You need to wash your hands.
Cleanse your God-given tools
So tuned and responsive, capable
Of good, of evil, of resentment,
Also of forgiveness.
The evidence is there for
Everyone to see. your knuckles
Bruised and swollen. sticky
Blood spatter and salty sweat.
The dirt under your fingernails:
The memories lacking the mercy
To recede, to dissipate, to
Wash away. what is held,
What is felt, even unconsciously,
While we sleep, while we work,
While we live and love.
You need to wash your hands.
The places you’ve been
Have not released you yet
From their grasp, their attention.
Millions of microbes,
Billions of bacteria teeming
On your unknowing epidermis.
Carried with you, silent
Invisible threats, micro-terrorists
Lying in wait, sleeper cells
Biding their time quietly yet
Ever-ready for you
To let down your guard.
To close your eyes. to sigh.
You need to wash your hands.
They are your parents’ hands.
They are years of sacrifice;
Scrubbing floors and breathing bleach
And knocking down doors and changing oil,
Carrying groceries, worrying and scratching,
Restless. trying so hard to hold on,
To climb up, and finally to let go.
Your hands are stained with
Life and death, birth and murder,
The blood of generations.
You may bask in your blissful
Self-indulgence and gratuitous ignorance,
But your hands have not forgotten.
And if you stop for a second
And acknowledge them, you will find
Them pulsating, fevered, grave and
Solemn in their gravity, the weight
Of history, of purpose, of indolence and of action.
They have served you dutifully,
And now it is time for you to serve them.
You need to wash your hands.
To move on. to build anew
Unencumbered by calluses,
Enriched by pure sensation;
A future rooted in honest implementation
Of such wise artifacts.
I remember a couple summers ago I was crashin’ with this shorty in Bed Stuy. Her punkass roommate had just gotten the first Akon record. In effect, every Saturday and Sunday morning I’d wake up to “I wanna love/fuck you.” Granted, it’s the right idea to start a Sunday with, but I’m not a fan of modern Rn’B or auto-tune. As if hearing it blasting out of every passing car window wasn’t enough, my personal time was being invaded as well. Miserable.
Walking down the street, I’d hear kids talking about the “Hip Hop” they were feelin’ on HOT97. As an independent rapper and musician, and a strong supporter of Hip Hop as a movement, I can’t help but cringe when kids defile this sacred community and lifestyle. Most of the time, they don’t know any better. They have simply succumbed to what I prefer to call “Trap Music.”
(Trap Music: Rap related music engineered by the powers that be to keep the masses entertained and complacent, focused on money, material things, and the attributes of wealth rather than the potential paths to better lives.)
Fast forward two years and there’s more of this Auto-tune R’n’B B.S. being misrepresented as Hip Hop. Now, I know that there are plenty of opinions on this. A lot of people are quarreling over what’s hip hop, and maybe it’s different to different people. I’m just feelin’ like nobody is really ready to call it like it is.
Most of the crap on the radio that’s being marketed as Hip Hop is just Pop music. Face it. It’s candy wrapped junk food aimed at kids and adults who would rather act as such. Catchy hooks, flashy clothes, and superstars spouting nonsense: these are the unfortunate heroes of our decade (and future stars of reality TV).
But I harbor a belief that this trend may be quavering on its last rickety legs.
To help defend this point in a manner that I think no one can argue with, I gotta reach back into the 80s to the glam rock era.
Glam rock, also “cock rock” or “hair metal,” is exactly to rock music what this Trap music is to Hip Hop. It was the polished and over-produced step-son of Rock n’ Roll, birthed from the financial gains that accompanied the artists’ superstardom. In a similar way Hip Hop, which developed organically, has been assimilated into popular music and polished up and over-produced into this Glam Rap.
Peep this new joint by Maino and T.I. called “All of the Above.”:::
Overall, not a bad track, but I had to laugh the first time I heard it because of how much the hook, particularly the harmonies, reminded me of so many 80s bangers like this Autograph track, “Blondes in Black Cars”:::
Pretty amazing similarities, eh? Busta Rhymes “Don’t believe ’em” from his new album shares similar qualities. Maybe it’s just T.I. to blame, but I doubt it.
More will come I’m sure. Those harmonies drove a whole movement of Cock Rock for about 10 years. Now they’ve made their way into “Hip Hop.” Brace yourself.
But all is not lost. Out of the teased bangs, cans of hair spray, and treacherously revealing spandex arose a great movement of music. From the dank garages of Seattle and the vomit crusted bar basements of L.A. erupted new sounds. A stark rebellion against the make-up laden rockers of the 80s: The Grunge Rock movement screamed onto the scene with bitter disdain and squelched out their sissy predecessors.
Bands like Poison, Warrant, and Skid Row were replaced with Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and Alice in Chains. Spandex and eye make-up were replaced with ripped jeans and flannels. Hairspray was replaced with, well, completely unwashed and greasy hair. Power ballads were strangled out by the gritty, honest, and often somber anthems shouted, screeched, and wailed into microphones.
A couple years back I would have argued that Underground Hip Hop was going vanquish Trap Music in the same way that Grunge music did Cock Rock, but it’s a different environment now. The major labels are crumbling, and so are no longer viable options for independent artists. And, for those that chose to move with the flow of the digital revolution as opposed to against it, independent labels managed with forward-thinking methods are flourishing (check out FakeFour!).
So what’s going to happen? Are we stuck with the minstrels of Trap Music? I don’t think so. It gets a lot of mainstream exposure, but more and more of the youth growing up in the digital realm are becoming more sophisticated consumers from earlier ages. Websites like Reverbnation, Bandcamp, Pandora, Spotify, and LastFM are breaking new artists all the time, and the internet is a world of musical diversity and options.
The independent artists are out there. They’re popping up all the time (no pun intended). The machine doesn’t chunk along like it used to, so they’re not being snatched up and thrown on MTV with such fiendish relish and the underlying speculation of the next great mu$ical movement. The next generation of artists are recording and mixing their tracks in their closets and basements. They’re uploading them to their favorite sites and then it’s up to the world to decide if they’re going to be spread across the blogosphere and rocketed into some new form of internet superstardom.
The radio still plays what it’s paid to play.
The TV still plays more reality shows than music videos, and less of the videos we really want to see.
But real Music was never about the money used to make it or market it.
(“broke is okay”)
Music is about the feeling in it that hopefully transfers to the listener.
It’s this undeniability that will push those diamonds in the rough into your MP3 collections.
“I know we facin a recession, but the music ya’ll makin gon’ make it the great depression.”
“you rappers singin too much, get back to rap, you t-painin too much”
“I don’t be in the project hallway, talkin bout how I be in the project all day.
That sound stupid to me, you a gangsta, this is how you prove it to me.”
-Jay-Z “The Death of Auto-Tune.”
It’s been a lot of hard work draggin my shadow through the dirt, through the outskirts of humanity—couch-surfing to infinity,
and my mouth hurts from the profanity.
There’s a Profane amount of vanity
infesting these roaches and assorted vermin
Talkin to mirrors candidly yet making no mention of the atrophy.
It’s my slap-happy catastrophy and I laugh in the face of apathy.
I pinch the cheeks of the cavalry and tickle the feet of the casualties—
If they got ‘em! Big top Jetsam and Flotsam.
The stock market’s as hostile as trading
small pox blankets for your wampum.
Playin the fool or playin possum,
play your hand or keep on walkin
The line. Either a pauper or a robber,
deep pockets lined with genocide
Slash and burner with cash to earn in a
Gotham City Nightmare on Wall Street
with Freddy Madoff’s razor five finger discount –
faulty wiring leads to four alarm fires, and a crumbling empire
where the ghosts in the rubble whisper tales of another life’s desires.
Out of sight and out of mind, dancing across the power lines –
Electric boogaloo through the loop de loop deception and sour times;
Eyes locked with a Cyclops dressed in Armani gear and high tops
And I’ll play him for the coward he is before I smack his smile off.
It’s a sorry state of affairs full of the starry eyed disaffected
While I stay passionate and savage,
a master of my own enchantments
It’s a Great Depression Redux so Skip to the Loo, I’m starving.
Feeling duped in a soup line bustling with martians and carnys
So forgive me if I skip the after-work boozing and whoring, I got
Better ways to kill time than spawning
another generation of orphans
I’d rather create a moment, a slice of perfection frozen –
as jarring as an earthquake, as calming as the oceans.
Feel me::
I spend my money on crap and end up funding terrorists
masquerading as legal governments sanctioned by Bilderbirg cads
And everything printed in popular media is lies filtered and molded
To keep the population distracted and unmotivated to improve their
stifled existences
This is where we say NOT ME!
I won’t be drowned in the monopoly.
I won’t go down with the ship. I will learn to swim. Fuck it.
I’ll grow gills and flippers and become the baddest fish in the ocean.
A killer whale killer shark octopus catfish with wings.
I will evolve into an intrepid creature of light and energy,
A monster of positivity bent on lifting my fellow lion hearts from the trenches.
They think they own us. But we are the uncharted waters.
We are the invisible threat of undertow, the deepest ocean currents,
The bloodstream of the earth. It is our movements that keep the moon in orbit.
It is our energy that spins this great globe, and it is our love that brought the sun
To that one perfect point in the universe to perpetuate our life.
As long as we stay in touch with this relationship, as long as we keep
Communication lines open, the balance will maintain.
I will take my gloves off if you will hold my hands and we can
Stand up together.
This is your new home for all things brokeMC related!
If you are already following me on twitter, my friend on facebook, myspace, friendster, reverbnation, youtube, and wherever else I may have established my broke-ass dominance on the intra-web, but you just can’t get enough, then I welcome you to my WordPress.
Here I will attempt to collect a professional array of my productions from photos, to paintings, to design, to video, to stories, etc..
Enjoy my art.
And, of course, should you require my talents in a professional manner, I will be more than happy to start making money doing things that I actually enjoy.
