SONG OF THE DAY: Ghetto Red Hot

There are certain sounds that perfectly encapsulate early ‘90s era hip hop and its influence on other genres, and this was also a time I lived in Richmond and tended to walk downtown with Boogie Brown on Friday afternoons to buy records at Willie’s, and downtown Richmond back then was WAY DIFFERENT. You’d have tons of people hanging out, waiting on the bus, or just kicking it downtown on Broad Street, and cars would be cruising, just BLASTING music, like ungodly levels of blast, but which still sounded crispy clear with immense thump. There’s like 3 or 4 beats that specifically just fire up those memories in my mind, to where I can smell the heaty stank of the city again, and this is one of them.

M3D1T4T10NS 0N WH4T'S P4SS3D...

meditations on what’s passed 
can all too easily turn 
into tethers to the past 

4LG0R1THM1C W1NDSH13LDS N0T...

algorithmic windshields not 
easily punctured; what we 
are seeing ain’t all that real 

3C0N0M1C S4V1NG S33N...

economic saving seen 
as spiritual practice, which 
is not innate to heart's thoughts 

H0VR-L0NG BVS R1D3S 4S 4 K1D...

hour-long bus rides as a kid

spent catching up on sleep, and

avoiding confrontation

PR0L1F1C PR0P4G4T10N...

prolific propagation
of native propaganda
from earliest of ages

S31Z3 0PP0RTVN1T13S T0...

seize opportunities to

make your brightest marks on this

world, which would leave you waiting

SONG OF THE DAY: Bigfakelaugh

Waiting for the shuttle bus this morning, to go between point X and point Y at my Zzzz work, and a prison van showed up, two different guards trying to figure out where to unload the prisoner being transported. They eventually pulled right up beside where I was waiting, driving third guard got out and was fiddling with back door where wheelchair transport lift but with bars was, to take prisoner in for hospital visit of some sort. Radio was blaring Steve Harvey morning show, and Steve was on his shit, hoo-hawing it up with the crew, and I thunk to myself what a strange blessing, to be free from prison for the morning, listening to Steve Harvey in the back of the prison transport van, a little grey tree-lined scenery to mix up the cinderblock existence, even if for hospital visit. I hoped it wasn’t anything too terminal, and wondered how much of what Steve Harvey was babbling about was relevant to this offender against allegedly civilized society? How long had they been in? Do they get to make this trip every six weeks, or is this first time ever?

Then my shuttle bus came, and I got on. The driver bumps old school jams as loud as uptight white people will tolerate generally, and today was no exception. As we got closer to where I was gonna get off, War’s “The World is a Ghetto” hit the playlist, and I don’t know, maybe I’m introspective as fuck today or something, but the lyrics was hitting me hard. Always loved that song, but it struck kinda extra hard this morning. We all got the existential jails we create for ourselves, navigating the system that’s in place all around us, making wrong and right choices, smart and poor ones, boxing ourselves in far more often than opening ourselves up. I thought about just sitting on the shuttle and riding it one more loop, to hear the end of the world being a ghetto, but also just to vibe. Also thunk how the larger parallel to that is riding this earth one more time round the sun, and how we don’t often enough just sit the fuck back and enjoy the ride, always giving ourselves these deadlines and needs to be productive and arbitrary must haves and cut off notices and gotta sees and just a general over fucking load of too much shit that ultimately don’t mean as much as just kicking it, stationary, in one outdoors spot, watching the world spin slowly for a few minutes, hours, days, lifetimes might mean.

Of course, I got off the shuttle though, and went and did my job, like I’m supposed to. But also “supposed to” is some arbitrary ass shit, and completely irrelevant to how my heart feels.