DVST-C0V3R3D R3L1G10VS T3XTS...

dust-covered religious texts

left behind as we indulge

in digital opioids

SONG OF THE DAY: Mary Jane

So hey, I took some weed gummies while I was out west last fall, and I’ll be honest I don’t even like getting high like that any more. My mind races too much and I just turn into metaphysical fetal position thought swirls which don’t stop, not even bad just constant, like a washing machine stuck on super spin cycle and it’s just spinning and spinning and spinning and fuck man, I’m constantly busy where there’s no down time. I don’t want to spin harder. They even told me the one kind was great for anxiety but it’s not even anxiety just constant brain/mind crunch of the demands of self-expression (which I never have enough time to do all the shit I want to work on) and obligations (fuckin’ real life is an asshole) and then to have mind spinning super fast while body is in bumble bumble mode, it’s more like torture than joy. Give me the fog, the deep heavenly grandmother quilted fog that wraps around your whole body and shuts down all sensation of pain and frustration and feels like you were reborn in clouds, floating on the couch, watching South American futbol, hoping for a riot that inadvertently triggers global order collapse.

SONG OF THE DAY: I Couldn't Get High

An abnormally warm Friday, week of my birth, dark familial matters like always, nation state geopolitics absolutely fucked, can’t get no respite not enough hours to do all the creating I wanna do and maintain responsible necessities, trying to sell art to a broke ass world, stretching $14 from here til 8 days from now (plus untapped change jar about two inches thick, mostly brown though – been strip mined of quarters once already), so yes very much yes the concept of getting high still calls me, still says in that sweet whisper, “Hey Raven, fuck it man, none of this shit matters, you’ll never get anywhere and you’re wasting all this effort trying to do all this shit that won’t ever happen for somebody with your background anyways. Fuck it. Take that oxycontin and go sit in the park, don’t do shit but listen to the birds, or go down by the river and let the rapids laugh at you, which your dumbass.” And man, that whisper makes a lot of sense, but my hands ain’t shaking, at least not today. But those poor choices always beckon, as the best choices possible a lot of times.

JJ Krupert Feb 2018 number one "syrup splash"

[met a white girl who rapped in Chinese 

at a tea house who reminded me 

Spark Master Tape was good like 

cup of warm kava on 

dark nights of the soul] 

Forty-five years and counting, but still stuck right here,

feeling as unheard as ever, wishing for that

slurred escape, pharma-fog to blur/make disappear

absurd life, living false, sittin' on nothing flat,

how did I get there? Can't remember precise path,

forgotten forks? Fuck it though, spoonfeed me codeine

and let me overdose on clouds, sweet grapes of wrath

flavored syzzurp to create blizzard of this obscene

abomination against the Power of Lounge

called civilization, mislabelled as progress;

rather be wobbling through woods, letting fingers scrounge

white trash quartz, stack dirtgod altars against noblesse,

making syrup splash in poisoned consciousness stream,

Biggie's voice echoing with "it was all a dream..."

freestyle sonnet #098: UPON CONTEMPLATING THE POTENTIAL BENEFITS OF POPPY TEA IN AVOIDING PAIN

Deep unshakable rootlessness, feel like I lack 

attachment to actual ground, lost without sight, 

wishing for natural fog to turn dark times black 

with numbness, fighting the myth of how living right 

somehow manifests a difference. Still feel doomed, 

still feel damned to downward spiral destinies, still 

stay dumbed down to navigate half-heart world consumed 

with digital fog delights. Writing useless swill 

of scrap words to attempt to find meaning amid 

mundane yet absurd subsistent existence - waste 

of time, waste of space square-locked into power grid 

lacking empowerment. Promise of life debased 

by design into chasing devil math nowhere; 

I'd rather chase the dragon off into dream air. 

SW1MM1NG THR0VGH 0XYC0D0N3...

swimming through oxycodone

fog in the upstairs back room,

lights (real and metaphor) dimmed

W0RK1NG CL4SS WH1T3 TH1NKP13C3S...

working class white thinkpieces

are the opioid crisis

of intelligentsia

[2k=0] Alone In The Crowd (Trying Not To Be A Glass Shard Person)

(say "word")

Broken people, likely out of learned survival skill, are very good at pretending nothing is happening. It’s that ironic “It’s all good!” or “It is what it is…” after they just told you about some horrible, wretched hardship or trauma they’ve endured, and are still standing, at least physically. The psychic (metaphysical, psychological, perhaps even neurological once science catches up – if it ever does) realm they perhaps are not standing so straight in though. But generally if you are from broken people, you know the edges are sharp, and we rub each other in ugly and painful ways, pretty consistently, and nobody ever really wants to take responsibility for their ugliness and the pain they’ve caused. A lot of broken people (think of them as sigils made of glass shards) tend to think of themselves as victims themselves, from a previous generation’s ugliness and pain, and the shit just compounds, both in unseen genetics as well as physical environment – a one-two double psychic dropkick that gives the next generation a pretty good traumatic shot to the soul, either in large horrible events, or the slow accumulation of instability and chaos.

When you come from broken glass shard people, there is a likelihood to some extent you will also become a broken glass shard person. It’s not set in stone (it’s glass, remember?) but that path is certainly laid out for you. Not becoming that type of person is really a crap shoot, to be honest. Self-medication, self-hatred, or that hatred being channeled outward to others are all fairly easy redirects of this negative energy that occur regularly in our late capitalist American culture. Two of the prominent news trends of the past few weeks have directly related to broken glass shard people, seen as white by racial constructs: opioid epidemics, and white supremacy/nationalism/neo-Nazis.

(As an aside, being this is the internet, which seems to be a medium for manufacturing hate at all levels, I want to clarify that by saying “seen as white by racial constructs”, I’m not denying the reality of those constructs. In fact, I have benefitted from them greatly in life. Even though I’m very much a broken person from broken people, I can put a $4 button down shirt over top my shitty tattoos, cut my hair, say “yes sir” and “no ma’am” enough to appear to be as safe a white as possible. I would not have the job I have now if I wasn’t white, not coming from the background I came from, nor with the internal jaggedness that I’ve always possessed. Though our racial structure in America is very much a created structure, it is also very much a real and oppressive creation. It’s important for me to acknowledge that, and also do what I can in my life to not perpetuate that.)

I’m not entirely sure why the opioid epidemic is now an epidemic as compared to previous decades when self-medication leading to addiction decimated so many urban minority communities as well as many rural lower socio-economic ones. When you click the map of Appalachian counties suffering the most overdoses in the currently defined epidemic, these are mostly places that have always been known to be homelands of hopelessness, long before greedy pharmaceutical companies starting pushing oxycodone through doctors in these areas. Certainly having a sort of legal way to self-medicate helped make that problem worse, but it was always there.

But as someone who has been blessed enough to sit in on jail writing workshop classes before can attest, or anyone who has been part of a similar recovery groups in the public sphere, these addictions travel back generations, and become learned behaviors, or at the very least acceptable behaviors. You don’t know any better. But you still grow up, become an adult, and then are saddled with the legal responsibilities as part of civilized society to know better. I think of it a lot of times like being asleep in the numbing fog, to avoid all the glass shards of others as well as yourself, and then needing to wake up at some point, and be like, “Oh fuck, I’ve got to stop cutting everybody else up with my glass shards!” There’s no real definitive point that happens but you see it a lot in the prison system, as well as recovery programs from substance abuse. For a lot of folks, that’s when they hit a personal low point where they can’t ignore it anymore, but also they’re often forced by the legal system to detox long enough to actually feel for a minute.

I’m almost seven years sober, so I understand that part. I have family who has battled addiction, both hard as well as legal (alcohol). Liver failures and disappearances happen. Suicides and early deaths. One of the scariest sights I saw before my 18th birthday was my dad attempting to quit drinking in the trailer we shared at the time, and watching him suffer withdrawals. But even my quitting had less to do with me than it did with the fact I had my own children, who I did not want to recreate this pattern with. It’s easier for us to love someone else than to love ourselves, easier to use that motivation for someone else to try and break these broken people glass shard cycles than it is for ourselves.

I will also clarify that I would never have been successful for seven years if I hadn’t practiced learning to love myself more. I still struggle with it, too, wanting to sink into the blinding, numbing fog of medication, legal or not, and disappear from this bullshit world. It’s very literally a daily battle.

Which brings me to the white supremacy/neo-Nazi part of this. When the Ku Klux Klan rally last month and the white nationalist/supremacist rally this month happened in Charlottesville, I felt it necessary to be present, as a rural-born, rural-raised, Southern white male, or as I prefer to think of it if I am forced to identify myself racially, as a country ass whiteboy, to say to these fuckers, “yo, I might look like you and be from where you are from, but fuck you, I’m not with you.” Those fuckers know people of color and marginalized groups are not like them, and they have a perverted pride in that. I feel it’s important for people they think might be down with their demographics as they wage their bullshit memetic wars for western culture, stand up and say, “nah, fuck you.” In fact, it’s necessary. It’s not enough to claim you’re not one of the bad white people; you have to go out and stand up to those who are bad, and prove you’re better than them. (If you wonder why that’s not enough, or think that’s bullshit, think about putting on the shirt and cleaning up for a job interview or court appearance, and wonder why that’s possible. If you can use your whiteness as an inside lane to then cooperate and navigate obstacles, you’re benefitting from the shit. I’m not saying it’s your fault, or you created the fucked up bureaucratic somewhat amoral mess that is America today, but if you can smooth your way through it and others cannot, then that’s a benefit. And thus when assholes are out being Nazis with confederate flags and the white polo shirt/khaki combo of every construction site foreman in America, instead of sitting back in the safety of your own circle and saying “heritage not hate”, you need to get your ass out there and confront those fuckers; not leave it for others to do for you.)

Charlottesville the weekend of August 12th was a horrible community trauma. It happened in the days before, punctuated by a fucking torch march on Friday night (caught the after effects of that in person by chance, with my daughter driving me), through the coordinated attack that happened at the rally itself, all while police did nothing (personally witnessed a truck almost run over 3 people a few hours before Heather Heyer’s death, and personally yelled the license plate out to a nearby police officer, who ain’t do shit but shrug her shoulders and say “the National Guard is back there”), through Sunday’s attempted press conference by the rally organizer, and is ongoing. There are a couple of scenes I saw that weekend that continue to haunt me, continue to make me wish I had done this or that differently. And I wasn’t even at the front lines of this shit! People are hurting everywhere.

On the Sunday of the press conference, I felt like I had to go. I wasn’t aware of any organized plan for people to be there, so I didn’t know what to expect. I texted my boy D and asked him to meet me up there, saying I needed him to because I didn’t know what I’d be walking into. Luckily, there were many people, seemingly disorganized other than by their own indignant morality, who also showed up, and we all yelled that asshole down. Apparently, a couple hundred freedom of speeches ring louder than one asshole’s freedom of speech.

After that weekend, I got texts, calls, and emails from friends all over, asking if we were okay, saying they saw me or my wife on this clip or that, making sure everybody was doing well. But a strange compounding to the post-traumatic stress of the weekend was the fact no one from my birth family checked in. I’m not sure they even knew. But because of the fractured relationships, the glass shards refusing to stop being glass shards, only unless we all just pretend we’re not cutting each other up inside, nobody checked in. Not once.

I’ve heard of multiple other people who had this same effect after that weekend – no family support. It’s a weird feeling, to feel completely unsafe in the face of an overwhelming threat to your community’s security, while to also feel like you got no family there to help. There’s such a strong sense of being unmoored, lost at civilization’s sea. But it’s also something many others have felt, and from many segments of our community’s they’ve felt this for decades themselves.

My glass shards are still there, but I try my best to not psychically cut up my children. Am I perfect? Fuck no. I need improvement, always. I am not the best father all the time, but I am trying to be aware of when I’m faltering or failing. That too is a daily battle.

Just as importantly though, I’m trying to wear down my glass shards for myself, so I’m not wracked with that psychic pain where hatred and self-medication feels so necessary. That process is far more difficult, and when I’ve been most successful with it, that’s usually been direct result of being in group of people attempting the same work. This culture we all live under has manufactured no short supply of broken people; they are everywhere. That’s why there’s an opioid epidemic (which always existed) and a rise in hate groups (which never went away). The traditional notion of family is built on a concept of unconditional support, which is not a reality for everyone in these modern times. But there are those around us all, in our communities, who need that same sense of family, outside of the traditional form (which has failed them). There is no shortage of broken people who need at least a little chunk of unconditional support somewhere in the week to try and dull those internal psychic glass shards just a little bit, to help make it easier to navigate the days.

At societal level, I’m not sure I believe there’s any fixing of the underlying issues that caused the August 12th attacks in Charlottesville, or outright end the current (and ongoing) growth of overdoses, but at that local level – our In Real Life communities – we can start to support each other more like a traditional family would, actively, getting ourselves emotionally dirty with each other, to try and lessen those sharp edges. And actually that might be the weakness of traditional family – that you just pretend everything is okay and ignore the actual issues, and come together at holidays and funerals and act like nothing’s wrong. But in our little pieces of the larger world, at that localized level, we can quit pretending everything just fine, quit saying “It’s all good!” or “It is what it is…” and get the fuck down to doing the painful work of helping ourselves heal, and take care of each other, unconditionally.

0P10D 0V3RD0S3S...

opioid overdoses

and car accidents - top two

American death causes

PH1L0S0PHY 0SM0S1S...

philosophy osmosis

from hydrocodone Hawkwind

feral yard headphone studies

freestyle sonnet #090: ODE TO THOSE WHOSE "WHITENESS" IS LOST IN THE OPIOID FOG

MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN says trucker hat 

cul-de-sac shiny Silverado/Ram easy 

rider, unaware (or more like just don't care) that 

nearby in abandoned rundown burbs too greasy 

to flip for profit, underemployed fellow "white 

working class" asses got left in the tall grasses, 

suffering overdoses. Hopelessness in fight 

against half-comatose existence as masses 

lack bootstraps advanced as solution to lost dreams. 

Lack of real chances expanding so fast we need 

a bigger rust belt. Red pills don't melt stillborn beams 

of doom. Plea bargains galore while the wealthy plead 

the fifth; mad folks dying in naloxone-free drug zones,  

as venture capitalistic vultures blame the bones.

(Plz note: "whiteness" is put in scare quotes in title because it refers to other whites othering whites who are not white enough to be white right in the eyes of the alt-right. Don't @ me.)

M0RPH1N3 DR1P P4R4D1S3 L4CKS...

morphine drip paradise lacks

eternal delivery,

but is wasted life wasted?

freestyle sonnet #088: 21ST CENTURY AMERICAN OPIOID FOG MACHINES

(hard times along dusty roads)

Opioid existential crisis for nation 

with deep psychic pain desiring that numbing fog 

of self-medication. Economic station 

plus internal spaces have depressions to slog 

through - the meek muck of things not quite being how they 

appear. Something is wrong here; our notion of "care" 

means to ignore until unbearable, each day 

navigating 1 to 10 scale, below 6 rare, 

yet expected to heal self, inside and outside, 

pull them psychic bootstraps up, alone in the crowd... 

or so it seems. These dreams of perfection applied 

to those who reside in surroundings simply cloud 

what's real - that most is lost in fog of denial, 

vast masses suffer tribulation and trial. 

RVND0WN S4T3LL1T3 D0WNT0WNS...

rundown satellite downtowns

saturated with them white

addicts, always conspiring

[HH3os] The Pluto Chips Store trio

(1st round match-up 15 of 27)

At time difficult to keep self-imposed schedules, especially since ultimately all this digital expressionism is futile. Like building sandcastles inside the ocean. Fuck it. (Epitaph that for me.)

Action Bronson/Party Supplies – Blue Chips

(released March 12, 2012; #32 on 2012 Pitchfork Albums of the Year list)

I ASSUMED ACTION BRONSON WAS AMAZING AND WOULD CRUSH THIS TRIO, considering I’d heavily rotated a number of these tracks through the ol’ J.J. Krupert machine the past few years. And yet listening to the Blue Chips bama beginning to end fleshed out those familiar tracks with a good number of uninspiring clunkers I must’ve abandoned early on in my/our playlist culture. I guess he was living out the Blue Chips metaphor, and I’d only remembered the clutch 3s Bronson hit, forgetting all the bricks he laid, not to mention the missed foul shots (there’s a lot of missed foul shots on here). And yet, one can never be mad at Action Bronson. He’s often (rightfully) compared to Ghostface, suggesting he big that style, and he’s certainly borrowed that flow and reappropriated it according to his own little-dicked Balkan nature (no diss, all that makes me love Action Bronson to be honest), but I also left revisiting this feeling he was way more Biz Markie than I’d ever acknowledged – just a big goofy fucker who will never speak an ill or serious word towards anybody, and it’s kinda hard to hate that, ever. We need far more big goofy fuckers on this planet, because they – contrary to logic – lighten things up a ton. (And "9-24-11" remains the go-to Action Bronson track, fuiud.) THREE STARS (***)!

Future – Pluto

(released April 17, 2012; #37 on 2012 Pitchfork Albums of the Year list)

I ASSUMED FUTURE WOULD BE TRASH AND I WOULD EASILY DISMISS IT AS THAT CRAP SWIRL FOG MUSIC PEOPLE HAVE BEEN FOOLED INTO LIKING, but then I ended up actually loving Pluto, so much so that I feel bad for never having tried it before, and for hating on him for no reason (other than pretending to drink lean, which is kinda chumpy). In both drugs and drug music, there’s this fine line between clouds and fog. Clouds you can still see through, which you can test out yourself by going up into the mountains where the clouds all are. As you walk through them, it is misty and you are clouded, but visibility is still normal for the most part. But shit is definitely cloudy. On the other end of this tangent is foggy, which is thick and obscures any real visibility whatsoever. In the world of drugs – and I am applying this mostly to that wonderful spectrum of opiates and opioids that we’ve all dabbled in or rubbled ourselves underneath (sadly) – the whole point is to get that clouded feeling of mountaintop mysticism like old T’ang era hermit poet. However, it is far too easy to crossover into fogged state (aka addicted), and then you’re fucking lost bro. You can find your way out, but it’s way more complicated and convoluted a labyrinth back to normal than it is when just simply clouded. That line is exactly like how Hunter S. Thompson describes the edge in beginning of Hell’s Angels, in that the only way you really know where that line is, is by going over it. This is all in relation to actual drug (ab)use though, not drug music.

With drug music, it’s just music, which is a commodity, not an actual experience, though good commodity pretends (successfully oftentimes) that it is actually art, and thus becomes an experience. But c’mon man, listening to a fucking CD – any fucking CD (which are no longer CDs) – is not an actual experience like smoking opium, ever. Anyone who says that is a fucking asshole trying to pass off their commodity as art. So the most you can get from music is the clouded version, as it feels more authentic and enjoyable. But when it crosses over into that fogged, you can’t really cross into fogged territory with a fucking commodity, so fogged drug music is just stupid posturing meant to give the impression of “whoa bro I’m totally enveloped in this strange fog of music” but it’s all a charade, falseness manufactured for chump ass kids to consume. And as I said before, I lumped Future into that realm, along with the entire genre that exists of wailing sing-rap over pharmaceutically-inspired (pharm-to-table) beats that feel robotic and empty of any actual emotion. I was wrong though. (Let me clarify that the potential for me having been trigger-tricked by the Khujo intro is there, as Khujo always been a fave of mine.) This tape is not fogged out at all, but very clearly just cloudheaded resistance against normalcy. I can support that, and will support it, if by “support” you include me listening to the illegally downloaded without payment of any sort robot file collection that contains this musical commodity more often in the future, no pun intended. SEVEN STARS (*******)!

Death Grips – The Money Store

(released April 24, 2012; #9 on 2012 Pitchfork Albums of the Year list)

I ASSUMED DEATH GRIPS WOULD BE ARTSY NOISE THAT I KIND OF ENJOYED BUT ALSO KIND OF GOT ANNOYED WITH. This turned out to be entirely true. I totally philosophically am on-board with the basic concept of noise music being a sort of humane industrial revolt. I’ve always assumed it’s against the soullessness of industry and capital, and expresses this in a way that sounds like smashing against the gears. So I support this, philosophically at least. But in reality, after about ten minutes of it, I’d rather be in the woods listening to crows. Death Grips had the added question mark of being majorly pushed in music industry world noise art rap, which sort of goes against the whole point of revolt against the machines, if you are then incorporated even partially into the machines. Thus, after brief enjoyment of Death Grips, I suffer horrible existential conflict which is only solved by masturbating beneath the shelter of the giant poplars (like always). TWO STARS (**)!

THE WINNER: This project has mostly been pointless, like all good internet projects, so I’m thankful that finally my preconceptions were not only challenged, but smashed, like free SXSW mixtape CDs in the cobblestone streets of my heart. The Future advances.

[HH3os] The Electronic Book of Black David Dreams trio

(1st round match-up 12 of 27)

I shall continue this thing without repent until the bitter end. It is warm – spring is not only in the air, it is in my fucking blood. Thus my heart pumps with the boom bap of the old school elders, and the gothic futurist treatises of Rammellzee make more sense than ever.

DJ Quik – Book of David

(released April 19, 2011; #29 on 2011 Pitchfork Albums of the Year list)

Did I mention with last DJ Quik-related project how I feel Quik should get a MacArthur Genius grant? If not, I have now. Musically, he’s on another level, and this album is no deviation from that norm. In fact, you get the sense at times Quik’s just fucking with people, he’s so good. Like the last track, with the extended silence to hide a buried track (as is often done in not-so-clever ways), which ends up being the illest shit ever. I still seek a high quality (lolol, or low) compendium of all the Quik instrumentals to drive around bumping, preferably in a convertible but not a natural convertible but the type of hooptie that looks like maybe it got driven underneath the trailer part of a tractor and trailer in Dukes of Hazzard/Blues Brother evasion tactical style, and thus was forced into customization to correct the necessary damage. (Fuck the police! ACAB!)

Quik is always a lyrical liability, although he has used his voice and delivery style to help cover that technical weakness in his style very well. (He even mentions finding the only word to rhyme with orange in a rap, then rhyming it with “door hinge”, which actually works if you let it.

The thing is, when Quik wants to get real about some shit – like being mad at his sister, or mad about people comparing him to Dr. Dre – it’s just like all those diss tracks he made against MC Eiht back in the day (you see, there’s no “g” in him is why he spells it that way, at least according to Quik at the time) or Denver (lolol at that verse in “Jus Lyke Compton” to this day, as he called THE WHOLE CITY A BITCH), he goes hard. So actually, even if he’s no lyrical miracle getting spiritual with the linguistical skills (as more *purely* regarded MCs are wont to do), he’s steady and consistent with: A) pissed at you diss raps, B) party time raps, and C) gonna have sex that involves oral in reciprocated fashion raps. He holds those lanes solid. And with the beats on some 21st Century Stanley Clarke/Herbie Hancock high fusion from space shit, I’ll allow for it all day long. (Seriously, Blue Note should give Quik a contract. DJ QUIK IS MY MADLIB, INTERNET!) All things considered, this album – even if it ain’t say shit (other than DJ Quik’s sister is a bitch) – runs a bright FOUR STARS!

AraabMuzik – Electronic Dreams

(released June 14, 2011; #40 on 2011 Pitchfork Albums of the Year list)

Not entirely clear how this was labelled as hip hop, but it was, and here it is. I am disillusioned by this early foray into electronic music masquerading as hip hop, and though I will not outright condemn electronic music, as I have offspring who thoroughly enjoy this type of music, perhaps I am a little too primitively boom baptist when I say I fear the larger consequences behind this type of music, which is designed not as stabs against real world’s cold cruelty, but a more pharmaceutical fog to envelope reality with. If one is not careful, this type of foggy music gets into your bloodstream, and then there is not action that can remove it. The cybertronic effects start to metastasize as copper readings in your bloodstream first, but the copper is able to breach the blood-brain barrier as well, and starts to metastasize in the fissures of your brain as well. It sneaks down your spinal cord through the fluid and starts to leech out into nerve endings throughout your tantric torso. Next thing you know, you are a fucking cybertron yourself, and you begin to justify cybertronic thinking, and feel more at ease in an environment of machines (even if broken) than you do among organic beings (especially when broken). This will eventually be the demise of humanity, which ordinarily might be a good thing, but it’s not organic. The end of human civilization should be an organic act of nature resisting mankind asserting too much metaphysical dominion. Maybe that’s what climate change is all about, who knows? But humanity destroying itself entirely and leaving behind artificially intelligent pseudo-humans is not the cataclysm this universe needs (although it might be the one we give it). ZERO STARS, for eternity.

Shabazz Palaces – Black Up

(released June 28, 2011; #14 on 2011 Pitchfork Albums of the Year list)

I really enjoy the Shabazz Palaces, but apparently I have mostly listened to all their other work, and not this one, because I recognized very little of it. The weird thing about this album is it sounds like there’s a party in an apartment on the third floor, but you live on the first floor, and aren’t invited. The production is weirdly muffled, which does nothing to counter the Artist Formerly Known as Butterfly’s whisper rap syndrome. (I have whatever that fake “hate quiet sounds” disease is that social media memes have falsely validated.) I mean I dig it, but not nearly as much as Lese Majesty, which is probably unfair to do, being there’s so much crap in this stupid Pitchfork project that is pure crap. But I have to do something to separate Black Up from The Book of David. THREE STARS!

THE WINNER: If I can find a reason to advance DJ Quik in this thing, I always will, hoping to eventually sink (sync?) into hydrocodone summertime stupor, blasting Quik-strumentals through the back yard, using the old 1970s speakers that weight a thousand pounds each I found at the dump one time. High fidelity, motherfuckers; high fidelity.

"opioid epidemic"...

"opioid epidemic"

overlooks underlying

cause of self-medication