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.

Monday, June 24

SONG OF THE DAY: Wanna Be Black

Breaking my creative protocol today with how I'm writing these song of the day thangs which, years past, was zippyshare links. But now ppl don’t dl music, they just stream. So I adjusted to using youtube links, because that give constant for these semi-daily triggers to write nonsense gibberish built off musical foundation of something I’d been listening to a lot. But then today’s song didn’t have a youtube link that I could find. And normally I would’ve just thrown a couple gifs together, slapped it into a youtube video I make and upload, and ran with it. That’s my method for this particular project, which is one of like a dozen or two ongoing projects that all have methods and rules that keep me creating at a high rate. I don’t even know how many projects it is because if I get caught in the details, I’m not creating. I have to do my variety of creative endeavors, or I hate life. It’s that simple. This is a small part of it.
Today’s song though is a person I think of very highly – BlackLiq out of Richmond, VA, who hopefully you know about, but if you don’t familiarize yourself. He’s an absolute beast of freestyle skills, and has been releasing mixtapes all year long from his extensive freestyle sessions on his radio show over the years. He is a highly prolific and genuinely authentic creative. I’ve seen a lot of ppl apply that title “creative” to themselves, even with a capital C, but I’mma be honest, not everybody claiming it is really possessed by it. I say that as somebody possessed by it, and recognizing that same possession in BlackLiq, as well as others out here – many others, but many of them in obscurity or outside the accepted realms of what’s considered cool art or not. In fact I got kinda pissed about that same shit this past weekend because I saw signs of someone I’ve experienced in real life as inauthentic but who is highly respected connecting with others who I have suspected as possibly inauthentic but also respected. And I also know I’m no judge of authenticity, so fuck it I won’t speak on that more than to say when you are possessed to create, you have to create. All the rest of the shit that comes with being economically successful – the marketing and acceptance by gatekeepers and being funded/supported by financially powerful people – that’s got nothing to do with authenticity, or merit.
With all that being said, because I respect BlackLiq’s artistic immensity so much, I ain’t make no youtube link to keep up with my protocols for this one tiny thing in the realm of Raven Mack nonsense. I embedded his bandcamp page for this track. When I seen this dude perform this song year or more back, it’s one of those fun ass songs, because he’s a live beast, gets down in the middle of everybody, and he’s pointing out big ass white people on the chorus to say “You wanna be black?” and it’s that wonderful discomfort but feeling okay about it that good art does. And I love for BlackLiq to blow up to where it meant economic comfort for him. But I also feel good in knowing this dude is out here teaching others to express themselves through their art, and sharing the power of the creative path, out of his need to do so, and his knowledge that it’s made him a better human being. And people like this gonna be doing what they doing until death, always something new, never no old age reunion looking back on what we did a long time back, because if you’re creatively driven, you’re always moving forward with constant drive.
All this is a long-ass way for me to say if you don’t know BlackLiq, get to know him. A friend of mine told me a year or two back about an old crazy artist in Detroit who described himself as “a natural born artist” and living that in all ways of every day. I strongly identify with that, and I strongly identify that with Black Liquid as well. If you don’t know of him or his work, explore that bandcamp, and get baptized in the benefits of getting to know another full-blown natural born artist. There’s more of them out here in this world than you realize, and the most natural born of them are often still mostly unknown by the creative meritocracy that trains us to decide what’s really real and what’s not.
This also makes me wanna have a “who are some natural born artists?” discussion on social media, but it’d get hijacked by the poorly opinionated, as usual. So drop them natural born artists in the comments below if you read this far. Let’s talk it out.

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