M0R3 4L0N3 TH4N M34NT T0 B3...

more alone than meant to be,

but too late to turn back now so

I listen to the birds talk

[HH3os] The Pablo Coloring Book unmastered trio

(1st round match-up 25 of 27)

The slow meandering ancient train of website stupid project motivation wanes hard, but then it waxed poetic this past weekend because I thunk up what other stupid project of semi-related bent to ram in behind it, thus the clog of unmotivation was flushed with excitement to allow myself something new, but only after forcing an end to this issue, of which nobody cares. I mean who the fuck cares what somebody thinks about some old ass albums? We are trained to only hype the new, only use our non-paid internet voices to help sell the new, even if the sale is just illegal stream which only feeds malware or whatever. This is a convoluted deeply perverted late capitalism system we have, and I am just another idiot cog in the industrialization of creative spirit. I cannot wait for this abomination against fractal geometries to finish falling apart, and I can go back to plugging my inner-kindle into red oaks and not false outlets.

Kanye West – The Life of Pablo

(released February 14, 2016; #5 on 2016 Pitchfork Albums of the Year list)

This is a weird trio, which starts off with a weird album, which was released on my birthday (I did not realize that at the time, because it felt like it got released like four times over, then unreleased once or twice, and I probably saw leaks before releases, so official release dates become somewhat obsolete information), and of course was highly internetted as any Kanye release will be, because despite his burgeoning mental illness of delusion, he remains highly returned on the algorithms. (He will continue to be so returned until Big Internet has drained every page view they can from him.) I will say up front – as is the case with most every Kanye release – this is not as great as it was made out to be by some. In fact, the bulk of Kanye’s work the past few albums has been Art School Kid stuff 100%. I’m not against Art School Kid stuff, not at all, in fact Art School Kid stuff makes for great contributions to grass roots arts at starter level. But Art School Kid stuff should not be passing itself off as Masterpiece Genius shit, which is essentially what Kanye pre-emptively does every time he drops some new Art School Kid project (and is what he did with this, declaring it Must Win A Grammy, submitting it for Grammy consideration, then melodramatically deciding not to attend the Grammy’s).

Now, my honest heartfelt expert old head opinions on this – it is interesting in a car wreck kind of way. Also, it’s always fun to imagine what other music somebody in the studio exposed Kanye to so he could Christopher Columbus discover a new sound. With this album, very obviously Chance the Rapper played Kanye a bunch of Kirk Franklin. This, in fact, is the most obvious act of Kanye being “inspired by” (aka biting) someone else heavily since he got ahold of some Daft Punk CDs before recording Graduation. And as we wrestle with the long-term effects of artificial intelligence, it’s great that Kanye did pre-emptively make the perfect robot gospel album, for when artificial intelligence runs amok and destroys large chunks of organic humanity, but still desires human creations. This album will be a mainstay on artificial intelligence pata-modern spiritual channels. FOUR STARS (****)!

Kendrick Lamar – untitled unmastered

(released March 4, 2016; #16 on 2016 Pitchfork Albums of the Year list)

As an old head who used to walk down Broad Street in Richmond from the then-still-grimy VCU campus most Tuesday afternoons and many Friday afternoons to scope out the new batches of 12-inch singles (which were an actual 12-inches back then, no Craigslist NSA math involved), I can say with some fond pride that getting the unreleased tracks as B-sides extras used to be a thing of beauty. I mean, you were already stoked to get solid instrumentals to repetitively play while you got high as fuck with your crew and rattled off endless wack ass freestyles that in pure moments of high aesthetics transcended your own abilities and entered the Realms of Unanticipated Perfection, but to get bonus tracks was, well, a bonus. My most favored slab of vinyl for years and years was an otherwise shitty Del the Funky Homosapien single off his first album that had the epic (and life altering, as an MC) track “Eye Examination”.

Internet changed all that though, and full curation was much easier, and eventually expected. There were no bonus tracks to be discovered or released now, as they were tagged on to the full itunes or best buy versions, or just released as part of the album, which included everything, because for some reason making an album became “let’s release 42 tracks even all the shitty ones” instead of “let’s cull this shit down to sharp, poignant, on point 13 tracks”. Anyways, because there is full curation in digital age, and not only is there full (fool?) curation, there is also feeble attempt by corporate overlords to capitalize on this easy functionality, a bunch of extra shit from Kendrick was packaged as this untitled unmastered thing, with simple dates as titles, and no pretensions made as to high artistic quality of the collection. Guess what? It kind of sucks. I mean, other than being like “oh, this isn’t a normal Kendrick song, wow this is neat” angle which is really no different than being excited to see a football team play in an alternate and thus not recognizable jersey, there’s not much going for this. Even in terms of full curation, I don’t know, you could kind of go without this. That’s not to speak ill of Kendrick Lamar’s artistic abilities, so much as to say, do I really need this? (Ultimately do we need any of this? Is there some sort of pop culture test to gain access to the afterlife club where we have to have consumed the most important pieces of pop culture to get in? Likely no.) And actually this being part of this trio gave me larger respect for Kanye’s shitty ass album because at least he shaped it, albeit haphazardly with cheap artistic thought, into an actual album. TWO STARS (**)!

Chance the Rapper – Coloring Book

(released May 13, 2016; #6 on 2016 Pitchfork Albums of the Year list)

I really loved Acid Rap, but did not really love this. Chance is a likeable guy, no doubt about that, but there are too many times here where I feel he’s trying to trick me into liking Jesus. I am very firm in my desire to not be tricked into Christianity, and due to my cultural surroundings I’m also very familiar with how Christians think it’s okay to trick people into liking Jesus. My own children (the youngest two) attended a Christian homeschoolers group the past year or two, because it was by far the best local homeschoolers collective, and I fear there’s been a little bit of trickery involved with then, which I guess is my own fault for exposing them to it, but I thought we’d made them stronger than that. They’re still young though. But they had some magazine we got, and there was a Chance feature one time with full page pin-up of him along with quote that said “I’m a rapper who is Christian, but not a Christian rapper” and my one kid had torn that out and tacked it up on her wall. I made her listen to the first three Metallica albums and write a three-page report on how sick that shit is for homeschool lesson though. (She’s a pretty sensitive kid, and not quite ready for Slayer just yet.)

As for music, taking the whole fuck Jesus shit part out of the equation, this is not very hip-hoppy album, lots of sangin’ going on, and I don’t know, I’m all for fun and games but if the fun and games start choking out any actual remnants of boom baptistery, then ya boy Raven Mack gonna get pretty blah-zay about it. And though I want to like Chance the Rapper’s album as much as I like Chance the Rapper the guy, I’m about 95% blah-zay about it. Then again, my kid’s are probably the target demo, not me (although I will eat the fuck out a Kit Kat still, just put in the freezer first for a little while). THREE STARS (***) because he’s such a nice guy (until super model poison cultured estrogen eventually contaminates him, like his mentor Kanye).

THE WINNER: By process of elimination, and for being an actual project which doesn’t encourage me to be into Jesus, the man most blasphemous against creative genius Mr. Kanye West wins this round. Despite him utilizing Art School Kid adult juvenile tactics (including co-opting classic Art School Kid literary hero Kathy Acker cover style from her Demonology book), it’s still better than a zip file of Kendrick performances off-the-record and Chance’s album. In fact, I feel almost bad for Chance because his mentor stole some of his audio thunder by dropping the pseudo-Kirk Franklin gospel a couple months before Chance, so to the uninitiated bystander, they’d think, “Wow, Chance really sounds like Kanye on this,” when in all likelihood it was Chance that got Kanye into Kirk Franklin (I am guessing, from an educated expert metaphysical perspective). But that’s how corporate structures work, and despite his artistic ambitions, Kanye is a corporatist more than anything else, in that underlings feed their brilliance upwards, and it gets filtered into the mediocre brilliance of those towards the top of the pyramid. God bless the meritocracy myth.

N0 T4LK1NG N0 T0VCH1NG JVST...

no talking, no touching, just

distant discourse, pretending

it's caring conversation

RVND0WN S4T3LL1T3 D0WNT0WNS...

rundown satellite downtowns

saturated with them white

addicts, always conspiring

MY D4D W0VLD S4Y 1F TH3 S1GN...

my dad would say "if the sign

says 'curve 15 mph',

that's a good place to wreck at"

patreon con mack retro active backwards release transmission 52

I have A PATREON which means you can just give me money for doing ridiculous internet shit, in real life. But I am also a horribly busy and aging person who might be better off disappearing from civilized tracked life than continuing to dig deeper into the labyrinth of bullshit.
Of the many promised and sometimes even delivered things for patreons is I am uploading back issues of my old Confederate Mack zine, working backwards from the end, into a shared drive. You give as a little as a dollar, and you got access to it. Uploaded issue 52 today.

This is classic C-Mack era in my opinion, and I often wish I wrote this prolifically and chaotically today. There is zero point to most all of it (talk of blunts and metalheads who smoke weed and Honda Civics and Weirton, WV, and how Scottsville the small town I live at was changing), but it carries weight despite being pointless. In fact, that's probably the clinical dirtgod style (both in retrospect and thinking about what I do now) - it is seemingly pointless, but pretty pointed, just (hopefully) not pretentious. Of course explaining it as such made it pretentious.

Anyways, throw some patreon money at me if you desire, or don't, and if you already have and see this GUESS WHAT THERE IS A NEW ISSUE UP ON THE DRIVE (also I am sending you a postcard this week).

Peace,

Raven

0N3 D4Y D1RTG0D G0NN4 D13...

one day dirtgod gonna die,

and there'll be three days worth

of pre-planned posts, then nothing

F0X W4TCH1NG FR0M 3DG3 0F W00DS...

fox watching from edge of woods,

waiting to eat all my damn

chickens, nocturnal or not

0V3RLY JVDGM3NT4L S0VTH...

overly judgmental South

Cackalacka minister

basic'ly quoted "Freebird"

M1M0S4 V0LVNT33R1NG...

mimosa volunteering

wherever lax eyes landscape,

silk flowers sleeping at night

H1GHW4Y T0 TH3 D4NG3R Z0N3...

highway to the danger zone

making four-day small town stops

to further spread trash culture

freestyle sonnet #086: THE LIFELONG INTIFADA OF SABU

The majesty of unspoken Sabu, pointing 

towards Allah's Paradise, which awaits those scarred 

with extreme righteousness - blood and sweat anointing 

those who moonsault in the name of all that is hard 

yet must be done. Those soft of core attempt to place 

merit upon self through financial metrics worked 

always, never a meritocratic shoot. Face 

and heel binaries mean nothing when clean and jerked 

by politics. Homicidal/suicidal 

behavior which can't be channeled into smart marks' 

woke identity markets left to sit idle - 

unbooked, too broken to be woke; but wildheart sparks 

for mystical prophets of chaos principle. 

Sabu may die but his spirit's invincible. 

4SK1NG SH4D3 TR33 F0R 1NS1GHT...

asking shade tree for insight

as to how to remain more

rooted in single moment

D0N'T TR34D 0N M3 R4TTL3SN4K3S...

don't tread on me rattlesnakes

slithering through faux country

suburbs in big shiny trucks

25-Man Metaphysical Roster: Burnley F.C.

(excited Burnley supporters, flexing their Premier League muscles)

[25-Man Metaphysical Roster is a football dork methodology meant to establish a listing of players who have been most active for English Premier League teams in their past 100 non-friendly matches. Essentially, it is calculated by minutes played, but weighted towards most recent games. The end result is a listing of the 25 players in a team’s recent history who have had the largest hand on their metaphysical sporting trajectory. The English Premier League was chosen because it is the highest level of football played in an English speaking country, and I speak English. Also, it is what comes on TV here in the USA, where I fucking live. Should I not fail in maintaining my unpaid deadline, a new 25-Man Metaphysical Roster will appear on the 1st and 15th of every month.]

I do not pretend to know that much about Burnley, other than they are one of the handful of teams that appear to be headed for relegation at metaphysical level regardless of what season it is. In fact, this past season’s epic 16th place finish was the first time (of three) that Burnley got to Premier League status and didn’t immediately fall back down. So props to them for surviving into two straight.

When I look at pictures of them, or think about who they are, I generally go “Oh yeah, the team that I always think might be West Ham, but isn’t,” because they look like off-brand West Ham. Burnley the place is a large town/small city situated in northern England, which means it has manufacturing roots and likely a bunch of swollheaded drunkard supporters who have Brexit tattoos. (This is all conjecture on my part, to be honest, but metaphysical conjecture tends towards truth on the truth spectrum.)

Anyways, they will be launching into this second full season of Premier League, hoping to solidify themselves with a third. That is the nature of bottom-feeders like that – survive one, then survive another, and hopefully establish yourself as middle-of-the-pack regular for years aka the Southampton model. Occasionally, if you make it to that level, you accidentally end up in Europa League competition, and other times you find yourself in relegation zone most of the season, hoping to make the slingshot move up the table in March and April. Somebody has to be the new Sunderland. So here are the 25 mens who make up their most minutes played metrics past 100 non-friendly matches metaphysical roster…

#1: MICHAEL KEANE – Only 24 years old but senior player according to my idiot man metrics, and was a Manchester United youth academy wonderkid who never caught on with them, and only made a single appearance for them in August of 2014, before getting loaned off to Burnley to never return. But Keane’s time appears to be gone, as after having had successful high profile role last year, Everton appears ready to swoop. (Oddly enough, Manchester United was trying to come back for the dude, but ended up not wasting their waste money on him but on someone else.)

#2: TOM HEATON – GK since 2013 who also was ManUnited youth academy dude, who also failed to catch on there (actually never appearing for them), and also is former Cardiff City scum. But since May of 2013, he’s been minding the posts for ol’ Burnley. Heaton also just got to play for the English national team this past week in France.

#3: BEN MEE – Young defender who came up through Manchester City youth academy as wonderkid, but never made the main team (which is theme here for these Burnley fucks), got loaned out to the Turf Moor club in summer of 2011, and has been there ever since.

#4: GEORGE BOYD – Boyd been solid winger for Burnley since 2014, but appears to be ready to bounce down a level to Aston Villa. This is predictable behavior for shaggy-haired English dude who wears hairband and has most notably been loved at place like Peterborough United. When you got Peterborough United DNA (and hairband), you are perfectly content to relegate yourself contractually from the Premier League.

#5: STEPHEN WARD – Ol’ Dublin Irish boy who plays along left side from far full back to striker (from the left), and also a Republic of Irish national team mainstay the past few years. In fact, Burnley had a quartet of prominent team members who form the foundation of the Irish national team. Ward’s the old dog of that crew.

#6: MATTHEW LOWTON – Another young Englishman holding it down for Burnley. Of concern though is how many very normcore looking white dudes fill the top of Burnley’s metaphysical roster. The only foreign dudes are barely foreign, like Irish or (sort of) Welsh. This can’t be good model for successful athletics at premier league level.

#7: ANDRE GRAY – A BLACK GUY! So of course he is a striker, but also he is from Wolverhampton originally, so please insert shrug emoji. Also career banger around of lower leagues at places like Hinckley United and Luton Town. And yet, he did clock 9 goals in PL competition last season, which should prove holmes is not bound for return to VANARAMA CONFERENCE NORTH, which may or may not still be called Vanarama Conference but I am operating off a late model version of Football Manager. Sorry.

#8: SCOTT ARFIELD – Arfield been a smug-looking midfielder for the BurnDawgs since a summer 2013 trial with them boys.  Previously he’d been at Huddersfield Town, who got promoted for this upcoming season along with Newcastle United and Brighton & Hove Albion (who are just one team, according to Wikipedia, as well as my extensive Jonathan Wilson readings). And like pretty much half of Burnley’s team this past six weeks, he’s been linked to a move to Newcastle, who are apparently going to sign all the middling Premier League players on Earth, and hopefully suffer another crushing disappointment. Fuck Newcastle United.

#9: SAM VOKES – One of my Football Manager experiments was putting all the best Welsh players on Wrexham and seeing how high I could get them in football world. They did not get that high once Gareth Bale’s career was plagued by injuries (other than brief Aaron Ramsey peak period) but Sam Vokes became a staple at occupying minutes in less-than-outstanding fashion. So when he had an overlooked handball against Swansea City this past spring which almost forced Swansea into relegation, I thought, “of course, fucking Sam Vokes.” Also, he is “Welsh” only because he has a Welsh grandfather. This means technically my children could play for the Welsh national women’s football team too, which is really exciting. None of my kids ever cared except for the youngest, and I took her to the local college women’s soccer game to learn how to play through observation. One player from last season who was fucking epic defender with spirit warrior passion, she graduated, and I had wondered where she was, so I googled her the other day. Guess what? She spent the spring playing in Cyprus and actually competed in the women’s champions league.

#10: JOEY BARTON – Barton makes the list having played for Burnley 2015-16, but going to Rangers last season, only to have contract terminated for practice ground dust-up, and came back to Burnley this past January, except he got suspended for 18 months for betting on football games, which naturally appears to be questionable. Now you may think, “Well this is probably betting on a game or two,” but no, my man Joey Barton bet on over TWELVE HUNDRED GAMES over the course of a decade, including games in which he was involved, though he has claimed he never bet against the team he was playing for when he was playing. The ironic thing about all this is he placed most all the bets he got busted for with Betfair, and roughly half the Premier League teams main kit sponsor are betting sites, and in fact Betfair themselves are “the official UK betting partner” of multiple Premier League teams, including Arsenal. So yeah, I get it, he should be banned (and I guess this means Joey Barton is now retired likely as he is 34, and already carried extra baggage before the betting scandal and Rangers fallout), but how can you take fistfuls of betting parlor money and then get mad when a player is making bets with those same sponsorship partners?

#11: JEFF HENDRICK – Another of them Dublin boys, who had been part of Derby County Rams organization in Ireland, before coming over to Burnley before last season. It appears Burnley is doing an Irish off-season tour as well, I guess pushing themselves there what with all the Irishmen on the roster currently.

#12: ASHLEY BARNES – Another unheralded striker who toiled in the lower levels of football, who played for a long ass time at Brighton & Hove Albion – one of the teams promoted to Premier League for next season. Also somehow despite being a thousand-year-old looking English guy born and bred in Bath, he is eligible for the Austrian national football team, though never having appeared for them at the senior team level as of yet.

#13: DEAN MARNEY – Born in Barking, grad of Tottenham youth academy, but been at Burnley since 2010. Did suffer horrible knee blowout in January that he’s just now coming back from.

#14: DAVID JONES – David Jones is an ugly motherfucker. Also he left Burnley before last season to remain at Championship level, moving to Sheffield Wednesday, who qualified for the Football League playoffs for promotion to Premier League, but were knocked out on PKs in two-leg semi-finals against eventual promotion winner Huddersfield Town. Thus David Jones remains in the second-tier (which also does not have terraces any more and is seated only stands).

#15: STEVEN DEFOUR – Defour was Burnley’s record transfer signing last August, coming over from Anderlecht in his native Belgium, but only appearing in 24 games for Burnley, not really making the impact he was expected to, and he might be bound for other ports pretty soon.

#16: JAMES TARKOWSKI – Young English defender who has played supporting role but is expected to step into larger role this coming season after Michael Keane’s expected departure.

#17: JOHANN GUDMUNDSSON – ICELANDIC WINGER IN THE HOUSE. I should probably try to be less rigid in my American-ness and figure out how to do all those linguistic things that aren’t native to my fat obese fingered Chinese buffet keyboard, but I haven’t thus far. I say this because “Gudmundsson” actually has like three different letters in his name than what I typed. Dangerous acts on my part because the fury of elven berserkers can easily be unleashed if the proper metaphysical respect is not shown. Hopefully my Gylfi Sigurdsson altar will save me.

#18: TENDAYI DARIKWA – Oddly, a second player with lower league Hinckley United roots. Hate to be judgmental, but I’ve got to assume a club with multiple dudes from Hinckley United might be in over their head in Premier League, and might be bound for relegation battles this coming season, and were likely lucky to avoid it last season. Word to Sean Dyche (Burnley manager), who likely made himself go-to Championship level manager of choice to chase promotion after keeping Burnley up.

#19: ROBBIE BRADY – Another of their Irish posse, and interestingly enough, most clubs will have very specific roles for players, maybe one guy who can play multiple levels along the flanks, from defender to attacking midfielder. Burnley has a handful of them, which likely that flexibility in role has allowed them to plug-and-play healthy people who are hot in ways that allowed them to overperform last season. Brady, along with Tarkowski, are young guys that Sean Dyche is hyping up right now during transfer hype season as being able to step into bigger roles and keep the club at this level. This time of year though, every fucking dude who you’ve never heard of is about to have a breakout season, and everybody is about to get the next Didier Drogba on transfer from a Turkish club you barely knew existed.

#20: ASHLEY WESTWOOD – Classic deep midfielder who tends to feed others who came to Burnley this past January, causing Burnley to challenge the infamous “no two Ashleys on the same team” rule that has been in place since Arsenal’s 1923 team.

#21: JON FLANAGAN – Liverpool youngster who was given the season-long loan treatment to Burnley last season, making a whopping 10 appearances, and now is back with his parent club, hoping to somehow crack his way into non-obscurity with regards to them, as he is still signed until 2019. It may be another season-long loan somewhere else for the lad.

#22: MICHAEL DUFF – Perhaps the origins of Burnley’s Irish connections is Michael Duff, defender from Northern Ireland (born in Belfast, raised in England) who held down shit on the back line for over a decade, from July of 2004 until retiring after Burnley earned promotion to the Premier League in the 2015-16 season. He remains with the club, working in their youth academy as a coach.

#23: MICHAEL KIGHTLY – Played regular role with Burnley from 2014 through last their successful Football Championship season, but got lost in the expanded roster last season at Premier League level, and ended up loaned out to Burton Albion in January, returning to the Football Championship. He was finally released this past month, and is now fishing for offers from other Football Championship clubs headed into a new season.

#24: KEVIN LONG – Fourth of the prominent Irishmen on Burnley. Kevin Long’s middle name is literally “Finbarr” which is about as hellishly Irish as it gets.

#25: NICK POPE – That back-up GK life for the young Pope, which means all the FA and League Cup appearances he can handle (and Burnley qualifies for) this coming season.

M3T4ST4T1C C4D1LL4C...

metastatic Cadillac

late model capitalism

trickle down head gasket leak

4N4T0MY 0F CH40S...

anatomy of chaos -

the wild bone is attached to

instability as child

N0TH1NG P3RM4N3NT'S TRVLY...

nothing permanent's truly

forever; only constant

is change which morphs as needed

C0NC3PTS 0F H0M3 4TT4CH3D T0...

concepts of home attached to

legal deed and nation state;

America is my home

H0LD1NG 0N T0 Y3ST3RD4Y'S...

holding on to yesterday's

luster as it fades into

obscurity then vintage

W4LK1NG FR0M BR3M0 BLVFF T0...

walking from Bremo Bluff to

Gladstone, avoiding human

contact for a week (or more)

3XP4ND1NG 1NFR4STRVCTVR3...

expanding infrastructure

of abandonment, busting

false economic models

M1LK CR4T3 L1F3 PLVS B4R3F00T L1F3...

milk crate life plus barefoot life

plus sixty-nine sciences

equals super destructor

L1GHTN1NG BVGS 4R1S3N L1K3...

lightning bugs arisen like

Jesus myth out the tall grass

as twilight waits for moon rise