RAVEN MACK is a mystic poet-philosopher-artist of the Greater Appalachian unorthodox tradition. He does have an amazing PATREON, but also *normal* ARTIST WEBSITE too.
At some point I fell into a Ghanaian Hip Life
website, and grabbed a bunch of tracks. Without a doubt this particular song
has been my most played song through the winter while riding around in the
Corolla. It’s weird to me how nationalized our consumption of music is. There
is no real global coverage for hip hop and hip hop tangential releases. My
oldest has spent a couple trips in recent years in Malaysia specifically but
throughout Southeast Asia, and the hip hop scene over there is vast, and
actually pretty amazing. And man, they got their content and marketing
attitudes down. She forwarded me a screenshot from the Malaysian Hustler the
other day, using M.E.C.C.A. as an acronym for Mindset, Ethics, Character, Communication,
and Attitude. The secular but highly Muslim culture of Malaysia has its effect
on all that, and fuck if M.E.C.C.A. isn’t just emblazoned in my mind now, to
where I’m contemplating that shit, like any good mantra.
Anyways, jam the fuck out to Gasmilla’s biggest
hit, “Telemo”. His nickname is the International Fisherman, which would make a
great iron-on letter t-shirt. As would MECCA. Fuck it, I might dig out my box
of iron-on letters and do both tonight.
The Power of Lounge creeps like tendrils through
the shadows of respectable society. We have this notion that society/culture
can be utopian and fully embrace everybody, so we’ve come to talk about
marginalization as a bad thing. And sure, it is. But at the same time, there
can be benefit to the margins – a certain autonomy outside of the system that
may actually be better in many cases than getting assimilated into the system.
The system itself is only designed to grow wealth for those in control by extracting
value from everything – Earth, humans, technology, minerals, whatever. So your
economic benefit from assimilation is also skimmed off of, and somebody
somewhere is making just as much off you as you are for being you. Thus,
dwelling in the shadows is where the true strongest Power of Lounge can be
cultivated.
I’ve very much been practicing refusing to refer
to my government name as my “real name” because it establishes organized
society as the truest legitimacy, and the source of truth. My government name
is no way who I am, and probably just as many people refer to me as “Dirtgod”
as “Charles” now, though obviously having Raven as my government middle name
blurs the issue because it is both my government and real name, albeit the government’s
second choice when referring to me. If I died in an accident that made the
news, they’d refer to me by my government name, and nobody would know I was
dead. Somebody recently texted me about legally changing their name, to their
more outlandish real name they use in life, and it seemed unnecessary to me,
just filing paperwork because you still identify the government recognition as
the most authoritative.
I say all this in relation to this “Tipitina”
song, because what you have here is a musical creation, born from the mind of a
human whose real name is Professor Longhair. There are few greater real names
in the recent history of American culture, than “Professor Longhair”. It is so
wonderful I am sad I no longer have longhair, and if I had a shitty tattoo gun,
I might put “professor longhair” on my left foot tonight. And then the song was
redone, for a larger cultural audience, by a human whose real name was Dr.
John. Again, though not quite Professor Longhair level, that’s still quality
lounge. [Side note: one of my dad’s drinking/smoking/watching football buddies
was known as Dr. John aka Johnny Sprinkle, and man he was known for telling the
most ridiculous stories that you knew were lies, but tolerated nonetheless because
he was so adamant in his ridiculous telling of these fibs. He was obviously
very influential on a young dirtgod.]
None of this has any point specifically, just
rambling words spiraling off wherever. I’ll perhaps print this out in a month
and tape it up with dollar store scotch tape into a zine, and it’ll circulate
there as well. Ridiculous fucking prayers against order and assimilation and
authoritative systems that define themselves as reality but no longer really do
all that much to earn that. Ridiculous fucking prayers towards the Power of
Lounge, inshallah.
J Cole is a polarizing as fuck figure. Some folks think he's an MC genius, and others hate the mention of his name. That's some classic middle child shit, tbh. I was getting gas the other night at the BP down at the bottom of my neighborhood, where wacky shit is always going on it seems, and it was cold as hell, but some lady pulled up absolutely BANGING "Middle Child". The SUV was rattling apart as she left it running to go inside. It briefly made it not feel so cold, and I appreciate that.
