D34TH W1LL H4RV3ST 4LL B0D13S...

death will harvest all bodies, 
one by one; where our essence 
is released is up to us 

FR3SH D3NTS BL0SS0M 1N B4CK R04D...

fresh dents blossom in back road 
guard rails on nightly basis… 
flyover country dead ends 

FR0M PH4RM T0 4BL3 - DVLL1NG...

from pharm to able - dulling

our overwhelmed senses to

avoid tearing it all down

CL4VSTROPH0B1C R3CKL3SSN3SS...

claustrophobic recklessness

of being broke never leaves

your DNA completely

T00 0FT3N W3 BV1LD C0FF1NS...

too often we build coffins

while still above ground, stifling

innate desire with tethers

SONG OF THE DAY: Iceland Moss

I’m not really sure what to tell you. There’s a lot going on in the world right now, and I’m not even talking about the shit on the news. Most of that doesn’t even feel relevant to real life. I hope you’re holding your shit together as best as possible.

V4ND4L1ST C4R1C4TVR3S...

vandalist caricatures

brightening shitty mundane

endlessly hopeless landscape

SPR34DSH33TS 0F HVM4N1TY...

spreadsheets of humanity,

each windowed cell full of lives

concatenating events

S0M3T1M3S Y0V W4LK TH3 T1GHT R0P3...

sometimes you walk the tight rope,

sometimes the tight rope flips the

script and wraps around your neck

L0VE T00 M34ND3R D34D 3NDS...

love too meander dead ends

in downward spirals until

I finally transcend life

SONG OF THE DAY: Brutus

Sometimes life got you to where you’re riding around in a borrowed Ford Escort GT, with the tape adapter connected to cracked screen iphone 4 you use as an ipod now, door speakers crackling out Westside Gunn, while you ride around cold winter world with window down, two machetes on the back floorboard and ka-bar on the passenger seat, just looking for somebody. No one in particular, though maybe yeah exactly a particular someone, and hoping you don’t find anybody because mostly you’re just looking for trouble, but rather than sit home and stew, you got no sense of safe harbor home, nowhere to stew, always on the move so that the shit of the world doesn’t start to put its stink on you and the only way to stay relatively fresh is to keep moving. So you’re just riding around, looking for trouble, halfway hoping in your heart you don’t find it, but also knowing your own history of being more likely to get found by it than not. Fuck it – the philosophy of the doomed.

SONG OF THE DAY: Death Row

Freddie Gibbs is an underrated often overlooked MC, probably because he’s from the Midwest, and not even notable Midwest like Chicago itself but rundown shithole suburb of Chicago in Gary, Indiana. Also his rap name is Freddie Gibbs, which is regular as fuck sounding, like he’d be a Memphis wrestler from 1989. But even shitty Freddie Gibbs tracks are better than most MCs. And also, the album cover to Freddie is without a doubt the best rap album cover of 2018, and probably the past number of years. It’s weird how end of year listicles are always performative and try to cover all the bases, and I doubt anybody will touch on Freddie Gibbs because they’ll have to include IMPORTANT or SEMINAL pop cultural moments. And yet, if you go back to these listicle ten years from now, most of that stuff is pure trash. What survives the test of time? Album covers like this one, that’s what the fuck survives.

M4K1NG FR13NDS 4L0NG S1D3 STR33TS...

making friends along side streets,

recognizing "what's up mane"

not appropriate for birds

D34D 4PPL14NC3S ST4CK3D 1N Y4RD...

dead appliances stacked in yard;

dead souls stacked in overpriced

houses; dead system's last gasps

JVST B3F0R3 SVNR1S3, W4LK1NG...

just before sunrise, walking

through New Orleans, trying to

find way back to train station

FR0M WH4T 0V3RH34D 4NGL3...

from what overhead angle

does this madness start to make

enough sense to continue?

JJ Krupert Dec 2017 numero seis "free chapo"

HEY YO...

life continues to be an incessant shuffle to claim some sort of psychological stability despite all flaws in this thinking. the universe cares not for my humane desires and feels at times like riptide of poor starshine leaving me lurching in horrible darkness, struggling to maintain direction despite forces pushing me underneath in opposite way.

HEY YO...

the tiny moments of art which fill the gaps in the day's gridlocked routines - the flipping thru photo books from the university library, expanding my eyes. the scribbling of verses on pc notepad at work, printing out before leaving, folding into quarters and tucking into back pocket hoping to remember not to leave in the wash where many a ill verse has gone the way of dryer lint tray.

HEY YO...

blasts of music in shitty aging minivan which is my destiny, with transmission starting to slip like 40-something knees beaten from decades of self-destructive enjoyments. minivan which has not felt smooth in forever but is all I got to get back and forth to maintain same barely breathing position in the aforementioned riptide which pulls me further from dreams.

HEY YO...

the frustration and anger and resentment and mistakes I didn't know any better than to commit, it leaves me feeling empty and hopeless, and this is when we embrace the dark arts, the music of fuck it, the naked images of beautiful ugliness. it is in these dark times the flygod feels good.

HEY YO...

says the flygod, and for brief moment as grimy minimalist baps boom, I can breath again, and imagine a future with a fist full of hundred dollars bills, middle finger outstretched at the present. fuck all yall fake motherfuckers.

D3C4D3S 0F D3CL1N3 SVRV1V3D...

decades of decline survived

due to solid foundation;

(not metaphor for country)

C0MP0S3 P03T1C 3DD4S...

compose poetic eddas

in twenty-one syllable

increments 'til my ass dead

W4ND3R1NG THR0VGH 4LL3YS W1TH...

wandering through alleys with

peripheral vision tag

teaming with intuition