a reminder that I have a Patreon

Scope the link to the right or click this, but I've been running a Patreon for a few years now, which is somehow full of just as much content as this constant ass blog has. I assume folks know, but I'm not sure they do, and I don't know that folks that support my Patreon even know this blog exists. Who knows? The daily photograph/gambleraku I post here actually compose sets of thirty that I post all together on my Patreon. Other things that go on there:

• shard tanka with tanka poems written with google street view screenshots
• fairly regular haiku batches
• a Dollarstore Tournament Fighting tournament set in an unreal town called Dirtrock (where I actually live)
• random sonnets or commentary
• just started a thing called The Maradona which is a soccer-related list thing in memory of Diego Maradona

Anyways, just throwing this in here in case anybody sees this that didn't know about that, and vice versa. I create a myriad of shit all across multiple media, both digital and physical, all of it accessible in different ways but none of it entirely connected. It's more like tendrils wandering wherever rather than a well-organized English garden. It's a beautiful mess, just like me, which makes sense.

SONG OF THE DAY: Somebody's Gone

Brother Theotis Taylor is a nonagenarian (dude in his 90s) down in south Georgia, who apparently for decades has had a piano and an old reel-to-reel tape recorder set up, so that when the mood struck him, he’d record some sounds. He toured as a gospel singers, even played the Apollo, and with Sam Cooke for a while. But mostly he’s just been living his life down in Georgia, feeling the creative spirit as it hit him, and making his art as a conduit from wherever it comes from for whoever might hear it. Even if they don’t hear it, it’s more about a relationship with creation than an end result of consumption. People lose sight of that too often. I lose sight of that too often. (My kids are always like, “why are you saying ‘people’ when you mean us?”) Creation existed long before consumption did, and will continue to exist long after this system of mass consumption – which has poisoned every possible creative outlet you could think of – is dead and gone. Anyways, this song is pretty fuckin’ great.

SONG OF THE DAY: Cheeba Cheeba

 

video 

Randomly decided to look up famous graffiti artist Stay High 149, and turns out he was born in Southside Virginia, down in Emporia, before moving to the New York City at age 6 in the mid-1950s, and ending up in the Bronx around ‘66. Apparently he never knew his dad, but early on in graffiti’s late ‘60s/early ‘70s days, Stay High 149 became well-known, turning a haloed stickman figure from a popular TV show into a smoking character that was thrown up with his every time he did it, stylizing it in a way not everybody did at the time. By the time hip hop and graffiti was blowing up towards the mid-70s, Stay High 149 was a legend. He apparently had a job as a messenger downtown, so rode the train all day long, saw other tags, so started carrying markers with him and tagging all over. He got featured in a New York magazine article in 1973, including a picture, and the cops busted him afterwards once they knew what he looked like. He switched to other tags after that, then he sort of disappeared, still tagging but also battling drug problems, while raising and supporting a family. (He apparently tagged the stairwells of the World Trade Center extensively, because that’s where his job was based, before he lost it due to drug issues.) Around 2000, as internet culture and information sharing was developing, he ran into another graffiti writer, and found out his name still carried legend. He resurfaced, getting mobbed at a couple art shows he showed up to at the time, and got back into graffiti for a while. Norman Mailer’s “Faith of Graffiti” long essay had been released as a book with photographs of prominent graffiti back in ’74, and featured Stay High 149. It got reissued in 2009, and had a picture of a Stay High 149 tag on the cover of it. At the same time, the actual Stay High 149 could be found haggling prices for graffiti canvases on the streets of NYC. Once again, the archivist from within the system of respectability and authority got more wealth out of the deal than the originator and source of the material. Stay High 149 died in 2012, from liver disease, after a life spent battling those addiction demons. He’s got a government name that his obituaries go by, but his real name is Stay High 149, and to think otherwise is fucking stupid and disrespectful to how he lived his life.
Emporia used to have both an east-west and north-south train line, but the east-west has been shut down, like a lot of shit in Southside Virginia. Folks try to gentrify them into rails to trails, but weekend bikers will never bring the economy that actual functioning textile mills and factories gave folks. It’s a dead end town for the most part now if you don’t already have wealth to live off of. The north-south line still runs, operated by CSX, and the Amtrak still comes through, carrying folks up north to better opportunities or family or an escape to this day. There’s no yard there, so probably not any old freights sitting around, but I wanna go down there and tag up some Stay High 149s, as homage to an illegitimate arts legend, and where he was born, because ain’t nobody there gonna bother trying to remember shit like that.

SONG OF THE DAY: Jo Lean (Slurred & Blurred)

Jo Lean video 

SHOUT OUT TO DJ BRILLIANT, SLURRING IT AND BLURRING IT. He told me he'd never really listened to this song before he fucked with it, slowing it down and chopping it up. True artists understand the essence of the material they're working with, even without analysis. Without thinking. Shit just comes to you, naturally, like McDonalds bags full of fries to a pack of crows.

SONG OF THE DAY: Why Hate?

In this age of riding whatever wave is the latest wave of the week, please remember to support your local longtime heavyweights. You can love music globally but support locally. Poe Mack, Case Jones, and Rawsole Records have been a cornerstone of Roanoke, Virginia, hip hop scene for a long ass minute. Poe’s one of them dudes I’ve seen talk about how the pandemic has shut down his independent opportunities as a performer. He’s also one of them dudes who has been about the movement happening right now in his local scene. Supporting dudes like him is important. So do it.

1 T3ND T0 W4ND3R, H0P1NG...

I tend to wander, hoping

creativity blossoms

in twenty different ways

VGL1N3SS M4D3 B34VT1FVL...

ugliness made beautiful...

that is the nature of art -

more than a commodity

SONG OF THE DAY: Shake

I am magnetically drawn by the specific composure of my human atomic build being composed of stardust derived from Epsilon Aquarii, Zeta Aquarii, and Gliese 876, to love the natural born artists upon this Earth ball who work constantly and consistently and without doubtedly all the while mostly in obscurity, because most of our civilized world is moth-brained attracted to the neon flames or iphone glare, and can’t see all the amazing human creation all around them. Today, that means Count Bass D.

SONG OF THE DAY: Hot Pan

Man I ain't got shit to say except Nickelus F is a legend, doing it underground for years, and yet also having secret influences within the larger industry itself. "We came up on gas station cuisine… fried everything, sodas, jellybeans." I GUARANTEE YOU NICKELUS F KNOWS ABOUT THEM EAST COAST POTATO WEDGES. ONE THIGH AND A LARGE ORDER OF WEDGES, TAKE ALL THE TEXAS PETE PACKETS YOU CAN.

SONG OF THE DAY: Anti

We had a War Games rap battle event this past weekend, our third, and it went down pretty well. Solid DJs plus solid direction plan helped. We’ve got a Brass Knuck title for the illest MC who controls the stage, everybody else get the fuck off, and that battle had both people do two songs (challenger first/champion second) then perform a third knockout song. The challenge was a female MC, Shamika Shard’e, and she absolutely fucked up the third song, like there was no doubt she was gonna win that shit. The way we run these is with a homemade cage, like MMA or wrestling, and three judges who score the competitors. Shamika won on unanimous decision.

The main event was a battle rap, featuring hometown hood battle rap legend Versity Rell vs. our champion Fellowman. Crowd was in Rell’s corner, but he did slip up in second round a little, and still got off some of the hottest lines. Fellowman won on judges scorecards, split decision, and there was a couple folks in the crowd heated about that. I mean Rell had his mama at the show to watch.

BlackLiq was one of our judges, and the thing I love about this dude is he’s always straight up, even if what he’s got to say ain’t what you was hoping to hear. Our host (my brother Remy St. Clair) had the judges speak on why they scored it the way they did, and BlackLiq was straight up with the crowd, no sugar coating. Then he hung out for a while, rode back to Richmond and hosted his radio hip hop show later that night. The dude is putting in work constantly. He’s put out a freestyle mixtape every month this year from his vast radio show archives, in anticipation of dropping a new album project in 2020. “Anti” comes off his last album project, which is slamming as fuck. I appreciate people who don’t necessarily slap that “creative” noun on their own ass, as an identity, and instead are just out here doing the work every damn day, building worlds. The rest of civilization notices little by little, and might not notice at all sometimes, but you’re still putting in that constant grinding work to build those worlds you need to see, need to express, want to make bigger. I respect artists like that so much more than self-identified creatives or people gaming the system with the same shit some other dude two neighborhoods over is doing.

Bonus footage of our 9 Pillars War Games heavyweight title battle rap below...

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.