rap music

i will post a mix of rap i made.

i want to say something now.

i like rap.

some of it.

this mix includes qwel, dose one, k the i, big juss, el-p, gza, rob sonic, alias, mr. skurge, company flow, buck 65, and quasimoto.

there are stereotypes associated with rap, and i don't really want to be associated with these stereotypes.

i'm not gangster, and if someone wanted to fight me, i'd probably run away.

stereotypes of people who listen to rap are, maybe: 'gangster,' 'talking with some kind of rap accent or using rap expressions,' 'keeping it real,' which, i think means, to fight someone if you think they disrespected you, and other things.

i say 'yo' sometimes. and 'sup?' sometimes. i never really threw my hands in the air like i just didn't care.

i don't think i like going to hip hop shows so much, because they always tell me to do that, to wave my hands around or something, the people on the stage would, and everyone else does it, and i feel pressure to do it, but i feel to sarcastic to do it, so i just end up leaving the concert with a vague sense of alienation and dejection.

i went to a divinci show, once, and i really liked it. he played 3 mpc's at the same time. he played the center one with his mouth and nose and chin. one time he fell over because he went totally insane. everyone was silent and i yelled, 'that was fucking cool,' and everyone laughed. and i loved that hip hop show.

i don't find fault with anyone that fits into some kind of stereotype. i'm not sure it's possible to stay stereotype-free.

let me tell you about why i like this mix, and why i chose some of these songs.

i don't like reading abstract poetry, or novels with a bunch of abstract sentences in them. i feel it's exclusionary. and trickery.

i can't explain why i feel different about music lyrics. it might have something to do with the fact that i'll listen to a rap song i like, maybe, 200 times over the course of a year or something, so i have time to think about almost every line in that song. this is not the same for poetry or novels. i rarely read a poem 200 times.

here are some lyrics from the 'kingspitter' by big juss, which is on this mix. i might have misheard words.

the battles, the legends, the heroes, the villains
the dual for the embodiment and consciousness of millions
who can't sabatoge the fourth information
molecular hyper universe
fully hardwired configurated to the main frame
rockin a syllable hydraulic chassis
wherever reaction occurs in the presence of a catalyst

and then there's a bunch more that i don't care to write about.

when i listen to these 200 times over the course of the year, it becomes very easy to understand what he's really saying, so you get the imagery, a scary, science fiction, mechanical, epic earth image, with this message behind it. the message isn't pretentious or something, and it's both one, all-inclusive maxim (something like, 'we're fucked'), and a lot of individual, detailed points. for me it's like reading a very good, scary science fiction novel. i become afraid of the things he says, sometimes, because i wonder what his brain looks like, if it's gigantic, and i wonder which pathway in his thoughts he was able to access by thinking of those lyrics. i begin to feel like these people are 'true intellectuals,' or something, even though that's a glorification.

this is one kind of reason that i like this kind of music.

now i'll say things about qwel. the songs by qwel that i put in the mix are off the album 'if it ain't been in a pawn shop, it can't play the blues'. i like the production in this album. it's perfect for me. the songs i put in the mix very much illustrate this. qwel is very smart too. here are some of his lyrics where he says some shit that is wrong with our society:

divided we stand man the sides to unite for bandwagons
antagonistic fashion statements pants saggin grand dragons
street taggin advertisers plastic liars barcodes stuck your wallets fat
mispelled your cotton farm clones
scarred with shoppin carhartt
march with the other army ants
we ardvarks for 40 hours, thought? hardly a chance
how long can we dance upon our hands for these snakes?
dreamscapes and screen savers, faith-based police states?

these are the first lyrics in one of his songs on the mix. he's really good at this. he doesn't even say one thing and mean another. it's like he just understands the world this way. it seems like there is little pretension to qwel. i like that.

here is the mix.

part one

part two

typing this is taking too long.

i hope you like it.