The Rhymes of Our Lives

Allow me to share with you the default song-in-my-head since 1999. It's the track that comes to mind after all others have faded away.

Black Star "Definition"

Where Brooklyn? (See that?)

peace.

A Deep Soul Story

Have a listen.

"Bad Girl Pt. 1 & 2." by Lee Moses

Almost two years ago now I was living in Toronto and training to be a voice teacher at York University. In October, all the students are given a week off for Canadian Thanksgiving. (For real, Canada!?) So I thought to myself, "Hey, I might as well get out of town and see some sights!" So I made arrangements for my cat, packed a bag, and hopped a train to New York to hang with my homie Mark in Brooklyn. I was looking forward to catching up with him.

He meets me at Penn Station and hits me with the obligatory bear hug. Even though the guy probably weighs about the same at a six-foot pile of feathers, you better be in shape when he decides to show you some love. We took the L train back to his spot in Bushwick and stayed up way too late making cynical and ironic jokes about music and politics. At the time he was living with both his girlfriend and another one of our LSU buddies, and I'm sure we kept them awake far too long.

Over the next week, we explored a variety of interesting New York things. The stand-out day was seeing the American Museum of Natural History. For many years I've seen pictures of the exhibits in that building and it was an incredible experience to actually stand next to them. Dinosaurs are effin' cool, especially those giant T-Rex skulls. It was also around this time when I began my interest in the work of Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson, who is the head of the museum's astrophysics wing the Hayden Planetarium. That was a really good day.

Nevertheless, some where along the course of the week Mark says to me, "You've got to hear this guy I just found." Now, usually when Mark says something like this to me I don't take the suggestion lightly. I can only remember two or three times during the course of our seven-year friendship when he's made musical or artistic recommendations; he's a critical cat. The time before this, we ended up seeing these guys. (Be sure to turn you speakers up all the way!)

I believe the first Lee Moses track Mark played for me was "Free At Last", and it was immediately apparent to me I would rest very little before I found every bit of his music I possibly could. He soared over the track with discordant radiance and inspired abrasion, erupting with soul. I simply could take my ears off his music. Next, we heard his immense version "Hey Joe", (by far the best version I know other than Hendrix) then took off into "Bad Girl Pt. 1 & 2". I believe the first impulses I had were feelings of jealousy and frustration, because I could remember very few of my theatrical performances in which I embodied that much need and urgency. This guy was putting everything he was on these records.

I eventually found a link to download his album which is about the only way anyone can get it. It's apparently out of print, so buying a hard copy is going to be difficult and expensive. If you'd like to know more about Lee Moses, this is always a good place to start. If you're interested in exploring other deep soul artists, I've found no better site than Sir Shambling's Deep Soul Heaven. Although Lee isn't on there (He should be!) there's plenty there to discover.

peace.

Soul Painters from Brooklyn

I promise. Once this show opens this weekend, I won't be so lame with writing stuff. This week has been rigorous.

So allow me to give some shine to my homies Not Blood Paint.

NBP is a rock/funk/rock/theatre/rock band born in Michigan and based in Brooklyn, NY. They'll be playing at The Knitting Factory this coming Saturday (July 16th), one of the most celebrated music venues in the city of New York. If you're in the area and are down with dope music and mesmerizing live performances, check these cats out. They put it down every time.

For more info on NBP, check out their blog here.

peace.

Bright Lights, Big City

I'm taking the night off tonight.

I spent a wonderful weekend with my friends Mariana and Mark up in Brooklyn. Mariana had a '90s themed house party on Saturday night which I was thrilled to attend. I even had the chance to assist her in setting up the place and picking some of the music. In between time, I hung out with my homie Mark as we strolled around Williamsburg and Bushwick. I got in tonight, met up with my friend Clarissa to work on an audition piece, and came home to settle down.

So yea, I'm taking the night off.

But here's a superfresh picture of Mariana and I from the photo booth she set up in her apartment. We had some big fun!

I love New York.

peace.

The Playlist

So I've spent the last two and a half hours working on a playlist of nineties hip hop tracks for my homegirl Mariana's party in Brooklyn next week. (By the way, it's 4:50am.) There's so much! I've had an interesting experience working on this. I'm remembering how old I was when each of these songs came out, in which neighborhood I lived, who my close friends were, where I was when I heard the song, and many other memories and feelings inspired by this music.

I've also been watching Coming to America all night. "I am a loyal citizen of Zamunda!"

If you want to hear the list, be at the party.

peace.

Emcee of the Month: Joell Ortiz

I watched quite a few Joell interviews, and I was trying to find something that was as recent as possible. But the thing about Joell is that he's very good at "shifting his code" to appeal to the given interview environment, much better than his outward show may appear. That's a good thing. It means he's aware of his audience and has learned how to make himself and his work available to them. However, due to interviewers hastily making their way to requests for Joell to rhyme, I feel we miss a lot of who Mr. Ortiz actually is.

So it took me a while to find a clip of him speaking that felt like I was seeing and hearing the purest story about who he is and what have been the important events and influences during his career.

I finally found an interview from a documentary television series called Mr. Dante Luna. Now, maybe I haven't searched enough, but I haven't found much information about this series; when it was made, its length, or its intention. Nevertheless, this interview with Joell is wonderful. There's no interviewer, no gang of dudes wallflowering the recording, and no pressure for a freestyle. Joell simply tells us about his life and career in very honest, simple terms. From what I can tell, he's quite an individual. Have a look.

peace.

Radiohole: Your brain won't save you.

"Who knows?"

After witnessing Whatever, Heaven Allows (WHA?!), staged by the Brooklyn-based experimental performance group Radiohole, and watching as it humiliates anyone who ever believed they were a part of forward-moving theatre, you may be left wondering what it was you just witnessed. What was the story? What were they trying to say? Where was it going? No matter the question, I would suggest the only reasonable response is, "Who knows?"

You see, that's just it. Knowing has nothing to do with it. This show is not for your brain, but rather your body and your soul. It's a show for audiences to taste, smell, and most certainly feel (especially if you're splattered with Jell-O shots from the front row). It's purpose is to vibrate, tickle, rattle, blind, deafen, chill, and warm you within a lightening quick hour and a half. You are lambasted with an image one moment then unapologetically snatched away into new imagery the next, with no regard for continuity or safety. Video screens whip out and slap you with rainbows. Ice water flings from a man's bald head into your lap. And there will be no mercy.

"Experimental" and "experience" are practically the same word.

This company is operating on the leading edge of the theatrical universe. A usual outing to the theatre is like Michael Faraday discovering electromagnetism on a table top; important, noteworthy, interesting. But we've been there many times before. Radiohole is closer to the Large Hadron Collider. Once they crank that thing up, who knows?

Here's a teaser video for the show.

peace.

A Journey to the Broken Angel

As it progresses, any developing cultural or social movement invariably discovers its own identity through a variety of unique and distinguishing characteristics. Most of these developments include inventions and evolutions in apparel and fashion, language and lexicon, dietary patterns, musical styles, and so on. For me however, the most enduring, most compelling, and most tangible cultural symbols involve the landmarks and locations of pivotal and momentous events in a culture’s history.

There's nothing like being there; and it's just that. Being. There.

If you're a rock n' roll junkie, then it's The Dakota or the Riot House. If it's jazz that turns you on, there's nothing like the Cotton Club. For the gearheads of the world, the Bonneville Salt Flats or the Nürburgring is your Mecca. And political aficionados should never turn down a trip to The Watergate Hotel or Dealey Plaza. It's about seeing, touching, feeling it for ourselves or else it will only exist in theory.

Hip hop culture has a few of these places as well, like D&D Studios (although you ain't NEVER gettin' in there) or Rucker Park. And a few months ago I took the chance to visit what I feel is arguably the newest on the list of hip hop cultural landmarks, The Broken Angel.

It is one erie place.

The Broken Angel was the home of Cynthia and Arthur Wood from 1972 through 2006. It's located at the intersection of Downing Street and Quincy Street in the Clinton Hill neighborhood of Brooklyn, NY. Its legacy in hip hop history was cemented in 2004 when it became the backdrop of a concert/block party that was organized and hosted by Dave Chappelle, and documented by Michel Gondry in the 2006 film Dave Chappelle's Block Party. In the film, Cynthia and Arthur invite Dave and his camera crew into their home to show them the inner workings of the building. It's one of the most entertaining parts of the film as we witness the couple's compassionate, albeit slightly eccentric, quality and demeanor. Towards the end of the film, there's even a shot of Cynthia in the window of the Broken Angel waving a peace sign to the crowd, which I've always felt was one of the indelible images of solidarity in the movie.

So I'll leave it to you to look up more on Cynthia, Arthur, and the Broken Angel. This is the story of how I got there.

Mariana had to leave. The needle on her record player had broken and we needed to head over to J&R Audio by the WTC because that was the only place she thought we could pick up a new one. So by the time I reached her brownstone in Bedford-Stuyvesant she was perched on the stoop, demanding me to hurry my a$$ up because the bank was about to close. So I shuffled into her place to set down my bag, she locked the door, and we hustled our way to Fulton Street.

After handling her business at the bank and "politely" assisting a young lady find her destination on Fulton St., we got on the C train to Manhattan. We got off at Chambers Street a few blocks north of Ground Zero and made our way down to J&R, which is situated at what's essentially Park Row and Broadway.

Everything is huge in New York, including this audio store. It took us two or three tries to enter the correct section of the building, and even then we really didn't find it without help. And one would think an audio store in New York would and SHOULD have everything under the sun, but alas Mariana's needle was not in stock. So dejectedly, we exited the store and decided it was time to eat.

Now, Mari had a pregnant-woman's craving for cheese fries right about now, even though she hasn't had a boyfriend in a while. However, I would assume this is purely by choice because a woman as beautiful as Mariana can be in a relationship almost anytime she wants. I can only deduce all the men she's encountered recently have been woefully sub-par. C'mon NY...

She suggested we head to Madison Square Park to get burgers and cheese fries at a well-known spot called The Shake Shack. While standing in the quarter-mile long line (it moved fairly quickly, so don't be discouraged) we continued our usual discussions on all things hip hop. We're both huge fans of artists like The Roots, Black Star, Common, J Dilla, and Kanye West. And as we sat to enjoy our slightly overpriced but incredibly delicious burgers, our conversation shifted to Block Party. As is the nature of these exchanges, one thing led to another and we mutually agreed to seek out the location of this magnificent day in hip hop history. We finished our food, scared off the giant attack squirrels, and hopped back onto the subway.

We got off at the N/Q/R stop at DeKalb Avenue and opted to take the bus down Fulton towards Downing Street. It seemed we were on the bus for an unreasonably long time and we worried that we had missed our stop. So we got off somewhere between St. James Place and Grand Avenue to hoof it from there. We approached a huge laundromat with some cool-a$$ middle-aged cats hangin' outside and asked them if they knew the way to Downing Street. Personally, I was hoping we didn't get the same "politeness" that Mari had offered the young lady from earlier in the day. But they were truly friendly and pointed us in the right direction. We got to the block about 10 minutes later.

There are very few places in New York as quiet as the corner of Quincy and Downing in Brooklyn. It's one of those spots that seems to exist solely on its own; as if arriving there means departing the rest of the city. We walked up to the impressive red door of the Broken Angel, with the name of the building and the address adorning it in a grayish-white hue. There was very little traffic. I don't think we saw one car round the corner the whole time we were there. We read the sign on the bulletin board just to the right of the Angel's door and discovered Cynthia Wood had unfortunately passed away due to complications with cancer. We stood by the daycare center where Dave and the others had visited, using the roof as an observation area. We took turns imagining the stage and quoting unforgettable lines and verses from the documentary. We made sure to take some time making fun of Common's role in the show, because we've always been puzzled as to why he seemed only to serve as everybody's hype man. Weird...

I've often wondered if the people that live on that block are getting tired of folks showing up and doing that type of stuff. But in the moment, we didn't care about any of that. We were just a little late to the party, that's all. We wanted to have our fun, too.

We left just before the streetlights starting coming on and walked the almost-two miles back to Mari's apartment in Bed-Sty. We were glowing. We touched the history of our own culture, and it was a really good feeling. Somehow, we felt more firmly connected to the inspirations that have been fueling our lives for quite some time now. When we got back, we threw in Block Party and watched a bit of the concert footage. I suppose it was our way of "double-checking."

But really, there wasn't any need. We knew what it looked like.

Due to the fading light, these were the only pictures that were decent. We took these with Mari's iPhone.

peace.