C0NTR0L 1S N3V3R M41NT41N3D...

control is never maintained 
around the clock, even in 
digital surveillance age 

F1LL1NG 4LL 4V41L4BL3...

filling all available 
cracks in our days' routines with 
a creative resistance 

S3RP3NTS, W1S3 1N D3C31TFVL...

serpents, wise in deceitful 
ways, tread upon us, slithering 
to top of pyramid scheme 

1MM0R4L1T13S L4VND3R3D...

immoralities laundered 
through prism of time’s passage; 
“you had to be there,” we think 

C4M0VFL4G1NG MY L0V1NG...

camouflaging my loving 
heart with gruff exterior, 
but these dimples betray me 

SONG OF THE DAY: Alabama

I still have goals of Southern Gothicc Futurist haiku slams starting up again, and getting a title belt made for our champion. Stylistically, I think the best title belt to base things off of is back when Adrian Street won the Southeastern Heavyweight title from “Wildcat” Wendell Cooley in the Alabama territory in the ‘80s, and painted it pink. That belt had giant crowns sticking off the champion logo, plus even a confederate flag emblem as one of the flags on the belt (which was not uncommon at the time in southern wrestling). Adrian Street’s gimmick was always that he was effeminate but masculine, had a female valet, and tough as shit. He painted the belt bright ass pink, which of course just infuriated the mid-‘80s pro wrestling attending demographics of Alabama, who back then would’ve hated Trump too because he was from New York City. That belt would be the basis of a Southern Gothicc Futurist Haiku Slam Championship belt, without a doubt. Might go lavender in color, but pink is always a bold choice, and good for challenging simple assed people with their brains full of poisonous muck.

J.J. Krupert Top 13 Countdown - April '11 #2: "Rollin' HSV Remix" by Jackie Chain featuring Jhi-Ali

Jackie Chain is the greatest Asian-heritage rapper alive. He's also pretty much the only one I know of. Another Alabama banger (and this is a remix version different from the one off the immensely great and still classic Fear & Loathing in Hunts Vegas mixtape), and featuring Jhi Ali, who has sort of become one of my most favorite rappers ever in that realm of having the potential to make the greatest most country ass perfect banging southern rap "Simple Man" by Skynyrd but for hip hop album possible, simply because he had the greatest verse on "Alabama" (also off that Fear & Loathing mixtape) and his solo joint "Grown Man" which is like the most lounge-empowering song ever done in rap history. I used to put David Banner on that pedestal, but he never really did anything even near as good as "Cadillac on 22s" on that spiritual level, and I've also kinda given up on Nappy Roots ever being able to have more than 3 good songs on any album they do. I don't even know if Jhi Ali does whole tapes, and if he does it's probably drug talk and having thangs like everybody else does.
Jackie Chain will never do super-spiritual Sunday morning coming down music; he is a longhaired Asian-American hip hop dude who smokes a lot of weed (a lot) and does other drugs and works in sex and writing rhymes into that daily regimen. There's nothing wrong with that, and I think this world - as it tries to pretend it's so clean and shovel-ready for economic recoveries that will never come - needs more people who don't give a fuck, but not in a hateful way, just in a "fuck it man, I'm gonna get high and eat some barbecue and try to fuck that girl over there's mouth later tonight, and tomorrow morning I'm gonna stank like tonight still, but that's okay we can go to The Huddle House and get some waffles."
STEAL "Rollin' HSV Remix"
NEXT: Oh man, motherfucking words to live by, and a song that has been on constant background soundtrack for both me and my ol' lady for months!

J.J. Krupert Top 13 Countdown - March '11 #9: "Soul Glo (The Knocks Remix)" by Paper Route Gangstaz

My wife is an herbalist, so she makes tinctures from plants that can help your brain not be so screwy, not to mention help actual physical ailments. She has often offered to make me brain tonics, but I'm just not good about remembering to do things like that. I was good about rubbing goldenrod oil on my back when it started spasming out while working on a ladder, but brain medications... I have always felt like mind over matter is the only way to go for a true alpha-to-omega mind like my own.
Of course, the modern world is buzzing and humming with electronic tomfoolery perhaps not completely meant to but definitely does cloud up the natural rhythms of the natural alpha-to-omega mind. I am not going to get conspiratorial and say this has been done on purpose, and we are all being weakened, maybe not to simply buy things in some sort of capitalist agenda, or to thin us out as the earth is becoming more overtaxed of its resources. Actually yeah, I am saying that. Look at fucking Japan right now, unleashing radiation into the atmosphere, perhaps building to a full-blown China Syndrome (which would actually be New York Syndrome if it happened in Japan, because burning through the core of the earth with toxic radioactive materials to the other side would go there instead... which is interesting that New York and Tokyo are on opposite sides of the earth, of course I have not looked this up on a map at all, so no need to correct me... I am just saying), and having had conversational interactions secondhand with someone who has suggested to me they security clearance access to things and that they know for a fact there have been immunizations tainted with cancer causing agents given to poor people, and that the Gates Foundation is a massive cultural engineering front for performing just such things in the third world...
Wait, this is the wrong direction. My wife made me a herbal tincture to help me focus on not getting caught up in the three thousand things that swirl through my head that I MUST ATTEND TO NOW ALL AT ONCE and to calm myself and handle my business in the thoroughly efficient and gangsta ass ways that I do when my alpha-to-omega mind is not jumbled by the buzzes and hums. And getting caught up in disaster porn or irradiation of the earth fears, that is buzz and hum. Thinking globally and acting locally may make a wonderful bumper sticker for Subaru stationwagons, but it is not a way to live your actual life. The World is huge, and it is impossible, even with the interwebs, to build community with the whole goddamned thing. You have to focus at what is at hand, take care of what needs to be taken care of, and move forward with that. So my wife made me an herbal mix for just such things, to take a few times a day, keep myself from getting fetal positioned out inside my cerebrum, and she called it Soul Shine Tonic because she gives them all names. This of course made me think of this "Soul Glo" song from the Fear & Loathing in Hunts Vegas mixtape from a couple years back that helped launch the Huntsville, Alabama, rap scene onto the world. Of course, that rap scene is a perfect example of thinking locally and acting globally, because for years and years, a solid and thickly intertwined underground scene was built, to the point there's nothing else like it going on right now for the most part, at least not to the extent Huntsville was doing it. Then they blasted out from that, through the interwebs, and now G-Side can get paid to go hang out in Norway, and Jackie Chain can get comp drinks in clubs from Charlotte to San Antone.
So let your soul shine fellow e-folks. Get your hands dirty in your own back yard, and leave the grime on your fingertips when you log into your cyberbot, and let that real soul grime slink into the belly of the beast. Live locally and pollute (the good kind of pollution) globally. But without the local foundation, you can't support the global aspiration. This is why I dremel Rojonekku poems into guard rails throughout southside and central Virginia. This weekend will be my first trip since being injured in January, since it's warm. I try to do a hundred guard rails a weekend, fifty per day, but if you get a good day going, you can knock most all of it out on a wide circle drive Saturday afternoon, and then top it off locally on Sunday morning with the last ten or so, then hit the dumpsters at the Food Lions, come home slop the pigs their Sunday feast, and sit in the back yard trying to figure out if the horizon is as askew as it feels, and how you can use the transmission from the old Datsun and a half-used spool of dry-rotted electrical wire to build a homemade Tesla coil to jam the buzzes and hums on at least part of your five acres.
STEAL "Soul Glo"
NEXT: I will be writing about Bob Dylan, which seems pretty shameful to me!

J.J. Krupert Top 13 Countdown - February '11 #6: "Rollin' (Diplo remix)" by Jackie Chain featuring Jhi-Ali

I have tried to write three different things about this song and all of them got fumbled somewhere in the runback. Stream of conscious is something I get too caught up in, and since I stopped drinking, I can feel its flow a little too closely at times. Different foods, different electronic patterns in the house, other people's aura floating through the house... all of it seems to be more easily affecting my thought stream. Not sure how to block it sometimes. I mean, if it's too much electronics, sometimes you can go out and flick the breaker and it resets everything, and that clears everything up because it takes a while for the army of machines to get their hummmm and buzzzzzzzz back up, like cicadas and cricket symphonies, but artificial, and never getting quiet for a thunderstorm, unless of course the power gets knocked out.
You can't really live off the grid, contrary to alternative energetic belief systems. You might step off the normal grid, but you're still trapped inside a square of that grid. Oddly enough, a Rojonekku lesson/exercise is taking one of the students along the power lines, those monstrous Tripods carrying the bulk of our electricity straight from alleged "plants" where dinosaur carbon is boiled into power, because power lines are never encumbered by overgrowth, and go for miles between major roads, and you won't see a house for two days of hiking, because who the fuck wants to live underneath a power line. You can feel the hummmmm and buzzzzzz extra strong walkabouting underneath of those things, but it's strangely balanced by the sheer lack of active civilization around as well. Lots of plant life you'll find too, unbothered patches of wild oats, St. John's wort plants blooming like mad, little yellow flowers in megacity clusters. The ol' lady says wild harvesting them is no good for medicine, because of the electromagnetic interference, but I make some tinctures anyways. I mean really, most of my students are still young and fairly degenerated for fat portions of their times not under my eyeballs' double gaze. I figure some electromagnetically charged oils probably helps rather than hurts drawing back them to the powerful side of life.
I've done a lot of meditating upon where machines fall into that life/death equation. At one point, I was convinced that there were good people and bad people, who were both ultimately on the good side of things because you still had to have a soul to go bad. And there was a vast majority of humans who were relatively soulless, or it was so shriveled up and concealed, they didn't know how to access it anymore. I still feel that way, I guess, but not quite sure how to navigate machinery and mechanisms into all that. I mean, there's something that feels good to the soul about walking on railroad tracks, or seeing ran down cloverleafs of graffiti stained elevated highways creepy crawling over a cluster of what was probably a bright beacon downtown of capitalist civilization at one point, but is now faded and damaged and yet somehow still beautiful looking, probably more so than when it was brand new. And junk cars are some of the most beautiful things I know of. How does that equate? Where does it fit?
Oddly enough, this song falls into relevance, because it's an ode to doing ecstasy, and again I'm not sure about the pharmaceutical derivatives of plants that the searching and lost types tend to abuse nowadays. Personally, I like the internal feel of non-pharmaceuticals, because the pure negative sterile energy of the places those types of drugs are manufactured in can really tilt you towards the wrong axis. And yet it still feels good to wander that way, and search for something, altering the mind's outlook by whatever means is available, because something doesn't seem to add up I guess.
Most likely, we can never know the full equation to it all. I make that clear to the Rojonekku students. I am no expert, on anything. If I tell you something and it makes sense, that's great. But don't hold that as gospel because memorized words are frozen in meaning, and the real truth is always slithering back and forth, just out of proper grasp.
STEAL "Rollin'"
NEXT: Pure motherfucking science!

J.J. Krupert Top 13 Countdown – January ’11 #12: “Blinded By The Light” by Jackie Chain

Jackie Chain is a great thing that exists – a longhaired weedhead Asian rapper from Alabama who pretty much raps about nothing other than banging chicks, getting high, and having diamonds. He also looks like my buddy Partin from RPG.
This is a recombobulation of that stupid fucking Manfred Mann song that you can still hear on classic rock radio every third hour to this day. That song sucks, and is mostly known as the song where it sounds like the dude says “wrapped up like a douche in the middle of the night.” Jackie Chain takes it, owns it, and makes it something far less annoying for truck rides back and forth to work. I imagine Jackie Chain is probably pretty good at shooting pool, but not obnoxious about it. Like he plays up or down to his competition, and could have a nice rousing game of partners where each side has one chick, but if some dude got all pool table alpha male trying to flex his gamesmanship muscles, Jackie Chain could play a serious game of 9-ball and fuck that dude up, and then go right back to shooting pool with chicks and barely winning. That is the ability to get along well with others, yet show and prove when necessary, but only when necessary. This is probably because he has magical Chinaman blood inside of him, the effects of which are further enhanced by heavy weed smoking.
Did you know most weed you buy nowadays is mad sprayed with pesticides and chemical enhancers? It’s not a common meme out there, but when possible you should really buy local and organic weed. Know your grower, which can be tough because growers are natural paranoids not wanting to get to know a lot of strange ass people. Still though, if you smoke a lot of weed, you owe it to your long-term health to do just that.
STEAL “Blinded By The Light”
NEXT UP: Another catchy ass Hayes Carll song!

J.J. Krupert Top 13 Countdown – December ’10 #10: “Paradise (screwed)” by G-Side

There are two ways to write about things here – one as Mr. Internet Talks-About-Music disreputable IRL failure, and secondly as if we were sitting at the picnic table in my backyard as friends about to play dice. And there are two things to write about in regards to this song – the group that does the song (G-Side) as well as the process of screwing it and who does that (Babe Rainbow). So I will attempt to cover all four bases, because that is what I do, namely whatever feels like it would be not entirely unenjoyable to do at the moment.
G-Side, internet-speak: The Huntsville rap scene has gradually been making more and more noise over the past couple years, and really the sheer amount of at least decent music coming from Alabama steadily is pretty amazing. But they’ve lacked that big cultural hip hop landmark album thus far, and with the odd artsy pre-release hype, it felt like G-Side’s One… The Cohesive Album might be that milestone. But it came and went and the world wasn’t turned on its collective ear. It’s a great album – Block Beataz continue to sort of meld together genres into something that oddly enough feels like the most real hip hop sound going today. But the album wasn’t the brain-crusher I think I was hoping for, maybe even expecting. Still though, G-Side has become The Thing I Think Can Be Amazing from southern rap music. Previously, I have put David Banner, Devin the Dude, and Nappy Roots in this slot – artists who at some point if the conditions are right will make the most Raven-endorsed hybrid of country ass living and hip hop music that ever was dreamed of in my most delusional drug-dazed states. But Banner never did anything even remotely close to “Cadillac on 22s”, Devin the Dude has never not gotten high long enough to put together a string of concepts that go beyond the next reload of the Vaporizer, and Nappy Roots has consistently had a few good “hits” on every offering, but never actually knocked that grand slam. Maybe I’m hoping for something that just won’t happen. I mean hip hop is not a new music so it is not made by forward-thinking people so much anymore. It’s become a derivative of a derivative, and you have to wonder if we’ve already gotten up to basically Disco 2.0 form of hip hop, which was the tired sound that hip hop originally replaced in the days of “Rapper’s Delight” that it might be caving in on itself. But I will hope against hope that G-Side will do this, and they definitely have the tools and talents. And I know the world ain’t ready for them. So the landscape is in place. They just need to whip up that creative tornado at some point. Until then, I guess the Fear & Loathing in Hunts Vegas mixtape will have to do as Alabama’s landmark musical offering.
G-Side, picnic table talk: There’s this crazy amount of country assed rap coming out of Alabama that’s pretty fucking good but nobody’s ever heard of none of these guys. G-Side is like the best of that, because they’re country as fuck, yet all spacey and full of Universal Magnetics. They’re fucking awesome.
(Interesting to note how internet analysis is that they’ve not yet reached their potential, thus shining a negative light on them, but picnic table talk props them up as the best from their little corner of the world. I did that by accident, but I think that sums up the difference between internet and real life. And fuck man, don’t even remind me how internet IS now real life for most people. Fuck.)
Screwed, internet-speak: Babe Rainbow is the dude who screwed this, and he’s had some pretty good SoundCloud mixes in the past year. I guess he’s some up-and-comer who also produces music, and judging by his body of remix work, I would guess he’s either a white guy from a larger college town east of the Missippi and north of the Mason-Dixon line, like Louisville, KY, or Springfield, MA, or somewhere like that. Or, if not such a white guy, he’s probably a black guy from Canada. But he’s been doing things that I enjoy, though I’m not sure if I’ve ever heard one of his original compositions yet. Screwing and chopping music is something that’s so lost, even with it’s popularity. The thing that’s overlooked a lot in regards to DJ Screw is that he was a solid DJ with a DJ’s ears. Screwing music, contrary to popular belief, is not as simple as slowing shit down. And shit man, mixing in chopping, I can’t even begin to try to explain that, because it’s beyond me musically. It sucks that Michael “5000” Watts has installed himself as the heir apparent to Screw’s throne, because his style has never really gotten it done for me. I always preferred OG Ron C’s more actual chopped up (not slopped up) style. In fact, I am going to stifle myself from going too far on and on about screwed music because I’ve wanted to speak upon that (orale!) at the good news/bad dope blog (see the sidebar) that’s wheezing on life support right now.
Screwed, picnic table talk: I love screwed music. I wouldn’t eat a grape if it wasn’t screwed and chopped first. A lot of people don’t like it, but you know what? Fuck a lot of people.
STEAL “Paradise”
NEXT UP: Going back to the motherland, in our magic lavender dress shirts!

J.J. Krupert Top 13 Countdown – October ’10 #11: “Wi-Fi” by Yung Clova

Alabama rap, specifically the Huntsville scene, has been hyped the fuck out of itself inside the interwebs in the past year, and yet there’s still tons of shit I find every other week that’s better at its high points than anything else going. I am more amped for the G-Side CD coming out in January than probably anything else that has been virally marketed in the past year. And really, the immense popularity of Kanye West’s retard style was kind of the straw that broke the camel’s back and made me realized that I am an old man, out of touch with what the world deems awesome nowadays. It’s funny being on this end of old manliness and not the other side like I once was, you realize that the world has gradual changes that make something pop cultural so perfect for young folks. I don’t understand Kanye’s popularity at all, but I also don’t think lolcats is all that hilarious or conjure up in my head images of Disney stores and bright lights when I think of NYC. But that’s what’s going on in this world now. The grime has been polished or run off like rats to where you don’t see it no more, everything’s so goddamned cleaned up like a mall, pre-planned and orderly and the wildest thing you see is a Buster & Dave’s closing at 1 am.
But you can still find your inner-grime in this sterilized world, and Alabama rap is the perfect example of that fact, this song in particular. Yung Clova is one-half of G-Side along with ST 2 Lettaz, and his The Koolest Kid mixtape that came out this year is gooder than fuck. “Wi-Fi” seems like that normal sterilized style of modern synth-heavy rap music, and yet there’s something different and great about it. Huntsville is a town that used to build rockets, and that space age mentality is tinged throughout Clova’s mixtape (as well as G-Side, as well the whole Slow Motion Soundz movement, probably from growing up in the shadow of rocket statues). This song is a great early morning transition into another shitty day on this earth’s surface, struggling and juggling and trying to find a month full of Friday nights in your life at some point, yet getting dealt nothing but a steady string of Tuesday mornings. Oh well, breath deep the reefer smoke and get yourself wi-fi.
STEAL “Wi-Fi”
NEXT UP: The King of Stoner Rap (or maybe the Stoner King of Rap)!

S14: Best College Football Teams

Sort of realized as I inserted the pics that I completely forgot to write an intro. Oh well... no one's looking at this except those seven people at that South Alabama message board. WHAT'S UP SOUTH ALABAMANIANS! HOLLA AT YA BOY! That means me... if you guys still have slaves, don't holler at them.

#1: SOUTH ALABAMA JAGUARS (6-0, 42.000 avg. margin of victory, #1 last week) – Beat Lamar last weekend, 26 to 0, and go on their longest road trip of the year out to Killa Cali to take on UC Davis this Saturday. After that it’s all home games against fellow upstart teams, including one called Henderson State that I’ve never even heard of. Man, I’m not sure I can get up to write these stupid football blurbs again.

#2: MINNESOTA-DULUTH BULLDOGS (7-0, 38.429 avg. margin of victory, #4 last week) – Won 49 to 0 at Mary last week, and the #2 team in Division II football. I was trying to think of something wacky to look up and fill in all these blurbs but could really come up with nothing. I am watching baseball right now and it was a rainy fall day and really nothing can manufacture a dullard’s mind quite like all of that. Watching a baseball game is like watching cancer develop. It is okay on the radio, but one of my local AM sports stations went to Jesus a few months back and the other one doesn’t have the baseball games.

#3: TRINE THUNDER (6-0, 38.167 avg. margin of victory, #2 last week) – Beat alma at home, 38 to 0, and are ranked 8th now in Division III, up two spots, coasting through the season to make the Division III playoffs, which are far more exciting than a lot of other collegiate sporting tournaments, just because there’s so many damned Division III schools, and most of them rarely venture out of their little region except for when they might make the playoffs. Shit man, some of them don’t even leave their home state most seasons.

#4: OREGON DUCKS (6-0, 38.000 avg. margin of victory, #3 last week) – Beat Washington State, 43 to 23, in Pullman or Beaverton or wherever the fuck Washingto State is, and are ranked #1 in most all Division I polls, except the BCS standings, which incorporate computer tricknology to screw shit up and shoot HAARP beams into QB and MLB helmets. When the Ducks had like one or two wacky bright green uniforms, I was all about it, but now that they have so much just trifling ass gear, they killed it. Imagine how good this team would have been if they still had that degenerate Samoan QB dude who went to Mississippi and that other LeGarrett Blount dude who went pro after punching people last year. That guy may not have had any more eligibility, but whatever. Oregon is proof positive yet again that in college football, if you load your team up with athletic miscreants, success will follow. And oh snap, the Ducks play tonight on TV against UCLA.

#5: WISCONSIN-WHITEWATER WARHAWKS (6-0, 38.00 avg. margin of victory, #5 last week) – Warhawks stomping in their big brown boots through the Wisconsin football conference they in, crushing Eau Claire, 45 to 0, at Eau Claire last week, and still sitting on something fat at #1 in Division III footballs. One time I met a hippie chick from Wisconsin while picking blueberries in Maine. I love that weird Wisconsin accent, and it always makes me think of masturbating in the rural piney woods of somewhere ten miles from Cherryfield, Maine, along dirt roads.

#6: BOISE STATE BRONCOS (6-0, 35.167 avg. margin of victory, #11 last week) – Crushed San Jose State, 48 to 0, in San Jose last weekend, and have this weekend off to set up a Tuesday night game (!?!?) next week against Louisiana Tech. I am all for a playoff in Division I football, and have laid out how it would work perfectly many times, like every other asshole inside the interwebz, but even as a man who roots for underdogs, I have to say I find Boise State kind of annoying. I hope they lose to Hawaii in two weeks, so that I can look at old Hawaii Rainbow Warrior helmets again for no reason, except they reminded me they existed.

#7: WESLEY WOLVERINES (7-0, 34.143 avg. margin of victory, #14 last week) – #3 in Division III still, and beat Southern Virginia, which is actually located in Lexington, which is not nearly the southern part of Virginia, 52 to 3, last weekend. Wesley Wolverines is one of those team names that sounds like there should be a middle name as well, like Wiley or Wilson. They are on chill mode this weekend, then come back Halloween weekend for their next to last game of the regular season.

#8: SIOUX FALLS COUGARS (7-0, 34.000 avg. margin of victory, #6 last week) – In their big showdown last week (as shown on NAIA TV… did you catch that?) against Morningside, they whooped them 28 to 3. First time this year they’ve been held to under 35 points, and they are still the undisputed King of NAIA, an honorary title at best. I anxiously await small college football playoffs so these teams can start knocking each other off a little more regularly.

#9: ST. XAVIER COUGARS (8-0, 33.875 avg. margin of victory, #10 last week) – #3 in NAIA football, which is played with only 9 men and a football made of homecrafted leather and filled with porcupine quills and the breath of village elders. They beat Malone last week, 55 to 16, and that was a football game somewhere in America while the rest of us were living our normal lives. 9/11 changed everything.

#10: WITTENBERG TIGERS (7-0, 32.429 avg. margin of victory, unranked last week) – Traditional Division III powerhouse strongly stomped Kenyon College, 52 to 0, to get onto the Bully List again. Wittenberg, ranked #7 in Division III, is in Ohio, and the subject of a famous book by Sherwood Helmsley.

#11: ST. THOMAS TOMMIES (7-0, 32.000 avg. margin of victory, unranked last week) – Those wild Tommies threw up their biggest total of the season last weekend, beating Hamline 61 to 17. They are #5 in Division III, and in a few short weeks, all these Division III teams will start whittling themselves down to a champion. If you have read this far more than twice this year, then you know more about Division III college football than 97% of the earth. Congratulations.

#12: UTAH UTES (6-0, 31.833 avg. margin of victory, #9 last week) – Beat Wyoming, 30 to 6, last weekend, and picking off bottom feeders in the Mountain West Conference, looking forward to their showdown with TCU in three weeks. Utah is ranked #9 across the board in all polls and computer finaglings. Oddly enough, there are as more teams right now in the top 10 from the Mountain West than the Big 12, ACC, and Big East combined.

#13: MOUNT UNION RAIDERS (6-0, 31.833 avg. margin of victory, unranked last week) – After falling off the Bully List for a week, Mount Union, the #2 team in Division III, beat a Heidelberg press up, 45 to 7, last weekend, and is back on this Bully List. They seem to be having a down year, as in previous seasons I’ve done this, they’ve averaged beating their opponents by well over 50 points per game.

#14: TEXAS CHRISTIAN HORNED FROGS (7-0, 30.857 avg. margin of victory, unranked last week) – Oddly enough, TCU only beat Brigham Young last weekend, 31 to 3, actually minimally bringing down their average margin of victory. But other teams’ stumbles allowed them to take the last spot on the Bully List this week. And I really need to take a fucking week off from this shit. Luckily Halloween falls on a weekend, so I’ll probably be doing minor psychotropical tinctures and listening to a lot of Geto Boys next week.

Gone from the list from last week: #7 Bethune-Cookman Black Wildcats (won at South Carolina State to stay undefeated, but only 14 to 0), #8 McPherson Bulldogs (beat Kansas Wesleyan in a shootout, 56 to 42), #12 Morningside Mustangs (lost to Sioux Falls, as noted above), and #13 Kansas Wesleyan Coyotes (lost to McPherson, like I just said).

J.J. Krupert Top 13 Countdown - June '10 #1: "Grown Man" by Jhi Ali

Huntsville, Alabama's rap scene is much hyped as the next big thing, which is ridiculous on two fronts. First off, if you haven't been paying attention, there is no such thing as a next big thing in the music industry anymore. Dudes are lucky to sell 50,000 CDs/downloads anymore. The game has simply changed. Secondly, Huntsville, Alabama's rap scene is already big, like huge, full of all sorts of quality artists, usually revolving around the Slow Motion Soundz studio, and them motherfuckers are already getting to do things like go to Norway for tours or constantly book shows throughout what's left of the Chitlin Circuit that hasn't been shut down by the cops. Plus, the internet jocks the fuck out of them, which I'm sure means mad college girl punani.
Most of the hype started with the Paper Route Gangstaz when that Diplo dude "remixed" their Fear & Loathing in Hunts Vegas mixtape, although if you hear a lot of the originals, there wasn't a whole ton of remixing being done. They already had a weird old pop music sample-based sound going on that was kind of like screwed music but more for pillheads. As the internet jocking of PRGz spread, there are always those down ass expert whiteboys who have to be ahead of the curve, and know more about something than anyone else, and those types have been jocking G-Side, especially ST 2 Lettaz and the Huntsville International mixtape. This is fine, because it's good music, and I'll be honest, I still bump the fuck out of that Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas mixtape, which I consider to be one of the best shits to come out in years... way better than this Lil Wayne or Drake bullshit people act like is great. Then again I'm more of a take a pill, crack a double deuce, and ride around in an old car for about four hours straight type of guy, so it fits my stroll.
The thing I've noticed though is, by far, my favorite rapper from the Huntsville scene is Jhi Ali. That "Alabama" song off the Hunts Vegas tape is The Fucking Shit. Plus, he drops a tight verse on the "Rollin'" song by Jackie Chain (best Azn rapper alive!), and generally just has a fucked up voice like Lil Boosie, but raps about way different shit... basically being a country ass black dude who loves pussy and money and the country. I'm not black, but goddamnit ain't no doubt I love the country and I love pussy and I really don't mind money, though I don't want it to rule my life, even though it do.
This song is off a Slow Motion Sounds comp called V.S.O.P. III, and it's the greatest motherfucking inspirational self-motivation song to ever be made in the rap music. Seriously. Forget those corny ass old school '80s songs or that fucking Nas song where the kindergarteners were all talking about knowing they can. This is the type of shit you can wake up with in the morning, pump on the shitty boom box in the bathroom as you brush your teeth with the same ratty fucking toothbrush you've had for a year and a half, look in the mirror, seeing the cracks in the wall behind you and the mildewed shower curtain and the uneven paint job, and be like, "Yeah, I'm gonna be the bestest Raven Mack that I can be." And then you go out and do what you do.
Seriously, self help too often is out of touch with those that need help. I ain't trying to hear about no Jesus bullshit or learn how frybread and pork chops is going to kill me. Self-helping other types are starting by trying to hit a half court skyhook when they need to start with lay-ups. Roll up to dudes and be chill and be like, "Be what you can. Shit is fucked, no doubt. Try to make it a little less fucked every now and then. Can I hold a dollar, bro?" Often times the reality of life is all too real, and when outsiders roll in with these This Is How You Fix It mantras, it just pisses everybody off. Hell, that's why Africa is so fucked up to this day. People don't think, "Hey, let's try to make Africa not so fucked up a little bit." They think, "Oh they got AIDS and they got genocide, let's sell a bunch of goddamned red clothes at the mall and throw money into the air and feel better about ourselves."
I am veering off the point of "Grown Man" pretty far, but I would like to brag upon the fact that my 11-year-old daughter's favorite rap song has been this song for a while too. She also likes that "Alabama" song a lot, though "Stuntastic" was her jam off Fear & Loathing in Hunts Vegas mixtape. Man, one day she's going to read Hunter S. Thompson and have friends who smoke weed and just become more hip to it all and she's going to figure me out. Shall I deny it like most parents, or act like it was different when I did it because I did it, not her? I don't know. Fuck it. Parenting is more about figuring it out as you go than knowing what's right or wrong to do. Most of those fuckers who know what's right or wrong to do are the same types buying red sweat shirts thinking it will help Africa not have AIDS no more.
So basically it's a world full of fuckers, and I enjoy the fact Huntsville, Alabama, is making so much goddamned good music nowadays, to where if you've never heard of it, there's seriously an entire back catalog of awesome music you could dig into for months and months. And nobody knows about it. Which is good. Because if it became the Next Big Thing as in opening for Lady Gaga and Kanye West and eventually headlining their own stadium brouhahas, it would no longer be what it is - which is pure and organic as fuck (organic meaning it came about naturally, not it's sterilized of pesticides, because there's crazy pesticidal homicidal suicidal bullshit in nature) and perfect just the way it is. Were my two turntables and mixer and USB connector and 4-track not in a pile in the camper trailer underneath some stuff we moved out the front room of the house, I'd do a Huntsville sampler for your ass. But as it is, the clutter of my life will force me to share my words and this single link of a song that I think is the motherfuckin' shit for you to pilfer from inside the robot race and try to find some human soul twinkle in your very own personal all too real life. God bless you bros and sisses.
STEAL "Grown Man"
NEXT MONTH: Last month!