this point my patience is fairly spent. 70 bucks down the crapper. This show better be good. We have high hopes for Club Zenbu(?).

As we approach the venue we realize quickly that the word “Zenbu” is Scandinavian for “Not cracking at all”.

I also realize at this point, that I’ve lost my cell phone somewhere… guess where?

In the snow.

$@&*#!

We arrive to an enthusiastic crowd of fifteen or twenty ski enthusiasts watching a snowboarding video on a wall opposite the stage. There was one guy who seemed to be there for a hip-hop show… he was visibly wasted and dancing extra-hard to everything over the P.A. Then, he does the most fantastically moronic thing that I’ve ever seen:

He walks onto the stage, walks toward the DJ booth, knocks the DJ’s beer over onto one of his CD players and walks off the stage… right into the club bouncer waiting to toss his ass out onto the yellow snow. Goodbye, lone hip-hop fan, we hardly knew ye…

Luckily we kick ass, so a good time was had by all; even the disaffected snow bunnies got involved when we freestyled at the end of our set. We killed the last of our complimentary Pabst Blue Ribbons, got our money and ran… literally. Two of the homies decide to challenge each other to a footrace on the ice. You know who wins a footrace on the ice? The spectators.

Needless to say, they both lose their balance, as one decides to start hopping on one foot, reducing the contact between him and the ice. While he’ll likely lose now since he can’t adjust his trajectory to the car, he keeps from busting his ass. The other homie? Not so lucky… he slides full-speed into the car. Had his human bones been less dense, he would have exploded on impact. He lay draped over the car for some time, having knocked the wind out of himself.

We drive back to the hotel at a blistering 24-and-a-third miles an hour. While laughing about the homie cracking his floating ribs, we receive a phone call from my phone number—somebody found my phone in the snow! We make arrangements for him to drop it off at the front desk of the place he’s staying (Tahoe Resort Property Management), for me to pick up after 8am.

Damn, might our Tahoe experience be turning around?

One of our caravan even managed to get lucky with a snow bunny back at Hotel Hell. Things were looking up… a bit. I’d link up with my cell phone the next morning and we’d be on our way to a lower, dryer Reno…

I awake, grab the phone book and guess what?

There’s no such place as Tahoe Resort Property Management.

Thanks, random ski-dude… thanks a lot.

After visiting the front desks of every place that had “Tahoe”, “Resort” and “Property” in the title and getting politely clowned by a few employees (“Nope, haven’t seen it, but if we find one we’ll call you… oh wait… [laughter]) I drove our sour arses outta there…

F-it, we’ll get to Reno early, chill in the hotel and work on some music.

Reno? Made it. Dry

Hotel? Nice, smells like ass but paid for.

Time? Plenty.

Show? Cancelled.

Yup. We get a call at 6pm informing that the show’s been cancelled due to 3-5 feet of white poop that’s about to be dropped on the city. If we stayed the night we might be stuck there for two (or three) days…

We checked out of the hotel—which wouldn’t discount me one warm dollar even though we’d been there a total of three hours—and we take off back to L.A…. through a blizzard. Men dressed in orange employed by the State of Nevada made us buy more snow chains before we could pass through. Another 70 damned dollars, only this time they actually fit right so they stayed on. And thankfully so, since we surely would have died driving through this blizzard; it took us seven hours to drive a hundred and fifty miles.

When we finally made it out we celebrated with cheap food and hot chocolate.

In retrospect, I should have known better.

Hanging all of my hopes for a good evening on a DOOM performance is like getting excited for a rendezvous with a really easy girl. Sure, you hear she’s good… but she’s probably got AIDS.

I should have known better than to think that a guy in a mask wouldn’t try to cheat me out of an evening. Especially since I’ve heard that he’s been doing just that since August. According to reports from concertgoers at Rock the Bells in San Francisco, Mr. Doom either sent a masked imposter to do the show for him or he chose to lip-synch his entire set himself. Similar stories have been recounted, posted, and blogged about since that initial disappointment.

Some die-hard Doom fans still don’t believe it. They say that he’s simply changed his mask or that he’s got some kind of cordless microphone built by weeded-out space aliens that makes his voice sound exactly like it does on recordings. Others, particularly those who have attended one of these recent shows, still try to give him the benefit of the doubt. They say that maybe he’s in the clutches of addiction again, going through one of the very same dark periods that changed Zev Luv X into Doom in the first place.

…or maybe I made up all these theories so I wouldn’t have to believe it…

Even in the hyper-masculine world of hip-hop, where the macho ideals of the mainstream ethos is almost finished crushing the enlightened safe space of the underground, I am willing to admit (without the obligatory “no homo”) that Doom was one of the last rappers that I looked up to. I realize that its dangerous to submit that kind of deference to an alcoholic in a Halloween costume, but every movement must have its leaders. Granted, the movement of post-modern, lo-fi, cartoon-character rappers is not a movement with a capital “M”, but Doom does represent the last vestiges of imagination in rap music.

Many of his fans are refugees from different eras of hip-hop that all got smashed together once white America decided it would only validate scary-black-man rap.

As one of those fans, I really hoped that he would know better than to try to pull it with L.A. fans… on New Year’s f’n Eve.

Fortunately it was a stacked line-up… 2Mex, Casual, Scarub, Grouch & Eligh and Haiku D’Etat were also on the bill, but when the host would ask if the crowd was ready for Doom, the place erupted everytime. Even the fifteen or so timed he had to do it to keep the crowd hyped during the tell-tale awkard pause that preceeded Doom’s set. In some of the other reports I’d read, there was always a long delay between the last act leaving the stage and Doom taking the stage. A long delay… with no music playing…

When he finally did take the stage, it didn’t take long to notice that at the very least it wasn’t him rapping live. He spoke no words to the crowd, he kept the mic completely over his mouth the whole time, and his vocals were studio-quality in a warehouse with more than 500 people in it. Each of his four hypemen could be clearly heard projecting through their microphones. The other thing he may or may not have realized was that there was a video camera right next to his face the entire set. The close-ups from this camera were shown on two 25-foot screens. One was right behind him and the other was in the middle of the warehouse.

His jaw was clearly not moving.

This was a farce that took some enormous balls to pull off. As egocentric as this might sound, it’s one thing to pull this in Nebraska or Idaho or North Dakota. Not only is it easier to fill a room with a recorded vocal in a small club, its also not going to unilaterally destroy your fanbase in one fell swoop. Why he would come to the second-largest market, gather all of his fans and then proceed to shit on them like that amazes me.

It’s also an insult to rappers that work hard to put on shows. 2Mex ripped that night, as did Casual and Haiku D’Etat. The host even brought up KRS-One to do the countdown and rock a couple of his classics. Luckily they put on the Legends after Doom’s abortion of a set. I’ve never really been a huge Legends fan but they put on capes and saved hip-hop that night. There were a few occasions while they were doing their thing that they reminded crowd that this is how it’s supposed to be done. They started a new chant that night that re-invigorated the crowd and probably saved the venue from owing fools money:

“This is L.A., and we do not f*ck around on microphones!”

I have a different set of values than most folks.

Many people consider award shows important. In my eyes, they’re a giant obscene act of masturbation committed by whatever industry that the particular show is honoring. I find this to be especially true of music industry shows. I noticed recently that the American Music Awards have come and gone for this year. I was reminded how Fernandez had threatened to punch me in the face if I didn’t participate in an award show roundtable last year. Luckily I’ve been participating on my own a little better as of late, so that I didn’t have to watch an award show or suffer any punches to the face.

This is a truncated version of the list things I’d rather do than watch an award show:

1. Apologize to Rex Grossman for ever questioning his manhood.

2. Eat something that I fully realize will result in painful, flaming diarrhea.

3. Go to work wearing two different shoes

4. Go camping in the projects.

Seeing ads for the American Music Awards in the last few weeks also led me to these two thoughts:

1. When I think of the AMAs, pictures of homely and de-sexualized white women flash in my mind along with names like Carrie Underwood and Taylor Swift. Women who I would not be able to pick out of a lineup if you paid me lots and lots of money, and

2. What kind of award show would I watch?

This, dear hearts, is a goldmine…

I began to envision an award show that would reflect my sensibilities in an unabridged fashion. An award show with a 2500-person audience full of people just…like…me.

Firstly, it would be hosted by John S. Hall. If you don’t know who he is, I’m dangerously close to no longer wishing to speak with you. But understanding that I can’t blame you for having bad parents, I invite you to Google him quickly and come back.

The show would begin with a shot of the red carpet, with luminaries like Paul Barman, Alan Moore and Meen Ween being interviewed by our correspondents. In the distance, over the shoulders of a human wall of indie wrestlers, is the velvet rope. Behind the rope lies the broken bodies of folks like Elton John, Usher, Michael Bay and Randy Jackson. Folks who consider themselves famous enough to be here, but alas, weren’t invited. The penalty for attempting to trespass:

The Canadian Destroyer (Pictured below):

…tables and all…

Cut back to John Hall on stage, introducing our first live performer… The Catholic Church!

(Each of the evening’s performers will be one of the nominees for Secret Society of the Year)

As the Jesuits are shown lubing up the yardsticks for their performance, John Hall reminds us that our event is sponsored in part by Wikipedia, Adult Swim and National Public Radio.

The house lights lower as the Vatican prepares to perform its hit, “World Domination Through a Fake Religion”. As the curtain lifts, a voice in the audience clearly shouts,

“Father Flanagan takes it up the ass!”

The church’s scene begins with a dark-skinned baby being born to two impoverished parents. The child quickly grows into a rambunctious and sexually promiscuous teenager who escapes to India to learn the tantric arts. Along the way he happens upon the vedic teachings of the Hindu and wisdom from the Buddha himself. He returns home and begins to teach what he’s learned to his prostitute girlfriend and their small circle of friends. He is captured and killed by the Romans who dig his body up, paint it white and have their greatest artists paint weak-willed portraits of him. These portraits are passed out to fat perverts in army uniforms who travel to distant lands use the paintings to beat indigenous people to death and hump their unconscious bodies. The missionaries bow and fart and the curtains lower once more to a standing ovation.

John Hall is clearly seen wiping vomit from the corners of his mouth as he introduces the next award: Best Actor.

Out to announce our nominees and winner are Steve Buscemi and Andre 3000…

Andre: (to Steve) when you gon’ put me in one in your movies, man. I love them independent flicks.
Steve: When I finally get a budget big enough to hire actors that aren’t my friends. Hey where’s your partner Big Boi tonight?
Andre: Oh, uh, well, they wouldn’t let him in… he caught the Destroyer.
Steve: Ouch, hope his teeth don’t end up looking like mine…

And the nominees for Best Actor are:

Sisqo, for impersonating a heterosexual man (A clip is shown of him looking mildly interested as he receives a lap dance from Melyssa Ford)

Jared from Subway for acting like people actually give a damn that he’s not fat anymore (a subway commercial is shown depicting Jared smiling daftly as Michael Strahan beats him about the head repeatedly with a foot-long Cold Cut Trio).

Rex Grossman for pretending like an NFL quarterback for over three years (footage of last Sunday’s overtime victory over the Denver Broncos is shown).

Hillary Clinton for acting like she’s ever once had sex with Bill (she’s shown looking into the camera at the podium of a Democratic debate and stating confidently that she just gave Bill a BJ fifteen minutes ago).

The crowd bursts into uncontrollable laughter.

And the winner is…

Sisqo!

He throws his hands up in victory and leaves his mid-row seat, ensuring to rub his bottom against the faces of all other men in the row on his way to the aisle.

He skips up the stairs to the stage and appears happy to pick up his trophy to the horror of Andre.

Andre: Hey, dawg, don’t you know what it means if you accept this award?
Sisqo: Oh… oh… damn… oh, I kinda just told all y’all my business, didn’t I?
Andre: (shakes head) Back to you, John.

John reminds us that everyone wins at the Freakloud awards. So Rex Grossman receives a kick in the nuts by Robbie Gould. Hillary wins a brand new mini-skirt and matching pair of crotchless panties, and Jared is forced to walk around in a fat suit… (crowd murmurs) …and then set on fire (crowd roars).

We prepare now for our next live performance from… the Illuminati!

BONG!

A gong sounds, and the lights lower once more. Half the crowd wets itself at the thought that The Undertaker might show up and beat up the Illuminates, but alas, it’s just part of their act. As the curtain rises, two lines of hooded druids are seen entering the stage from each side. They converge into one line and slowly walk a large circle around the stage. Just as the tension becomes unbearable, they make a triangular formation. Suddenly, they cast off their robes to reveal kneepads and leotards. They launch into a crackhead kid-friendly dance medley to the tune of “Its Peanut Butter Jelly Time”. They do the Bankhead Bounce, the Nina Pop, the Chicken Noodle Soup, and Crank Dat Supaman as the grand finale. They then proceed to do a short butt-sex magic ritual and exit the stage bleeding and somewhat enlightened.

John Hall wonders aloud if he’s the only person that got that, and introduces our presenters for the final televised award of the evening. The presenters are:

Dave Chappelle and all of the black guys from TV on the Radio

They are here to present the award for the greatest musician… ever.

The nominees are:

John Linnell

Frank Zappa’s ghost

George Clinton

Don Henley, and

Stevie Wonder

For the winner of this award, the result of the book-reading contest between Soulja Boy and Hurricane Chris, and performances by the Bilderberg group and the Bohemian Grove, you’ll have to tune in next week.

In the meantime, have a song:

This is Parts Unknown (Me and Psychosiz) with Nyctophobia.

LAST WEEK’S FREAKY PEN PALS

Akomplice writes:

Slightly Autistic-

Peace

I was hoping someone would catch that long ass Iron Chef tirade… the wife makes me watch that stuff…

The good homie Flow-Joe had this to say:

I like your term slightly autistic, and I think I’ll start using it. It describes me so perfectly. I am terrible anti-social in so many situations. Especially when I don’t know folks. Too many times in classes or first starting a job or something, I would sit alone in my own world and not even bother to interact with other people.

I thought that I came up with the term “slightly autistic”. Then I googled it… Now I’m afraid that I might get busted by the RIAA.

Jenae wrote:

im only on the first paragraph but i had to come back to your comments and tell you when you said you wanted to type monkey a bunch of times i giggled and clapped my hands alot like a 5 year old. im also prolonging my enjoyment, because i saw the first comment about anti-socialites and i have no idea what it pertains to but huzzah!!

…you can never have enough monkeys to please everyone…

Look forward to more audio auto-erotica after a short, niggardly discussion.

A NIGGER MEANS TO A NIGGER END

Nas’ next album will be titled Nigger.

His last album was supposed to be named Nigger, but he ended up changing it to Hip-Hop Is Dead, which made all of the angry southern rappers even angrier.

In case you missed all of the hullabaloo at the time, Young Jeezy, T.I. and even your mild-mannered, neighborhood Ludacris had something defensive and dismissive to say about Nas’ album title.

HHID, as it came to be known, was discussed, debated and fiercely argued all over the Internet and on public access hip-hop talk shows everywhere.

It reached a fever pitch in the weeks preceding the album’s release, but took a sharp turn when his first single astonishingly used the same Iron Butterfly sample as the lead single from his previous album. It was Mr. Jones’ latest WTF moment.

Admittedly, I’ve never been a huge Nas fan. I’ve always thought he was a sick lyricist, but aside from one record (not the one you think), I’ve never really dug an entire LP of his. I’ve always known a lot of avid Nas supporters (or Stans as I’ve seen them identified on message boards) and even the most enthusiastic of his fans have been absolutely dumbfounded by some of his career choices:

1. “Owe Me Back” – For most rappers in the burgeoning bling era, it seemed a no-brainer to link up with Timbaland to get off that “club banger” for your new record. But Timbo’s blips and Nas’ close-to-creepy sexual inferences were a misfire for most. In hindsight, this is when conscious hip-hop may have needed him most.

2. “Hate Me Now” – From the Diddy co-star to the superfluous crucifixions, this song and accompanying video only seemed to piss everybody off at the time.

3. Signing to Def Jam – Earning each other’s respect is admirable, coming together on stage is monumental, but for two rap adversaries whose attacks on each other included questioning each other’s manhood and boasting about sexual adventures with one another’s kinfolk, one making the decision to put his career in the other’s hands left many scratching their noggins.

4. “Who Killed It?” – I could definitely appreciate what he was going for here. But while the “Sam Spade” voice may have worked for emcees like DOOM or J-Zone (artists whose catalogues grant them a measure of artistic freedom), Nas’ identity has always been so closely tethered to the hood that many of his listeners didn’t know what to make of this who-killed-hip-hop crime caper.

Let’s build for a moment on Nas’ rap identity. One of the most intriguing things about the Queens-bred emcee is how he is regarded in the hip-hop pantheon. He is maybe the last mainstream survivor of hip-hop’s lyrical era. He came along right when B.I.G. was upstaging everyone by successfully making hits for the club and lyrically potent album songs. His popularity and financial success was just beginning to change the landscape of the industry.

It was now common for many rappers to have a club single and a street single. Eventually, as Internet access influenced hardcore rap fans to buy less music, the street single began to disappear and so did much of the street content. And here we are today…

Nas is the last financially viable lyricist.

His work is canonized to the point where he couldn’t re-invent himself if he wanted to. He’s already tried to appease the club-goers (see above) and he was fortunate to survive. He’s too sophisticated lyrically to do the Soulja Boy thing. So how can he make sure that this generation’s rap fans continue to buy his records?

Controversy.

Hence the title of his new LP. He’s done it again. He’s got us all talking about a record from which we haven’t heard a single beat. We’re lighting up message boards and having public-access conversations once again. He’s capitalized on the Don Imus thing and he’s got politicians threatening to gaffle $84 million from Def Jam’s parent company, Universal. The label, by the way, is behind him 100%. Why? Because it’s already proven to be a wildly successful marketing move.

And please, before you get your black-panther panties in a twist, remember these items that you didn’t holler about:

Dick Gregory’s Nigger

ODB’s Nigga Please

AS PROMISED…

Pretty decent feedback for last week’s song download… almost good enough to make me wanna sell it to you… but I promised free music, so free music you shall have.

Its called “The Mole in Your Ministry”, and… well, listen…

boomp3.com

I just wanna type the word “monkey” a gang of times. I don’t even know why. I’m just in love with how that word sounds right now. The same way I’m currently enamored with Steely Dan, turkey burgers and plums.

I feel like I need to re-introduce myself to you. I know I should probably qualify the above paragraph at least… or maybe I shouldn’t. Actually, I won’t.

Instead, I’ll fortify some of my more base opinions with the finger-lickin’ molasses of self-assurance. I’ve read that a good way to draw proper boundaries between people is to show ‘em the dirty parts first. Dispense with all the pleasantries and commence with the hot monkey words.

First off, there hasn’t been a good movie made in a long time. The last really good movie I saw was I Heart Huckabees (2004). The Departed (2006) was a distant second. A few times in-between, I was coerced into seeing trash like 300, which I found to be over-produced, hyper-violent, and covertly racist (I loved the part where the dark guy’s face fades to black, and for a few uncomfortable moments, all the viewer is left with is a bamboozling image of tar skin and white teeth). And who doesn’t love an Old-World tale set to the soundtrack of Mortal Kombat?

I saw Breach, too. I kept hearing it was good. And it might have been, save for Ryan Phillipe’s middle-school-Christmas-play style of acting. He reminded of Method Man in How High, reading his lines as if somebody suggested that random pauses make you sound smart.

Speaking of Meth, I love the guy, but I thought his record stunk. I like him on the couple of new Wu songs that have been leaked, but the wife dug his solo LP a lot more than I did (She bumps it in-between Jodeci and Busdriver). I’m not really into the new Common or Kanye, either. There’s about six songs between both of them that pique my interest. I know that they’re both solid records, but they’re just not for me. They’re for younger and more worldly folks that haven’t availed themselves to as much music as I have. That’s not a knock on any of them, but it’s sure as hell not a knock on me, either.

See there, I’m doing it again. Every time I sit down to share with you, I tell myself that I’m not gonna continue to make this a “talk sh*t about rappers” column. I’ve been doing that since 2004 and it’s beginning to feel juvenile. There’s only so many times you can question pink clothes and fart-noise beats before the bass in your voice flutters away like so many tattooed butterflies.

Plus, as much as my bank account won’t admit it, I’m in the game now. Even though I’m just making niche-market hip-hop, I’m still competing for the spending change of hip-hop fans around the globe. I’m competing right alongside those I detest—the gold-roped monkeys that continue to make monkey-ism contagious. Since I share similar economic goals as the simians, bitter Internet slander ends up looking like presidential mud-slinging. Mud-slinging is a sophisticated way to say bitch-fighting, to which I am painfully allergic.

So rather than write with an epi-pen, we’ll have fun exploring new ways to be entertaining without being predictable. The fun thing about experimenting is that we open ourselves up to a wide possibility of outcomes. The not-fun thing about experimenting is that it leaves us equally open to some bullshit. All I ask is your patience and honest criticism. If you’re tired of reading the word “monkey”, by all means, let me know.

That may have been the world’s longest intro. If this article was a movie it’d be one of those crime-caper nouveau yarns where there’s twenty minutes of shooting and gambling before the opening credits roll. But alas, we’ve arrived at the beginning.

I’m here today to share with you a problem that I have.

It won’t surprise many of you, and I’m sure that some of you have been trying to find a way to tell me this for years.

This will validate anyone who’s ever thought me to be a little bit more awkward than that for which this life calls. It will also finally vindicate any woman who no longer wished to deal with me but couldn’t figure out a way to paint an accurate picture of how and why I got on their “last gott-damned nerve”.

Dear hearts, I’m here to admit to you, finally, that I have a condition.

I’m slightly autistic.

I haven’t been diagnosed, but I’m fucking convinced of it. It’s all there—the poor social skills, the inability to engage in small talk, the over-exaggerated comfort of isolation.

I’m sure that if I were examined by experts, the needle of my diagnosis would land firmly between autistic and normal on an imaginary continuum.

I repeat, for many that have dealt with me closely this is no surprise, and as I type this I can vividly remember the faces of some frustrated past lady friends who desperately trying to find these words. They wished to scream them at me, hurriedly, while the rhythm of the argument would deem them relevant.

Aside from my romantic life, nowhere is my condition more relevant than in my music.

I hereby formally apologize to anyone who’s ever bought music from me in the expectation that it would be somewhat relational.

I’ve learned a lot about this thing called music lately. I know now that most people don’t really need it for much more than the rhythmic rattling of their bones from time to time (look out for “rhythm”, it’s the new “monkey”). The vibrations help many folks to relieve visceral stress. You can almost gauge how much stress the average person deals with by how loudly they listen to music. Those who lead the most challenging lives are willing to sacrifice their hearing for it.

Another popular way that music is used is to assist people in social gatherings with connecting with each other. In hip-hop clubs, it guides the penis-to-ass grinding in which many indulge. In house parties, the choral singing of a favorite song is a social lubricant on par with the huskiest of cheap whiskeys.

The problem that this presents for someone in my predicament is two-fold. For one, us anti-social folks live in our minds instead of our bodies. This makes my experience of music much more cerebral than physical. Meaning that I’m much more interested in the pictures that a song paints than whether or not it “knocks”.

The other issue is that as a socially-impaired rapper, I don’t give a ashy damn whether you feel compelled to shake your ass or not. I’m sorry, but I don’t. I guess if it were up to me everybody would meet their live interests at the library or in line at the post office, exchanging wanting glances while choosing a cushion-mailer.

Autism also affects timing. So naturally, I learned all this after I spent most of 2007 recording another solo album.

If you’d asked me two months ago, I’d have told you that it was the breathing reincarnation of the holiest of sliced bread, but since then I’ve given a few copies out to friends who have been strong enough to give me the most honest of honest feedback:

Dead silence.

I can now say that I understand. Most of the songs are masturbatory in a way that only a band geek could love.

Don’t get me wrong, it has flashes of brilliance, since it was a very well executed autistic concept. I’m sure some of the more inward-directed of you will be able to appreciate it. Most won’t be able to categorize it, though. Which leave them to focus on the ambitious but certainly not ass-moving production quality.

For riding with me this long, though, I’ll let you be the judge. I’m giving the whole thing away on MGF, one song at a time.

Its called The Meditation Hu$tle: The Self-Help Bathroom Reader.

This first one is called “Slightly Autistic”. It used to be called “Rearrange”. Now it’s not. It’s one of the nicest-feeling things I’ve ever done, though. It’s one of the quintessential reasons my record came out like it did… I was making the kind of songs that I like to hear.

Follow this link to download.

Frank Zappa, Prince Paul, Robert Anton Wilson, John S. Hall and John Linnell beat each other up in my head most of the day. Just about every action that I take is the result of one of them bashing the other over the head with a shovel. Most of the time they don’t make direct contact with each other as they tussle over control, but every now and again, one of ‘em lands a clean shovel-shot right to the forehead. The victim sinks into the suddenly soft earth of my brain-land like a rail spike, all the way up to his pale neck. He is rendered immobile since he can’t use his arms to defend his head under the dirt.

My personal royal rumble has a rotating cast. Just seven years ago it was Tom Robbins, Q-Tip, Kurt Vonnegut, the perennial John Linnell and lord-help-me, Dwayne “the Rock” Johnson. He’d usually win then because he knows suplexes and such. He was replaced in 2003 when he left the wrestling world for good. It then became clear that he was no longer concerned with my entertainment. Just as easily replaced were Busta Rhymes, Jay Dee, and the recently switched out MF DOOM. At some point they all did something to let me know that they were no longer concerned with my money, admiration or attention. I’m always upset by these exhibitions of free will… more proof that they’ll never be slaves to my ideas like I am to theirs.

Zappa and Hall are winning right now. Therefore I’m compelled to share with you, dear reader, parts of my psyche that don’t breathe fresh air too often. Excuse their impoliteness, they come from an autistic place and don’t get to practice social skills often enough to stay sharp.

The current soundtrack is a beautiful beat composed by Kuest, a member of the Swim Team. It’s a piece of warm psychedelic wonder and I’ve been attempting to write to it all day. It’s challenging my skill as a writer. Not because of any complex rhythmic structure—on the contrary, its got the smoothest little boom-bap swing to it. The problem is that its too genuine.

All beats, especially sampled ones, come programmed with certain pre-determined aesthetic messages. It’s a combination of the tonal vibrations of the track itself along with the intent and mood of the producer and multiplied by the intent of the composer(s) of the original sound. When an emcee hears a track, this “vibe” guides the rapper in the construction of the lyrics to the song. For example, Common heard a No ID beat tape, and from nostalgic, bluesy guitar licks of the track, he was inspired him to write “I Used to Love h.e.r.”. However, he could have ignored this vibe and wrote a song about Polish sausages and deep-dish pizza (see “Similak Child” by Black Sheep)

Kuest’s beat is telling me to write something genuine. I wrote a verse about how tired I am and how tired you should be of mainstream rap. As of today that was the best I could come up with. This made phantom-Zappa call me a robot. Hall’s making me write about it to validate my existence. I don’t believe myself to be a mechanical person, but at the moment I don’t have much evidence to present on my behalf.

They Might Be Giants – The Else
Idlewild/Zoe Records (7/10/07)
Rock / Alternative

Let me start this off by confessing that I’m partial.

Not mathematically, snarky; I am not a fraction. I mean that I’m not objective about the works of John Flansburgh and John Linnel, the Brooklyn duo that comprise the nerd-rock institution known as They Might Be Giants.

Sometime in 1990, while watching MTV’s 120 Minutes, I saw a group of people in a video in one of those Michael Jackson back-up-dancer triangles. Instead of street-gang leotards they wore matching flannel shirts and large cardboard eyes over their real eyes. As if the visual stimulation of this moment wasn’t enough, the clip had the audacity to be paired with the most beautiful song ever written, “Birdhouse in Your Soul”.

Granted I was ten years old, but I was smart enough even then to know that the Go-Bots couldn’t hold a wax candle to the Transformers, so my discerning tastes were well on their way.

Something about that fantastic melody, that shameless and vulnerable nasal tone and the unabashed awkwardness of the whole thing tugged at my lonely bones. I had been hooked, and from that moment forward they would be the most important band in my life.

Nine albums later (12th overall), TMBG has released The Else. While its thirteen tracks clock in at barely forty minutes, this is a critical LP for the Johns. Since 2001’s Mink Car, the band has experienced some fluctuations in support from its cult-ish devotees. That record saw the duo conspicuously reaching for some measure of attention from listeners outside of the margin. The strength of the songwriting was potent as ever, but some of the songs seemed to delve into serious electronic rock to the degree that some fans supposed that the Johns might be parodying the genre.

I, too, felt the difference in texture. And while it did seem uncomfortably self-indulgent at times, it eventually grew on me, as I became able to separate the songs from the production. 2004’s The Spine saw somewhat of a return to form, but even it had an air of “wanting to be taken seriously” that was a little disheartening for hardcore fans.

On Tuesday, July 10, 2007, The Else was released, and I drove around L.A. for two days trying to wrap my crooked fingers around a copy. I was a tad alarmed when I read that much of the production was done by The Dust Brothers of Paul’s Boutique fame. The last thing that I wanted was for the Johns to start sounding all hip-hoppity. Yes, I’m a rapper, and no, the irony isn’t lost on me.

I eventually found a copy at Amoeba Music (if you don’t know, I almost pity you), and by the time I’d made it back to my car, I had wrestled the disc free of shrink-wrap and military-grade adhesive. I loaded the disc into the player and I swear to god it was over in what felt like ten minutes. I had skipped through close to half of the album’s thirteen tracks within 30 seconds of hearing them. I instantly related to all the women who had sex with me in college:

“Is that it?”

“Yup, that’s it.”

Its not that the songs are bad. In fact, there are some beautiful songs on The Else. “I’m Impressed”?, “The Bee of the Bird of the Moth”, and “The Cap’m”? are gorgeous melodies, and most of the songs are arranged and penned magnificently, but it is the frowning skull of over-production that once again sucks much of the flavor out of the LP. Too much drum machine, too much electric piano, and too much, too much, too much guitar. It seems as if TMBG have convinced themselves that their best music is made when they’re aiming towards polished pop, when many of their fans prefer the geek-punk sensibility that made the music just as quirky as the lyrics.

I am especially troubled by this quote from Flansburgh, delivered during an interview about the new album:

We were very lucky that we could approach this project without deadlines or release schedules hanging over our heads. We wanted to be sure this was an album that was our best effort from beginning to end and I am very excited to report I believe we’ve actually done it!

These words effectively remove all possible sources of blame for what I consider a lackluster effort. Unfortunately, this is what they think is good.

But wait! There’s a 23-song bonus disc. Yep, a thirteen-song album with a 23-song bonus disc. And get this, most of the bonus disc is good—it’s a collection of popular re-worked songs from their podcast entitled “Cast Your Pod to the Wind”. The bonus disc is my hero. It has nunchucks and its not afraid to use them. Just yesterday it put out a puppy fire. And as good as it is, it’s somewhat insulting. For a band to have such a good handle of what their fans wan’t and to give it to them as an appendix to a mediocre album is awfully close to disrespectful.

But these are not the thoughts of a impartial person. For when it comes to the Johns there’s not an objective bone in my brain.

Rating:

I’m 26 years old.

Twenty-six revolutions around the sun from my birth ’til now. Not only have I managed to stay alive this long, I’ve had the fortune of landing and losing a few jobs, having a few graduations and losing my virginity a few times. I have a pretty decent job now, a beat-up but paid-for automobile and a mortgage that could choke-slam an elephant. In other words, I’m grown.

I don’t usually have to say that much. People that are truly grown never do. That phrase is usually yelled by hot masses of confused sexual energy that are trapped in the Western social invention called adolescence. They’re usually yelling it at real grown people who are laughing at them, out loud or silently. Real adults know that you never have to prove your adulthood to anyone. I, however, have had to prove it to myself, lately.

For as much as my behavior and responsibility level resemble that of a full-grown human American male, there are parts of my mind that betray that level of maturity. One pre-pubescent idea in particular continues to hover up there and lately its been attempting to wreak havoc on the fragile order of my mind.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I still have heroes.

With the shame that I deliver you this knowledge, you’d think that the “o” in heroes was a “p” and I was attempting to be the Magic Johnson of non-lethal sex-sickness. No, my affliction, although significantly less stigmatized, is just as difficult to say out loud.

I’m sure it has something to do with my social skills. I’ve used my $35,000 bachelor’s degree in psychology to diagnose myself as “slightly autistic”. Somewhere in the course of my development, I missed some really basic information about communication with other human beings. 26 years later, the 60% of human communication that is “small talk” causes me much, much agony.

I’ve learned a few tricks over time—little things I can do to hide the awkwardness of struggling for the words. But even if its hidden behind confident gestures and good timing, let it be known that I live inside my head.

How is this related to having a goddamned hero? You may be asking. Well keep your knickers on, speedy. I’m getting to it.

In my active and intended evasion of social interaction, I created a rich, inner life. It’s decorated by inaudible conversations with myself and downloaded archetypes from video games, comic books, music and wrestling. The isolationist foundations of an introvert’s worldview.

I learned about interpersonal relations by observing Scott Summers, Jean Grae, Logan, Remy and Rogue. I studied conflict resolution with Ric Flair, Sting, Savage and Hogan. I shared triumph and failure with Link and Samus Aran. I worshipped John Linnell, Eddie Veddar, Q-Tip, Michael Stipe, Posdnous, Frank Black and Les Claypool as gods.

Infallible gods.

The comic book characters, wrestlers, and game sprites could all be easily disassembled in my mind as they were obviously make-believe. The musicians, on the other hand, could do no wrong. In my solitude, my imagination ascribed to this pantheon, traits that should have gone to successful adults around me. But even when I did go outside, there were none. It was the eighties, so the crack epidemic had wiped some of the best minds of my parents’ generation. Though I was young, even then, I could feel that all of our families’ hopes of the future had skipped a generation and landed in our corduroyed laps.

Where there was no inspiration, I invented it. Better yet, I synthesized it with the on-screen personas of a set of distant humans. If my heroes had been real people, no, people in my real life, my psyche could have felt both edges of the sword. I would have seen them succeed and fail. I would have known much earlier that a human is still a human no matter how tall his or her pedestal rises. Shit stinks at any altitude. But I’m really only learning that now.

I admired people who I could only experience via their best take in the vocal booth, or the video clip that was better than the ones on the editor’s floor. Every picture I saw was from their “good side”. Now I’ve got a foot and a half in the entertainment industry and each day I realize that these people will never measure up to the standards that make-up artists, editors and I fashioned for them.

I should have gone through this when I was nine. Nine is the age to have heroes. Not 26. At this age, the mind has a more difficult time adapting to disappointment. When rugs are yanked at this age, bones break and sprain.

I can’t hop right up and start playing again.

It’s a crazy rappity rap rap world.

Urban music information whizzes around like gnats on coke. Life-long homies are beefing, multi-platinum artists are smacking youngsters around at shows, and all the black Baby Boomers in the world have decided that gangsta rap is a bigger problem than bad parenting.

God bless the elegant chaos.

The old guard is fading, the new class is eating itself, and I’m waiting, just waiting for one of the Dip-Unit jokers to declare himself openly… republican.

Common and Russell are getting bashed on Oprah. Not because they are purveyors of the ubiquitous filth in the world, but because neither one of them is able to come up with a way to defend the filth to anyone who is actually listening to the words.

Meanwhile, beneath all of our soggy noses, the movement called nerdcore is selling out venues around the country on the backs of MCs named Frontalot and Lars. One is a brilliant lyricist and niche creator, the other is a pop culture vulture with cute raps, a bad band and a slideshow. I recommend that you see one of the shows. There’s never been a whiter group of people at a rap show ever. Not for Eminem, or Anticon… not even for Sage Francis. No wiggers or coffee shop hipsters. Just regular old white people hollering that Lil’ Jon is killing hip-hop.

Then you have Fiddy Cent (Thank you Jim Lampley) escorting a sombrero’d Floyd Mayweather to the ring in a red, white and green bulletproof vest. Nevermind that the entire country is all ass-over-shoulders about Imus, let’s go out there and piss off all the Mexicans before I spend twelve rounds punching one of their heroes in the face. Classy, very classy. Somewhere, Pat Buchanan is bent over a whiskey bar laughing his pasty ass off.

Don’t forget that GQ Fiddy is still beefing (veal-ing is more appropriate) with Cam’ron. And the new news is that Cam and Jim Jones haven’t spoken in a year. This revelation underscores Jones’ absence in the word-war between Cam and Fif. It also brings light to the notion that the dogs atop the NY rap scene aren’t making enough money to leave each other be. If they all had top-ten records then they wouldn’t be so bitter and sensitive toward each other. It also seems as if the bitterest one of the bunch is the one that hasn’t had his pink-framed mug on anyone’s countdown in a while.

In the midst of this madness, Lil Wayne is fast becoming everybody’s favorite rapper. While the NY cats bicker and the LA folks grope around for a platform to yell from, Weezy, Jeezy, and T.I. are winning the hearts of rap fans from Peachtree to Bed-Stuy to Crenshaw. You won’t catch me running to Coconuts to cop their newest mixtapes but I agree that at least two of them are leagues ahead of their peers lyrically. The only sad thing is that it sometimes seems as if swagger is the only thing that matters anymore.

But don’t tell that to the few hungry vagrants that huddle around the occasional garbage fire that pops up in the underground. Yes, the underground is still where the most talented people are, but the scene is becoming so self-indulgent that even the fans are starting to see the egomaniacs that are pulling the strings behind the curtains. It’s a shame, too. Stuff like Brother Ali or J-Zone is buried under piles and piles of demos burned by disaffected suburban youths that rap because it’s easier to learn ProTools than it is to play the drums.

I’m guilty, too, though. When I first had my underground-is-dead revelation, I concentrated on making music that combined progressive lyrics with beats and hooks that the average rap fan could vibe to. Yup, I tried it for all of two weeks. Even got a couple of decent songs out of it, but slowly but surely, my experimental nature asserted itself and I was back to sampling King Missile for the 14th or 15th time. I can’t help it I guess. I make what I wanna hear. This means two things. One, I’m on the slow, slow, slow road to fame and riches. Two, for the time being, I’ll be performing for and pandering towards the boom bap refugees.

I’ll be trolling the boards of okayplayer.com, allhiphop.com, projectblowed.com, and undergroundhiphop.com. I’ll be posting flyers for shows that you either won’t go to or won’t miss. I’ll be posting trivial opinions on random subjects from time to time so I don’t blow my cover and expose myself as a Thirsty Fish and/or Open Mike Eagle shill. I’ll (continue to) shower your arse with MySpace bulletins and comments until other people are doing it for me. I promise that I’ll never use a ‘bot, though. Mostly because I’m afraid that they’ll delete my account.

And I’ll be doing shows in discos that are filled with my friends and family. Handing out burned CDs with the rest of the wretches.