Category Archives: Music

March 11, 2011 · 3:35 PM

Too Soon: My Pain Is Your Pleasure

You do NOT want to be mayor of this place.

One of humanity’s most fascinating and cherished features is our ability to fashion beauty from tragedy.  Such was the case in 1997, when two of my college classmates and best friends died on an Independence Day weekend road trip.

A few of us were in a rap crew at the time (long live The Myth) and decided to pen a song called “On Your Journey (Too Soon)” as a soundtrack to our sadness.  Recently, I decided to completely remake the track so that we could lay down new vocals – the idea was that rallying around this project would give us an excuse to reunite.  After I dived into it though, it became apparent that my emotions had other plans in store.

Let me just say that the last several months have been a dark time for your hero, O my brothers and only friends.  I’ve been in a protracted war with the forces of evil across multiple fronts for a while now, and the nature of the eventual outcome isn’t at all clear.  When the anniversary of my father’s death came around, I could almost taste the darkness that was threatening to envelope me on all sides.  I had to do something.

For me, that something consisted of embracing the pain.  After all, it wouldn’t be the first time that I’d romanced a serious bitch.  It was about time I got something out of this particular abusive relationship.

So, I slightly reworked my verse from the original song and dropped it on the new instrumental.  Thankfully, the lyrics were just as poignant to me in 2011 as they were in 1997.  Now what?  How could I follow that?  Over the course of the next couple of days, I realized that while those lyrics had a specific contextual meaning regarding the death of dear friends, the overarching significance was profound loss and its aftermath.

When I realized this, two new verses poured out, each addressing a different aspect of that unavoidable component of the human condition.  The second verse is about a woman who didn’t know herself and therefore, never fully knew me.  The final one deals with my first and greatest loss – that of my father.  To be honest, I wondered if the whole “black boys need their dad” thing was a little trite, but then I remembered that no one else can tell my story but me…so anybody that mistakes it for a cliché can kiss my muscular ass.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to get back to the fight.  Please enjoy the pain.

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February 19, 2011 · 7:35 PM

Sex and Candy…Remixed

 

I doubt that Jay-Z spent any time near this Marcy Playground...

This joint is my remix of Marcy Playground’s “Sex and Candy”.  I’ve always loved the way that song perfectly captures how it feels to want someone…bad.  I took that and added a little bit of a creepy stalkerish vibe by way of a dark synth and a new rap verse featuring yours truly.  Couldn’t resist!

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February 17, 2011 · 2:19 AM

The Policy of Truth: Morality According to Depeche Mode

I thought the truth was supposed to hurt...

Now you’re standing there tongue tied
You’d better learn your lesson well
Hide what you have to hide
And tell what you have to tell
You’ll see your problems multiplied
If you continually decide
To faithfully pursue
The policy of truth

– Depeche Mode, “Policy of Truth”

Anyone who knows me well knows that I grew up in a Pentacostal household. Unfortunately, the many hours that I spent in church, listening to preachers yell until they were hoarse and watching otherwise sober-looking women launch into full-body convulsions, failed to produce any long term religious fervor in me (my God-shaped hole is HUGE), but I did learn a thing or two about morality.

One of the biggest lessons I gleaned was that a lie, whether an omission of an uncomfortable fact or an outright prevarication, was a bad thing.  My grandmother used to always say, “There are two types of people I can’t stand—a liar and a thief.”  I’ve come to understand that her equal distaste for those social pariahs proceeds from the fact that one simply can’t trust either of them.  And without trust, well, you have no way of establishing a relationship that any well-adjusted human would call healthy.  I went through life letting that precept shape my discourse with others…usually.

That I employed the word “usually” above should be a big hint that my perspective on truth-telling did became more sophisticated over time.  For example, I grasped fairly early on that there were occasions when avoiding the truth was actually one’s moral duty.  Case in point: if you’re living in Amsterdam in 1944 and a man with a funny cross on his arm asks you if you’re hiding Jews in the attic, and you are, you should politely reply in the negative.  That’s extreme, I know.  “Do I look fat in this dress” is a more common, yet equally life-threatening example.  The point is, sometimes you have to lie for the sake of the greater good or to spare a person from unnecessary hurt.

What has shocked me is just how broadly many people’s concepts of “appropriate” and “obligated” lying reach.  I’ve been personally admonished for being too honest with women early in my relationships.  On one occasion, a female friend actually asked me if I was purposefully trying to sabotage my efforts with one lady, all because I acknowledged that I still cared for a past girlfriend.  This was in spite of the fact that my other words and actions clearly showed that these emotional remnants weren’t a hindrance to our romantic progress.  In another instance, a friend recently complained to me that it was commonplace for folks in his company to willfully mislead potential clients about the readiness of product features.  The argument was that if the deals went through, they’d just “find a way to make it happen.”  WTF?!

As I see it, the problem with this expanded notion of the appropriate lie is that it can distort the fabric of our relationships.  We get locked in a kind of arms race, with lies as the weapons of mutually assured destruction.  We begin to lose trust in everyone, all the time, and in turn we start to feel increased personal pressure to hide the truth.  Taken to its extreme, I posit that we slowly lose our ability to even distinguish the valid from the invalid.  We could be staring truth in the face, but because we’ve become so blinded by the darkness of deception, we can no longer discern the difference between it and its twin.

Perhaps that’s just the way the world turns, and I should just get with the Depeche Mode program.  (God knows they were on point with “Personal Jesus”.)  All I know is, I’m tired of playing by the rules, only to find out that hardly anyone else does.  What’s worse, some even consider me the social deviant for doing it!  It seems that yet again, my idealism is costing me…I just hope that I don’t end up morally bankrupt.

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February 17, 2011 · 2:15 AM

Always Will?

The Southern Hummingbird

Ever heard Tweet’s “Always Will”?  It popped up on my iPod yesterday and I couldn’t help but play it ’bout fifty-leven times.  The sparse, acoustic guitar-heavy instrumentation combined with the smooth, almost celestial background vocals and Tweet’s heartfelt delivery are guaranteed to get me every time.

Not familiar with it? Here’s the basic gist:

Tweet loves someone, and she believes that this someone loves her.  In fact, she loves this someone so much that she declares that no matter the obstacles in their way, even if the distance between them is literally cosmic in scope, she bets that she “always will.”  And she ratchets the wager up a notch by proclaiming that this someone “always will” love her just as much.  It’s quite touching.  Really.

It’s too bad that it’s probably not true.  I mean, when you really think about it, to how many people have you personally said, “I’ll always love you,” or something similar?  C’mon, be honest.  I’ll wait.  Now how many of those promises rang true like, by the time you finished first semester in b-school?

Exactly.  Even if you meant it with all your heart and soul and being at that time, chances are that by now you’d cringe if you could do a Marty McFly and stand next to yourself when you lovingly whispered that sweet nothing in the ear of your boyfriend of four month’s time on a Holiday Inn couch after Senior Prom in 199X.  Crap, you’d probably even grimace when you think about the last time you said it.  When was that?  Last Valentine’s Day?  New Year’s Eve after that last shot of Henny (or Vodka Redbull for all my white folks)?  Your wedding day?

It’s OK though.  You can’t help it.  Human beings have an unrestrainable need to feel as though they have control over their own futures.  That’s why millions of us faithfully read horoscopes, wear lucky underwear before a big game, and (gasp!) say our prayers.  They’re all just as futile as trying to end interracial dating in Minneapolis or Seattle, but that doesn’t stop us from doing it.  There’s just so much in the world that’s out of our control, whatever little bit we can do to feel that we’ve taken some power back from the Lords of Chaos does our pitiful little souls good.

So we try to will ourselves into infinite romantic love.  I mean, what human condition is a better target for our self-protective efforts than the steamy, shivers-up-the-spine, daydreamy emotion that drives everything we do in our waking moments?  Yeah, I said it.  When we’ve got it, we can dance under water and not get wet, and when we lose it, a lot of us just drown in tears.  Who wants to deal with the latter?  I don’t.  Hell-to-the-damn no!  I saw “The Secret”!  Let’s just speak our love into perpetual existence!  If only it were that simple.

Wish on a star, wish on a full moon—crap, wish me love a wishing well—but love can no more be controlled than thunderstorms, or heat waves, or tectonic plate movements, or [insert force of nature here for dramatic effect].  Even R&B, for all of its syrupy, hyper-optimistic expositions on the subject, grudgingly recognizes this as the truth.  Think “I Keep Forgettin,'” “I Miss You” (Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes, not Aaron Hall) and the best example: “Love Don’t Love Nobody”.  In the end, when it’s over, it’s over…and more often than not, it doesn’t take death to part you from your lover.  A nice smile or a nice fatty can work just as well, let alone the thousands of miles Tweet was singing about.

Did I convince you?  No?  I doubted that I would.  See, you believe that “real” love is eternal, despite the fact that 50% of U.S. marriages end in divorce and 75% of those who don’t are mostly unhappy.  You believe that sheer will power will keep you in love indefinitely.  You believe that you needn’t worry that your love could simply vanish – FOR NO REASON AT ALL.  And why not?  It feels good, don’t it?  Keep it up.

I bet you always will.

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