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.

Sunday, December 31

JJ Krupert Dec 2017 number thirteen "mediate"


flipping of the arbitrary calendar boxes causes motherfuckers to think everything is somehow different
same day every day just different sunrise
ain’t nothing changed
unless you change it

tonight’s midnight is random fencepost driven into constant time keeps on slipping chronology
don’t mistake it for anything more than forcing order on your life
your life doesn’t need order like that
or at least mine don’t

I wandered in the woods today
and found a hunk of wood that looked like a hummingbird or some shit
so I brought it home
and shook the spray paint from the back camper trailer
which my eldest thinks her and her partner are going to be able to tolerate
in mid-January cold (but I don’t think so)
and shook the spray paint until it was unfrozen and loose
and the marbles clanked a wonderful clank in the cold (fucking so cold) back yard
and I sprayed some orange and then light blue highlights
and then the bulk of dark red on the stick bird thing I had found
then poked a hole in some cardboard with sharp piece of quartz
so I could spray paint black eyeball

it didn’t mark the end of one year or the beginning of another
it was just me wandering through the woods
looking for illegitimate arts inspirations
which were everywhere
because it is cold and the quartz has been popped out the ground
by frozen soil
and every step
was another quartz chunk to inspect
or stack into a pile

but then I have to come back out the woods
and none of it matters
because my human life is part of the calendar boxes
and forced order
and I hate it as much as the quartz does
as much as the stick birds do
lolol I forgot that I am a stick bird
sick stick bird
stupid sick stick bird

raven the fool

JJ Krupert Dec 2017 number twelve "ghetto rendezvous"


One who has read my nonsense gibberish perhaps has encountered my thoughts that DJ Quik should be given a MacArthur genius grant to make music to encourage mass revolution. I read an interview once where he talked about how he didn’t use dissonance because it was too dangerous a feeling to encourage in people and he didn’t want to do that. MacArthur genius grant that dude and turn him loose on mass consciousness in my opinion.

But all of that is built off the what should be common knowledge that he is the superest of super producers. You should know that. But what gives Quik that added dimension is his strange left field mic style which I mean you know nobody gonna be like “oh yeah you like that Black Thought 10-minute freestyle? you know who you need to listen to is Quik” but it still serves a wonderful purpose upon this Earth as a voice of many realities. Just like every body type doesn’t have to uphold the norms of accepted beauty (which is ugly tbh) every rapper doesn’t have to get an old head phd stamp of approval notarized by hip hop blogosphere.  There is no better more recent album perfect example of this unique DJ Quikness than this track which is a diss song for his lazy piece of shit sister. Imagine becoming famous and wealthy by humble beginnings and supporting your family as is considered the norm, and that family member just continuously fucking you over and not deserving that support. And then you are sad because you kept trying to enforce these external norms on your dysfunctional reality, but you make the break finally, and there is guilt and frustration because you are lamenting a family ideal that never existed in the first place. For many of us, this causes depression and funk (the bad funk) and all types of heartache that is hard to exorcise. Quik had this and figured “fuck it, I’m gonna make a diss track to my piece of shit sister.” It’s so fucking great. Quik is so fucking great. Fuck you if you disagree.

D1SH3S R3M41N STVCK 1N S1NK...

dishes remain stuck in sink;
depression stays thick in heart;
keep spinning world, keep spinning

JJ Krupert Dec 2017 numero once "traficantes michoacanos"


my love of narcocorridos remains shameful 
soy un gringo stupido 

forever
lo siento

Saturday, December 30

M4N'S C0L0RFVL D3TR1TVS...

man's colorful detritus
scattered across Earth's surface
gives false impression of bright

JJ Krupert Dec 2017 number ten "still slummin'"


a slim christmas
but just got paid yesterday
& after all the bills (I know of) is paid
taking the young ‘uns out on an old fashioned
Goodwill loop
hit them thrift stores
ball on a budget

more professional than ever
the stick-n-poke ahnk on my left forefinger
didn’t stop me from real jobbing it
but still jobbing it
natural born jobber
stay broke stay struggling
that’s the nature of this system
& ppl are resilient
we figure out how to afford shit we can’t afford
every month
week
day
still slummin’
(scope the lute)
a world with single economic superpower
& political model
gonna make the world is a ghetto a reality
still slummin’
still smilin’
still a dirtgod

trash no more

JJ Krupert Dec 2017 number nine "all the beauty in this whole life"


la ilaha illallah” is a thing I chant in my head (heart) pretty regularly
(five times a day if I’m right)
and “inshallah” is a thing I say to myself
but not out loud bc idk it feels best to keep to myself
even though “la ilaha illallah” is a thing I have faith in
and practice and believe and thus is not just myself

all this is unnecessary prelude bc likely
it made someone think different of me than actually pay attention to the words
but this Brother Ali song here about All the Beauty in this Whole Life
it is one of the most beautiful metaphorical rap songs that has ever been
and I love it so much and listen to it so much
and I looked it up on genius
which is the site where crowdsourced knowledge attempts to explicate lyrics
and of course nothing was explicated about this song
except one line which even that didn’t feel right
and internet genius doesn’t understand
la ilaha illallah
and fuck man I didn’t understand that shit even a few years back
but it makes more sense to me now
than most things
perhaps all things
but all things
just one thing

anyways

N4V1G4T3 4M3R1C4'S...

navigate America's
wasteland knowing which highways
mark off my perimeter

JJ Krupert Dec 2017 number eight "public enemy #1"


too fast for love
completely attached in memories
to first times (which were also worst times)
long phone conversations
on actual phones
bc that’s what life was like
back then
(crows didn’t want me)
(now I’m hot, crows all up on me)

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(8x but with “I said”s mixed in between each rep of 2)

Friday, December 29

Thursday, December 28

S3C0NDH4ND 4ND L3FT B3H1ND...

secondhand and left behind -
that's that dirtgod raven mack
always abandoned blue track

JJ Krupert Dec 2017 number seven "louisiana stripes"


Making good authentic degenerate drug music is difficult, because one has to be immersed in drug-fueled degeneracy in order to do such a thing. And it’s never as easy as just being all fucked up and making music, because music history is full of fools and idiots who thought they were making music when they were just junkies. Or people who thought they’d fallen over the edge when they hadn’t even gotten close to it, and they made safe sterile music that people thought was brilliant but was co-opted for corporate product sales later on (aka the U2 Rule for Creative Non-Degeneracy), and it made even more sense in that form than in the original form.
Anyways, country music is not really warm to good drug-fueled degeneracy. There’s a long history of drug addicts and alcoholics barely holding their shit together enough to maintain their position as a country musician, but the outlaw status of that was always still marketable. Willie and Waylon and crew did this best. But modern country is really defined by the Garth Brooks 1990s takeover and homogenization which ultimately bleached the fuck out of it beyond belief. That has left us with two forms of rebellious country music…
AUTHENTIC COUNTRY MUSIC REBELLION FORM A: The artist in recovery who because of his recovery from horrible addictions just doesn’t give a fuck to completely kowtow to Nashville’s politics, and he makes “real” music. For me, I enjoy Jamey Johnson from this vein, but that Chris Stapleton guy appears to be this as well, and it’s the type of music that gets the really boring white dude from a job you had in the past to make a bold Facebook post about how THIS IS REAL COUNTRY MUSIC LIKE MY DADDY USED TO PLAY, NOT THAT SHIT ON THE RADIO NOW. I enjoy Jamey Johnson a lot, but every time I hear him it makes me think of my dead father, because my dad would’ve loved Jamey Johnson, but hard living and drug-fueled degeneracy helped my dad die before he could hear recovery Jamey Johnson’s $12 CDs about reality. So there’s a hypocrisy there I think.
AUTHENTIC COUNTRY MUSIC REBELLION FORM B: The Americana alternative whatever the fuck internet-friendly artist who is TOO GODDAMN REAL for corporate country music, and whose songs are regarded (by internet fuckers usually) as more a short story than a song. I guess Jason Isbell and DBT are this (ugh) but the past couple pop culture media cycles has really driven home Sturgill Simpson as perfect example of this. I’ve read all types of shit about how real and authentic Sturgill Simpson is, and perhaps people are confused by his real name, but lemme tell you as a guy who has lived long spells in trailers and trailer parks and did crank with his own father and also did crank at his father’s funeral day bonfire party (where I had to swear a lifelong grudge against a guy I legit do not remember because he accidentally stole a Little Feat CD from me – fuck that guy forever, whoever he might be) – Sturgill Simpson is dentist’s office music, at best. But authenticity has been gentrified by assholes, so a bunch of brunch eating fuckfaces who think they’re country because they support a CSA (the new kind of CSA, not the old one) will tell you how great Sturgill Simpson is. Lololol FUCK OFF YOU FAKE MOTHERFUCKERS.


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Anyways, I say all this as prelude to what a fucking classic Hank Williams III’s Straight to Hell is, because it was in his spiral of motivation and drugs and accomplishment that he hit his peak here. And those peaks never hold – you always sink too far into drugs or not far enough into motivation, and it’s really a tricky fucking matrix to navigate. (Ask William Burroughs.) But he hit it here. And not only did he hit it here, but he double CD’ed it here, with the second CD being where he had found that first CD peak, working at home studio on analog four-track, and said, “You know what? Fuck it, let’s go all out on this shit.” and just blended it all together like a good drug-fueled degeneracy would do. “Louisiana Stripes” is the only track separated listing on Disc 2, before a 42 minute barrage of this and that’s smash together like a 4-day weekend snorting crank in the backroom of the outbuilding at the far end of a rambling compound, deepest into the woods, with top sheets and flags nailed up as curtains. It is the most classic of drug-fueled degeneracy modern country music that exists, and fuck you if you disagree.
I still wrestle with class consciousness pretty badly, and the things I’ve experienced in life and how that makes me both better and worse off. I guess I shouldn’t expect comfortable people to understand how uncomfortable true degenerate rural living can be, nor how beautifully special it is in some strange underlying way. Like I would not have it any other way, to be honest. I still feel most comfortable on a warm spring day in my shitty little camper trailer blasting drug music from various genres, even while stone cold (steve austin) sober, camper door wide open to the wild world outside, peepers or whippoorwills or dogs or muffler-less Silverados or whatever the fuck rumbling outside. But Straight to Hell speaks to me on very deep cellular level, and I guess I believe that’s what makes it feel authentic. I could be full of shit, in fact probably am, because I’m writing all this on the internet, which is kinda like being a Sturgill Simpson anyways.