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slapshot-to-the-heart · 4 years ago

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Four Times Nathan Proposed and One Time He Meant it

Hi! This is my humble contribution to @nolypats and @hockeyboysiguess campaign for Nathan MacKinnon for Hockey Boy of the Month. Please see their blogs for more info, also just because they’re amazing writers. This is my first time trying a 4+1, I thought it would be nice to put something out before the next chapter of Flatbush & Atlantic. It was genuinely so much fun writing this, so please let me know what you think!

Wine pairing: Rotari rosé. @hockeyboysiguess and I have started to pair all of our writings with their own wine, bearing in mind that neither of us knows anything about wine. It’s all about the VIBES.

4 times Nathan proposed and 1 time he meant it

The first time (February)

Jordan knocked on the door, a glass dish balanced precariously on her hip. She and Nathan tried to have a standing date night every week, something that wasn’t grabbing lunch when they were both free or meeting for coffee before she had to head to work and he went to practice. That was, unless there was a game. Or a roadie. Or a team event. So needless to say, the two had been a little strapped for “couple time” recently, and they were both feeling it. She had an article due the next day, a co-write about the use of illegal dark money in a recently-elected congressman’s campaign. Nathan had a long practice that morning and wasn’t feeling too up to anything that would require him to move too far from his couch.

He opened the door, giving her a quick kiss. “I pulled up a few movies I thought you might be into, but didn’t want to pick anything until you got here.”

“You’re so considerate, I think I’m going to swoon,” Jordan said.

Nathan shrugged. “I’ll catch you if you fall.” Deep down, he really was a romantic, though the boys would chirp him endlessly if they knew.

Jordan padded into the kitchen, setting the dish onto the counter and opening up the cabinet right above the toaster oven, grabbing two plates. Even apart from date night, it wasn’t uncommon for them to eat in; partly due to the fact that there were few things in this world Nathan loved more than being able to fly under the radar, something that was a little bit difficult to do when you wore the A for the Colorado Avalanche, but partly because in his own way, it was letting Jordan into his life. “What movies were you looking at?”

“Depends what you’re feeling,” Nathan replied. “We’ve got...Star Wars, Captain Marvel, and 10 Things I Hate About You.”

Her ears perked up. “The one with Heath Ledger?”

“That’s the one. Sound good to you?”

Jordan had always had a penchant for movies of the late-90s and early 2000s, especially if they were romcoms, and especially if said romcoms starred Julia Stiles. As a little girl, there was definitely more than once where she had herself entirely convinced that her life would turn out exactly like The Prince and Me. Minus, of course, the fact that the beginning of Paige and Edvard’s entire relationship was built on lies. Mainly, she was just really into crowns and big poofy dresses as a little girl. “Sounds good to me!” She said brightly. “You want a brownie?”

Nate craned his neck to look at her in the kitchen, looking expectantly at him with one hand holding a spatula. “You made brownies?”

Jordan giggled. “I did. I take it that’s a yes?”

“That’s a definitely, please, my God give me one right this second or I might combust.” She slid the plate onto the side table a minute later, grabbing two napkins. “Are these normal brownies?” Nathan asked, picking one up and inspecting it with a semi-confused look on his face.

“They’re triple-layer, it’s an old recipe for slutty brownies from when I was in college. Bottom’s cookie dough, then Oreos, then fudge brownie on top of that.”

Nate raised an eyebrow. “Slutty brownies?”

Jordan swatted at his shoulder. “I know it’s a weird name, just give them a chance. I know you’ve been feeling a little down with the losing streak, and thought you could use a pick-me-up. They were my go-to for breakups, always seemed to help the girls feel better, so I thought it might work for you too.”

He wouldn’t admit it, but Nathan’s heart skipped a beat with Jordan’s words. “Guess I’ll have to see,” he said, taking a bite out the corner. His face melted. “This is...literally the best thing I’ve ever tasted. Seriously, it’s so good. So good. Oh my God, marry me.”

Jordan flushed, turning to take a sip of water so he wouldn’t see. “I’m glad you like them.”

The second time (May)

It was 11:38 on a Friday night, and Jordan and Nathan were at a bar. To be precise, Jordan, Nathan, and pretty much the whole team were at a bar, plus what seemed like the entire population of Denver. Springtime meant playoff season for the NHL, and winning a series meant going out. Jordan normally had to pass whenever the team decided to hit up a bar or club after a win; as much as she would have liked to go, she was a journalist who kept a 9-5 job, which meant that she had to at least get some modicum of sleep if she was going to be able to function in the newsroom without an injection of caffeine straight into her veins. But it was the weekend, and she’d be damned if she was going to miss out on this.

For the most part, the fans weren’t making a fuss; there was the occasional picture taken or pat on the back for winning the conference semifinals for the first time in twenty years, but nothing out of hand. Sipping her Dark & Stormy, she looked fondly over at Nate, who was having what looked to be a very animated conversation with Burky. Already two and a half drinks in, Nathan was starting to act a little tipsy; while he was normally more reserved about public displays of affection, he kissed Jordan more than one as the night went on. Not like she was complaining. Picking up a refill from the bar, she scooted back into the booth next to Nate. He planted a messy kiss on her cheek. “Where’d you go, Jo?”

Jordan rolled her eyes. “Unlike some of us, I can’t just snap my fingers and have alcohol appear at will. I had to actually go to the bar for another drink,” she teased.

Nathan threw his head back laughing. “‘S’pose you’ve got a point there, babe.” He slung one arm over her shoulders. Jordan unconsciously leaned into his touch. “What’d you think of the game?” She wasn’t able to make it to every game, but was lucky that she could get down to the Pepsi Center more often than not. The Avalanche had beaten the Flames in 6, after dropping the first two games in Calgary and being pegged as another likely sweep, they had come back to win the next four and the series.

“Just trying to stroke your own ego, eh, MacKinnon?”

“Picking up some Canadian slang, eh, Murphy?”

She tilted her head. “Maybe, maybe not. But the game was amazing. You know that. You did amazing, Nate.” In the 3-1 win, Nathan had scored two points, an assist and an absolute beauty of a power-play goal that just barely squeaked into the top left corner above Rittich’s shoulder.

“Sure, maybe I do know,” Nathan admitted, “but it’s one thing hearing it from fans and the media and even my teammates. It’s another hearing it from you.” Jordan loved Nathan, but he wasn’t always the best at expressing his feelings out loud. She was the first one to say “I love you, to introduce him to her parents, to take just about any step forward in their relationship. It was something he was getting better at, slowly but surely, and it meant the world to Jordan that he was trying so hard. Maybe it was the liquor, or the atmosphere, or the excitement of the night, but it meant just as much to her to hear it as it probably did for him to say it.

Half an hour and several drinks later, the last few people left were trickling out. Most had carpooled to the bar, leaving their cars back at the arena to get the next day. Jordan would have ordered Nate an Uber and then just hitched a ride with someone else back towards her apartment west of downtown, but Nate was pretty far gone. And he was a cute drunk, all things considered, but she was on her way to sobering up and felt an obligation to at least get him in bed safe. Their car pulled up, Nathan clumsily ducking in ahead of her as she shut the door behind him, buckling first his seat belt then her own. They walked through his front door fifteen minutes later, Jordan dropping him off in his bedroom to get undressed before grabbing a glass of water and a bottle of Advil. Nathan was in his boxers when she walked in, struggling to pull a t-shirt over his head. Jordan laughed, walking to his side of the bed before gently tugging it, handing him the water and two Advil. “If you take it now, it’ll help with the hangover later.” Kissing his forehead gently, she turned to leave.

“Where are you going, Jo?”

She stopped at the door. “Home?”

“I want you to stay.”

She sighed gently, smiling at him. “Okay, I’ll spend the night.”

“No,” Nathan interrupted, grabbing her wrist lightly as she turned to grab one of his old World Cup shirts to sleep in. “Forever. I want you to stay forever.”

The third time (August)

It was the middle of August, and Jordan and Nathan were in Canada. He had invited her earlier in the summer to visit for a few weeks, and as soon as she got the time off approved, she booked her flight. Getting to Springhill wasn’t the easiest — she flew to Toronto, had a layover, flew to Halifax, then got picked up by Nate for the two hour drive to his hometown. He had flown out in June, about a month after the Avs lost to the Kings in the conference finals, so the couple hadn’t seen each other in nearly two months. Jordan wasn’t about to complain about a few more hours. His parents had been so generous letting her stay for two weeks, and hadn’t batted an eye when Nathan had moved her into his old room. “Just don’t wake us up,” his mom had said, causing Nathan’s cheeks to turn scarlet.

Jordan had met them a few times before; they had flown out for the All-Star game the previous January and had gotten together during the team Moms’ and Dads’ trips. And if she was around when Nathan was FaceTiming them, she always popped in for a few minutes to say hi. But she still hadn’t quite expected the ceaseless hospitality she had been offered over the past week. Maybe Canadians really were just that nice.

Halfway through Jordan’s trip, they decided to throw a barbeque. And by they, that meant it was Nate’s idea and he roped them all into helping. Jordan had already been introduced to a few of his old friends, they had gone out for drinks to the one bar in town on her second night, but she was excited to meet everyone else. His dad Graham was keeping an eye on the grill, Nathan had filled the cooler with drinks, and Jordan was helping his mom carry out the fruit bowl and salad to the backyard. Nathan ran up to his room to change right as people started trickling in, and came back to a yard full of family and friends. He craned his neck, trying to figure out where Jordan had wandered off too, before his sister pointed to where she sat with a few of his cousins.

Nathan opened his mouth, about to ask her something, when Jordan quietly brought a finger up to her lips. “She’s sleeping,” she whispered, gesturing to her arms, where a tiny baby was nestled, eyes firmly shut.

He remembered that his cousin Rachel had had a baby not too long ago, but didn’t realize she’d be old enough to travel yet. “Is this Natalie?” he asked quietly, sitting in the chair next to Jordan. Rachel nodded. For a few moments, Nathan was lost in the scene, lost in how damn perfect Jordan looked with a baby in her arms. They had spoken about those sorts of things — future things — enough to know that marriage and kids were something they both wanted, but this was the first time it had hit him, like really hit him, that that could be them down the line. Over by the fire pit, his mom watched, a soft smile on her face.

Nathan stood in the kitchen with his mom a few hours later, drying off dishes from the party. Handing a plate to him, Kathy shot a curious glance at her son, as if a thought had just popped into her mind that hadn’t been there before. Nate looked back at her, confused. “What is it, mom?

Kathy nodded out the window, where Jordan was laughing at a joke his dad had just made, balancing the last round of dirty plates to bring in on her arm. “When are you going to put a ring on it, Nathan?

Nathan wasn’t particularly prone to blushing, but he had been doing a lot of it lately. “I—uh—” His mom rested a hand on his shoulder with a knowing smile. “Okay, I’ll admit that I’ve been thinking about it.”

Kathy was beaming. “I knew it. When?”

“When am I going to propose?” She nodded. He shrugged. “I don’t know when it’s going to happen, Mom, but it’s going to. I’m going to marry that girl.”

The fourth time (November)

Jordan grimaced, breathing in sharply as she braced her elbows on her desk. Elisa, her friend who worked in the cubicle beside her, looked over, a concerned expression on her face. “You good, hun?”

Jordan nodded mechanically, opening a drawer and pulling out a bottle of ibuprofen, swallowing three with a gulp of water. “Yeah, I should be fine. I should be starting my period in the next day or two, so I’m pretty sure it’s just cramps.”

“Are they usually this bad though?” Elisa had always been a worrier.

She shook her head. “No, not since I went on birth control a few years ago, but who knows. The ibuprofen will help, and it’s probably normal anyways. I’m sure it’ll go away.”

It didn’t go away. Two hours later, when Elisa was finishing up the last paragraph of her analysis of the Broncos’ new coaching hire, Jordan suddenly shot up from her desk, running at breakneck speed towards the women’s bathroom with a queasy look on her face. Elisa followed, bursting through the door to the unmistakable sharpness of vomit. She knelt down next to Jordan, pulling her hair back with the spare scrunchie she kept on her wrist. “Jordan? Are you okay?”

Jordan shook her head. “I feel awful, El.”

Eliss touched the back of her hand to Jordan’s forehead. “You’re warm. Have the cramps gotten better.”

“Worse,” Jordan admitted, wiping at the beads of sweat that had started to accumulate on her forehead.

Elisa pulled out her phone from her back pocket. “I’m calling an ambulance. I don’t think this is cramps, Jo.”

Jordan didn’t have the strength to argue, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to anyways. The ambulance arrived ten minutes later, carting Jordan off to Denver Health Medical Center. “Any chance you could be pregnant?” one EMT asked.

“I could be, but I shouldn’t. I’m on birth control and my boyfriend always uses protection,” Jordan said weakly. The EMT made a scribble on her paper. She barely registered pulling into the hospital, nurses pulling her into the ER, or a doctor wheeling in an ultrasound machine. She was conscious enough to recite her name, date of birth, and insurance number before being taken into the operating room, and then a mask was placed over her nose and her world went dark.

The first thing Jordan did when she woke up was check the clock in her room. It was 3; from what little she remembered, she had been taken to the hospital sometime a little after noon. “Oh, thank God,” she heard from her left side. She recognized that voice. It was Nathan’s voice. He grabbed her hand — the one that didn’t have an IV drip in it — and kissed it quickly, smoothing back the pieces of her hair that had come out of the hair tie. “Elisa called during practice, and she told me what happened, but she didn’t even know what happened, and then I left and drove over here, but then—”

Jordan laughed softly, feeling a dull pain in her lower abdomen. “It’s fine, Nate, I’m fine. What happened, anyways? I don’t remember anything after I went into surgery, I have no idea what it was even for.”

“You had appendicitis, your appendix was about two seconds away from bursting.”

Jordan let out a low whistle. “Glad that didn’t happen. Hey,” she added as an afterthought, “I thought visiting hours here didn’t start until 4?” Jordan had visited a college friend of hers who had had a baby a few weeks prior, and could have sworn that she wasn’t let in until later.

Nate smiled sheepishly. “Yeah, they do. I couldn’t even figure out what room you were in at first. They wouldn’t tell me anything, so I told them I was your fiancé.”

“Oh, did you now?”

Nathan rubbed his thumb over her finger. Her ring finger. “I mean, it’s pretty much true. All I’ve got left to do now is ask you.”

“And get the ring,” Jordan added.

“Nope.”

+1 (January)

Family skates had quickly grown to be one of Jordan’s favorite parts of the season. She had loved the first one, but had felt just a tiny bit out of place; her and Nathan had only been dating for a little over six months, and it seemed like almost everyone else had known each other for years. But she’d forged some amazing friendships with other WAGs over the past year, trading babysitting duties for pies and meeting to watch the game while the boys were on a road trip, sharing new Spotify playlists and learning how to support each other along the way. The team had become her second family, even though her parents only lived an hour and a half away.

Jordan had been a competitive figure skater throughout high school and into college, so she was no stranger to the ice. She obviously couldn’t get out nearly as often as she had before, but her skates still fit and she could still land a triple salchow after warming up. She and Nate had been skating around for an hour or so, taking a break after some “friendly competition” where Josty had made the mistake of challenging Jordan to a race around the rink. She beat him by two seconds.

Jordan unscrewed the top of her water bottle, taking a few grateful sips before putting it back in her bag. “Babe!” Nate called from a few rows away, where some of the younger kids were gathered next to what looked like pastels. “Want to face paint?”

She smiled, raising her eyes playfully as she popped on her blade guards and walked over towards the bench. “You sure about that one, MacKinnon? I’m not much of an artist.”

He nodded enthusiastically. “It’s okay, I bet you’ll be great!” He was so sweet for believing in her.

“Alright,” Jordan said, straddling the bench and picking up the box. “What would his highness like for the design? Bear in mind you’re working with a beginner here.”

“Butterfly!” He chirped excitedly. “There’s been a whole bird and insect theme going on here,” he pointed at the kids’ cheeks, covered in bees, ladybugs, and one demonic-looking...crow? Was it a crow? Did they even get crows at this time of year? “and I wouldn’t want to break the trend.”

“We couldn’t have that,” Jordan agreed. Ten minutes later Nathan had a very blue, barely-acceptable-looking butterfly on his right cheek, but he was beaming like the sun as soon as he pulled up his camera to look at it. “I love it, Jo. Thank you,” Nate said, giving her a quick kiss.

Activities wrapped up not too long after, and Jordan and Nathan walked out of the rink hand-in-hand towards his car. They had moved in together two months earlier, and Jordan had been more than happy to move out of her tiny studio into Nate’s giant apartment, where you could see the Rockies from the rooftop on clear days. Plus, his building allowed dogs. As Nathan drove home, one hand on the steering wheel and the other tangled with hers by the center console, Jordan looked over at him, with the little blue butterfly on his cheek, and she suddenly felt so unbelievably happy. So unbelievably full. It went without saying that she loved Nate. She loved him like she had never loved anyone before, and never would again.

At the same time, Nate’s heart was beating faster than it ever had in his life. He wasn’t scared, he wasn’t surprised, but he had just realized something. He already knew that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with Jordan. Nathan had realized that months ago. And he hadn’t been lying at the hospital, he had already bought the ring. But Nathan wanted everything to be perfect when he proposed; it couldn’t be rainy outside, because what if she wanted pictures? It couldn’t be too soon after her older brother’s wedding, because then she might think that was the reason why. It couldn’t be in the summer, because then he’d go back to Nova Scotia for the summer and his mom might scalp him for leaving his fiancée in another country. But, Nathan realized as they pulled into the underground lot, there never was going to be a perfect time. He knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he wanted to be Jordan’s husband. There shouldn’t be anything stopping him. There wasn’t anything stopping him.

“I’m going to run to the bathroom,” Nate said as Jordan slipped off her shoes. She nodded. Nathan went up the stairs, but past the bathroom. He walked into their bedroom, into his closet, to the shoebox that had his old atom league medals. He grabbed the velvet box, opening it and taking one last look before taking a deep breath and putting it in his pocket.

“You want to watch SVU reruns?” Jordan asked as he ambled back into the living room.

His mouth opened and closed like a fish. “Uh—can I say something?”

Jordan looked over. “Yeah, go ahead? We can totally watch something else if you’re not feeling Law & Order, I think I saw Chopped on the Food Network, or Jurassic Park is halfway through��” She trailed off.

Nathan shoved his hands in his pockets, turning the ring box over and over. He bit his lip. “You know how much you mean to me, right?” Jordan nodded slowly. “When I met you, I wasn’t looking for anything. I had just had my heart broken by someone who I thought would be my forever, but then you came into my life and suddenly...suddenly, it all made sense. I thought I knew love, I thought I knew what it was to be in love, but I didn’t, really. Not until you. You bring me down to earth, Jordan, when I’m too far in my head. I know you’re on my team even when we’re losing, even when it seems like nothing in my life is going right I know you’ll always be there to pick me up when I fall. And I don’t ever want to take that for granted. You challenge me in the best way, you always push me to be a better partner, a better teammate, and a better man. I wouldn’t be where I am today if it weren’t for you.” Jordan was tearing up, starting to figure out where his whole speech was going and hoping beyond hope that she was right.

“I know I’m not always physically here, but I promise to always be there for you, Jordan. I’ll hold you when you’re crying, I’ll buy your favorite chips when we’re out, I’ll pay the utility bills because I know you’re terrible with remembering dates. It was eight months in when I realized you were the one.” Nathan bent down on one knee. One of Jordan’s hands was over her mouth, the remote having long since been abandoned on the couch. “I can’t wait to see where we go, Jordan. I can’t wait to get a nice house with a big backyard, go down to the animal shelter saying we’re only going to adopt one dog but come back with three. I can’t wait for the day you tell me you’re pregnant, and we get to hold our child for the first time and I get to see you be a mother. I can’t wait for us to start our lives together. I can’t wait for you to be Jordan MacKinnon.” He opened up the ring box. “Will you marry me?”

Jordan fell on her knees, hands on both sides of Nathan’s face. “Yes.”

#hockey imagine #hockey smut #nhl imagine #nhl smut #nathan mackinnon #hockey #hockey imagines #hockey writing #nhl #nhl imagines #nhl writing

231 notes · View notes

faccioliste · 4 years ago

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12 Etudes, Op.10: No.2 in A minor – Frédéric Chopin, Andrei Yeh

12 Etudes, Op.10: No.4 in C sharp minor – Frédéric Chopin, Andrei Yeh

1977 – Ana Tijoux

24 mila baci – Adriano Celentano

33 “GOD” – Bon Iver

3 Nouvelles Etudes, B.130: 2. Allegretto in A flat major – Frédéric Chopin, Andrei Yeh

3WW – Alt-J

3WW – OTG Version, Alt-J

44 gatti

505 – Arctic Monkeys

50 Special – Lùnapop

715 - CR∑∑KS – Bon Iver

A Cruel Angel’s Thesis – Neon Genesis Evangelion

A Fifth of Beethoven – Walter Murphy

A mano a mano – Rino Gaetano

A me me piace ‘a nutella – Il piccolo Lucio

A new error – Moderat

A NINGÚN HOMBRE (Cap.11: Poder) – ROSALÍA

Acida – Prozac+

Acqua (Malpensandoti) – Tedua

Addams Family Theme

Addio a Napoli / Ma come fanno i marinai – Dalla, De Gregori

Address Unknown – The Ink Spots

After Hours – The Velvet Underground

Aggiungi un posto a tavola – Johnny Dorelli

Ai ai ai – Los locos

Ain’t Got No – Nina Simone

Al ballo mascherato – Fabrizio De André

Alexander Platz – Franco Battiato

Alla consolle – Mimmo Amerelli

All Alone – Gorillaz

All Day and All of the Night – The Kinks

All In – Nitro

All I want is you – Barry Louis Polisar

All of me – John Legend

All tomorrow’s parties – The Velvet Underground

Alter Ego – Tame Impala

American Boy – Estelle, Kanye West

American Pie – Don McLean

American Woman – Lenny Kravitz

Amigas Cheetahs – The Ceetah Girls

Amor, amor de mia amores – Natalie Lagourcade

Amore che vieni, amore che vai – Fabrizio De André

Amore disperato – Nada

Anche per te – Lucio Battisti

Andavo a cento all’ora – Gianni Morandi

Anemos - Introduzione – Murubutu

Another brick in the wall – Pink Floyd

Antidoping – Gemitaiz, MadMan, Ensi

APPARTENGO - Il sangue – Marracash, Massimo Pericolo

Applausi per Fibra – Fabri Fibra

Arabella – Arctic Monkeys

Are you gonna be my girl – Jet

Argenti Vive – Caparezza

Arrivederci Tristezza – Brunori Sas

Ask - The Smiths

Autoipnotica – Caparezza

Avrai ragione tu (ritratto) – Caparezza

Azzurro – Adriano Celentano

Ba-ba-baciami piccina – Quartetto Cedra

Babalù – Mannarino

Baby – Justin Bieber

Baby Boy – Beyoncé

…Baby One More Time – Britney Spears

Baby’s on Fire – Die Antwoord

Baciala – La Sirenetta

Baciami ancora – Jovanotti

Back In Black – AC/DC

Back On The Scene – Slaughterhouse

Badabum Cha Cha – Jim Croce

bad guy – Billie Eilish

Bad Mouth – Fugazi

BAGDAD - Cap.7: Liturgia – ROSALÍA

Balla – Umberto Rosario Balsamo

Ballata degli impiccati – Fabrizio De André

Bam bam – Sister Nancy

BamBam – Matador

Banana Brain – Die Antwoord

Bandiera Bianca – Franco Battiato

Bandiera Gialla – Gianni Pettenati

Bandiera Rossa – ✊

Bang bang (My baby shot me down) – Nancy Sinatra

Barbera e Champagne – Giorgio Gaber

Beachwood Park – The Zombies

Bella ciao – ✊

Bella vera – 883

Be my baby – The Ronettes

Ben 10 – Sigla

Benzi box – DANGERDOOM

Berghem béla sità

The best of both worlds – Hannah Montana

Bibbidi bobbidi bu

Bigger Than Prince – Green Velvet

The Black Angel’s Death song – The Velvet Underground, Nico

Blackbird – The Beatles

Blank Space – Taylor Swift

Blowin’ in the wind – Bob Dylan

Blue Monday – New Order

Blue Suede Shoes – Elvis Presley

Blush Beat – Club Domani

Bocca di rosa – Fabrizio De André

BODY PARTS - I denti – Marracash

Boom boom boom boom – Vegaboys

Boom Boom Pow – Black Eyed Peas

Branca Day – Derozer

BRAVI A CADERE - I polmoni – Marracash

Brazil – Django Reinhardt

Breakthru – Queen

Briciole – Calcutta

Brother Sparrow – Agnes Obel

Bull in the heather – Sonic Youth

Buonanotte Fiorellino – Francesco De Gregori

Buona sera (Signorina) – Fred Buscaglione

By Night – Sophie Hutchings

B.Y.O.B. – System Of A Down

By starlight – The Smashing Pumpkins

By This River – Brian Eno

Cacao Meraviglio – Renzo Arbore, Paola Cortellesi, Nino Frassica

California King Bed – Rihanna

Camcamini spazzacamin

Canapa – Punkreas

Cannabis – Ska-P

Cannibal Bling Bling – 10LEC6

Can’t Hold Us – Macklemore

Can’t Stop – Red Hot Chili Peppers

Canzone – Lucio Dalla

Canzone all’entrata – Caparezza

Canzone all’uscita – Caparezza

Canzone a metà – Caparezza

Canzone Del Maggio – Fabrizio De André

Canzone intelligente – Cochi E Renato

Canzone per te – Sergio Endrigo

Carabinieri – Sigla

Caramba beviamo del whisky

Carlo Martello Ritorna Dalla Battaglia Di Poitiers – Fabrizio De André

Caso umano – Ministri

Cattolica – Pop X

Centro di gravità permanente – Franco Battiato

C’est la vie (you never can tell) – Pulp no pulp

Che coss’è l’amor – Vinicio Capossela

Che Fico! – Pippo Franco

Che Idea! – Flaminio Maphia

Chi C’è – Fabri Fibra

China Town – Caparezza

Chi Se Ne Frega Della Musica – Caparezza

Chissà Dove Sei – Francesco De Gregori

Chop Suey! – System of a Down

Chum – Earl Sweatshirt

Chunky – Flatbush Zombies

Ci Penso Dopo – Fabri Fibra

Cirano – Francesco Guccini

Clandestino – Manu Chao

Clint Eastwood – Gorillaz

Coda di Lupo – Fabrizio De André

Come porti i capelli bella bionda – I Girasoli

Comfortably Numb – Pink Floyd

Complicated – Avril Lavigne

Comprami – Viola Valentino

Compro Horror – Caparezza

Comunque Dada – Caparezza

Concerning Hobbits – The Lord of the Rings

Conga!

Cooler Couleur – Crookers

Cose che non capisco – Caparezza

Country Roads

Crabs in a Bucket – Vince Staples

Crazy in Love – Beyoncé

Crooked Cops – Rejjie Snow

CRUDELIA - I nervi – Marracash

Cuccurucucù – Franco Battiato

Cuore Matto – Little Tony

Cuore Nero – Blind

DA BUTTARE - Il ca**o – Marracash

Da Feeling – Nightmares On Wax

Dafne sa contare – Murubutu

Dance Monkey – Tones and I

Dancing Queen – ABBA

Dancing With Myself – Billy Idol

Dangerous – Kid Enigma

DE AQUÍ NO SALES (Cap.4: Disputa) – ROSALÍA

Death on Two Legs (Dedicated to...) – Queen

Death USB – Salmo

Dedicato a te – Le Vibrazioni

Del Verde – Calcutta

Desire Be Desire Go – Tame Impala

Detto, Fatto. – Gemitaiz & MadMan

DIANA – M¥SS KETA

Dieci ragazze – Lucio Battisti

Diet Mountain Dew – Lana Del Rey

Die Walkure - Ride of the Valkyries – Royal Philharmonic Orchestra

DI MI NOMBRE (Cap.8: Éxtasis) – ROSALÍA

Disorder – Joy Division

Dispari – Marta Sui Tubi

Disperato Erotico Stomp – Lucio Dalla

Dog in the Mirror – Guerilla Toss

Do I Wanna Know? - Arctic Monkeys

Domani – Ernia

Domani – Articolo 31

Domani smetto – Articolo 31

Don Chisciotte – Francesco Guccini

Don Raffaè – Fabrizio De André

Don’t Cha – The Pussycat Dolls

Don't Give Up – Mystery Jets

Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood – The Animals

Don’t Pass Me By – The Beatles

Don’t Sit Down ’Cause I’ve Moved Your Chair – Arctic Monkeys

Don’t Stop Me – BowLand

DON’T WANNA SPIN – GFOTY

Do the astral plane – Flying Lotus

Dove sta zazà – Gabriella Ferri

Dove vola l’avvoltoio – Pietro Buttarelli

Downer – Nirvana

Dream – Hiroshi Noshimura

Dream a Little Dream of Me – Ella Fitzgerald & Louis Armstrong

Drogata schifosa – Pop X

Due su due – Articolo 31

Ed ero contentissimo – Tiziano Ferro

E la luna bussò – Loredana Bertè

E la vita, la vita – Cochi e Renato

Eleanor Rigby – The Beatles

El pueblo unido – ✊

El Tango De Roxanne – José Feliciano

Endors Toi – Tame Impala

Eroe (Storia di Luigi Delle Bicocche) – Caparezza

Estate – Negramaro

È tardi – Caparezza

E ti vengo a cercare – Franco Battiato

Everybody Needs Somebody to Love – The Blues Brothers

Everytime We Touch – Cascada

Facciamo un pupazzo insieme? – Frozen

Fai da tela – Caparezza

Fall In Love – Yuno

Family Affair – Mary J. Blige

Fango – Jovanotti

Farò di te un uomo – Mulan

Fatty Boom Boom – Die Antwoord

Feel Good Inc. – Gorillaz

Feeling Good – Nina Simone

Femme Fatale – The Velvet Underground

Fenomeno – Fabri Fibra

Figli d’arte – Caparezza

Figli Di Pitagora – Eiffel 65

Figli di puttana – Pop X

Fireside – Arctic Monkeys

Five to one – The Doors

Fleas to beas – 10LEC6

Forever Jung – Caparezza

Franziska – Fabrizio De André

Freak Like Me – DJ Deeon

Frosinone – Calcutta

Funkytown – Lipps Inc.

Funnel of Love – Wanda Jackson

Fuori dal tunnel – Caparezza

Gaetano – Calcutta

Game of Thrones – Sigla

Gasolina – Daddy Yankee

Gente che spera – Articolo 31

Ghetto Kraviz – Nina Kraviz

Gianna – Rino Gaetano

Gigugin – Articolo 31

Giotto Beat – Caparezza

GIOVANNA HARDCORE – MYSS KETA

Girlfriend – Avril Lavigne

Girls Just Want to Have Fun – Cyndi Lauper

Giudizi universali – Samuele Bersani

Gli insetti del podere – Caparezza

Gli uccelli – Franco Battiato

G.O.A.T. - Il cuore – Marracash

GO AWAY! – CocoRosie

Goodbye Malinconia – Caparezza

Good Golly Miss Molly – Little Richard

Goodnight Moon – Shivaree

Gotta Go My Own Way – High School Musical Cast

Grande figlio di puttana – Stadio

Grau grau grau - da “io sto con gli ippopotami” – Bud Spencer

Grease – The Four Seasons

Greased Lightnin’ – John Travolta

GRETA THUNBERG - Lo stomaco – Marracash

Hallelujah – Leonard Cohen

Happiness is a Warm Gun – The Beatles

Happy Days – Ghali

Happy Days (Theme from Happy Days) – Pratt & McClain

Happy Hour – Felix da Housecat

Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger – Daft Punk

Harry Potter in 99 Seconds – Jon Cozart

Have You Ever Had... (Skit) – Salmo

Heart and Soul – Joy Division

Heartbreak Hotel – Elvis Presley

Hello, I Love You – The Doors

Hey Bulldog – The Beatles

Hit Me with Your Best Shot – Pat Benatar

Hit the Road Jack – Ray Charles

Hive – Earl Sweatshirt

Ho capito che ti amo – Luigi Tenco

Hoedown Throwdown – Miley Cyrus

Hollaback Girl – Gwen Stefani

home with you – FKA twigs

hope is a dangerous thing for a woman like me to have - but i have it – Lana Del Rey

Hotel Supramonte – Fabrizio De André

House Credibility – Caparezza

Ho visto un re – Enzo Jannacci

How Far – Tei Shi

HUMBLE. – Kendrick Lamar

HUMUHUMUNUKUNUKUAPUA’A – High School Musical Cast

Hypnotize – The Notorious B.I.G.

I Am Woman – Helen Reddy

I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor – Arctic Monkeys

(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction – The Rolling Stones

I Cento Passi – Modena City Ramblers

I colori del vento – Pocahontas

I consigli di un pirla – Articolo 31

Ieri era zero – Hercules

I Fink U Freeky – Die Antwoord

I Follow Rivers – Lykke Li

If She Really Is Your Light – Pavlove

I Know It’s Over – The Smiths

Il ballo del qua qua – Romina Power

Il ballo di San Vito – Vinicio Capossela

Il bar della rabbia – Mannarino

Il Bel Canto – Ministri

Il Bombarolo – Fabrizio De André

Il Cielo In Una Stanza – Gino Paoli

Il Dito Medio Di Galileo – Caparezza

Il Funkytarro – Articolo 31

Il Gatto E La Volpe – Edoardo Bennato

Il gigante e la bambina – Lucio Dalla

Il gorilla – Fabrizio De André

I’ll Be Your Mirror – The Velvet Underground

I’ll Come Running – Brian Eno

Il Mondo – Jimmy Fontana

Il Pescatore – Fabrizio De André

Il posto più freddo – I Cani

Il Principe Ali – Aladdin

Il regalo più grande – Tiziano Ferro

Il senso dell’odio – Salmo

Il suonatore Jones – Fabrizio De André

Il tempo di morire – Lucio Battisti

Il testamento – Fabrizio De André

Il testamento di Tito – Fabrizio De André

Il testo che avrei voluto scrivere – Caparezza

Il Vitello Dai Piedi Di Balsa – Elio e le Storie Tese

I’m a Believer – Smash Mouth

I marinai tornano tardi – Murubutu

Impara il longobardo con Alessandro Barbero

I’m so tired – The Beatles

In caduta libera – Folkstone

In Cold Blood – alt-J

Incontro – Francesco Guccini

In Italia – Fabri Fibra

Innuendo – Queen

Insieme a te non ci sto più – Caterina Caselli

In the Aeroplane Over the Sea – Neutral Milk Hotel

Introduzione – Fabrizio De André

In Un Giorno Di Pioggia – Modena City Ramblers

Inverno – Fabrizio De André

Io centro con i missili – Pop X

Io credo in me – Naruto

Io ho in mente te – Equipe 84

Io non mi sento italiano – Giorgio Gaber

Io sono fatto di neve – Ministri

Io sono qui – Salmo

Irene – Pinguini Tattici Nucleari

Iris – The Goo Goo Dolls

Isla Magica – Maria Usbeck

Isobarre – Murubutu

I sogni son desideri

Isola verde – Murubutu

Italove – EMMANUELLE

It Is Not Meant To Be – Tame Impala

It’s not too late – 10LEC6

I’ve got a woman – Ray Charles

(I’ve Had) The Time of My Life – Bill Medley

I vitelloni – Bobo Rondelli

I wanna be your lover – La Bionda

I wanna be yours – Arctic Monkeys

I want you back – The Jackson 5

I will survive – Gloria Gaynor

Jazz suite no.2: 6 waltz II – Dmitri Shostakovich

Jigsaw Feeling – Siouxsie and the Banshees

Johnny B. Goode – Chuck Berry

Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In) – Kenny Rogers

Just the way you are – Bruno Mars

Kalasnjkov – Goran Bregović, Slobodan Salijevic

Keep yourself alive – Queen

Kentucky – Il Bepi & The Prismas

Kevin Spacey – Caparezza

Killer Queen – Queen

King’s Supreme – Machete Crew

Kitaro – Caparezza

Kurt Cobain – Brunori Sas

La Ballata Dell’amore Cieco (O Della Vanità) – Fabrizio De André

La Ballata dell’eroe – Fabrizio De André

La Ballata del Miché – Fabrizio De André

La bambola – Patty Pravo

La bella la và al fosso – I Girasoli

La Bomba In Testa – Fabrizio De André

La Caduta di Atlante – Caparezza

La Canzone del Padre – Fabrizio De André

La Canzone di Barbara – Fabrizio De André

La Canzone di Marinella – Fabrizio De André

La cesarina – I Girasoli

La città vecchia – Fabrizio De André

La collina dei pioppi – Murubutu

La cosa – Cochi e Renato

Lacrime – Ghali

La cura – Franco Battiato

La danza delle streghe – Gabry Ponte

Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space – Spiritualized

La donna cannone – Francesco De Gregori

Lady Marmalade – Moulin Rouge

La famiglia dei becchini – Musica Per Bambini

La fine di Gaia – Caparezza

La Ghigliottina – Caparezza

La grande onda – Piotta

La guerra di Piero – Fabrizio De André

La Isla Bonita – Madonna

La La Land – Green Velvet

Lala Song – Bob Sinclar

La libertà – Giorgio Gaber

La lontananza – Domenico Modugno

La mamma di Rosina – I Girasoli

La Marchetta di Popolino – Caparezza

La mazurka di periferia – Raoul Casadei

La mia parte intollerante – Caparezza

La mia ragazza mena – Articolo 31

L’animale – Franco Battiato

La notte – Arisa

La parata degli elefanti rosa – Quartetto Cetra

L’appuntamento – Calibro 35

La prima rondine venne ier sera – Pop x

La prima volta – Motta

La prima volta – Salmo

La regola dell’amico – 883

La rivoluzione del sessintutto – Caparezza

L’armata perduta di Re Cambise – Murubutu

Larsen – Caparezza

Las Divinas – Patito Feo

La società dei magnaccioni – Lando Fiorini

La spesa – Marta Sui Tubi

La stagione del tuo amore – Fabrizio De André

La Strada – Modena City Ramblers

La Tartaruga – Bruno Lauzi

Laughing On The Outside – Bernadette Carroll

La Valse à Mille Temps – Jacques Brel

La vie en rose – Édith Piaf

La vie en rose – Louis Armstrong

L’avvelenata – Francesco Guccini

Layla – Eric Clapton

Le barche – Calcutta

Le coppie – I Cani

Legalize The Premier – Caparezza

L’emozione non ha voce – Adriano Celentano

Le ragazze di porta venezia – Myss Keta

Less Than – Nine Inch Nails

Le tasche piene di sassi – Jovanotti

Let Me Blow Ya Mind – Eve

Let’s Get Crazy – Hannah Montana

Let’s Twist Again – Chubby Checker

Levante – Murubutu

Lexotan – I Cani

L. Fast & D. Young – Salmo

L’Idraulico Aulico – MusicaPerBambini

Life on Mars? – David Bowie

L’immensità – Don Backy

Limonata – Calcutta

L’infinto – Caparezza

L’inno del corpo sciolto – Roberto Benigni

L’isola Che Non C’è – Edoardo Bennato

L’italiano medio – Articolo 31

Little Green Bag – George Baker Selection

Little Lover – AC/DC

Livin’ la Vida Loca – Ricky Martin

Lonely Boy – The Black Keys

Lonely Day – System of a Down

Long Tall Sally – Little Richard

Lontano dagli occhi – Sergio Endrigo

Lontano, lontano – Luigi Tenco

Look at Me, I’m Sandra Dee – Stockard Channing

Looking at You – MC5

Loose Lips – Kimya Dawson

Loser – Beck

Los Ojos Del Diablo – El Raton

Lo stretto indispensabile – Il libro della giungla

Love Buzz – Shocking Blue

Love Is a Laserquest – Arctic Monkeys

Love Me – Justin Bieber

Love sex american express – Cristian Marchi

Love Stink – LoboLoto

Love Story – Taylor Swift

Lucifer Sam – Pink Floyd

Lucille – Little Richard

L’ultima festa – Cosmo

L’ultima speranza – Hercules

L’uomo che premette – Caparezza

L’uomo tigre

L’uva fogarina – I Girasoli

Ma che freddo fa – Nada

Madame Hollywood – Felix da Housecat

MADAME - L’anima – Marracash

Maddalena e Madonna – Brunori Sas

Madonnina dai riccioli d’oro – I Girasoli

Mad Sounds – Arctic Monkeys

Magazine – Dark Polo Gang

Ma il cielo è sempre più blu – Rino Gaetano

MALAMENTE (Cap.1: Augurio) – ROSALÍA

MALDICIÓN (Cap.10: Cordura) – ROSALÍA

Maledetti scarafaggi

Mambo Italiano – Renato Carosone

Mamma Roma, Addio – Cranio Randagio

Mara e il maestrale – Murubutu

Marco gioca sott’acqua – Murubutu

Marks – Nicolas Jaar

Marry You – Bruno Mars

MARYLEAN – Machete

Marylou – Mannarino

mary magdalene – FKA twigs

Mas Que Nada – Sergio Mendes

Materazzi ha fatto gol – Matrixgol

Matilda – alt-J

Men In Black – Will Smith

Mentre tutto scorre – Negramaro

Merchandise – Fugazi

Me So’ Mbriacato – Mannarino

Messa in moto – Caparezza

Meteorological – Guerilla Toss

Mica Van Gogh – Caparezza

Migliora La Tua Memoria Con Un Click – Caparezza

Milano – Calcutta

MILANO SUSHI & COCA – M¥SS KETA

Milkshake – Kelis

Mi mujer – Nicolas Jaar

Minor Swing – Django Reinhardt & le Hot Club de France

Minuetto – Mia Martini

Mio fratello è figlio unico – Rino Gaetano

Mi parli di te – Motta

Mi sei scoppiato dentro al cuore – Mina

Mi sento una betulla in piena estate insieme a te – Cecco e Cipo

Misirlou – Surf Boys

Mi sono innamorato di te – Luigi Tenco

Moanin’ – Charles Mingus

Moby Dick – Led Zeppelin

Mon oncle – Frank Barcellini

Moondance – Van Morrison

Morte in diretta – Salmo

Mouth trap! – 10LEC5

Mr. Simpatia – Fabri Fibra

My Generation – The Who

My Rollercoaster – Kimya Dawson

NANA (Cap.9: Concepción) – ROSALÍA

Nandemonaiya – RADWIMPS

Narcoleptic Verses Pt. 1 – Salmo

Negative Youth – Salmo

Nel blu dipinto di blu – Domenico Modugno

Nella Mia Ora Di Libertà – Fabrizio De André

Nella pancia dello squalo – Salmo

Nessuno – Brunori Sas

Nessun rimpianto – 883

Niente da capire – Francesco De Gregori

Niente di strano – Giorgio Poi

No. 1 Party Anthem – Arctic Monkeys

No Big Bang – Priests

No Fear – Fabrizio Maurizi

Noi bambine non abbiamo scelta – Baustelle

Non farti cadere le braccia – Edoardo Bennato

Non me lo posso permettere – Caparezza

Non me lo so spiegare – Tiziano Ferro

Non potrei mai – Fast Animals and Slow Kids

Non siete stato voi – Caparezza

NON SONO MARRA - La pelle – Marracash

No Stress – Laurent Wolf

No Surprises – Radiohead

No Tengo Dinero – Righeira

Noter de Berghem – I cör alegher

Notte prima degli esami – Antonello Venditti

No Woman, No Cry – Bob Marley & The Wailers

Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da – The Beatles

Oh, pretty woman – Roy Orbison

Oltre il ponte – Modena City Ramblers

Oltre l’orizzonte – Oceania

One More Time – Daft Punk

One O Six – Jupiter

One way or another – Blondie

On Melancholy hill – Gorillaz

On the floor Jennifer Lopez

Oops! I did it again – Britney Spears

Orgasmo – Calcutta

Oroscopo – Calcutta

OSCENO – Lilly Meraviglia

Our song – Taylof Swift

Paint it, Black – The Rolling Stones

Pale Blue Eyes – The Velvet Underground

Pantalica – Colapesce

Papa was a Rolling Stones – The Temptations

Paper Bag Acid – Jerome Hill

Paradise – Phoebe Cates

Paranoia mia – Ernia

Parole parola – Mina

Party in the U.S.A – Miley Cyrus

Peace Lovin Man – John Lee Hooker

Peaches en regalia – Frank Zappa

Penny Lane – The Beatles

Pepper – Butthole Surfers

Per amore e basta – Motta

Per dimenticare – Zero Assoluto

Però mi vuol bene – Quartetto Cetra

Per tutte le volte che – Valerio Scanu

Peter Gunn – Henry Mancini

Piazza Grande – Lucio Dalla

Piccola Sbronza – Selton, Dente

PIENSO EN TU MIRÁ (Cap.3: Celos) – ROSALÍA

Pifferaio magico – Articolo 31

Piledriver Waltz – Arctic Monkeys

Piove – Domenico Modugno

Pippi calzelunghe

Pistorius – Gemitaiz, Madman

Più bella cosa – Eros Ramazzotti

Planet Caravan – Black Sabbath

Play – Betta Lemme

Pleasentville – Nitro

POCO DI BUONO - Il fegato – Marracash

Poesia – Don Backy

Poetessa maledetta – Club Domani, Stephanie Glitter

Pokemon – Giorgio Vanni

Pollon, pollon combina guai – Critina D’Avena

Pop porno – Il Genio

Pornoromanzo – Brunori Sas

Posso farcela – Alex Baroni (Hercules)

Post Concerto – Coma_Cose

Precipitevolissimevolmente – Dente, Il Genio

Preghiera delle palle di neve – Musica Per Bambini

PRESO (Cap.6: Clausura) – ROSALÍA

Pretty fly (for a white guy) – The Offspring

Price Tag – Jessie J, B.o.

Prima di dormire – Salmo

Prisencolinensinainciusol – Adriano Celentano

Prisoner 709 – Caparezza

Promised Land – Joe Smooth

Prospettiva Nevsi – Franco Battiato

Psycho Killer – Talking Heads

Pump up the jam – Technotronic, Felly

QUALCOSA IN CUI CREDERE - Lo scheletro – Marracash

Quando quando quando – Tony Renis

QUELLI CHE NON PENSANO - Il cervello – Marracash

Quello che siamo diventati – Motta

QUE NO SALGA LA LUNA (Cap.2: Boda) – ROSALÍA

Questa è la mia festa – Maria Antonietta

Questa è la realtà – Hercules

Questo piccolo grande amore – Claudio Baglioni

Ragazza magica – Jovanotti

Ragazze acidelle – Flaminio Maphia

Ragazzo fortunato – Jovanotti

Ramaya – Afric Simone

Rancho della luna – Salmo

Rasputin – Boney M.

Recitativo – 2 invocazioni 1 atto di accusa – Fabrizio de andré

Reginella campagnola – I Girasoli

Relax Your Body – D.F.X.

RENIEGO - Cap.5: Lamento – ROSALÍA

Respect – Aretha Franklin

Restiamo in casa – Colapesce

Ricchi Dentro - Ghali

The Climb – Miley Cyrus

The Dark Side of the Mood – Nitro

The Flintstones – Sigla

The Gravedigger’s Song – Mark Lanegan

The Heroic Weather - Conditions of the Universe, Part 1: A Veiled Mist – Alexandre Desplat

The Kids Aren’t Alright – The Offspring

The lazy song – Bruno Mars

The realness – RuPaul

8 notes · View notes

oklcmc · 4 years ago

Text

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀،̲،̲⠀𝐔𝐍𝐃𝐄𝐑𝐆𝐑𝐎𝐔𝐍𝐃 𝐂𝐎𝐌𝐁𝐀𝐓 ❪chapter uno：heat wave❫ [𝟏𝟖+]

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀〝⠀Cross your HEART ⅋ hope to⠀⠀⠀DIE？⠀〞 ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀— Kei Valentine，2016

ׂ ̣ ○ . ° ♰ 𓈒 ॱ 𓂂 WORD COUNT：5，853

ׂ ̣ ○ . ° ♰ 𓈒 ॱ 𓂂 PAIRING：street fighter!black!male oc ❪keith powers❫ ✕ black!female oc ❪kelis rogers，circa ‘99❫

ׂ ̣ ○ . ° ♰ 𓈒 ॱ 𓂂 FOREWARNING：This chapter will contain use of strong language，use of drugs or alcohol，violence，gore，character death，abduction and angst. Read at your own discretion.

Flatbush，Brooklyn · Sunday，August 21 11:00 AM

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀𝐊𝐄𝐈 𝐕𝐀𝐋𝐄𝐍𝐓𝐈𝐍𝐄

ㅤㅤㅤ𝕾INGING BIRDS，MOVING CARS，CHILDREN laughing, and Shyheim playing from a boombox was all that could be heard as I made my way down the street my boyfriend lives on, sporting out my white Polo Ralph Lauren baseball cap, Columbia University T-shirt, solid black leggings, white slouch socks, “Georgetown Hoyas” colorway Reebok Question Mid sneakers and Louis Vuitton Alma BB handbag.

The humidity was high in New York City about this time around which would explain pimps and hustlers occupying every block, parents shouting at their children from open windows, and kids freestyling on stoops or playing around open fire hydrants.

I could see Antonio's grandmother, Mrs. Lewis, in her kitchen apron, emptying trash into the galvanized trash can sitting beside her brownstone from a distance.

"How are you today, Mrs. Lewis?" I asked once I was near her.

She stopped what she was doing just to take a glance at me.

"Blessed and highly favored, Kei. I didn't see you in service today. I wonder why?" She smiled.

Antonio's grandmother is a pastor and his grandfather is a retired war vet. They're genuinely kind hearted folk. Who do you know welcoming their home to any and everybody, including the homeless?

"Yeah, about that; Jasper had to fill in for someone at the deli, so he left me to look after our grandfather, but since he's playing checkers in the park with Mr. Lewis and Joie's with his babysitter, I decided to past time by coming to visit."

"Mhm," She hummed with her hand on her hip. "Well, come on in, child. I don't want you having a heatstroke."

"Y-Yes, ma'am." I stammered, following her inside where it was cool— most likely from the air condition running in the living room window— with lodgers roaming from one room to another.

"Are you hungry? I have curry chicken and dirty rice sitting on the stove." She said, gesturing towards the kitchen.

"That sounds delicious, Mrs. Lewis, but I can't even look at food right about now. I think I ate too much of Jasper's waffles this morning." I confessed, rubbing my stomach.

"Alright, well, Antonio is sitting in the living room with Dimitri and Erick 'cause I know that's who you came to see."

"No, I—"

She shot me a glare that caused me to laugh.

"Alright, thank you."

"You're most certainly welcome."

I entered the living room area where Antonio, Dimitri and Erick were sitting around the analog television screening Rosemary's Baby. I would never understand how these guys could sit and watch horror flicks midday like it's nothing.

"Hey big head!" I greeted Dimitri with a forceful mush in the back of his head, almost causing the eyeglasses he was prescribed to wear to fly off his face.

He kissed his teeth, looking back at me.

"You play too much." He seethed, adjusting his eyeglasses and violet purple Billionaire Boys Club snapback.

"You play too much." I mimicked. "What's up, architect?" I gave Erick a gentle nuggie.

He chuckled softly in response, removing my arm from around his neck.

"Happy birthday, Kei." Surprisingly, he was the first in this household to acknowledge that it was my nineteenth birthday which caused Dimitri and especially Antonio to glare at him in envy because they weren't the first to say.

"What I do?" Erick asked innocently, looking to and fro between Antonio and Dimitri whilst shrugging his shoulders.

"You didn't do anything wrong, Erick. They're just hating 'cause you were the first to say. Thank you, Erick." I hugged his neck from behind.

"Don't sweat it, Kei."

I slid down to Antonio who wasted no time pulling me down on his lap and securing his arms around me.

"Careful." I warned causing us both to gaze at each other in concern.

"Get a room!" Dimitri commented.

"Shut up, Meechy!" Antonio and I said in unison.

I pitched the closest thing I could find at Dimitri's head which so happened to be the pack of Trolli Sour Bite Crawlers Antonio was eating.

"Happy birthday, beautiful." Antonio directed his attention back towards me.

"Aw! Thanks, mi amor." I rested my forehead against his.

"C'mon, I got something for you." He helped me stand up before helping himself up, our fingers still entwined.

He led me upstairs to the third level of the apartment where his bedroom was located. Our faces fell at the sight of a bum snooping through the drawers of his 5-drawer dresser.

"Yo, what the fuck?! Get the fuck out my room!" Antonio bellowed.

I pushed back the urge to giggle as I hid behind Antonio's back like an anxious one-year-old clinging to her mother. My immense dark brown irises watching the bum's every step out the door.

"You seriously need a lock on your door." I stated, releasing his hand and making my way towards his neatly made twin size bed.

He kissed his teeth.

"Tell me something I don't know."

My eyes wandered his small, yet overfamiliar bedroom that was far from extravagant.There was the twin bed I was currently sitting on, a Playstation 3 console and small television sitting on top of the dresser for when him, Dimitri and Erick wanted to play WWE, an iMac and condenser microphone crammed in the corner, and we can't forget the self-made paintings, psychedelic art, and family portraits he had hanging on the gray walls by push pins.

"Here we are!" Antonio exclaimed, pulling a black security box from under his bed.

I watched as he blew dust off the lid before getting off his knees and taking a seat beside me on the bed. He slipped a single key from his back pocket, preparing to unlock the box until I stopped him.

"Before you open and show me whatever is in the box... I-I need to share something with you." I breathed.

His arms fell loosely by his sides.

"Good or bad?"

"I-I'm not sure," I answered honestly, placing my Louis Vuitton pom-pom keychain aside before unzipping my handbag. "I know it's my birthday, but surprise!" I exclaimed, flashing him the positive First Response early result pregnancy test.

With his mouth ajar and his eyes widened, he reached for the test.

"You're... Pregnant? I mean, we're pregnant. H-How? I-Is it even accurate?"

"Well, remember when I told you I accidentally forgot to take the pill a couple months back and a little while after that we insisted on having sex without a condom? This is the result and I'm pretty sure it's accurate after pissing on three different tests." I entwined our fingers again and propped my chin up on his shoulder as we both gazed at the test.

"Why do you sound so offended? I was only asking. You know I got you, Kei. I won't let you down." He placed a soft kiss upon my forehead causing my cheeks to warm up. "That brings me to my next point," He finally managed to get his security box open, revealing his gold Desert Eagle and quite a few stacks of $100 bills being held together by rubber bands.

Antonio is evidently a street pharmacist, but it was only to sustain this career in music he had going on with Dimitri and Erick. It might've not been the safest job in the world, but it was efficient and efficient is what they needed in order to make it up out of here. Who am I to judge? Besides, who wouldn't want a hood gentlemen?

"You remember that house in Staten Island we were looking at after visiting my mom's burial last year?"

I nodded.

"Yeah, what about it?"

"I'ma buy it for you... For us," He stated, glancing down at my present flat stomach. "I want what's best for our child and I know you do too. This is $450,000. All I gotta do is make 19,000 more and it's ours, baby. I just need you to do me a favor."

"Anything."

"I need for you to hold on to this for me."

"Antonio, I can't. I-It's your mo—"

"It's our money, Kei," We both looked into each other's eyes intently. "You know I wouldn't be asking you if I didn't trust you. I trust you, Kei. I know you'll keep it safe." He gently unclenched my fist and placed the money in the palm of my hand. "I'm sorry that I couldn't get you anything better, but I know how bad you wanted that hou—"

I pressed my lips against his, cutting him off mid-sentence. I could feel tears of joy beginning to well up in the brim of my eyes.

"It's perfect." I whispered against his lips, a smile playing on my own.

He lowered himself on to the bed, pulling me along with him. His hands caressed what little curves I did have as my hands caressed his face. Our lips touched yet again.Before the kiss grew anymore intense, my rose gold iPhone 6s Plus began vibrating inside my handbag causing us both to pull away.

I sat up and reached for my bag, pulling my iPhone out. Unlocking it, I tapped the unread message badge and pulled XiXi's text up.

XiXi 👯💛： I'm outside

"That's XiXi. She's outside waiting on me." I informed, locking and slipping my phone back inside my handbag.

I stuffed the money Antonio gave me and the positive pregnancy test I showed him earlier inside my purse before zipping it closed, grabbing my pom-pom keychain, and standing up.

Antonio stood up and pulled me into a tight hug.

"I love you. Stay safe, okay?" I said, kissing his cheek.

"Yeah, okay."

I wished Dimitri, Erick, and Mrs. Lewis farewell before walking outside to XiXi's chrome pink Jeep. Once I was seated in the passenger's seat with my seat belt strapped across me, we both reached across the armrest to embrace each other in a hug.

"Hey, best!" XiXi squealed as if she hadn't seen me just yesterday.

"Hey!" I giggled.

"Yo, we gotta go swoop mi abuelo up at the park."

"No problem." She pushed her mirror sunglasses over her eyes and switched the gear stick to drive.

Manhattan，New York City 4:30 PM

ㅤㅤㅤ“𝕱IRST OF ALL，YOU USE a griddle while cooking quesadillas, not a skillet.”

"Why does it even matter? They're both frying pans."

" 'Cause it just does, okay? Leave it to the professionals."

"You call yourself a professional?!"

Jasper and XiXi's voices trailed from the kitchen to my bedroom. The aroma of my favorite Mexican dish traveling throughout the apartment caused my stomach to growl.

I was finally back at the two-bedroom apartment in Harlem that I shared with my older brother, Jasper; my nephew, Joie; and my grandfather.

Everyone told me to lock myself in my bedroom and find something constructive to do until dinner was finished. I wasn't exactly sure what they were doing, but it wouldn't exactly be a surprise if I could hear their conversations all the way from the kitchen either.

To keep occupied like everyone had suggested, I sat on my full size bed with my navy blue Chinese Shar Pei puppy, Toto and decided to create my own photo album that I could share with everyone at the dinner table.

After slipping the photo of Jasper holding me at three years old behind a photo sleeve, I reached for the photo of our mother holding me as an infant.

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀𝐕𝐈𝐒𝐔𝐀𝐋𝐒⠀⦂⠀kei ⅋ jasper，circa ‘00.

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀𝐕𝐈𝐒𝐔𝐀𝐋𝐒⠀⦂⠀kei ⅋ mommy，circa ‘97.

It wasn't too long after this her and my father left Jasper and I to travel the world. The responsibility of raising Jasper and I fell on my grandparents.

It's funny how they're travelers, but we haven't received not one postcard nor letter informing us that they're still breathing and coming to take us home. That's just wishful thinking, I guess and I'm just lying in wait.

My grandmother passed away peacefully in her sleep on a Tuesday. She was the heart of the family. These past three years without her has taken a hard toll on all of us, especially my grandfather. He once worked as a boilermaker at a steel mill, but injured his hand on the job. He was forced to quit his job and face disability. The incoming money helped us rent this apartment, but Jasper couldn't bare the thought that we were only depending on our grandfather's money to get by, so he insisted on getting a job at a local deli where he met the love of his life, Jennie.

Jennie died from amniotic fluid embolism while giving birth to Joie. Of course, it took a toll on Jasper worse than it did mi abuelo and I because we were growing to like her. Jasper figured she gave him a beautiful blessing, so he quit displaying his feelings, but I know there's not a day that passes him by where he doesn't mourn the loss of Jennie and our grandmother.

I guess we've grown immune to people walking out of lives without a simple farewell.

I felt something wet trailing down my cheek. It wasn't until I reached up to wipe it away that I had noticed I was crying. For what reason was perplex to me. I was never the one to get emotional over my current situation.

Knock! Knock! Knock!

There were a few knocks at my bedroom door causing me to flinch.

"Kei? You in there, girl? Dinner's ready." I could hear XiXi's angelic voice coming from the other side of the door.

I cleared my throat before speaking up.

"Y-Yeah, I'm here. I'll be out in a second." I sniffed.

After placing the last photo behind a photo sleeve, I closed the photo album and slid off my bed. I approached my bedroom door with Toto following behind me. Unlocking and pulling the door open, revealed XiXi with her head turned in the opposite direction. Her gaze hadn't fell upon me until I cleared my throat.

"Oh, Kei, you scared me!" She gasped.

"Sorry?" I said softly.

"It's okay, c'mon." She gently grabbed my wrist and began leading me inside the kitchen area.

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀〝⠀For she's a jolly good fellow， ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀for she's a jolly good fellow ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀For she's a jolly good fellooow， ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀which nobody can deny!⠀〞

I couldn't help dying of laughter at the sight of Jasper, Joie, mi abuelo, Antonio, Dimitri, Erick, and Mr. & Mrs. Lewis dressed in sombreros, faux mustaches, and maracas. Not to mention their God awful singing, but it was their way of showing affection, so it was only considerate of me to enjoy every minute of it 'cause I could've received nothing.

Jasper approached me with a triple layer marble cake made from scratch that instantly caused my mouth to water.

"Make a wish, little sis."

The dancing flames on the number candles reflected against my face. I closed my eyes and thought long and hard about something reasonable to wish for this year.

I wish to have an healthy and happy full-term pregnancy.

With my photo album clenched tightly in my hands, I leaned forward and blew out my candles. A round of applause followed after causing me to smile.

10:00 PM

ㅤㅤㅤ𝕬FTER A FUN-FILLED EVENING OF feasting, storytelling, and opening gifts, my birthday celebration had finally came to an end, sending everyone their own separate ways. Dimitri, Erick, Antonio, and his grandparents headed home, Jasper went to put Joie down for bed, and mi abuelo eventually KO'd in his recliner while watching those Western movies on the DVR, leaving XiXi and I on kitchen duty.

Out of the few gifts I received today, I really took a liking to that sewing machine and kit Jasper bought me. It'd come in handy when I start my new semester on Wednesday.

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀〝⠀Ladies leave yo man at home ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀The club is full of ballers and ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀They pockets full grown，⠀〞

I was aimlessly sweeping confetti and cake crumbs from the tile floors of the kitchen while XiXi loaded the dishwasher when Destiny's Child's single "Jumpin', Jumpin' " began playing from the Amazon Echo speaker sitting over on the counter. I fixated my eyes on XiXi as I aligned the broom at my side, already knowing what to expect of her.

"Don't do it..." I warned through a giggle while pointing my index finger in her direction.

XiXi, of course, accepted my warning as some sort of challenge; inching towards the speaker and boldly wrapping her hand around the volume ring.

"Everyone is asleep, XiXi! You better not! I swear to—" I was abruptly silenced by the increase of volume on the speaker. My head almost immediately fell forward into the palm of my hand at the thought of Jasper storming inside the kitchen and making a fuss about how we woke up Joie and possibly mi abuelo as well.

XiXi was so hardheaded. Speaking of whom, she sashayed her way towards me; taking the broom from my hands and sitting it up against the wall.

"C'mon, dance with me, Kei." She insisted, grabbing ahold of both my hands and dragging me to the middle of the floor though I showed no signs of amusement throughout this whole nuisance. "Will you stop being so stubborn and just dance with me, Kei?" She urged me even more than before.

Her hip coming in contact with mine and me almost flying into the dining room table is what caused me to break character and breakout into a fit of giggles.

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀〝⠀Though he say he got a girl ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀Yeah it's true you got a man ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀But the party ain't gon' stop ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀So let's make it hot，hot，⠀〞

Watching XiXi prance around the kitchen and sing off-key to the throwback tune eventually intrigued me enough to join in. What I thought was outrageous, especially at this time of night, turned out to be quite fun and not a single soul bothered interfering, surprisingly.

Eventually the up-tempo record was replaced by something more quieter, allowing us to unwind in the chairs at the dining room table.

"Ugh, that was so much fun!" XiXi exclaimed, tilting her head back only to have it fall forward again; strands of her ginger-dyed coils covering her eyes. "Let's go clubbin'."

"Clubbin' on a Sunday, XiXi? What are we paying tithes at the door in order to get in?" I shook my head in disbelief at what she was suggesting as I dragged the Tupperware bowl full of Smartfood's white cheddar cheese flavored popcorn towards me.

She laughed at this.

"Of course not. Look, I got the perfect spot. You remember when I told you I met someone a few weeks back?"

"Yeah, what about 'em?" I asked, grabbing a handful of popcorn and stuffing it inside my mouth.

"His name's RetcH. He's the boss at this nightclub and casino called the Red Room right here in Manhattan. I'm telling you he could get us in for free."

"Uh-uh. Nope. Negatory." I immediately declined her offer by shaking my head. "Ain't no way I'm 'bout to get caught third wheeling with you and your "supposed" fling. You know the minute this bonnet goes on my head, I'm in for the night."

"Oh c'mon, Kei! It's not like he doesn't have homies and you know I'll willingly style your hair for you."

"No." I stood up from the dining room table with the Tupperware bowl and approached the trash bin which I proceeded to empty the popcorn into.

XiXi was very skilled in the field of cosmetology though she had yet to earn a diploma to show for it while I was more devoted to fashion which is probably why we clicked so much. We made the perfect team. I'd piece together our outfits for certain occasions while she went crazy with the hair dye and nail art. In fact, XiXi was the only person I trusted styling my hair and doing my mani-pedis other than myself, that is, but even that wasn't enough to make me take one for the team.

"Please?" She pleaded, following me towards the kitchen sink.

"Didn't you just hear me say 'no' or do you not comprehend? What would I get in return if I decided to go anyways? Another faded memory?"

"Or a box of strawberry Eclair's and I'll even pitch on on helping you find that bismuth crystal that you've been searching for."

I slowly turned to face her, a goofy grin playing on my lips as I batted my mink eyelashes. Her offer sounded fabricated.

"Cross your heart and hope to die?" I asked, holding out my pinky.

"I swear." She promised, but that still wasn't enough to make me accept.

"No," I shook my head. "You have to pinky swear."

"Fine! Cross my heart and hope to die." She smiled, entwining our pinky fingers.

2:00 AM

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀𝐎𝐌𝐍𝐈𝐒𝐂𝐈𝐄𝐍𝐓

ㅤㅤㅤ𝕶EI’S INDEX FINGER TRACED THE rim of her Canada Dry ginger ale soda can continuously as she sat by the bar, attentively observing her best friend shooting craps alongside RetcH and a few other betters.

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀𝐕𝐈𝐒𝐔𝐀𝐋𝐒⠀⦂⠀*⠀LE SHANGHAI NIGHTCLUB⠀╱⠀red room nightclub.

Five hours.

Five hours is how long she had been seated in that bar stool, only daring to get up when she needed to use the restroom. It could've been the eight ginger ales she had washed down while patiently waiting on XiXi's say-so on when they'd be leaving, but then again frequent urination was a common symptom amongst pregnant woman.

There were offers to dance and drink from several different men, especially those of RetcH's crew, but she politely declined. She wanted to observe.

She noticed an odd group that consisted of five males, standing on the opposite end of the craps table. Three of the five men seemed rugged by their heavy streetwear and more engrossed in the game while the other two seemed to be more engaged in their cell phone or undressing Kei through their vintage Gianni Versace shades for one.

"Vodka straight." The mellowest male voice came from beside Kei, breaking her previous train of thought.

To her left stood her secret admirer whom was currently in the process of pulling $20 from his leather wallet.

Kei's eyes shifted over to the brown skin bartender placing a shot glass on the counter and cracking open one of the most expensive bottles of Roberto Cavalli Vodka then back over to her admirer.

She took this time to really admire his physique. His coiled hair hidden beneath a black snapback, his full pink lips, killer jawline, and the speckles adorning the bridge of his nose and cheekbones. The gold hoop earring dangling from his left ear, the Jesus pieces draping around his neck and the gold Rolex peeping through the sleeve of his white bomber jacket had only enhanced these features.

Little did Kei know, he was admiring her through the red lighting of the nightclub also. Her signature afro full of curls— the roots which were dyed honey blonde and exceeded out, blending in with the pink ends— were now twisted back into double buns using hair sticks. Her eyebrows were dyed the same shade of pink as the ends of her hair. Only she could pull that off with the beautiful mocha complexion she had. Her eyes were wide, but slightly slanted, giving the impression that she identified to more ethnicities than one. They were the perfect shade of dark brown. Her nose was small, but pointed outward. She had a round face, chubby cheeks, and full pink lips. She was sporting a red Cheongsam style blouse, a Louis Vuitton Alma BB handbag, black dress pants, and glossy red Giuseppe Zanotti wing sandals. A gorgeous woman with expensive taste was definitely his weakness.

He thought now would be the perfect time to introduce himself.

"I'm Tyree, Tyree Devlin. And you are?" He extended his hand out for Kei to shake.

Normally, Tyree wouldn't find himself being this polite to any ordinary female sitting by the bar past midnight. He'd just denigrate them until they found it appealing, take them to his pad in Vinegar Hill, Brooklyn for him and his crew mates to share, then he'd be kicking them all out like Martin Lawrence come morning, but Kei gave off a different aura. The same aura that got him caught up with his wife, Alina and his girlfriend, Brooklyn, but that's another topic for a different discussion.

"Uninterested." Kei responded dryly, passing on his handshake.

"Ouch." Tyree smirked, playing it off by stashing his wallet away in the pocket of his bomber jacket.

He was truly affected by Kei's response. She was definitely taking the hard to get route.

He removed his shades from his face and placed them on the counter beside his shot glass before taking a seat in the bar stool beside Kei.

She couldn't help but bite the corner of her lips at the sight of his dark brown irises.

He chucked in reaction at her, ending it by tracing his tongue along his bottom lip. It wasn't until then that Kei had noticed his gold-plated bottoms glinting in the dim lighting of the nightclub.

"Can I offer to buy you something to drink, uninterested?" He asked, finally throwing his money's worth shot of Roberto Cavalli Vodka back with ease.

Kei forced a phony cackle to leave her lips.

"No, thank you. I'm not much of a drinker." She confessed.

"Well, then can I purchase you another ginger ale? I'm almost sure that one's gone flat."

"Me and my ginger ale are just fine, thank you."

Truth be told, Kei's bladder was full and she knew she'd be excusing herself any second for a restroom break which is why she had passed on Tyree's offer.

"Suit yourself," He followed her gaze which wasn't fixated on him, but on the craps table. "Is someone catching your attention over there?" He nudged his head in the direction overcrowded table.

"My best friend, XiXi. She's standing next to the guy in the Polo bucket hat."

"Ah, I see. If you were standing next to me when I was shooting, you would've made one helluva good luck charm. I would've made a fortune off of you." Tyree slipped his fingers beneath Kei's chin only to have them slapped away.

"Don't," Kei warned. "Now, if you'd excuse me, I have to make a restroom run." She hopped off the bar stool and rushed off into the women's restroom before he even got the opportunity to see her blushing over his cheesy pick up lines.

Once she handled her business inside the stall, sanitized, and refreshed her appearance, her Giuseppe's were echoing towards the exit of the bathroom yet again.

As she extended her hand out for the handle of the door, it swung open, colliding with her nose. Her head flew back in the process. The impact was enough to send her fragile body flying across the marble floors.

She groaned in pure agony, feeling something warm gushing from both her nostrils. When she reached up to touch the substance, she noticed blood covering her fingertips in her near focal point and a 9mm MAC-11 in her far.

"Move another inch and I'll blow your fucking brains out."

Kei froze from where she was lying on the marble floors, but couldn't contain her heavy breathing nor trembles. She had been lucky enough to empty her bladder before she had faced her taker who so happened to be one of Tyree's rugged crew mates.

"Get up." He demanded, waving his MAC-11 in her direction causing her breath to hitch.

She started to pick herself up, but it seemed too slow for his patience; therefore, he didn't mind gripping the back of her neck in order to speed up the process.

"Faster, bitch! You think this shit a game, huh?" His nails were now sinking into her flesh.

She had finally released an ear piercing scream for his enjoyment.

"Shut up!" He bellowed, pushing the steel barrel to her temple as a warning.

"Okay, okay." She pleaded barely above a whisper. Tears were now escaping freely from the brim of her eyes.

"Open the door." He demanded.

She did as she was told, pulling the door open. The club was mostly clear aside from RetcH and Tyree's crew mates. Only difference was that Tyree's crew mates had all of RetcH's crew mates held hostage, that included XiXi.

"KEI!" XiXi screamed for her best friend from across the room, tears staining her face.

"You tryna die tonight?" Tyree whispered to XiXi since he was the one holding semi-automatic pistols to her and her boyfriend's dome.

Not even twenty minutes ago, Kei viewed Tyree as harmless, but now she looked at him in pure rage and it was only feeding that rebellious ego of his.

"Since y'all don't wanna play fair and swindle me out my money, we taking everything valuable around this motherfucker!" Another one of Tyree's rugged crew mates spoke through a sinister smirk while aiming AK-47's at Pockets and the bartender's head. "Slim, how's it coming along back there?"

"It's coming." Slim answered breathlessly from behind the bar.

"Aight, well, hurry up. I need for you to pull the Escalade out front."

"Bet."

"Richie, you holding up?"

"With these two lanky motherfuckers? Yeah, Raphael, I'm straight." Richie said sarcastically, holding Raptor rifles at the back of Percy and Teddy's head.

Slim managed to slide across the bar with an Adidas duffle bag full of cash, liquor, and handguns The Stallions had hidden around the Red Room. He approached Raphael, yanking the keys to the Escalade from the belt loop of his jeans.

"Be out in two minutes." He informed.

"Two minutes, no less." Raphael muttered.

That gave Slim the OK to evacuate the building.

"Fuck y'all, niggas! Y'all won't suppose to step foot on our territory anyways! Just wait 'til this gets around to Bones! Y'all dead men walking!" Torque spat.

"Bones ain't gonna do a God damn thing! You best shut the fuck up before I end your life right here, nigga!" Raphael removed his AK-47 from the bartender's head and pushed it beneath Torque's chin instead causing him to swallow spit.

Everyone but Kei seemed so distracted by Torque and Raphael's antics that they hadn't even noticed XiXi's hand inching behind RetcH's back. What would her weapon do against seven handguns?

It wasn't until the distinct sound of a car horn blowing from outside that everyone's head snapped in XiXi's direction. RetcH's 9mm Smith & Wesson clenched in her trembling hand.

"NO!" Kei screamed.

It was as if everything was in slow motion as Kei witnessed multiple bullets being lodged into her best friend's chest. Her blood splattered from Tyree's pale face to RetcH's solid white T-shirt.

XiXi fell to her knees then face first into the marble floors where she took her last few breaths until she was eventually lying in a pool of her own blood.

"YOU KILLED HER!" Sobbed Kei, dramatically collapsing in her taker's arms.

No one could actually make out what she was screaming through her uncontrollable sobbing and sniffling. She wished that this was all a bad dream and that at the click of her heels, she'd be back home with Jasper, Joie, abuelo, Toto and a breathing XiXi overshadowing her.

"Let's bounce! Matta fact, Tec, bring that bitch along too since she wanna scream. We gon' give her something to scream about." Raphael traced his tongue along his ceramic braces as he inched towards the exit, his crew mates following his every step.

You had to be a fool to think Kei was going out without putting up a fight with Tec. Of course, he wind up winning in the end, dragging her out into the pouring rain by the collar of her blouse. The buttons began popping off one by one, revealing her solid red Victoria's Secret bra.

"HELP ME!" Kei screamed in the midst of the boys stashing their gats away in the trunk of the car; her soon-to-be one way ticket to hell.

"Shut that bitch up!" Raphael demanded.

"You're the damn enforcer of this crew, I don't see why— AH!" Tec yelped at the sharp feeling of one of Kei's hair sticks being lodged into his thigh.

She attempted to crawl away, only to have Tec compress his teal high top Air Force 1's into her back before she could get any further.

"Stupid bitch." He gritted, restraining her arms behind her back and using a plastic security loop to bind her wrists together. Next would be her ankles.

Kei helplessly laid there whimpering from the throbbing discomfort of her restraints and the constant replay of witnessing her best friend get murdered. She feared for her and her unborn child too.

"Let me take you out your misery, baby girl." Tyree cooed, a smirk playing on his lips.

He stifled her screams and cries with a rag drenched in chloroform until she gradually became unconscious in tranquility.

The last thing she had seen was his alluring eyes in the rain fall.

Any dream would be better than this one.

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀dimitri ﹅ meechy darko ﹅ simms as 𝐇𝐈𝐌𝐒𝐄𝐋𝐅

⤷ occupation：antonio’s homie╱brother ⅋ upcoming artist

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀erick ﹅ erick the architect ﹅ elliott as 𝐇𝐈𝐌𝐒𝐄𝐋𝐅

⤷ occupation：antonio’s homie╱brother ⅋ upcoming artist╱producer

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀YOU’LL DISCOVER...

𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐏𝐓𝐄𝐑 DOS，PRT 𝟏╱𝟐⠀⦂⠀﹅ SING ABOUT 𝐌𝐄. ﹅

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀HERE!

#keith powers #kelis #urban fanfic #urban ff #urban fanfiction #streetlit #black authors #poc writers #djffny #def jam: fight for ny #def jam fight for ny #flatbush zombies

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randomvarious · 4 years ago

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Lisa Lisa & Cult Jam - “Lost in Emotion” I Know What Boys Like! Song released in 1987. Compilation released in 1996. Pop / Freestyle

From an old biography on Billboard.com:

Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam were one of the most musically diverse and successful recording acts of the '80s. With hits produced and written by Full Force, the six-man performing/songwriting/production team from East Flatbush/Brooklyn, NY, they scored million-selling hits with dance-based tracks ("I Wonder if I Take You Home"), beautiful ballads ("All Cried Out"), and unabashed pop tunes ("Head to Toe," "Lost in Emotion"). They were one of the early exponents of what later became hip-hop R&B. With five gold singles, two number one singles on both the R&B and the pop charts, two platinum albums, and inclusions on various compilations and movie soundtracks, Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam were the most successful act of Full Force's "One Big Family" roster of acts.

A constant theme throughout Lisa Lisa & Cult Jam’s history is the influence of Motown. Motown music is what seemingly brought them together and it’s what ultimately led them to achieve gargantuan levels of success throughout the 80s and early 90s. But it all started in 1984 with a struggling New York-based hip hop / R&B / funk / electro band called Full Force. They couldn’t get a label to bite and decided that they needed a change in direction. Having witnessed the success of R&B boy band New Edition, who were transparently packaged as an 80s rehash of the Jackson 5 (a new edition, if you will, of a Motown group), the members of Full Force formed an idea that they thought was sure to hit: an 80s rehash of The Supremes (an all-girl Motown group!). Full Force would write, produce, play the music, and provide backing vocals while a group of girls would take care of the main singing parts.

Full Force percussionist and roadie, Mike Hughes, would then come upon a 17-year old girl named Lisa Velez at a New York club called The Funhouse, which is also where Madonna ended up being discovered. Velez, who had visions of pop stardom, was a member of a traveling troupe in school that performed Motown hits and showtunes. Initially impressed by her looks, Hughes would invite her to an audition at a house in Brooklyn where three brothers from Full Force resided. Velez wouldn’t tell her protective older brother (she had nine siblings, by the way!), probably out of fear of him denying her request that she be allowed to go, and hopped on the D train to chase her dreams.

But it wasn’t all initially hunky dory. In fact, Velez’s first time meeting Full Force was rather creepy. From a 1988 interview and profile of Lisa Lisa in Spin:

...”I sit on a stool in the basement, and I’m looking around, and I see pictures of these big, big guys. Six big guys. I’m saying to myself, ‘Oh shit, they’re gonna kill me.’ I didn’t know what to think. I had just met Mike. Enter the six big guys, and I almost shit in my pants. Paul Anthony was the first one to come up to me, and he bent down and he kissed me and he says, ‘God, you’re very pretty.’ That’s when I thought, ‘Oh Jesus, he’s gonna rape me now.’”

But her fears were soon alleviated.

...Lisa started to sing. “She was singing this song that Mike Hughes wrote for her to do,” says Lou George, “and it wasn’t kicking at all. It was horrible, plain and simple. Because it had her singing so off-key, because the way the song was written, she was singing all off. I was just laughing until my tears came down because of the fact that she was off and Mike had wrote it, and it was just so funny the way the notes was going. And I was by the bathroom crying in tears, and Lisa couldn’t see me.

“Then she sang ‘For Your Eyes Only,” [the theme song from the 1981 James Bond flick] and that’s what got it. Everything fell into place.

Full Force would end up auditioning more girls, but in Velez they had found the Diana Ross piece to their 80s Supremes puzzle: an attractive young woman blessed with a high-pitched and innocent-sounding voice that MTV-watching teenybopper types could fawn over and try to emulate. Rather than wait to fill out the rest of the group with more singers, Velez and Full Force got to recording. She would be given the stage name Lisa Lisa, a sort of play on the Full Force-produced, 1984 breakthrough hip hop hit, “Roxanne, Roxanne” by UTFO. Mike Hughes and a guitarist and bassist who was associated with Full Force named Alex “Spanador” Moseley would make up Cult Jam. LL&CJ would then debut in 1985, finding decent chart success in a platinum-selling album with songs like “I Wonder If I Take You Home,” “Can You Feel the Beat,” and “All Cried Out,” the last of which would reach the top ten in the US. A couple years later, they followed up with Spanish Fly, achieving platinum status again thanks to two chart-topping pop singles, “Head to Toe” and “Lost in Emotion.” Both songs would be noted for their clear infusion of Motown influence.

“Lost in Emotion” really is just a perfect piece of sun-drenched 80s pop. And yet, despite the fact that it’s clearly such a bop, and that it reached #1, it still feels a bit overlooked today. Throughout all my years of listening to the classic pop and rock radio format, I feel like I’ve never heard it on there. Similarly, I also feel like I don’t see it included on all that many 80s mixes or playlists. I mean, this song has over 4 million plays on Spotify, which is a lot, but “Straight Up” by Paula Abdul, which hit #1 the following year, and has that same type of young and innocent girl vocal affect, has over 40 million plays. They’re both good songs, no doubt, but go listen to both of them back to back and tell me which one holds up better today. The answer is “Lost in Emotion” and I will fight you if you disagree.

Ultimately, this song reflects a fantastically catchy pairing of an in vogue and upbeat, poppy freestyle sound with old chunks of Motown mixed in. Alongside slapping percussion, flooding synthesizers, and twinkling, sort of tropical-sounding melodies courtesy of a combination of xylophones and bells, Full Force divine their main inspiration for this song from a pair of Mary Wells hits (she was a Motown star!), “Two Lovers” and “You Beat Me to the Punch.” And if you listen to those songs, you can hear the bits and pieces that ended up motivating Full Force to write “Lost in Emotion.”

But this sweet 80s jam struts with more than just Motown flair. The main, funky bassline that undergirds the whole thing has a definite Ben E. King “Stand by Me” feel to it, which is still 60s, but not Motown, and the extended bridge section, which also contains a nice sax solo, showcases even more glints of non-Motown 60s sounds. The male bass baritone backing vocal that briefly swoops in the outro portion is a clear callback to doo-wop groups of the 50s and 60s, which wasn’t Motown’s lane, and Lisa Lisa also appears to give tribute to Del Shannon with her own backing vocal by briefly wailing an “aye-yai-yai,” mimicking the iconic “why-why-why” from the early 60s rock-and-roll-pop masterpiece, “Runaway.” It’s these combinations of Lisa Lisa’s naturally nubile voice, not to mention her sheer attractiveness, along with Full Force’s expert mixing of both old and contemporary sounds that would enable “Lost in Emotion” to be the most popular song in the US during the summer of 1987. It’s also a tune which proves that, when done right, Motown doesn’t go out of style. At least it clearly hadn’t by then.

Of course, there was a music video for “Lost in Emotion,” too, which plainly shows Lisa Lisa lip syncing the whole song as she and her friends move through a crowded street fair rigged with carnival games and a stage, which Lisa Lisa graces at the end. According to Wikipedia, it was the fourth-most played video in 1987 on MTV.

youtube

An absolute classic banger of an 80s pop song that shows Lisa Lisa & Cult Jam at their peak. You ignore this flawless summer earworm at your own peril.

#pop #pop music #freestyle #freestyle music #music #80s #80s music #80's #80's music #80s pop #80's pop #80s pop music #80's pop music #classic pop #80s freestyle #80's freestyle #80s freestyle music #80's freestyle music

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vernonfielding · 5 years ago

Text

Such is the life of trailblazers

Story No. 4 of my Season 7 Countdown Project. I would still love prompts for future missing scene fics!

Summary: “This heroine is my heroin.”

Rosa’s never seen anyone who looks like her on the cover of a book before. So of course she’s going to buy that book and read it. Takes place during Return to Skyfire. (Read on AO3.)

Rosa heads straight to her rented garage in Flatbush after work so she can put in a couple of hours on the Audi Ur-S6, which is a dumb-looking car but then, collecting’s never been her thing anyway. She FaceTimes with Tom Hardy for a bit to show him her progress on the ignition system and once she’s shaken him – dear God, Hardy is a talker – she cleans up and heads home.

She doesn’t think about The Crimson Portal until she’s finished heating up her dinner and is looking around for something to do while she eats. She reaches for her phone automatically, but then she notices the heavy hardcover sitting on the counter next to it. She picks up the book instead.

Rosa had grabbed it on a whim as they were leaving the convention. Jake was right, the character on the front cover looked exactly like her and so – look, she’d been curious.

Now, she flips open the cover to read the plot description on the inside jacket. The main character’s name is Xiomara Axis and she’s a natural-born truth-seeker who was abandoned at birth and raised by a blind beggar named Ishara in the slums of Devols’r. It’s even worse than Rosa imagined. She folds the book open anyway and tucks into her leftover chicken and rice.

+++

Rosa’s parents were insistent that their girls be bilingual, and so they only ever spoke Spanish to their daughters when they were young. Rosa appreciates that now – her Spanish isn’t flawless, but it’s pretty damn close – but the first few years of grade school were rough. She’d already learned to read in Spanish at home but her English was almost nonexistent and she hated being so far behind everyone else. She hated silent reading time when she had to pick her way through the worn, sticky pages of the readers everyone else had burned through, and she hated the shelves full of real books at the back of the classrooms, mocking her with titles she could barely decipher.

But when she did finally crack the English – Rosa doesn’t say or think this lightly, but it was friggin’ magical. Rosa tore through books, read her way through practically the entire school library (which, admittedly, was just a one-room portable) and then got her own card to the neighborhood branch of the public library.

She read all of the worst young adult romances of the ‘80s and ‘90s, and every dumbass Babysitters Club book (though she’s since swiped her mind clean of all of them), and everything by Anne Rice and VC Andrews and Judy Blume and Lois Lowry. She was especially drawn to fantasy novels, anything based in entirely original worlds that she could get lost in. Her favorite was The Song of the Lioness series, which she read at least three times through, because here, at last, a girl was the hero.

But by middle school Rosa had decided that even Alanna of Trebond – the red-haired and fair-skinned protagonist who tried so hard for so long to hide who she really was – didn’t belong to her, a Latina born to immigrant parents who, at age 14, already knew exactly who she was but had no idea what to do with that person. Rosa was angry at 14, already hard-headed and independent. She was fed up with white girls and white boys and white men, for fuck’s sake, telling her story.

So she stopped reading. Rosa decided that she needed to live in the real world and not her fantasy novels if she was going to figure out her place.

Over the years, she’d pick up a dumb summer beach read now and again. She plowed through nonfiction books when she came across a new subject she needed to learn all about. She even briefly majored in “ethnic” literature in college before realizing it was totally insulting that anything non-white just got lumped together.

But otherwise – well, fantasy was best left to children, she’d decided a long time ago.

+++

Rosa’s dinner goes cold as she blazes through the first three chapters of The Crimson Portal. At the end of the third chapter – The C’y’thian Denizens – she lays the book flat on the kitchen table so she can pack the chicken and rice back into a tupperware bowl. She grabs a diet soda and a bag of Pirate’s Booty stashed in the back of her pantry instead, and she takes the book and the popcorn and the drink to her living room and curls up on her sofa, socked feet pulled up under her legs and a blanket in her lap.

She can’t remember the last time she just indulged in a book. Not since she was a child, for sure. She reads for hours, well after her bedtime, pausing only to take out her contacts and change into pajamas, and later to crawl into bed, where she keeps reading under the orange glow of her bedside lamp.

Xiomara is mean and hilarious. She’s a fierce protector and a ruthless revenge-seeker and she’s smart in a way that’s useful in her adventure-seeking life. She speaks three languages – the one of her birth, the one of her youth, and the one that was an unexpected side effect of the time she was poisoned by the Liars of Dollomar – and is proud of the heritage that unspools before her as she seeks the Ancient Forbidden Rings.

Xiomara knows herself. And if the rest of her world doesn’t understand her, that’s their problem. Rosa is in love.

She finally closes the book, sliding a slim razor between the pages to mark her place, when her eyes are aching and her concentration is so shot that she knows she’ll probably have to reread the last chapter or two in the morning. She sets the book on her nightstand and turns off the lamp, and when she closes her eyes, she sees herself: tall, proud, wild hair flying all about, black eyes bright and eager even as the world burns all around her.

She smiles as she slips off to sleep.

End Notes:

Title is from Bikini Babe Workout (Bash Brothers).

The Skyfire episodes aren’t my favorites, but I love the idea of Rosa realizing that her doppelganger is the hero of a fantasy novel. And I love even more that she reads the book and totally digs it.

I haven’t actually read The Song of the Lioness (what I have here is from Wikipedia) so if I got something horribly wrong – I’m sorry? Please feel free to let me know and I’ll make revisions.

#b99 fic #b99 season 7 countdown project #rosa diaz #missing scene #return to skyfire

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thelazyeye · 5 years ago

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Title: Nothing Worth Having (Ever Comes Free)

This title READS as angst city. Like, fucking reads it I can’t even begin to explain. But angst with a happy ending I think.

angst, parental death, assault, nsfw

I feel like this title screams Class Difference. Like Richie is a boy who lives on the Upper East End of manhattan and the Eddie lives in a broke down neighborhood in the Bronx NY. And they meet somehow, probably in a club or something, and they’re instantly drawn to each other and they sleep together that night. And then they don’t hear from each other again for a long time, maybe months. But then they bump into each other again at like a pizza shop in like Flatbush or Dyker Heights or some shit and reconnect because Richie has lowkey been thinking about Eddie since they slept together so he offers to buy his pizza in exchange for some of his time and Eddie says yes because fuck man who’s going to turn down free food. Plus he’s been thinking of Richie, too. They finally learn each others names and they go fuck around in Central Park (because this is a NYC fic come on we gotta have Central Park in there) and they figure out that holy shit they have some real chemistry it isn’t just their dicks talking.

They depart and Richie gives Eddie his instagram and his phone number and they text but Eddie quickly learns (based on the pics Richie posts) that Richie comes from Money and he knows, he fucking knows he’ll never be able to keep up with that lifestyle but it’s so exciting and he can’t help himself so they play a game of cat and mouse where Eddie lies to Richie about where he went to school and where he’s going to college in the fall and all this shit because it’s all just a game. Eddie never brings Richie back to his house and he doesn’t ever let himself go to Richie’s. Somehow Richie pays for everything. Maybe Eddie convinces him maybe Richie is just That Guy you know?

But here’s the big thing. Eddie is in debt to the Bower’s Gang because of his Father’s Chemo treatments. Their insurance didn’t cover everything so Eddie took out loans from sharks to help pay and in the middle of the fic Eddie’s dad dies so it was all in vein anyway! And the sharks are after Eddie because he’s no longer borrowing but he also can’t make payments yet! Oh no! So at some point he gets jumped. Like really bad. Bowers threatens his LIFE and he kicks the shit out of him and Eddie avoids Richie for days after, not talking not seeing him nothing

Richie ends up bumping into a still recovering Eddie and demands to know what happened and Eddie lies his little fucking pants off because if he tells Richie the jig is up.

They resume their flirting bc Richie missed him. They sleep together a few times and shit. And then one day they’re together at night walking through Manhattan near Grand Central or some shit and Eddie gets jumped again! This time they’re out to kill him but Richie is there and the gang holds them both at gunpoint, Eddie is bloodied up on the ground seconds from death and Richie takes out his wallet and throws handfuls of hundreds at Henry so they back off

Cue Richie desperately trying to help Eddie and Eddie doesn’t have good insurance so they can’t go to the hospital and Eddie BEGS to not go there because when he’s in hospitals all he can think of is his dad so he has Richie bring him to his house. His mother is sleeping when they come in and they go up to his room where Richie bandages him up and Eddie sobs and tells him everything. They fall asleep together but he kicks richie out in the morning. he later breaks up with him and deletes his number/blocks him on social media when he finds out Richie pays off his entire debt to the bowers gang. His pride is too big. Richie shows up at Eddie’s house a few times but he never lets him in.

They don’t rekindle until over a year later when they bump into each other in the same pizza place and Richie buys Eddie’s food for him. Eddie is upset but Richie is persistent and begs begs begs Eddie to go to central park with him. They reconnect again and go slow, eventually falling in love. Richie goes to NYC and Eddie is in community college at this point working toward a scholarship to a 4yr where he can finish his bachelors. When he gets that scholarship, he goes to NYU to be with Richie

#tw parental death #tw angst #wow this was fun #would anyone read this??#richie #eddie #reddie #oldguybones #Em Answers

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newyorkthegoldenage · 2 years ago

Photo

Members of the Flatbush Boys Club in Brooklyn (and a few girls) pose in front of the club with the Flatbush Boys' Club Band in back on the steps, ca. 1927.

Photo: Underwood Archives/Fine Art America

#New York #NYC #vintage New York #1920s #Boys Club #Flatbush #Brooklyn #children #boys #band #children's band #vintage Brooklyn

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onlylivinboy · 5 years ago

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Drabble: Gabe has run away, and turns to underground fighting with his powers as a way to survive. Feeling lost and abandoned, he knows no other way than to return every night and fight until the brink of exhaustion. But he gets payed well, so he keeps going back.

There were times when Gabe looked more bruise than boy. It wore him to the bone, and he’d lost track of the hits he’d taken, the scars left behind. The mutant fight clubs were a brutal place, but hell, it kept a roof over his head, didn’t it? He was tough, he could take a hit.

He sat out on the stoop of the Flatbush apartment- tuning out the pulsing music and chatter on the other side of the heavy metal door as he took a pull of his cigarette and counted up the crumpled twenties in his hand.

“Fuckin-” Gabe counted again and rose to his feet when he found the money short. Forty dollars short. He shoved the bills into his pocket and dragged the heavy door open, fire burning in his eyes. It was harder to control these days- when anger came, the flames did too. Hotter and brighter and wilder all the time.

Gabriel laid eyes on the other guy and grabbed him by the shirt, hauling the fucker out to the middle of the room to the sound of jeers and shouts from the others. “You said three hundred.” he snarled as the other man’s shirt started to burn away where he gripped him.

It wasn’t more than seconds before Gabe was shoved off and the other pulled back, the money thrown at his chest. He worked his jaw at the of jeers from others, shouting at him to get the hell out. Whatever. He’d seen that response coming a mile away, but he just needed the rent money. He stepped out into the hot summer night, counting it all up in his hands and heading for the subway.

#Fuascailt #AU???#IDK #Drabble #Anonymous

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bandstolookup · 3 years ago

Text

london

brides of destruction

sister

brigade

the lafontaines

findlay

danny goffey

dead!

the amorettes

ryan hamilton & the traitors

the bottom line

towers of london

the main grains

shvpes

sleep token

black map

massive wagons

pete spiby & the beat alls

freeze the atlantic

rews

airways

october drift

asylums

dirty thrills

sulpher

ducking punches

false heads

riskee and the ridicule

carcer city

create to inspire

colt48

blackwaters

the turtles

ben folds five

ezra furman

satanbeat

phil taggart

shame

black honey

the baboon show

confidence man

touts

whenyoung

s u r f i n g

$waggot

night terrors (ts are crosses tho)

cvltvre (e is some weird thing)

x (but it's in a box??)

layer 013

sidewalks and skeletons

rook

tom jones

mf doom

run the jewels

death grips

good morning

sales

her's

the lemonheads

death bells

drowning pool

lund

citizen cope

matthew sweet

voltaire

the hoosiers

pomplamoose

temposhark

mother mother

caravan palace

bringing back reality

chelsea grin

kublai khan

yves

wage war

lord dominator

big time operator

eagle-eye cherry

lazerhawk

ultracomputer

blank banshee

hotel books

kyle dixon and michael stein

timcop1983

trevor something

pylot

t e l e p a t h (weird japanese)

prod. yng vapor

frankjavcee

acuteparanoia

bow church

hands off gretel

duke of wolves

alvarez kings

press to meco

childcare

the skinner brothers

django django

benjamin booker

flatbush zombies

ekali

yaeji

party favor

big thief

jason bentley

oh sees

sigrid

busy p

the bronx

AC slater

sudan archives

jackmaster

otoboke beaver

chloe x halle

hundred waters

pachanga boys

bedouin

mild high club

priests

ron gallo

bane's world

kittens

menium

kamasi washington

french montana

aminé

jessie ware

jamie jones

kamaiyah

san holo

dej loaf

petit biscuit

ibeyi

motor city drum ensemble

aurora

noname

jacob banks

chris liebing

jidenna

bad sign

the jb conspiracy

sad season

the faim

koyo

gold key

canvas

cheap meat

the bad flowers

saint agnes

lucie barat

screech bats

the cramps

nightlord

romonas

the fallen state

black orchid empire

skarlett riot

bryde

inklings

deadly circus fire

tequila mockingbyrd

lots holloway

empire

the soapgirls

fierce ideas

calico jack

strides

7he7ouch

sarah vista and the henchmen

natalie shay

harry pane

the lutras

plain sails

glossii

via dolorosa

nash albert

arable desert

thieves of liberty

priests to pilots

confessions of a traitor

the silber bayonets

nephew

ben frost

black star

first aid kit

interpol

stone sour

national skyline

a minor swoon

cocorosie

book of dead names

emika

jon and roy

hal david & john cacavas

assignee

the stereotypes

raffi sahak

kahlil4mb

the details

haroula rose

stars

boards of canada

nyt liv

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sohannabarberaesque · 7 years ago

Photo

Moth Mondays with the Funtastic World of Hanna-Barbera: Jane Jetson from The Jetsons

Even in the future, housewives will still be housewives ... even if it's a little difficult trying to adjust to newer technologies for grocery shopping, which are the subject of this contrived Moth story:

I have to acknowledge where Rosie (our resident robot) can be a rather difficult robot to work with around my apartment, even when you consider a husband who works only about three hours a day, two kids and a somewhat eccentric space creature in Orbitty, which can sometimes cross the line into sheer nuisance. Hence, my asking Elroy to keep Orbitty away from the PC or the screen phone when I'm communicating on the same.

Which is likewise the rule when Rosie and I scour the shelves and try to figure out what to get groceries-wise from the e-supermarket we deal with. It can be convenient, make no mistake about that, but with a Flatbush accent like Rosie's is programmed with, as well as having to cope with the constant need to have some variety in meals, it can get to be crazy. And still, you want to stick within budget as much as possible, even with an electronic wallet that George loads with the pay he gets, but don't want to make choices the family doesn't like. Especially Elroy, our younger son; a growing boy, but nonetheless a finicky sort of eater.

Witness one especially trying e-shopping session for groceries some months back. Thankfully, George was at work, Elroy and Judy were at school and Orbitty--let's just say Orbitty was in safe quarters. Rosie and I were just going through the week's list of grocery needs when she recognised that we were running low on soy meat-substitute crumbles. Which, I admit, can be something of a meal stretcher, if ever there was one, such as for sloppy janes or tacos. (Yes, you heard right about the "sloppy janes"--they're like sloppy joes, only it's made with soy crumbles.) Still, the amazing thing about 12 ounces of soy meat-substitute crumbles having as much nutritve as one pound of hamburger was enough to consider some serious stocking up. Rosie, for her part, had to check to see if there were specials or discounts for buying in case lots, which was not exactly George's way of thinking; limited space in the freezer, you know. But still, you want enough for a variety of dishes.

Somehow, there was a saving grace to all of this: Rosie came across something from our e-supermarket's rewards club programme, and found we had yet to redeem a rather substantial bonus we had accumulated all this time. A bonus, it was to emerge, that was more than enough to stock up on those soy meat crumbles, still have some room in the freezer--and pacify George as much as possible. Especially considering his being rather peeved about me hogging the wallet on shopping trips; besides, the bonus allowed for a modest discount on the usual delivery charge. So in any event, Rosie and I were able to put through the order in time for delivery early that evening (along with some pasta, pasta sauces and even some soup mix for an ur-beef stroganoff using that soy meat substitute), applying the bonus on the soy crumbles. (Not to mention getting the receipt printed out just so George wouldn't get annoyed as to where the money was heading.)

It was a rather crazy scene two hours later when not just George, Judy and Elroy came back, but also the e-supermarket delivery drone waiting on the outside patio, struggling as it did just to handle a polystyrene container containing the soy crumbles packed in dry ice, ready to be moved to the freezer. And it was at the very freezer that George was bound to chew me out for ordering so much in the way of soy crumbles when there were still at least three packets of the stuff waiting to be used. Only to have me--and Rosie--explain that we still had a loyalty-programme bonus as had yet to be spent, and yet was close to expiring, that we felt needed to be taken advantage of.

"But Jane!" George put it, "with all the soyburger crumbles we seem to be going through, I'm starting to wonder if we're quickly becoming soy burger junkies!"

"Just be thankful," Rosie acknowledged, "soy crumbles aren't as fattening as beef. And besides, any notion that soy is somehow 'feminising' is just an intergalactic old wives' tale." Whereupon I showed George the receipt from our online order, and breathed something of a sigh of relief.

"George," I quickly put it, "you sometimes have to look out for the right sort of timing. Especially because our rewards were about to expire."

"NOW she tells me!!" was how George responded. And fainted upon the floor, with Rosie procuring some aromatic solution to revive George out of such a revelation.

"... and that's the story from The Moth"

(The preceding is an independent fanfic feature having no official connexion or association with The Moth. For more information, please visit TheMoth.org.)

#fanfic #hanna barbera #moth monday #the jetsons #jane jetson #rosie the robot #online grocery shopping

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whileiamdying · 7 years ago

Text

I DIDN’T KNOW YOU COULD SING

THE GIRL who became an international star was born Annie Mae Bullock, easily the most unprepossessing “real name” hidden in any artist's closet, surpassing Norma Jean and Harry Webb.

Annie was born in Brownsville, Tennessee, some fifty miles north of Memphis. Her birthdate is usually given as 26 November, 1938 although Tina insists the year was 1939. She was raised in the township of Flatbush, celebrated in song as Nutbush. Later her family moved east to Knoxville, a town nestling near the Great Smokey Mountains. Her father, Floyd Bullock, was a farm manager and ‘share cropper’ who worked on a white-owned plantation. As children, Annie Mae and her older sister Eileen helped pick cotton and strawberries.

Floyd was a Baptist and ensured there was regular church attendance. Annie's mother, Zelma, had a powerful voice and sang in the Knoxville Baptist church choir. Zelma was part Cherokee and Annie inherited her mother's high cheekbones which give her such a dramatic appearance. She also inherited her mother’s voice, which she was able to show off both in the church choir and while singing opera at school.

Although they lived in the South and Mr. Bullock worked in the classic circumstances of many black Americans who hadn't migrated to the big cities, they were neither particularly poor nor unhappy. They lived in a comfortable house and recalls Tina: “We always had nice furniture.”

The girls had their own bedroom separate from their parents and the family owned livestock which included pigs and goats. “We weren't poor,” says Tina.

She went to a tiny school which had only two classrooms, and she didn't enjoy lessons. She preferred the summer picnics, when there were barbecues, pitchers of lemonade and huge fruit pies to enjoy. There was also live music, often provided by a trombone player known as Bootsey Whitelaw, accompanied by a drummer. o-man band made some great music in the swing, jump blues style of the Forties, and everyone encouraged Annie to get up and sing with ‘Mr. Bootsey.’

As well as singing hot gospel in church, Annie began to absorb the blues music she heard regularly on the local black radio stations. She listened to the famous ‘King Biscuit Hour’, a show sponsored by the biscuit company and hosted by Sonny Boy Williamson. Listening to him made her think she might be able to pursue a career as a singer, rather than end her days pickin’ Cotton.

The blues were hugely popular in the postwar years, but only with black audiences. There was little ‘cross-over’ in pop music, and radio stations, like the buses, were segregated. The blues was referred to as ‘race music’ and confined to its own charts. And yet rock’n’roll, when it burst upon an astonished world in 1956, was based on the music that black choirs, bands and vocal groups had been playing for years. It was all there — the electric guitars, the steady off-beat from the drums, doo wop vocals screaming tenor saxes, wild boogie piano, and raucous vocals. All that was lacking was the marketing and the pretty faces.

Black artists had themselves transformed the old country blues and made it more acceptable to audiences in the northern cities. As well as the radio stations there existed the ‘chitlin’ circuit' of clubs and theatres where bands could grow and develop. There was plenty of work and a great outpouring of music. But after the mid-Fifties black audiences themselves began to reject the old blues styles and demand modern music that suited their aspirations.

Rhythm'n'blues was the phrase that covered a multitude of styles, from frenetic jump music with jazz influenced horns, to vocal harmony and ballads. While the big record companies stuck to dance orchestras and crooners, the new market was catered for by an army of small independent record companies, which gave hope and exposure to up and coming black artists, even if there was usually a lack of hard cash.

There were plenty of topline blues performers in the Forties and early Fifties making hit records on the R&B charts — like John Lee Hooker and Muddy Waters, whose I Can't Be Satisfied in 1948 featured amplified guitar and launched electric rock blues.

There were other great musicians around for Annie Mae Bullock to soak up and admire, like ‘King of the Blues’ guitarist B. B. King who was working out of Memphis, which was also the city where Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis and Carl Perkins began the process of fusing country and western with R&B to make rock’n’roll. They were exciting times.

They were also the times when black American demand greater freedom within society. In 1954 the Supreme Court called for the end of segregation in schools and the Civil Rights movement gained strength. Black Power and Black Pride were the results, a transformation that flowered in the Sixties, with the help of protest marches and riots.

Music had always been a meeting point between black and white cultures, and entertainers and their fans were most likely to mix and break down the barriers. There was little need to politicize the lyrics or sing protest songs. The sheer energy the music was an expression of newfound pride and confidence.

Zelma and Floyd were undergoing marital problems and in 1954 they separated. Annie Mae was sixteen when she and Eileen moved with their mother from Knoxville, Tennessee to St. Louis, Missouri, further to the north and west. There was plenty of musical action in the city, and Annie began hanging out at the local blues clubs, hoping that maybe some night, someone ask her to get up and sing, just like they did at the picnics and parties back home. Big sister Eileen started going to the Club Manhattan in East St Louis. It was a smart place where the black clientele wore sharp suits, pretty dresses, and lots of jewellery.

Annie was seventeen years old when she was taken to the club one night to see a band led by one of the most respected musicians in St. Louis. The band was the Kings of Rhythm, and their leader was Ike Turner.

She was intrigued by the slim, good-looking dude who played organ and guitar, and had a mean, smouldering look in his eye. He was surrounded by beautiful women who seemed to come running whenever he called. She may have felt a gawky teenager, even a country hick, but she knew there was a way to attract his attention. She approached him. Could she sit in with the Kings of Rhythm and sing a couple of numbers? Ike wasn't too keen. He was mostly concerned with such problems as how to extricate himself from a half-dozen female admirers who were all paying calls at the same time. He'd stay on stage, even when the band took a break, and play around with the Hammond organ. Finally he'd call up his wife to get him out of the club.

Then one night, tired of hanging around waiting to be asked, Tina jumped on stage while Ike was sitting at the organ, grabbed the microphone and began singing one of her favourite B. B. King songs. Her voice roared around the club and customers came running to the stage to find out who was singing. The song over, Ike came down from the stage, looked at Tina somewhat shyly, and in surprised tones said: “I didn't know you could reallysing.”

Annie later recalled the events that led to her meeting Ike. I was going to nightclubs with my sister. Ike was working at one that we used to go to all the time. Well, I used to ask him to let me He'd say “Okay,” but never call me to the stage.

‘One night he was playing organ and the drummer put a microphone in front of my sister for her to sing. She said, “No!” so that's when I took the mike and started singing. Ike was shocked! When he finished one tune, he called me on stage. I did several numbers with them that night. Later I joined the group.’

Ike was born Izear Luster Turner, in Clarksdale, Mississippi, on 5 November, 1931. He was the son of a preacher, and began making music from the age of six. His first instrument was the piano. Says Ike: ‘I played on an old piano in a church lady's house. She would let me play if I cut wood for her in return. At that time, I didn't really know what a piano was. All I knew was that when I pushed down on the keys it made a sound I liked.’ After picking out a few notes to such songs as Blues In The Night. Ike begged his mother to buy him his own piano. "When school was out that year I came home with my report card full of good grades. I walked in the house and there it was. A new piano. She said it was all mine.

Ike taught himself, but the famed pianist Pinetop Perkins (not Pinetop Smith), showed him how to play the rolling left-hand boogie woogie beat. He started playing at school and formed a band called the Tophatters, with his school friend Raymond Hill on saxophone. Aged only sixteen, the go-getting young Turner got himself a job as a DJ and standby studio musician on the local Clarksdale radio station. The next step was to put together his own fully professional band, which became known as ‘the Kings of Rhythm’— the first in a long line of such aggregations.

By the age of twenty in 1951 Ike and the Kings of Rhythm went to Memphis to start recording. Under the supervision of producer Sam Phillips in a Memphis studio, the band cut a number called Rocket 88. Released on the Chess label it became a hit. Ike played boogie piano, while Jackie Brenston sang and played saxophone. The performance was so exciting it inspired a country and western band leader called Bill Haley to change his musical direction, and cover the song himself.

Unfortunately the unexpected hit led to a bust-up which hurt Ike badly and may have turned him into a much harder, more cynical character. Jackie Brenston felt that his singing and input had made the record, so he left and took the band with him. Ike's on the same day as Rocket 88 and released as a single own song, cut Heartbroken And Worriedcoupled with I'm Lonesome Babywas a flop. He rarely sang on record again.

NeverthelessSam Phillips, who later went on to record Elvis Presley, could see that Ike Turner had talent and was adept at finding good performers, even if he wasn't so hot at holding on to them. Phillips employed Turner as a talent scout and producer. Ike would bring in talent for labels like Modern and Sun. One of his major discoveries was bluesman Howlin' Wolf. He also helped B. B. King, Bobby Bland and Elmore James.

Ike became a powerful, respected figure in the years before he met up with Annie Mae Bullock in St. Louis. So much so that even the errant Jackie Brenston and Raymond Hill returned to help form the next Kings of Rhythm.

In 1958 Ike cut a single for the Tune Town label called Boxtop which featured Ike together for the first time with Little Ann, who was of course, Annie Mae Bullock. Ike looked back on his early efforts with a mixture of chagrin and pride. ��Rocket 88 was a big financial score but some dude at the record company beat me, and I only got forty dollars for writing, producing and recording it. After that I took the Kings on the road, doing shows with Wolf and B. B. King. Somehow I ended up in St. Louis and was playing at this nightclub, and through unique circumstances, I met Annie Bullock the future Tina Turner!’

The lives of the musicians constantly on the road, working all hours, often until four in the morning, led to all kinds of entanglements and complications. Ike had a common-law wife and two sons. He had made the move to East St. Louis in 1956 and lived with his family in a large three-storey house. He had early on acquired a taste for flashy living, and believed in the motto ‘if you got it, flaunt it’. But his extravagances required frequent injection of cash so he worked long hours. In the early part of the evening he booked his band to play at the Club Imperial, then on to the Club D'Lisa, winding up at the Club Manhattan, the rocking blues until sun-up.

As Annie Mae became part of the band, Ike kept his distance and looked after her more like a brother or a father figure. He was pleased with his discovery and wanted to make her a star.

He bought her special stage clothes, jewellery, even a padded bra. She rode around in Ike’s latest mad passion, a pink Cadillac. ‘I felt like I was rich, and it felt good!’ she chuckled. Romantically she was drawn, not to Ike, but to his s player Raymond Hill. Not long after leaving high school, Annie became pregnant by Raymond and they had a son, named Raymond Craig. There was no time for rest or motherhood. Tina was soon back on the road with the band, earning up to twenty dollars a night.

Then Ike decided to try his luck in the recording studios again. This time he wanted to make a demo of a song he'd written called A Fool In Love. He intended it to be sung by Art Lassiter, one of the Kings of Rhythm. But after a row with Ike over some detail of band affairs, Lassiter failed to turn up. Annie was given her chance to sing instead. He voice ripped through the song, and when the record company heard it, they flipped. It was released by the Sue label and was an immediate hit. It got to number twenty-seven in America's pop chart, and number two in the more specialized R&B chart. The ‘demo’ became the smash hit of 1960.

Ike realized he couldn't call the new partnership Turner Bullock, which would have sounded like a firm of plumbers. He had to come up with something more hip to suit the record company and to flow off the tongues of disc jockeys and record buyers.

Bullock would have to go. Without consulting Annie Mae, he came up with the name Tina, inspired by a jungle queen from a long forgotten film serial. ‘Ike and Tina Turner’ sounded great. Yet it suggested they were married, which they weren't and ‘Tina’ resented having her name changed without her permission. With a record on the charts already credited to the new act, Tina was in no position to start fighting back. She was also ill. Just as A Fool In Love zoomed upwards, she went down with a severe bout of yellow jaundice, probably brought on by all the irregular hours and endless travelling.

Ike wasn't pleased. He dragged her from her sickbed and set her off on the road. The pattern was formed. Tina was obviously going to be a source of hits and a star attraction on the road. She wanted to pleasure island, but the puppet master was going to pull the strings.

Gradually, the relationship between Ike and Tina ceased to be strictly platonic. Perhaps because of all his philandering, Ike had broken up with his wife, and he asked Tina if she would come with him to California, where he was due to start recording. Tina agreed. After some time on the road, with Tina singing A Fool In Love backed up by their new all-girl vocal group, named The Ikettes, Tina became pregnant, by Ike.

Perhaps in panic, Ike chose this moment to decide to go back to his common-law wife. But this meant loosening his grip on the young singer whose talents were the key to a sensationally sexy golden future.

Ike returned to Tina and this time proposed marriage. They went to Tijuana in Mexico, in 1962, where weddings were conducted briskly, with no questions asked. Tina was unhappy with these arrangements. They didn't seem very romantic, even though she felt affection towards Ike. Already she was beginning to wonder what she had got herself into, and began to make tentative moves to break away. But it was too late. When Ike wanted to sign them to a big record company for a lucrative deal and his star hinted that she wanted out, he beat her up. From the outset their relationship was stormy and often violent. And yet Tina was still drawn to him. She admired him as the boss who had given her fame, money and a role in life. She had a son by Ike, and together with Ike's own offspring, and Tina's boy from the affair with Raymond Hill, there were four sons to look after. Tina was trapped.

When things were good, Ike remained charming, amusing company. He was the business brains, the composer, the band leader, and general wheeler dealer. Without him there would have been no motivation. Nothing would have happened.

It is possible to understand why Ike dealt with Tina the way he did. As a black American fighting his way up in a white-controlled world, there were plenty of pressures and tensions. He had to assert himself. Anyone who got in the way would have to be lapped down. The problem came when the occasional, forgivable outburst became a built-in pattern to their lives. Tina was torn between love, duty, guilt and fear. The conflict between them was evident right from the beginning and it was obvious that the pair were incompatible. But there was no one who could really help them. There are few more dangerous situations than interfering between a man and his wife, even with the best of intentions. And so the band would listen to the thumps and yells coming from the dressing room, and would shrug, wince and maybe even joke about it. Eventually ‘Ike and Tina’ became a working relationship, sustained by the hit records.

A Fool in Love was a devastating performance making a tremendous impact on white listeners more used to singers like Doris Day and Rosemary Clooney. In her harsh, sandpapery outbursts of wordless ‘vocalese’ Tina was echoing a style that went back to the Cotton Club and the Duke Ellington recordings of the Twenties. But nobody had sung with such a range of expression in that style before, and even in the lower register she added emphasis and sudden thrusts that were impressive to hear, and technically difficult to produce. Their next record I Idolise Youwas another R&B chart hit, but didn't cross-over into the white pop charts. A third single was a flop.

Their fourth single for the Sue label, was, to Ike’s relief, a hit. But he didn't have much to do with it. Another team of and producers were brought in to try and rescue the situation. They were Mickey Baker and Sylvia Robinson, who had enjoyed their own hits like Love Is Strange. They worked up song called It's Gonna Work Out Finewhich had a call and response pattern, similar to the gospel routine where preacher and congregation interacted. It had been the mainstay of the blues, and incidentally had been the basis of most big band swing music.

It’s Gonna Work Out Fine was strictly secular and very much a modern soul performance. It became one of the biggest hits of 1961, coupled with Won’t You Forgive Me. Most people assumed it was Ike Turner engaging Tina in the amusing banter and cool dude responses. But it was later revealed that the deadpan dialogue came from Mickey Baker, while Sylvia played the shimmering guitar licks. The couple also wrote the song, using the pseudonym Seneca and Lee.

The record was billed under Ike’s name, even though he wasn't even in the studio. Reaching number two in the R&B chart in the autumn of 1961, it rocketed to fourteen in the national charts. Their star status was confirmed.

The couple stayed with Sue Records until 1963 and among their other releases for the label were Poor Fool, Tra La La La La, You Should've Treated Me Right, which was a chart hit in June 1962), Please Don't Hurt Me, and Ike's guitar instrumental, accompanied by a jumping big band, Prancing.

Many of the lyrics on Tina's songs during the Sue years have a strangely ironic flavour in view of later revelations. For example, on Worried And Hurtin' Insideshe opens up with a blistering unaccompanied outburst: ‘Now baby, you mean everything to me, and the last thing I'd want to do is break up with you She goes on to shout stop your shoving and treating me wrong!’

This wasn't one of Tina's more attractive vocal performances, but Dear John issued in 1966 was an extraordinary semi-spoken testament about the evilest, most rotten, lowdown man I've ever met in my whole life!' She complains about beatings and black eyes, while Ike noodles idly on the organ in the background. If she wasn't joking, it was a miracle she got away with it. However, it must have been good therapy.

Ike meanwhile was out battling with record companies. He had cause to complain. He had already experienced rip-offs and rebuffs from the earliest days. He complained: ‘I wrote thirty-two hits for one firm, but I didn't know what a songwriter's royalties were. I didn't know nothing. They were sending me a hundred and fifty a week which was enough to keep me happy in Mississippi but not enough for me to get away to find out what was really going on.’

Ike had also had trouble with the master tapes he had been sending to Sue, who often rejected them and sent them right back again. But they recorded five albums for Sue, none of which were released in England. Sue products were then issued in Britain on the London label, until in 1963, a British Sue label was formed London, part of Decca Records, did however issue an album called The Storywhich included two Ike and Tina tracks It's Gonna Work Out Fine, and A Fool In Love. But neither of these tracks issued as singles, were hits in Britain at the time.

After the Sue experience, Ike signed his outfit to a succession of record companies. He also tried to form his own label, the short lived Sonja. Ike and Tina went on record for the Modern label, as well as Warner's subsidiary Loma. Among their hits for the latter label was Finger Poppin'(1965). They went back to Sue records for a while, had a spell with Kent/Modern and then signed with Ray Charles' label Tangerine, for whom they recorded an album called Ike and Tina Turner And The Raelettes.

In between all the recording activity, the revue kept on working on the road, Ike in his shiny suits and Tina in long dresses that gradually became shorter, until they reached above her knees.

In 1966 the show was recorded on a live album for Warner, re-issued in 1985 on the Edsel label. It was cut at the Skyliner Ballroom, Fort Worth, Texas, and at Lovall's Ballroom, Dallas, and provides a revealing insight into the styles and standards of the time. On the opening number Finger Poppin' which has a strong Twist beat, Tina sounds hot, bothered and somewhat strangled. In contrast, one of the singers in the band Jimmy Thomas revealed a much more melodic voice on Down In The Valley. The contention in those days was that Tina was trying too hard to be regarded as a quality, legitimate singer. And there was no doubt on items like Good Times that she tended to present a rather rough blend of Sam Cooke and Otis Redding styles. She was still learning and needed to develop and control her talent. Once again, Tina's violent attack on You Are My Sunshine with Ike, contrasted rather poorly with guest singer Vanetta Fields' straightforward performance on Having A Good Time.

When the album was recorded, Ike and Tina Turner had become hot property in America and they were invited to appear on many top US TV shows like "Shindig' and the long-running 'American Bandstand'. And there was no doubt, when Tina screamed at the climax of the classic Sixties rave-up number Twist And Shout that complaints about her lack of finesse became rather piddling and academic!

#ike turner #tina turner #ike and tina turner #the tina turner experience #chris welch #in english #kings of rhythm

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