I was locked inside my apartment building for about four hours yesterday. The doorknob on the door to the outside broke and wouldn’t open. I called the management company, and a guy named Louie came and couldn’t open the door from the outside using my keys. He called someone else, they got the…
“If I could ever be reincarnated, I would be a bird.”
I would be a healthy dose of sun lighting up a city so that people could have something good to say about the day. It doesn’t matter how bad a day could go- death in the family, car wreck, broken foot, bad sandwich, stolen property, loneliness, reading a man foliate his crystal plated mind… It’s all the same, as long as the sun showed itself. Naturally, most people stay indoors when the sun’s out. The Modern Age doesn’t allow us to focus on anything other than a handful of keys and a computer screen, but if given the opportunity and the right amount of motivation, one can experience the golden rays encapsulate clouded thoughts for another day. Focus on the release of any concrete subject and turn to the bastard child of dreaming: daydreams. Everybody and nobody is there watching you stumble around looking for the surface ground in the downtown half-lite alleyway. Grabbing a table for the 357,216,920 memory that comes to mind. Even when you open your eyes you are perpetuating all of it under the sun, if it isn’t lost under the noise.
Harsh, Harsh, Harsh, smoke billows from my mouth. Grains of salt trickle from the tip of my tongue to lessen the expecting thirst, otherwise known as my self-reflecting amateur nunchucks. (Yeah, I said it. Nunchucks) Not the ninja incorporated brand, but the the type that smack you in the face when you realize you are the same person you were when you thought the sliding glass door was opened and ran straight into the damn thing. Innocent under the burning ball aflame. Every time I glance at the glowing seed of daylight I can’t stand it. It is too much for the human eye. I instantly turn away knowing that it will permanently damage my sight if I look at it any longer. It will always be a showdown never ending. And I will always look at it plainly.
Someone’s been demoted
Pacing around remembering all the time that has passed
The door’s locked but it doesn’t matter; nobody’s coming in or out
Violins are playing “Eleanor Rigby,” except the lyrics are different
Either way, it overshadows his thoughts
Two women in the kitchen prepare food without distraction
He wants out
He built a family that can’t be appreciated
His eyes open wide for the last time eager for an answer
Nothing
Another man sleeps letting drip drool fall from his lips
Wakes up to his dream swirling around like water down a drain
Staring at it for a second, he tapes it to the wall
“Is it for me or just a coincidence,” he wonders.
A gust of wind opens the windows and takes off his arm
Outside people applaud
Shabazz Palaces “Black Up”
Shabazz Palaces is Ishmael “Butterfly” Butler from Alternative Hip Hop Group Digable Planets, t-h-i-n-k A Tribe Called Quest, but on this project he has created a changeling of sonic forces that can’t be pinned down. Lyrically, Butler is all over the place. At times there are conscious messages directed at the community of listeners buying into commercially successful rappers more concerned on becoming action heros than making a decent record, and at other times it’s other worldly imagery representing many of Butler’s ideals. On the opening track “free press and curl,” Butler says it best, “I’M FREE.”
The beats on this album (a beat is what happens when the stutter in your heart becomes dedicated) deliver something to behold. “an echo from the hosts that profess infinitum” is reminiscent of Rich Boy’s “Drop” or Lil Wayne’s infamous “A Milli” beat while others are experimental jetsets that are as spacey as anything crafted by Flylo.
This is the progression of a genre that has become so grounded it’s forgotten what Shabazz Palaces is doing: pushing the boundaries. This is dangerous, not in the glorification of crime, but in the sense that it is opening the doors for other artists to follow.
Go ahead. Listen for yourself.
