#bardo says hi

[brenna]

the vibe for may 18th is completing my to do list. I bought A Few records and tapes to reward myself for leaving the house for basic car maintenance. and I did other chores, too, so. earned it.

[perilegs]

i'd be the world's worst streamer bc i have so many unfunny things to say about video games at any given moment. anyways bardo lamento has tiger pattern ears and tail and now that i'm doing his route, every time he shows up my brain immediately goes to this finnish meme of "camoon tiikeri näytä muna" translating to "c'mon tiger show [us] your cock"

[ghouldump]

Hiii i love your writing 🫶🏼🫶🏼

If youre open for requests i was wondering if you could maybe write a lestat x siren or mermaid reader?

I hope you have a lovely day, please exuse my bad english

Fallen | Lestat De Lioncourt x Mermaid!Reader

ෆ princess of demacia, a marine kingdom is temporarily banished. she refuses to conform to the standard, being a heartless killer. wandering the water, she finds herself in new orleans, where she meets a vampire.

your english is awesome! i liked this idea and i hope you enjoy what i came up with, it’s giving little mermaid x twilight crossover 😭

"I don't understand," you said, swimming behind your father.

"Y/n, mermaids do not intermingle with humans," King Zale, your father, found you talking to your pet fish. He at first, only intended to simply scold you because you were supposed to be training, until he heard your conversation. You explained how you didn't want to mate with any of the mermen and how you'd been to the surface, studying human men.

"Why not?" you questioned.

"Because that's the way things are, you do not need to be with people, who have for over a millennial, hunted and killed our ancestors, and do not speak of these feelings to anyone. Do you understand?”

"Yes Father," you agreed, following him, as he brought you to the surface.

"Watch your sister,” he pointed, observing your older sister, Nerissa. She peeked from out of the water, in front of the human man, who was fishing on the small boat.

Immediately, she sang to him, as he stared, mesmerized. Leaning over the boat, she kept singing come closer, until he fell out of the boat. Then, before he could blink, she began to drown him. He flailed around, but she only dragged him deeper.

Feeling a knot in your stomach, you watched as she tortured the man, before her other half, Luca, joined her, and together, they ripped at his flesh.

Merfolk could eat humans, but you preferred your sea vegetation.

"Soon, you will have your turn," your father said, placing his hand on your shoulder.

Your first kill was between the ages 16-19 depending on how ready the elders thought you were. You were already 15, and you knew now, that you did not want to have to kill anyone, let alone enjoy watching the others commit the act.

As the man eventually went limp, they let his body sink. The other sea creatures, that were willing, wrestled for the flesh.

"Come now," he said, swimming away, as the two began to perform the partnership ritual.

The humans called their other half spouses, and their rituals, sex. The ceremonial ritual was when, your partner, who was chosen by the elders, and you would mate, becoming one, with each other and the water.

You overheard your brother, Arista, say these things, being one of the only merfolk granted permission, to go to the land. It was a painful process, the breaking of your bones, separating your fins until you looked completely human. He described it as the most unbearable thing ever felt.

Your future other half was Rory, although, you couldn't stand the sight of him. He was 16, and already had his first kill, making many of the older merfolk hold him in high regard. He loved the thrill of the humans thrashing under his tight hold, constantly bragging every time he was around you. You were due to mate at 18, and he reminded you of what was to come every time he was around.

"I am serious Y/n, I don't want to ever hear you speak such vile things ever again," he tells you, before swimming to the palace.

"Yes father" you mumbled.

"Princess Y/n, I've been looking for you all morning," your teacher, Bardo, stressed. He was only twenty-three, slim, his curls flowing freely past his shoulders.

You sighed, allowing him to drag you back off to the reef. Your only training was to become a murderer. Your father was four hundred years old, and once he passed, the throne would be given to your eldest brother, Ari, who was already one hundred and fifteen. Together, you had thirteen siblings, and you were the youngest.

"Now, princess, let me hear your song," he tells you.

"Actually, I was hoping we could talk about Kaia," you said, watching as his fins began to flicker nervously.

"Fine, but then we'll practice your song," he says, as he begins telling you all about his meeting with Kaia, his chosen other half. They liked each other already, and it was only their third time meeting. You didn't care too much, but it was an easy way of getting out of training.

"Oh, I've let the time pass us by," Bardo said, finally stopping his rambling, realizing you hadn't trained at all today.

"It is fine, you seem to like Kaia, I hope it all goes well," you said quickly swimming away.

"Thank you, princess," he called out to you. Smiling gleefully, you sped up, happy to be free from the pressures of killing some innocent person. Closing your eyes briefly, you slam into a body.

"Sor-sorry big brother," you said, looking down, as Ari frowned at you.

“I heard you missed most of your teachings"

"It wasn't on purpose brother," you pouted.

"It doesn't matter-

"Mother said dinner is ready" Wade, your other brother said, swimming past the two of you.

"Stay on top of your training, because you wouldn't want to disappoint your family, would you?" he asked, his voice filled with authority.

"No, big brother" you whimpered.

"Good"

"You have no choice but to be ready," your father says, pulling you into a hug.

You were now 19, and the elders had held off on forcing you to have your first kill, but you were getting much older.

"Is she ready?" Rory asked on the other side of the door.

Opening the door, he backed away, his eyes fixated on you. The elders were making him come with you, not only to make sure you completed your test, but after you would have to mate with him, whether you wanted to or not.

"Beautiful," he says proudly.

"Thank you," you mumbled, seeing Ari glare at you. Telling everyone you'd see them later, you swim off with Rory. Treading behind him, you stayed close, as he made turns, slithering through the caves. Until you both got close to where the humans swam. Daylight radiating into the ocean, and you could feel the sound waves, of their music.

"I will be over there," he tells you, as he swims into the seaweed.

Rising to the surface, you peek, seeking your victim. If you could at least get past your first kill, everyone would stop being so stern around you. Immediately, you notice him. It was a boy, who looked around your age. He sat on the edge of a wooden pavement, with his legs crossed, reading. Going back under, you swim, until you're close to him.

Only raising your head above the water, you begin singing to the boy, before he could scream or scurry away. Extending your hand, you allow him to grab hold, as he jumps into the water with you, still hypnotized.

Swimming backward, you slowly moved underwater. Still singing, the both of you maintain eye contact, until you heard it. You could hear his heartbeat, it became slower, showing he was running out of breath. Stopping your song, he snaps out of it.

Realizing what was in front of him, he began to panic, moving around trying to get to the surface. Taking note of the expression of fear he held, as well as what radiated from his body, you couldn't continue. Grabbing his arm, you swam to the surface, as he gasped for air.

As he caught his breath, he swam backward, away from you, terrified of the sight in front of him. Your dark hair, grayish blue skin, pale eyes, razor-sharp teeth, and nails. Moving away, he bumped into Rory, who looked at the boy as if he were one of the bottom feeders of the water.

The mermen didn't have a song to sing but were much more aggressive and stronger than the mermaids. Grabbing the boy, he dragged him deep into the water. You tried swimming behind, but Rory was much faster than you, one of the fastest. It was pointless screaming out to the boy, humans didn't understand the merfolk languages.

By the time you made it to them, Rory had already ripped out the young boy's heart, and now let his body sink into the dark trenches.

"What were you doing," Rory asked you darkly.

"I couldn't do it," you confessed, as you both moved away, seeing the sharks drawing near to the smell of the blood.

"The elders won't be too pleased to know you failed unless I keep your little secret," he says, swimming circles around you.

"You would do that Rory?" you asked, hopeful.

"Of course, as your other half, but only if you hold up your end," he says, trailing his hand down your fin on your back. Sharply turning, you held in your glare.

"I'm not ready Rory," you tell him, and the grin that once played on his face dropped.

"When will you be ready? I already waited a year longer than I had to"

"I don't know, I can't do this," you said.

"Fine, have it your way," he said, grabbing your hair, and holding tight to you, as he swam back to the palace, rushing the throne room door open.

"How was the..test?"

"How was the...test" your brother, Arista, asked awkwardly.

Slinging you to the floor, Rory panted, looking down at you in pure anger and hatred.

"I want a new mate," he announces to the elders.

"What happened?" your father, King Zale, asked.

"This pathetic excuse-

"Watch your tone," your second eldest brother, Mari spoke, staring darkly at the merman.

"She failed...she didn't kill the human, she almost helped him escape the water. Then, she refuses to mate" Rory explained.

Deep in thought, your father, and the elders exchanged looks before turning to you.

"Is this all true Y/n?" your mother, Serena, asked. dropping your head, you nodded, causing her to gasp at you. Meeting their eyes, all of them looked at you with either disappointment or sadness, except Mari. He never looked down on you for your beliefs, he just saw you as his little sister.

"Speak," Ari said.

"Yes, I failed. Seeing his face as his life drained from him, I felt like a monster" you confessed, crying in your hands.

"Go to your room, and do not come out unless you are called," your father said, as you swam away.

Leaving to go the the left side of the palace, where your room resided - you noticed the whispers, and snickers from the other merfolk, as they watched you. They probably all heard what happened.

As you got into your room, you sat at your counter, depressingly organizing your shells. You leisurely reorganized your entire room, until darkness fell upon the ocean. When there was a knock on your door, Ari opened the door.

"Come with me," is all he said.

Choosing to not say anything, you quietly follow behind your brother, as he brings you to the outskirts of Demacia. There stood all thirteen of your siblings, your parents, and the elders.

"Y/n, you are getting one last chance at your first kill, if you do not succeed, then you will face judgment," your father said.

Swimming to the surface, Nerissa volunteers to help you, to make things much easier. She finds the kill, luring him into the water, and just as he begins to thrash, everyone intensely watches you. You saw the pain on his face, shame, and pain clouded your mind.

"I…I can't," you cried.

Sighing, Nerissa snaps his neck, letting him sink. Watching in horror, as his eyes stayed open, hollow of life.

"Since you couldn't perform this simple task, I grant you judgment...you are to be banished from Demacia. perhaps a few years alone will give you the realization that is needed. You are to leave, immediately," your father says angrily, swimming away, Ari and the elders following behind.

As your mother and siblings, stayed behind, about to say goodbye, your father stopped, turning around.

"Everyone back to the palace, now. She doesn't deserve a proper goodbye," he continued, rushing away. Looking back at you, grimacing, Mari spoke.

"Goodbye, little sister"

Alone, grieving, sorrowful - all words that describe you. You aimlessly wandered the ocean for the next five months. Hiding from creatures that could potentially kill you, or collecting trinkets you found along the way. Sadly, you couldn't keep up with consistently finding vegetation, so you turned to eating fish as well.

Your appearance changed drastically, your once slender figure, was now curvier, and more meaty. Your full hair grew to your waistline, and your breasts, although hardly visible were bigger than before.

After traveling for months, you were certain you were far from home. The water, which was cold, or usually lukewarm, in your home, was now inconsistent, hot on some days, cool on others.

As you swam forward, you noticed a wooded pole along the water, letting you know, that humans lived nearby.

Swim forward in the water. Even underwater, you could hear that humans were close. The sound waves of them, playing music, laughing, moving their bodies, you could hear it all. Going further down, you stayed there until it grew quiet. There had been plenty of fish and vegetation, it was perfect, wherever you were.

Rising to the surface, no one could be seen, making you sigh in relief, coming up more. You could see a civilization not far off, around you, was strangely snapped wood, you remembered they were called boats. Then you got an idea, you could try to go on land.

Jumping from the water, you made a noise, falling into the boat. Taking your hands, your grip the foreign material underneath yourself. Suddenly, your throat felt like it was tightening like it was being crushed. Gasping, trying to breathe, you turned to reach for the water, but it seemed to be too far.

Next, you felt a burning pain rushing through your body, as if it was breaking. You found yourself uncontrollably squirming, as you heard the sound of your own bones cracking. Your tail, felt as if it was being ripped apart. Which it was, to a certain extent, creating your own pair of human legs. Screaming in agony, you clawed the sides of the boat.

After it was over, you panted, able to breathe, but only taking short breaths, to save oxygen. Pushing yourself up, you stood, stepping onto the dock. Wobbling at first, you tried to find balance, before bending your knees, then standing up straight.

Smiling gleefully, you walked around in circles, your walk was funny compared to how humans walked, but you would eventually get the hang of it. Walking towards the civilization, you stopped, The scent hit your nose, making you look up. Letting your feet move, following the scent, you eventually found the source. Flesh, you were smelling burning flesh, inside some dark machinery.

The sun radiating on you, you reach to cover your face, but never moved. It felt nice against your skin, much different than the warmth it brought in water. Looking down, you felt dizzy, before blacking out.

As soon as the moon graced the night sky, Lestat woke up, full of energy. Quickly, he left, meeting with his close friend, Louis. He had recently become his maker but they soon realized they were better off as friends. Continuing their usual hunting, and conversations, platonically.

Finding and draining the indigent men, they carried the bodies to the incinerator. Entering the backyard, they shared a look, seeing the nude woman sleeping in the grass.

Sensing the presence of something unknown, you opened your eyes and were on your feet in an instant, you went to run, but the man appeared in front of you.

“Not so fast,” he smirked, walking towards you.

Hissing at him, he lunged forward, biting into your neck, but quickly moved away, spitting.

“What?” Louis asked, confused.

“Her blood, she isn't human, it tastes like fish,” he gagged, dramatically.

Holding your neck, you backed away from the two, breaking off into a sprint, running to the docks, and jumping into the water, your body twitching rapidly. Your fins ripping through your skin, tail reconnecting. Hoping they were gone, barely peeking out, they looked down at you.

“Hey, come on out, my friend didn't mean no harm, biting you,” the other man spoke, while the culprit simply stared at you, with his arms crossed. Louis, extended his hand, wanting to help you out of the water, but you simply went back under.

“Whatever she is, we should leave her,” Lestat shrugged.

“No, look,” he pointed, both of them rushing to the dock.

You lifted yourself onto the wood, going through the painful process, again, the two men watching, completely astonished. Shakily, you stood up, in front of them.

"Wow," the nice one said, while the other man looked away.

"I think she's a mermaid, those exist too?" he exclaimed again, examining your fin, that broke off.

"I guess, I wouldn't have known," Lestat mumbled.

"You're not even looking, " Louis told him, as Lestat took off his coat.

"She was just a giant fish and now she is naked, it's hard to ignore that," Lestat says, approaching you.

"Put this on," he told you, handing you the coat.

Staring at the jacket, you wrapped the sleeves around your waist, as if it was an apron. Groaning, Lestat takes back the coat, placing it on you, looking at the ground, to avoid looking at your perky breast.

"Are there others like you?" he asked you, finally looking into your eyes, but you only stared at him.

"Maybe she doesn't speak english," Lous said, walking closer as well.

"Parlez-vous français ?" Lestat asked, making you tilt your head in confusion at him.

"I don't think she understands that either”

“I'm Lestat, this is Louis," he tells you slowly, as you look at both men.

“Would you like to come with us?” Louis asked, holding out his hand, smiling as you hesitantly accepted it.

"Sit,” Lestat said, but you remained awkwardly standing.

Lightly pulling your arm, Louis led you to the loveseat to sit.

"What is your name?" Lestat asked, walking in front of you. Staring at you, he reached to touch where he bit you. However, out of fear you jumped back, hissing at him, now on guard.

"My apologies, I assumed you were human," he told you, putting his hands up.

Backing away, he leaned on the table, crossing his arms, staring at you.

"Do you understand us?" Louis asked, as you nodded.

"Okay, you understand, can you speak english?" he spoke again, but you only tilted your head.

"Lou-is…Lest…at," you managed to get out, in broken english.

"Yes, that's our names," Louis cheered you on, as you now held a small smile.

"E..eng..lish n...not..mine," you explained.

"You don't speak english?" Louis helped interpret your speech. While Lestat stood, observing you.

"What do you speak?" Lestat asked, looking up at you.

"Water," you spoke clearly, moving your hand in the motion of waves.

"I’m going to find her something to wear," Louis said, jogging upstairs, one of the many blouses and slacks Lestat insisted on keeping from his women victims.

Speeding down the stairs, he was back in front of you in an instant, sitting the pile in front of you.

"You can put these on, just go to the bathroom," Before he could finish, you had already slipped out of the coat, struggling to put the clothes on.

"You can help with that," Louis said, walking away, as Lestat stood looking the other way.

"Here," he tells you, removing the shirt.

"Put your arms through the smaller holes, now you close the buttons," he said, as you buttoned the shirt. Looking at him, you both maintain eye contact, before he looks down, pulling the hem of your shirt down, along with helping with the pants.

"N..nice..h..human?" you asked him, watching carefully.

“Ma chérie, I am no human,” he told you.

“Nice human,” you ignored him, placing your hand on his heart.

Merfolk could easily read body language, and you had him read like a book. He was a caring person, but due to loneliness and circumstances, he oftentimes came off as cruel.

"I'm a nice person?" he asked sarcastically.

"You are," Louis called out, walking back to you both.

For a moment, Lestat and Louis began talking amongst each other, about you. They couldn't renounce their interest in understanding you, and what you were.

Walking away from them, you stood in the mirror, touching it, as you stared at yourself. biting down on your teeth, you stare at them. Moving your mouth, you mumbled things you've heard the two men say, to get familiar with the language. You quickly understood, being that mermaids were slightly more intelligent than humans, in certain areas.

"My name, Y/n," you said randomly, making them both stop talking and look at you.

"Your name is Y/n? You aren't from around here are you?" Lestat asked, and you shook your head.

"I am princess of Demacia," you said, walking back to the pair, sitting on the sofa.

"Demacia? Have you heard of this place before?" Louis asked Lestat.

"Where is Demacia?"

"Water, far away," you told them.

"I need to leave, the sun is coming out soon, let her stay here," Louis told Lestat.

"I am leaving, I will see you soon enough, take care," he tells you, as you nod at him, watching as he left.

“I go to water,” you stood.

“Nonsense, we wouldn't want to hear from Louis, you can use the bathtub, it doesn't get any use,” he told you, walking away. Stopping, he turned to you, and realization washed over that he wanted you to follow him.

The bathroom was large and unused, with a glossy bathtub against the wall. You watched as Lestat ran the water, his hand under the faucet to check the temperature. Turning the water off, he faced you.

"If you're a princess, why did you come here?"

"I was banished, I couldn't perform my first kill"

"First-kill?”

"Mermaids use our song, to kill a human, to show we are strong"

"And you couldn't go through with it. Can I hear this song?"

"No,” you shook your head.

"Those who hear the siren calling and live will be trapped with a life of hallucination if they don't drown themselves"

"Do you miss your family?"

"Just my brother, Mari, everyone else not really, thankfully I am not connected to my other half," you said.

“After you,” he motioned.

Trying to take the shirt off, you felt stuck, tugging at the shirt. Lestat groaned, unbuttoning the shirt, and helped remove the clothing, before helping you to the water. Your body began jerking, making him back away as the water splashed.

Instantly, you wiggled, and flailed. Lestat almost wanted to intervene, noticing how painful it looked, having your back fins ripped through your skin.

After the process, you sunk deeper under the water your large tail hanging from the tub.

"Amazing," he mumbled, leaning against the wall, as he observed you.

"Is the process painful?" he asked, and you only nodded. His eyes lingered on you before pushing himself off of the wall.

“Tomorrow we will find something suitable for your diet, try to get some rest,” he said, leaving the bathroom.

Waking up in the middle of the night, after sleeping for hours, you began to climb out of the bathtub, flopping onto the tile floor. Covering your mouth, to endure the pain, it hurt more than usual. As you muffled your groans of agony, you thought back to Arista's words. One, it wasn't good to shift too frequently, or too close together in time, you'd break down your body. Two, the longer you go without shifting, the less mermaid you become.

Remembering Lestat’s instructions, you put the clothes back on, with only a little struggle this time. Sighing, out of exhaustion, you lay on the floor.

“I see that you are awake, come, Louis stopped by, with a few things for you,” he held out his hand, helping you stand, leading you to the large dining table.

Sitting down, your eyes were set on the brown bags on the table. Placing a plate down, your mouth watered at the aroma of fish, along with a portion of Jumbalaya. Lestat questioned where Louis got the food, but he shrugged him off. Seating the food in front of you, you stared cautiously, enjoying the smell, but unsure of the taste.

"Do you not like fried fish? Louis insisted it was a favorite of the locals," Lestat asked, grumbling in aggravation.

"I’ve never had it, you?" you asked, touching the food with your hands.

“This food is for you alone,” he tried to explain simply.

"Try using your utensils," he continued, cutting and scooping the food, bringing it to your mouth, while you ate.

Handing you the spoon, you tried. It was easier if you only took small pieces. Lestat tapped his fingers on the table, as he examined you.

"While you eat, there are a few things I'd like to discuss with you," he said, as you nodded, your mouth full.

"Is there a reason I can't sense your...reproductive system?" he says, looking at you, but you sit the utensil down, looking confused.

"I don't sense your…womanhood" he corrects himself, as you nod in understanding.

"Merfolk are born as male, the elders choose who will be female, then by 5, those who were chosen, become female," you explain.

"How?"

"You phase, but phasing won't be noticed until your years of growth when things grow," you said, looking at your breast.

"Why is it this way?"

“To assign other half"s, our ancestors were able to choose freely, and so there were many who were male and male, and female and female, mating. As they died off. The elders said only certain people would be allowed to change, and everyone's other half had to be the opposite"

"Same-sex mating? so a male mermaid could get another pregnant, is what you're saying”

"It's a merman, but yes, if he was his other half," you said, finishing your food.

"What is an other half?"

"It is your partner, the person you are bonded to for eternity"

“Your companion,” he said lowly.

“Yes,” you nodded.

"What happened to you have yours...before you were banished?”

"I was assigned an other half, Rory. I had no love for him, so we never became whole," you admit, losing your appetite, pushing the plate away.

"My apologies, I am sorry to be intrusive, I can't hear your thoughts," he apologized.

"It is fine, but I'd like to know about you, what are you, obviously not human anymore, tell me, if you don't mind," you told him, leaning forward, a smirk forming on his face.

Looking into your eyes, he explained to you everything. Even he was surprised by the words that came from his mouth. He talked about his previous life, his maker, Louis, his trauma, and his loneliness. His failed relationship took a toll on him, but he couldn't let Louis leave his life completely afraid of being alone all over again.

"Your life has been full of misfortune, but it has made you strong, and your heart, it beats hard, that's good," you told him, placing your hand on his heart, hearing and feeling the blood rush through it.

Realizing what you were doing, you quickly removed your hand. Looking down, Lestat stared at you.

"My apologies," you whispered, standing up. Not seeing the small smile that played on his face.

"I didn't mind, is your hearing intensified?" he asked you, as you turned away.

"I can hear and feel all of your flowing blood," you said, as he stood, moving your hand back.

Suddenly a memory came to mind, one that you sheltered years ago.

“Y/n, mermaids do not intermingle with humans”

Your father's words, repeatedly in your mind, making your face burn in shame. Lestat was beginning to make you feel things, you had to keep away. You didn't want him to become angry with you like your fath-

"I see you liked the food," Louis called out, making you turn, removing your hand.

"Come, you clearly aren't going home anytime soon, we’ll have to find you a few things to wear," Lestat tells you, grabbing your hand.

"Watch your step,” Lesta said.

Holding onto his arm, as he led you to the backyard, removing the blindfold. Gasping, you looked at him, shaking your head, you couldn't believe your eyes.

“This is too much”

“Nonsense,” Lestat said.

It had been another five months since you made it to New Orleans, and ten away from your family. No one other than Lestat and Louis knew about you being a mermaid. After that night with Lestat, talking and eating the fish, he insisted that you stayed a while longer since you had no place to be anyway, but you weren't a fool. It was obvious to you, that he wanted to keep you around, he was becoming attached. The feelings were mutual, but guilt plagued your mind constantly, what would your father say about this? were human, or vampire rules the same as merfolk? You wouldn't know because you didn't leave the palace grounds often.

Every time you found yourself getting too close to him, you'd make up an excuse to put distance between you, such as now. The last few weeks, Lestat wouldn't allow you into the backyard. Your breathing was beginning to become shallow, meaning you needed to get back to water. You had told Lestat about your plans to spend a few days in the water, near the dock. However, he was coming up with possible solutions so that you wouldn't have to be in the water when he surprised you with a saltwater pool.

"I just, I don't think it is safe for you to be alone out there," Lestat said, moving close to you.

"New Orleans seems safe to me"

"it is, but I can't guarantee the water"

"I am grateful, but I can protect myself," you laugh, finding his concentrated expression adorable.

"Of course, but who will protect you, when you are shifting, you could be hurt," he said.

“If you wanted me to stay, you just had to say it,” you smiled, unbuttoning the dress, and keeping eye contact with him.

Jumping into the water, you quickly transformed before coming up. Lestat had taken his shoes off, soaking his legs in the water as he watched you. At first, he couldn't understand why he wasn't able to read your thoughts, but it was later understood that it was because you weren't human - meaning you had to intentionally give him access to your mind.

"You should show your teeth more, you look so cute," he said making a biting noise, sitting near you, while you lay floating on your back.

"I look like a monster," you thought.

"The is no appearance for a monster, you are a work of art, the gray skin and pale eyes, you could stop anyone in their tracks," he spoke out loud.

"Out of fear"

"No," he disagreed, chuckling.

"You say those things to make me feel better"

“I have no reason to lie to you"

"Do you ever miss your life before vampirism?" you changed the subject.

"No, are you missing your family?"

"Occasionally, once you receive your other half, in my kingdom, you no longer care too much about your immediate family, but with no half, I'm left partially...empty" Groaning, you submerged under the water.

"Not having your other half affects you that much?"

"Rory will be given a new half, while I, will die alone," you told him, he was stunned, raising his eyebrow at your choice of words.

"Do not speak that way, you have no idea what the future holds," he told you, angrily.

“I’m sorry"

You weren't, and it was true. Every mermaid/man who never mated or was exiled before mating, suffered the same fate, dying alone in a peculiar manner. Perhaps that was your unclear destiny, but you were accepting of it if it meant no innocent humans had to die by your hands.

"You better be, you couldn't be alone, ever, now that you have moi," he tells you, climbing into the water with you.

"Stop there"

Swimming backward from him, you hadn't been this close to a human in your form, in a significant body wate, since the young boy who was killed.

"This condition, your countenance doesn't make you a monster, it means nothing to me, it's all external," he said coming closer to you, moving your hair, before touching your hand, laying his against it.

"What are you doing to me?”

"I should be asking you that," he said, as you laid your hand on his heart.

"Two half's come together-

"and become one," Lestat finished your statement, pulling you close, as he kissed your lips, making you shut your eyes.

As he backed away, you opened your eyes, dazed, seeing his grin. Instantly, you noticed the cut on his lip, your teeth had cut him. Ashamed, you turned away.

"What is- oh it's only a small scratch, it is nothing but blood," he says, licking his lip, as you turn back him, allowing him to pull you into a hug.

Maybe what you're father didn't know, wouldn't kill him… right?

“Mr. de Lioncourt,” the young man called out, approaching with the sack filled with fish.

You submerged under the water, before blowing water bubbles and splashing at him. His eyes softened, looking at you before his face straightened as he stared at the man.

"I brought the fish," he announced, holding up the bag.

"My god," he mumbled, seeing you swim across the pool floor.

"Surely, this is an abomination," he whispered, making Lestat snap his head the man’s way.

"What is this monster?" he questioned to himself.

"You don't know how to do a job without being in someone's business"

"Would you like to repeat what you were saying instead of muttering it to yourself?" Lestat said, biting back his anger.

"I was only curious, my apologies"

"Don't worry about things you don't understand"

"Alright, no need to get hostile, I have the fish here, and I’ll take my leave," he said, backing away noticing that you had stopped swimming, and now peeked in the pool, staring at him, unblinking.

“Actually, I have other plans for you,” Lestat said, appearing behind the man, and covering his mouth before he drained him. You turned your back away from the sight, preferring to not see such things.

Hearing the sound of the incinerator, turning around, you watched as Lesat approached, tearing the sack apart, and dropping in the fish for you. Briefly, you stared into each other’s eyes, before you turned your back. Were you abominable? possibly. You were falling in love with a vampire, who offered to become your other half.

The two of you had gotten much closer, since the eventful night in the pool. Lestat oftentimes found himself, caressing your scaled skin, desiring to be more intimate, but you made it clear, that he was trying to cross a line you felt he wouldn't be able to handle.

"Y/n" he called out to you. Refusing to turn, he came around to you.

"Why did I have to be a monster"

"You know that is not true," he told you.

"I want to get out"

Climbing out of the pool, and flopping around, your body began to transform. Crouched down panting, Lestat approached, wrapping a towel around your body.

"Come on, ma chérie," he said, scooping you up. Silently, you laid your head against him, your face void of any expression. Sitting you on the bed, in the guest bedroom, that had become yours, he stood in front of you.

"I have a gift," he said, making you look over at him. Grabbing the small box, he sat it in your lap, allowing you to open it, revealing the pearls.

“I figured you could wear it when we go see the play,” he said, hopeful that you liked it.

"Thank you, I love it," you mumbled, brushing your fingers over the pearls.

"I don't like this, you ignoring me because of some pathetic human," he said, sitting next to you.

"Sorry"

"Don't apologize, confide in me," he said, leaning closer, but you turned your head.

"We shouldn't”

"I know you feel how my heart beats for you," Lestat says, placing your hand on his chest.

"Other half's, it's more than blood or sex"

"I don't need that from you, I just want to make you whole," he said, his voice softening.

"You're saying that now"

"I love you, Y/n"

"I don't want to hurt you"

"The night we first met, you felt my heart and said I was strong. Trust that I am strong enough to love you properly. Two half's-

"Become one," you said, slowly opening the towel, as Lestat crawled towards you.

“You will not like my blood”

“Your blood is perfect”

•••

meanwhile...

"Any traces?"

"None, at least not anywhere within 1000 kilometers"

"Go farther, find her"

"I don't know, I think she needs a doctor," Louis said, as Lestat examined your face.

"Is this normal...after the rituals?" he continued, looking at the dark circles that formed around your eyes.

"No," you said weakly.

Within the last three weeks, your health declined tremendously. You didn't even have the strength to get into the water or eat.

"Maybe she just needs to be in the water for a while" he suggested, as they stood, watching you.

Nodding, Lestat grabbed a hold of you, before carrying you to the pool, allowing you to sink into the cool water. They took note that you had yet to transform, when suddenly, your body violently shook, nothing else happening. Panicking, Lestat had you out of the water within a blink of an eye.

"I'm sorry," he repeated, as you struggled to breathe, holding his hand, to let him know you were okay.

"What the hell, why didn't she transform?” Louis asked.

"I don't know," Lestat stressed, helping you sit down, and kissing your forehead.

"Find a doctor and bring him to us,” Lestat told Louis, watching as he nodded, leaving.

"I'm sorry," he said again, hugging you close.

"I am fine," you said, leaning against him, and closing your eyes.

Since completing the ritual, you could feel everything Lestat felt, at an incredibly high level. He, of course, being a different species only felt a small part of what you experienced, and he usually only understood it through feelings in his stomach. Good feelings were described as butterflies, while the negative, aches.

"Calm down," you tell him, placing your hand on his chest, your eyes still shut.

"Louis needs to hurry," he said, ignoring you.

"I'm back, I found a doctor,” he said, the man, who had been glamoured followed behind.

"Help her," Lestat instructed.

Sitting his bag down, he reached to touch you, occasionally reaching into his bag for medical tools.

“What is wrong with her?”

"I can get a sample of blood, could be pregnancy, a virus, or a cold," he said, as he searched his bag for the needed equipment.

“Get him out of here,” Lestat told his fledgling, Louis instantly was directing the man to leave.

“Y/n, I need to drink of you,” he said, reaching for your wrist, with your blood in his veins, it was the only time he felt most connected with you.

Nodding, you groaned at the feeling of his vangs sinking into your skin. He drank for a while, your blood dripping down his chin, when he heard it. Faint, so low he could easily miss it.

“How is this possible?” Lestat choked, hardly able to speak, hesitantly moving his hands to your stomach.

“What is it?” Louis asked, coming back.

“She is…pregnant”

“How is that possible, you're dead,” Louis asked, confused.

"It was the ritual, the water has accepted our companionship, and bestowed this upon us"

A while after physically mating, along with giving and drinking blood with Lestat, in your human form - you did it in your mermaid form. It isn't similar in the slightest, more so, letting the water bond you to each other, emotionally, leaving an orgasmic feeling. Deciding if you are worthy of being gifted a child.

“So you're a father now, congratulations,“ Louis pat his back.

"This still doesn't explain her behavior, I've never seen this before in pregnant women"

"What pregnant women have you been around?" Louis asked sarcastically, and you opened your eyes, waiting, with your eyebrow raised.

“I mean, typically symptoms"

"Vampire, the child is possibly a half-vampire, and they are feeding on me for nutrients,” you said, staring at your stomach.

“Has the been heard of before?”

“Not with vampires, just humans, it has only been heard of once in my lifetime, a distant relative from years ago”

"Do you know how her pregnancy went?"

"They say it was shorter than usual"

"The elders-she..." you stopped, your hand going to your chest.

Why didn't you think of your cousin, Sherah? She was seen to have much potential, until she fell in she with a human man. She left home without anyone knowing, to be with him. Having a son with him, she eventually was found. Immediately, they killed her, leading of pod to surround her. They baby, they took, and kept him, but treated him like an outcast, until he was killed by a shark, at only ten. All of this, and yet here you were making the same mistake.

"Your cousin...she isn't alive, is she?" Louis asked, making you shake your had

"No harm will come to either of you, okay?"

"Okay," you nodded, as he pulled you into a firm hug.

Closing your eyes, you prayed the water would make a way for you and your child because you had never in history heard of a child born of a vampire and siren.

"We've found her, she has been traced, all the way in the Gulf”

"I want you to move in-

"There is more, my king"

"What?"

"The others think she may be on land"

•••

"My goodness,” you groaned, your hand going to your stomach.

"What's wrong, is it the baby?" Lestat seemed to appear out of nowhere.

"I feel strange”

"Do you have to urine? It seems you need to go all the time,” he asked.

"Probably, help me up, please," you said. Instead, he picked you up and was in the bathroom within a flash

You were six months now, your womb swollen as if you were further along. You had been unable to transform, the entire time. Forced to drink human mixed with Lestat’s blood to remain healthy. While there were days you felt worse than others, seeing Lestat so happy was like your medicine. He never in his lifetime imagined something like this happening, and with it unfolding, he was more than grateful.

"I need to get to the water," you told him, he had your dress up, halfway, looking at you, unsure.

"Are you sure?" he asked.

"I've got this weird feeling, the water is calling for me," you said, holding onto him, as he picked you up.

Standing at the edge of the pool, he hesitantly dropping you into the water. Crouching, he watched as you stripped from your clothes, when it happened. You were transforming, Lestat released a breath of relief, furrowing his eyebrows at your large belly, seeing the concerning sharp kicks.

“The baby is coming”

Hearing the words, Lestat was glad to already dead, because he would have died from anxiety and excitement. 

“Louis, it is happening,” he managed to get out, calling to his fledgling, watching in astonishment as you pushed out the child, like a dolphin.

You slowly swam around, until the child smoothly came out, with the placenta and blood. The water turned light red, but you were still visible, circling the small child, that had a small tail, with a head full of hair.

"A girl," you told him, as the child, swam close to you, snuggling against you.

"What happened?" Louis asked, rushing over.

"She has given birth, it is a girl," Lestat said, as you stared lovingly at the child, who now lay comfortably in your arms.

"Will she be able to transform?” Louis asked, relieved when you nodded.

“I will find something for her to wear,” Louis rushed into the house, excited to see the baby in its human form.

Lifting from the pool, laying in the grass, you shifted back. Lestat watched with tears in his eyes, as the baby changed, the tail turning into the most precious legs and toes. 

Picking up the child, he held her close, amazed at the creation the two of you made. 

“Here,” Louis said, handing you a gown, and Lestat a tiny blanket for the baby.

"Mermaids don't cry much as babies," you told him, sensing his worry.

“Will she age?”

“She seems to be more mermaid than vampire,” you told him, reassuringly.

"She is beautiful,” he cried.

"And ours," you said happily.

"What will you name her?" Louis asked.

"Amara, it means, everlasting," you said, as he carefully placed her into your arms. The moment couldn't get any more perfect, you sat feeding your daughter, before giving her back to Lestat to hold. Watching the sight in front of you, you smiled softly. Until you heard something, making your blood run cold. It was a siren song, far from New Orleans, but getting close. Standing, you worriedly approached Lestat.

"Give her to Louis and let him take her home," you said.

"What? Why?" he asked, furrowing his eyebrows.

"Please, listen to me, quickly," you said, running inside, grabbing another blanket to wrap around her, and grabbing your pearl necklace to slip inside.

"Please, get her away from here, I will explain everything later," you continued, handing him the child, and ushering him away.

"What is going on?" Lestat asked you.

"Stay here, wait for me to return," you said, making him give you a look, but you ignored it, pecking his lips, before taking off.

Slowly, you walked to the dock, where your new life began. Approaching the water, you could see someone standing there, their scent familiar.

"My sister," the voice said, snapping your head to the left, there stood Mari, in his human form, a cloth around his waist, taller and more muscular than the last time you saw him.

"Mari," you said, shocked to see him.

"Won't you hug your brother?" he asked, in the same emotionless voice.

Running, you jump into his arms, as he hugged you tightly. As your feet touch the ground, he kisses your forehead, hugging you again.

"You've grown," he says.

"What are you doing here Mari?"

"The others are coming, they are ready for you to come home, to force you to have your first kill, if you haven't already, I wanted to be the one to tell you," he said.

"I can't leave Mari," you whispered to him. 

"Is there something st-" Looking up, you see he had stopped talking, staring ahead, on high alert.

"You couldn't have possibly thought I would let you run off, in a panic, and not be concerned," Lestat said, standing behind you, never removing his eyes from your brother.

"This is Mari," you tell him.

"Mari, this is Lestat, he is special to me, and he is not human," you tell him in your native tongue.

His eyes shift back to him, as he gives a small bow out of respect. They could be heard, the water didn't make any movement, but you could hear the fastness, of them swimming closer.

"Lestat, you need to go home"

“Home is with you, ma chérie”

Rising above the surface, King Zale and Ari, were in front of the group of other mermen, and your siblings.

"Y/n, my daughter, have you learned your lesson, ready to come home?" your father said.

"What are they saying?” Lestat questioned before you gave him access to your thoughts where the language translated.

"I will not come back Father, I am sorry, this is my home now," you tell them.

"This is not your home, you are no human," he tells you.

"I can't leave," you say sadly, causing your sister to gasp.

"Father, can you not see it?" Nerissa asked, making all of the merfolk look around confused.

"What is it?"

"She has mated with that human man," she said through gritted teeth. Snapping his eyes onto Lestat, he looks back your way.

"Y/n, who is this man?"

"This is Lestat, he has become my close friend and...my other half"

“Y/n, tell me this isn't true,” your mother cried.

"then I would be lying," you tell her.

"Where is the baby then?" Nerissa said.

"We haven't conceived yet, we were hoping the water would bless us" you lied.

"What she has done is an abomination upon us all, she is vile," Ari says angrily.

“He is not human, can you not smell it?” you argued. Everyone inquired amongst themselves in agreement that the man didn't smell human.

“That doesn't matter, he isn't one of us, she has broken our ancient laws,” Ari countered.

"What shall we do, my king?" one of the elders asks.

"Are you confessing to your detestable actions?" King Zale asked.

"Yes father," you said.

"Then it is final, you will face judgment and I am no longer your father"

"Father, that is-

"Stay out of it Mari, always taking up for her, but look what she has been doing, we ought to kill all of these worthless humans" Ari spit out.

"No, I face judgment with no resistance, and you leave these people alone" you glared.

"You are no one to bark orders," he said darkly, moving forward.

"Enough, we will be back shortly to deliver your retribution," your father said before they all lowered into the water.

"I will try to talk to them," Mari tells you, grabbing a hold of your hands.

"You don't have to risk your place for me," you tell him.

"It is the least I could try to do for you," he says, hugging you, before diving back into the water.

Looking at Lestat, you cried, laying your head on his chest. 

“Will you take care of her?”

“You don't really think I am allowing this to continue? You have lived on land, their threats are nothing to me”

“Lestat-

“No, I will not allow them to take you away from me, from us, I will spare your brother, but the rest will know my wrath, trust me,” he told you, kissing your lips.

•••

“There has to be another way, she is still young, and she has much to learn-

“Silence Mari, it is I, who will become king, not you, you will shut your mouth, or you will die with her”

•••

“Saying your final goodbyes?” Ari asked a devilish grin in place.

“Y/n, we have come up with a final decision,” your father said.

“There is a problem with your judgment, it holds no value when Y/n is mine, and I won't give her over so easily,” Lestat spoke, angering many of the merfolk with his boldness.

“Does he not realize his stupidity will kill everyone?” Nerissa asked, as a reminder.

“Do it, I am no human,” he shrugged.

“Your insolent mate will respect the statutes, I am King-

Before anyone could move, Lestat had lunged forward, ripping your father’s head off, his spine still connected.

“Long live the king,” he smirked, as the others gasped.

“Not so fast, or you will all suffer the same fate,” he told them, as they were about to attack.

“I reject my bloodline of Demacia and denounce all rules and statutes, I accept an eternity of banishment,” you spoke, making Ari scoff.

“If you are ever seen anywhere near us, you are dead,” he said, taking your father’s remains as they swam away.

“Thank you,” you slung your arms around Lestat.

“Anything for you”

Turning to leave, you stopped, seeing Mari climb from the water, transforming, before standing tall.

“I just want a word with you before I leave,” he said, seeing Lestat glare at him.

“Your child- I could smell them on you, almost immediately, like Sherah’s son,” he started.

“We were given a girl,” you told him, seeing him smile slightly.

“The water knows best”

“I'm worried about her aging, Lestat hasn't aged since he was turned, and he lives off of human blood,” you explained.

“She will be fine, raise her as both, the water will sustain her and eventually his gift will take over, take care, Ari calls for me,” he said, turning.

“Mari, stay here, you’ll like it-

“I can not abandon my duties, love you, my little guppy”

7 years later…

"I'm finished, Can I please go play?" the seven-year-old asked her daddy.

"It's getting late, Amara,” you told her, but she only pouted, climbing on her father.

"Daddy, can I go play, please?"

“I thought you wanted to swim tonight?” you asked her.

"I do, I won't be long, tell her daddy, tell her how fast I run,” she said, making him chuckle.

"Let’s just give her a few minutes,” he said, using the handkerchief to wipe the blood from her lips. Clapping in excitement, she was out of the house immediately.

"She can't always have her way," you told Lestat, who continued playing the music on his piano.

"You have your way all the time, ma chérie, who do you think she gets it from?” he asked, smirking, as you leaned down, kissing his lips.

“She is getting better at hunting every day, it’s a reward for her and a break for us,” he said, standing up, and picking you up.

•••

"Hey, I'm back" Amara whispered, as she approached the dock.

"Did you eat well?" the merman asked, rising above the water.

"How can I understand you?"

"Because you're special," he tells her.

“I'm a mermaid, like you, but only half,” she told him.

“Yes”

"What's your name again, sir?"

"Mari, but don't tell anyone, our secret"

"Okay, can I hear the story now? I ate all of my food and asked my mommy and daddy to come play”

"Of course, little one, it is about a lonely mermaid princess, who was banished from her home, this is a true story"

"A mermaid princess? I bet she was pretty, what was her name?"

"She was one of the most beautiful, let's call her angel?"

"Angel? Why that?"

"She was the only one to have the heart of an angel, out of all of her brothers and sisters, but Amara, we must continue"

"Sorry, go on," she giggled, listening to him tell the story.

•••

"Amara," you called for her worriedly, running around the port. You knew she wouldn't be right back, but after over an hour passed, you became worried.

"She's right here," Lestat appeared on the dock, picking her up.

"You said you wouldn't be long, young lady," you said, as the child pouted, she looked so much like Lestat with his pale eyes and sharp features.

"Sorry mama, look at what I got though," she said, showing the pretty shell.

“It is very pretty,” you told her.

"Come on, ma chére, you need a bath," Lestat said walking back home.

You didn't follow, staying still a little longer, staring at the water, unable to identify where the familiar scent was.

"Mari?" you whispered.

"Ma chérie, Amara wants to apologize with kisses,” Lestat reappeared, making you laugh.

"I’m willing to hear her out, but only because she's so cute," you said, joining the two. 

Watching from the water, Mari was happy for you, you were finally with people who accepted you completely.

"Thank you," you mumbled. Your heart warmed at the thought of Mari being involved in Amara’s life - that she would know another mermaid outside of herself and you.

"Hm?” Lestat asked.

"I hope you know you have to finish what you started, later tonight," you said lowly, grinning.

“I intend to”

"Two hearts became one, and the fallen princess had risen to outshine her dark nation," Mari thought.

"Goodbye, big brother"

"Goodbye, little sister"

Looking back for the last time, the merman dived into the water, swimming back to his underwater kingdom.

the end 😅

[saintmeghanmarkle]

While lawyer John Bardo representing Prince Harry on behalf of US Homeland Security says that Harry lied in his memoir Spare ... Here are video clips of Harry admitting to drug and alcohol abuse in interviews. Credit: MT on twitter by u/Negative_Difference4

While lawyer John Bardo representing Prince Harry on behalf of US Homeland Security says that Harry lied in his memoir Spare ... Here are video clips of Harry admitting to drug and alcohol abuse in interviews. Credit: MT on twitter https://ift.tt/JCOjNIR post link: https://ift.tt/ZyrlzJ4 author: Negative_Difference4 submitted: February 24, 2024 at 02:05PM via SaintMeghanMarkle on Reddit

[fleuraimer]

prompt: for the dom to have the sub on all fours,  using them as a table or footstool. 

some objectification from dismissive h… that would be hawwwwt while yn whines for attention

first slumber party ask!! i've like... never thought of this before and it's rlly...🥸🥸 it’s something that’s fs!!

wc: 601

cw: smut. minors dni. 17+. d/s dynamics. allusions to high, hindering stress/anxiety. humiliation&degradation kink. objectification&dumbification kink. fingering (f recieving). spanking. mean dom!harry.

You can't say you recall exactly how you got into this position. Though, you can't recall much of anything in this moment—this position. You're grateful thought—recollection—isn't something that's expected of you here. Just your obedience.

The chipped red paint of your fingernails, much like the carpet fibers (calloused; scraping against knees and digging into palms) beneath your form—kneeling on all fours, head bowed between your straight, straining shoulders, back flat—blurs in your line of vision.

You inhale sharply—but not sharp enough to move—when the clinking of ice against glass rattles above your head. Your peek out of the corner of your eye and spot as an old fashioned glass is brought to hover over you, condensation dripping down the sides, cradled in jeweled, tattooed hand. You exhale, now, and will yourself not to shift as it slips from the glass and falls into the dip of your spine, cooling against your overheated skin.

The chatter and commentary coming from the television—a footie game, from what you can tell, which isn't much in your current state, this hazy, smog filled bardo—morphs from speech to static in your ears. You blink at the carpet, lagged.

How had you gotten here?

(was it because you'd failed to have his meal—dinner, the feast you're unchangingly responsible for each night—prepared for him upon his return, instead found in your washroom, shower running, sat under the hot spray with skin rubbed raw and fingertips pinching at your roots, nails scraping at the scalp, staring down at the water trailing toward the drain blankly, hollow—un-useful, the woman fallen to hysterics. Or was it because he saw through the surface and knew you needed him to fix the problem; couldn't do this on your own, too unstable—the girl built on broken stilts—needed his heavy hand, curled around a stone chisel, to chip it away, to cut it clean off—)

You're pulled from your thoughts—a fruitless reverie, more jumbled and confounded after trying rather than just letting—when the cool, wet press of fogged glass is felt against your flat back. Your bottom lips fits itself between the bite of your teeth, willing away any reaction—objects don't react, and you're not you right now.

It becomes increasingly difficult when the hand clasped around the liquor glass standing on your back leaves it to stand, unsteady, on its own and settles over the swell of your ass—tender to the touch, hand-printed and bruising—fingers smoothing a downward trail to your cunt, wet and dripping with neglect. A thick, ringed finger slips between your soaked petals, parting, to press itself inside.

Your throat bobs, shoulders shake, ever-so-slightly—but enough for him to notice.

You freeze when you hear his soft tut.

"Don't move, Pretty Thing," Harry mutters, eyes still tailing the footie game on the television, tone vaguely distant, infliction indifferent. He takes his finger out to pet over your aching ass, gently. It lifts, and the soothing of flesh smoothing into flesh is replaced with the lingering sting of skin colliding. The strength with which it's delivered is more bruising than those that he'd previously left behind.

You don't move, though. Nor, yelp, or stiffen. You barely breathe.

"Good," he hums, and presses two fingers inside this time. "Don't spill my drink."

Your eyelashes flutter—lids heavy, sight blotchy, spotting—eyes threatening to roll back.

You're not sure you can take much more of this. You're not sure you can keep still, stay good, for much longer.

You're not worried about it, though. Not with Harry here, with his flesh against yours; his heavy hand, fit to your purity (chipping away at the festering disease—a tumor, brain and body, to cut clean off—

problem solved).

——

a/n: this was slightly liberating to write :)) anywho hope this suffices nonnie and THANK YOU FOR PARTICIPATING IN THE CELEBRATION/SLUMBER PARTY!1!!1 😁🥳

loosely edited/proofread!!!

[emsuemsu]

If there's something I really love in life it's the elderly. I love old people and old people love me and that is a fact. I am a peepaw whisperer, I speak fluent grandma. So naturally I've been on a mission for some senior citizen Drarry to quench my never ending thirst.

Some of these fics do contain neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's. Some of these fics do contain MCD in a form of dying of old age. They're all tagged accordingly, if in doubt check the tags.

These are all well under 10k, and hit me up with some more geriatric Drarry recs if you have some!

About Damn Time by @lumosatnight ���� 4,045 words

All Draco wants to do is eat his custard cup and nap in peace. Is that too much to ask? Apparently so, when the Flamel House for Experienced Wixen is overrun with Harry Potter and his idiot friends.

The Afterlife, According to Draco Malfoy by @stripedsilverfeline 👴 1,861 words

Tea is not a proper substitute for astral brooms': The Afterlife, according to Draco Malfoy

Age is just a number by @gnarf 👴 1,555 words

Married for decades, their life is perfect. Until Harry gets a call and hears the following words: "Mr Potter, we caught your husband stealing ten large packs of King Sized condoms."

Attic Past by @piarelei 👴 500 words

Here are his knees. Noticeable and ugly. Harry sighs, doesn’t dare look at more of himself; the skin loose around his thighs and the wrinkles crowning his eyes. “I have ugly knees,” he tells the room. Draco, predictably, is already downstairs and doesn’t answer.

Brave by @mars-bar81 👴 8,403 words

Draco had never been the brave one- that had always been Harry's job.

Easier Than Falling Asleep by @gnarf 👴 1,029 words

After a long and happy life Harry is ready to return to Kings Cross. This time it's not Dumbledore, but his husband waiting for him there and they finally get to ride the Hogwarts Express together.

Dear Life by @drarryangels 👴 5,208 words

"Draco ran his fingers over the headstone at his feet and let his creaky knees fold underneath him to sit on the grass. When he was younger, he thought he’d never get old like this. With bad joints, white hair, and off trend clothes. Harry would’ve laughed at him if he could see Draco sitting in the dirt sniffling over his lost touch in the fashion industry." Or the story where Draco and Harry get to grow old together and be happy.

I Wouldn't Change a Thing by @rei382 👴 1,380 words

Harry and Draco, an old married couple, need to pack to go to their retirement home. But Harry stumbles upon an old photo album, and all kinds of memories start to flood back.

lucidity comes before the sun sets by @squintclover 👴 707 words

Life and memories are cruel sometimes... Stealing Harry from Draco before his time.

Meeting Too Late by WSbrat 👴 1,528 words

What if Draco and Harry fell in love when it was too late? What if they fell in love anyway?

Old School by Bardo 👴 5,053 words

When he was younger, Draco Malfoy used to say sex was dead after 65. Of course, at the time, he wasn't talking about himself.

Stay with me forever, we'll ride this out together by @triggerlil 👴 420 words

In old age, Harry cares for Draco.

Two Old Coots by @sofyachy 👴 1,898 words

On their 50th anniversary, Harry and Draco are a couple of old coots who no longer care what they tell other people about their relationship, to their kids’ mortification. Gather round, children; it’s inappropriate story time.

Wiser With Age, Still Stupid in Love by @sethsevolution 👴 3,483 words

There came a point in their lives where they felt like they were only ones left and that was what finally drew them together.

Won't You Stay By My Side by @gracerene 👴 1,936 words

Harry needs to convince Draco that he is too old to continue his dangerous job as an Investigative Journalist.

[euronymous-files]

This would’ve been around spring ’91, when Slayer Mag #8 came out – the one with that legendary Euronymous and Dead interview where they lay down the law in terms of, ‘Black metal is like this, death metal is like that. And it’s a lifestyle.’ All this really resonated with me. I thought, ‘Fuck, I love what they’re saying here. It feels right.’ That interview changed my whole approach to music, my interests, and the direction I wanted to take. […] I never got around to playing him (Euronymous) my music. I was a little concerned that he might not be into it, so I kept dragging my feet a lot in terms of letting him know about the Mortiis project. I was literally terrified that if Euronymous told me it sucked, I wouldn’t want to make more music. I can handle a lot of criticism but, at the time – as an eighteen-year-old – I’d have been devastated if Euronymous said, ‘Dude, it’s shit.’ Because he was very honest and would’ve told me in no uncertain terms if he didn’t like my music. So, I think that held me back. I do recall entertaining this little daydream that it would’ve been fucking cool to release something on his label, but, at the same time, I knew it would’ve taken forever. Euronymous was always dealing with various financial complications. […] I’d just turned eighteen and thought I was going to prison; I had a police detective with a big beard staring me straight in the eye… and I’m like, ‘I am so fucked.’ I wasn’t raised in the fucking Bronx, you know. I didn’t grow up in The Godfather, nor have I ever been forced to survive on the street. I’m a middle-class kid! My parents paid for my first album, for fucks sake. So no, I’m not tough like that. They fucked me and then I had to fucking deal with it. You know, for years. People felt I’d snitched on Faust, but that wasn’t the case at all. It’s true that I did talk to the police because they tricked me. The motherfuckers tricked me. When it came to Varg, I had zero loyalty. I told them everything I knew, because he killed Euronymous. I even testified in court against that dickhead. Still to this day, I’m fucking glad I did that.

--------------------------------------------------------------

Excerpts from the interview on Bardo Methodology #7

Please please please go read the rest of the interview, it's extremely insightful.

[steddieunderdogfics]

Baby I'm Your Man (Don't Fear the Reaper) by Capriciously_Terminal

@capriciouslyterminal

Rating: General Audiences

3,248 words, 1/1 chapters

Archive Warning: Major Character Death

Tags: Eddie Munson's Near-Death Experience, Eddie Munson Has a Crush on Steve Harrington, Eddie Munson Needs a Hug, Eddie Munson Lives, A Way to Say I Love You, Bardo Discussions, Eddie Died but He Doesn't Stay Dead, meta-ish, Drabble, Eddie Munson's Chat with Death, Resurrection, Come Back Right

Summary:

“If I have to challenge you to a game or something,” Eddie says, feebly spitting a mouthful of his own lifeblood against the dry grass of the dead version of his hometown to try and look cool. “It can’t be basketball when you look like that. That shit’s cheating.” “Why would I want to play basketball?” Death, who at this moment looks exactly like Steve Harrington, asks. But he does it with the Steve Harrington bafflement, the prickling of his perfect brows and shake of his majestic head. The human and likable part of Steve Harrington, that Eddie had only just known and kind of wanted to take like a vitamin once a day to improve his quality of life, is stapled onto the least human and likable thing of all. (AKA Eddie Munson and Death Have a Conversation). (AKA My Response to Prompt 94 of p0ck3tf0x's "100 Ways to Say I Love You" List).

Thanks for the rec! This recommendation is apart of our Writer's Wednesday! All of the recs today are written by @capriciouslyterminal . Want to nominate an author? Fill out this form!

You can submit fic recs to our asks or the submission box!

[sgiandubh]

I'm confused why people keep insisting this woman is Sam's beard. A beard traditionally is a woman who is pretending to date a man to hide that he is gay. In this fandom every woman is Sam's beard - used to signify hiding his relationship with Cait. However, as far as I know Sam and Sarah have never even been in a photo together. He's cheering on her and everyone else at Hyrox, because yes, he does know this woman and is presumably her friend. Why is she a beard and not his friend. Has she posted things that imply a relationship? Has she interacted with the antis or mommies in her comments? No. I know you and others have called for people to just leave her alone but I don’t think people know how.

Dear Keep Insisting Anon,

Or are you the returning Not Allowed Anon, hoping for more traction? I wouldn't know.

No, she has emphatically not interacted with the overzealous Mommies, who already started fawning 🙄.

Yes, she has posted things that might imply a relationship, from Gran Canaria: the fitness 'go' and the protein powder (or whatever the hell she was preparing) video from that rental's kitchen. Those definitely had Ha-wa-wee 🐰vibes and are what a beard would absolutely do (look here, not there). Whether she was completely unaware about what Mordor is always able and ready to make of those videos or just serving another round of Narrative Kool Aid, is up to debate.

I chose not to give this uhm, 'thing', more traction than it deserves and I explained why. I will add only this: any further nitpicking on that particular topic only fuels *urv's new Fitness At Dawn Harlequin fanfic. That is something I would never want to be a part of. And I will always say, very clearly, to leave her and her child alone: the least thing those people need is this kind of questionable attention.

But when did this fandom know where or how to stop? The alternative is the Bardo of Boredom and very frankly, Anon: who would want to be stuck there until the new avatar steps in?

[perilegs]

ok i think lamento should be awarded with the prize of worst lube in fiction

[letthegoodtimesgull]

Task 001.⊹ ࣪ ﹏𓊝﹏𓂁﹏⊹ ࣪

ᴛʜᴇ ʟɪɢʜᴛʜᴏᴜꜱᴇ ʟɪꜰᴛꜱ ɪᴛꜱ ᴍᴀꜱꜱɪᴠᴇ ᴍᴀꜱᴏɴʀʏ,   ᴀ ᴘɪʟʟᴀʀ ᴏꜰ ꜰɪʀᴇ ʙʏ ɴɪɢʜᴛ, ᴏꜰ ᴄʟᴏᴜᴅ ʙʏ ᴅᴀʏ.  ᴇᴠᴇɴ ᴀᴛ ᴛʜɪꜱ ᴅɪꜱᴛᴀɴᴄᴇ ɪ ᴄᴀɴ ꜱᴇᴇ ᴛʜᴇ ᴛɪᴅᴇꜱ,   ᴜᴘʜᴇᴀᴠɪɴɢ, ʙʀᴇᴀᴋ ᴜɴʜᴇᴀʀᴅ ᴀʟᴏɴɢ ɪᴛꜱ ʙᴀꜱᴇ, ᴀ ꜱᴘᴇᴇᴄʜʟᴇꜱꜱ ᴡʀᴀᴛʜ, ᴛʜᴀᴛ ʀɪꜱᴇꜱ ᴀɴᴅ ꜱᴜʙꜱɪᴅᴇꜱ

{  ​🇧​​🇦​​🇸​​🇮​​🇨​​🇸​  } ⊹ ࣪ ﹏𓊝﹏𓂁﹏⊹ ࣪ ˖

SIGNATURE DOOR

a door that belongs to nowhere yet feels right at home on the beach. half-painted and half-forgotten, the wooden arch door stands, a quiet contradiction of neglect and care. the top half is dressed in tired blue, as the paint peels in tired flakes, curling, holding and falling. whilst the bottom bears hesitant stroked of fresh light blue paint which halts about half way up with no hopes to be finished. between the cracks of the wood, scattered across are peeling stickers from random bars reminiscing of wild black out nights with mismatched graffiti scrawled all over. messy penmanship in sharpie with crude jokes from classics "call for a good time" to thick lines and scribbles scratching out hidden love notes and messages. the rusted hinges slowly corroded by time and salt. each holds on with a stubborn sort of charm yet their loose screws jut out dangerously, ready to scar and scrap those who come near. the knocker, a bronze fading anchor dangles dead centre. the fish tail handle that curves at touch , scaly and weatherworn that slightly invites the touch to those who are curious enough to try. to tide the door is a blur of memories mashed together. nothing is clean and proper, it's lived and used, a gateway that is something more. a mixture of growth and moving forward, words that are long forgotten. maybe snippets of his childhood home. then it really begs to question what part of the doors reflect his home.

SOUL SEVER

the swiss army knife tide carries is a compact and striking tool, its silvery-blue finish gleaming subtly under the light. the sides are engraved with a nautical pattern of coiled ropes, anchors, and gentle wave motifs, perfectly reflecting tide’s carefree and ocean-inspired personality. the blade, sharp and pointed, is sleek and practical, though it isn’t the tool’s most notable feature. a sturdy bottle opener flips out easily, often used by tide to pop open a cold one as he relaxes and takes life as it comes.

DESIRED EMOJI 🌊🕶️

WHAT DO YOUR MUSE’S WINGS LOOK LIKE?

lets keep this one simple. tide ain't the brightest spark and to know the exact spices and much about bird family. it's not something the he retained but letting out a low chuckle, click of the tongue and a whistle when his wings unfurled recognising his wings to be that of a gull. for reference they are like the Larus sapp, a little grey that mixes in the greying skies. more to be added!

WHAT SHAPE DOES THEIR BARDO USUALLY TAKE?

beach like vibes. a lighthouse. messy rooms. hammocks that fill the room. chilled blues and whites. a mini bar and actual bar that is darted around. deck chairs that are comfy to sit in. wooden shakes like beach hut. everything is always bright and sunny. to be edited....

WHAT ARE THEY LIKE AT THE DEPARTMENT OF AFTERLIFE AFFAIRS?

tide is the one who is constantly poking his nose into everyone else's business. maybe he wants to be part of the conversation, maybe he want to be the topic of conversations and very much will rather do anything than the damn paper work. he is the one that talks the loudest, talks the most and talks alot of bullshit. when you find him at his desk 9/10 he would be doing the equivalent of doom doom scrolling. his feet will be kicked up on his desk. sometimes he might be taking a nap. you'll find notes on his desk like "gone fishing", "meeting in progress" or something witty and charming that would give you a chuckle or two. he is also a moaner. one that will be complaining when is it home time. when things are too quiet he has got to make some noise or have some sort of games that are going on. like level of annoyance i would say he would be like a mixture of kelly and michael scott from the office, always needed to making noise or be engaged with something that is beyond him.

WHAT IS THEIR OPINION ON 𝚃𝚑𝚎 𝙼𝚊𝚐𝚒𝚜𝚝𝚛𝚊𝚝𝚎?

"Sorry..who was that again?"

{  ｏｐｔｉｏｎａｌ  } ⊹ ࣪ ﹏𓊝﹏𓂁﹏⊹ ࣪ ˖

HOW DO THEY LOOK LIKE/DRESS LIKE IN THE AFTER?

messy effortless wavy hair that is always combed a little back. rarely ever tied up, if it is that means it's time for serious business. although his style is pretty much laid back with shirts and shorts or trousers if the right occassions call for it, his attire is anything but boring. taking slight inspiration for styles in the karate kid trilogy and romoe + juliet 1996, tide does wear bright colourful shirts and trousers with sunglasses that are match. [pinterest]

ANY NOTABLE RELATIONSHIPS WITH NPCS AT THE DEPARTMENT?

everybody loves to hate him. xoxo. TO BE EDITED.

ARE THERE ANY RUMORS OR GOSSIP ABOUT THEM?

🕶️ he will start arguments or fights if anything bad is said about starling. well okay let's not say fights, he has a little bit more charm too him but you will be on his prank list one way or another. he has some class too him. 🕶️ tide is a massive flirt. but not because he is looking to date or shizz, that is part of his cheeky charm that he thinks he will get out of trouble. 🕶️ is the headache and dumbass of the group but that is a badge of honor that he was wears proud. 🕶️ shit scared of people who not yell at him but use that cold tone with him. 🕶️ pathological need to be liked or spoken about. more to add...

[diy-fire-water-pups]

Hey Zuma, what's your family like? You've mentioned them a few times and I'd love to hear more about them.

Oh? Hmm, let me see... I'm not sure what I've already said before or not. I have one brother, Zack, I remember mentioning him sometimes... Three sisters, Pixie, Penny and Polly... And my mom, Hazel!

Zack is very hyperactive, and we look almost entirely alike, so we've switched places a few times before just for fun, and even by accident! He likes to play, to swim and last I heard he's been trying to surf but I was told he still has a lot to learn until he can say he's a surfer pup for real.

On the other side, Penny is the most chill of us all, but she's still pretty smart and playful. She's black, with white chest and paws, with black spots on these white parts. She loves helping anyone with anything and is a very good emotional support for anyone who needs it!

Pixie has a duller brown fur than me, it's like someone toned down the saturation even more, with a few darker spots randomly all over. She loves making new friends and is maybe too curious for her own good. If there's anything new in a room, she will inspect it all over... And that got her in some sticky situations a few times, like how she got her nose stuck in a sticky trap for bugs once. It was hell to get her free and clean her nose after that!

As for Polly, she's The Diva. She's got a darker fur, like, if Zack and I are kinda walnut colored, she's the actual dark chocolate shade. She loves dressing up and wearing accessories, absolutely thrives on getting attention! I've never seen Polly get into the sea at all, but she might have at some point after I moved to live here with Ryder. She said saltwater was bad for her fur. You bet I splashed her several times or shook myself next to her just out of spite during a good part of my puppyhood, ha!

And last, there's Hazel, our mom. She's very energic and loves to run and play. Her favorite game is beach volleyball! She always made sure to educate us all into nice friendly pups, but we might have skipped a bit on the well behaved part of the story. She says we got that from our father! His name is Bardo and he's a Dalmatian who was on a vacation trip with his owners, coming all the way from Australia. Me and my siblings didn't get to meet him, but we got to do a video call once last year. It felt kinda weird, but he seems to be cool!

[genesis-king]

Teen Wolf: The Movie released in 2023 should NOT exist and is an ABSOLUTE ATROCITY. Here’s why:

Not only was it absolute bullshit that Jeff Davis killed Derek the same way his family was killed, by burning him alive! But he also had Derek’s 15 year old son WATCH him die. JUST LIKE how Derek watched his family die from a fire when HE was 15!

Where the hell is Stiles, a key character to the series? So major of a character that when he didn’t appear in the beginning of season 6 of the original series, views decreased SIGNIFICANTLY. And when he returned in season 6 episode 11 (with Derek, might I add), views SKYROCKETED like crazy.

A majority of the movies plot points don’t line up with the original show. For example: Chris Argent and Isaac Lahey took the jar containing the Nogitsune with them when they went to France. So why is it on a shelf, let me repeat: a GOD DAMN SHELF, in Japan?! Another thing is that in the original show Derek (as an alpha) was able to survive a wolfsbane bullet wound for almost, if not, 24 hours. While in the movie Chris says Scott (also an alpha) only has a few hours to survive before the poison kills him.

Stiles would never abandon not only his Jeep, as stated in season 4 episode 1: The Dark Moon, but ALSO Scott and Lydia, his two best friends.

There’s so many other things that just don’t line up but it would take way too long to explain and that’s not the reason I’m posting this. The reason for this post is up next. So moving on…

Since Jeff Davis HAS decided to give us this movie with its OUTRAGEOUS plot line and BULLSHIT ending (no offense to Davis entirely, he did very good on the original series but he honestly should have left it there), I have decided (as I’m sure others have as well) that there needs to be a sequel to fix it. Here’s some of the things I think need to happen in said hypothetical and much needed sequel:

Eli’s the main character (not Scott McAsshole) and we learn who his other biological parent is (most likely Kate because even if everyone hates it, it would serve as a very interesting plot).

Stiles comes back because the show is absolute SHIT without him. AND he’s pissed about Scott & the pack not calling him for his help, resulting in Derek being DEAD! He’s also mad at Scott because he, an ALPHA, allowed one of his betas to SACRIFICE himself. In front of his KID no less! The TRAUMA the poor pup will have now. (Can’t there be ONE Hale generation that DOESN’T have life altering trauma and hogwash happen to them!)

Isaac should also return so we can see his reaction to Allison being resurrected and Derek being dead. His reaction is so important to me because when Allison died they were dating and Derek was his original alpha & took him in after his dad died.

In fact, since we’re bringing Stiles and Isaac back, let’s bring EVERYONE that was still alive at the end of the original series and were still part of the pack (or once was) back. Let’s have them make a major debut for an amazing kick ass battle against some new big bad. (Possibly “Captain America: Civil War” style. ✨SCOTT vs STILES✨ …That’s actually not a bad idea. I’ll post about that next, but first we got to continue with what else needs to happen.)

Derek isn’t ACTUALLY dead! Yay! He should be in bardo because 1: he’s a stubborn, self sacrificing pain in the ass who has been wronged in SO many ways. And 2: he has realized his mistake of sacrificing himself (while needed in the movie, it could have easily been prevented if Stiles was there) causing him to leave his son and outright REFUSES to fully die. PLUS, right before Derek died we saw his eyes turn RED, meaning that he is now a True Alpha. That changes a LOT of things! I don’t care if there’s no body and he can’t logically return to this plane of existence physically. He’s in bardo. Plain and simple. The show has already broken so many perceived supernatural rules, what’s one more?

Stiles has ✨magic✨ (as hinted on by Deaton saying he has a Spark MULTIPLE times throughout the series) and brings Derek back from being almost-dead-but-not-quite-dead.

And finally, what a MAJORITY of Teen Wolf fans (myself included 😌) have been waiting for *drumroll*: STEREK!!! FINALLY it happens! *jazz hands*

BOOM! DONE! STORY FIXED! Your welcome!

Feel free to comment what you think is wrong with the movie and what should be added to the hypothetical & desperately needed sequel.

Until next time…

~Peace,

Genesis. ✌️

[harrystiddess]

DRUMMER GIRL

PART II

A/N: If my scenarios before bed were a fanfic haha

WORD COUNT: I’m bad at math

SUMMARY: She's a drummer and a cop and he's in need of a drummer. Will she "stick" with his offer?

DRUMMER GIRL SERIES

Content Warning: None as of yet!

Read Part I here

HARRY’S POV

H: I think I just found us a drummer

Jeff: While taking a walk on the streets?

H: …Yes..

Jeff: When can they audition?

H: Actually tonight 7pm at Bardo’s

Jeff: They have a gig or something?

H: Sort of…

Jeff: Alright, I’ll meet you at your place then?

H: Uhm Actually I’ll be going early…

Jeff: To the venue? Why are they a friend?

H: No she’s not a friend and I’m juts going to get her flowers that’s all

Jeff: 👀

H: Here we go again

Jeff: Hahaha I’m joking chill man

H: you’re annoying

Jeff: I know 💁🏻‍♀️

6:30 PM Same Day

I’ve been pacing back and forth, I even drank chamomile Tea which I hate- but nothing seems to calm me down. Only this sentence playing through my head. “Harry Styles is going to fucking watch you play tonight”

It’s almost show time but i can’t see him anywhere. I would be lying if I said I haven’t been peeking through the curtain to find him. Even though he seemed a little full of himself I couldn’t bury the pure excitement I was feeling. As I take a good last peek for the last time, I spot Jeff. Great. Even though I knew he’d be there, it was just enough to tip off my anxiety.

I go back and quickly fix my make up and wear the last bit of my outfit.

The only good thing about tonight was that I was wearing All leather and thigh high boots. Tonight’s outfit- was my dream come true.

I’m the first one to walk out to the crowd screaming. It wasn’t a huge crowd, just about 100 people.

I walk in, bow down and I take a seat on my throne. (A/N: The seat of a drum kit is called a Throne)

As the others make their entry on stage I take my time to find Harry. He looks curious as if he were genuinely interested in my talent.

It was time for us to start, which we did with a classic “Viva La Vida” by Coldplay followed by imagine dragons and songs the bad wrote.

At the end of the hug, the crowd was left in awe. Tonight’s gig was a big hit.

After all of us take the last bow and take the crowds leave, we all go backstage getting our gear back in, to go to the bar and celebrate.

I come back out with Elle laughing about me tripping when I realise that Harry and Jeff are walking towards be. Harry has a bouquet in his hands. Bouquets of white daises. It was quite funny because Whute Daisies are my favourite flowers and there was no way he knew that unless..

“Hi” he says breathing out

“Hi”

“You were fucking amazing”

“Was I really? Or you’re just desperate for a drummer”

“I wouldn’t say I’m desperate, but you were phenomenal”

“Thankyou” I say chuckling

“Oh and I got these for you”

“White daisies” I say looking at them fondly smelling them and inhaling some pollen causing me to sneeze

I can hear them chuckle but I pretend I don’t.

“Uh Ava, this is Jeff my Manager, and Jeff this is Ava, the drummer girl” he introduced us.

“Nice to meet you” I say shaking his hand.

Jeff… he seems different than I thought. He’s.. welcoming. And has got a warm radiance in general.

“Let’s get a table?”

Everyone nods in agreement as we get seated on the table.

Oh and try is is Elena, my bestfriend and the guitarist of this band.

We all get seated and order a round of drinks.

“So Ava, what do you do? You a drummer of this band?”

“No actually.. Korid, their drummer is sick so I’m just covering for him. I’m actually a cop”

“A cop” Harry raises his eyebrows

“Well not exactly. But low key yes”

“That sounds very important”

“I mean it has its ups and downs” I say laughing

“So we definitely would love and I mean this in a way that if we have you as an employee, we’d go places we couldn’t reach before” said Jeff stepping in.

“Having you in the Love Band, would be like a miracle”

By looking at my unsure face he begins again “And we’re ready to negotiate. If you’re willing to still be a cop and do both at the same time, we’re ready to adjust”

The minute he said that it was like every problem in my world had been resolved. Not literally but the main pressing issue had been.

“I’m listening” you say with a wide smirk looking at Harry knowing that he knows that the deal is established and closed.

“We would love for you to come to the studio, we can talk terms, legalities, your pay and everything else”

I look at Elena for confirmation as if I was hesitating. Which I was. This was a huge step. Good for me but regardless a huge step. She nodded at me holding my hand making sure I knew that she supported me an thought that this was good for me.

“Alright. I’m in”

The minute I said that I could see Harry’s face light up like a damn glowstick. He had an expression I couldn’t quite decode but he was definitely happy and satisfied. And so was I. I’ve dreamed of this moment, infact even written fanfics about this moment for years. And this mine couldn’t compare to either of them.

We talked for a bit, decided that I’d come over to the studio tomorrow to close the deal and meet the rest of the bandmates. I exchanged numbers with Jeff as we bid our goodbyes. What surprised me was that Harry asked me for a picture. With him. He was the star! It sounded absolutely ridiculous. He knew I was thinking that but we clicked a picture anyways. As it turns out, it was his plan all along.

“Could you send me that picture?”

“I don’t have your contact”

“That’s alright you can give me yours, I’ll text you” he said with subtle smirk and smug look on his face.

“Uhm yeah” I say as he hands his phone to me.

We bid our goodbyes, and I head home. The second I enter my flat, my phone rings, notifying me of a text.

I just couldn’t stop thinking about the fact that he gave me White Daises. It was a little too good to be a coincidence. But there’s no way he have known, right?

The minute I enter my flat I get a text from an unknown number.

Unknown: “Drummer Girl 😉” I like it

I can’t help but smile at it. He’d think I wouldn’t notice him referring to me as the drummer girl. But putting that as my contact name in his phone probably just proved it

[naturally-geeky]

** I felt like writing**

Stiles had found Derek sitting on the Nemeton in the woods surrounding his apartment in DC. At first, things has been silent. He’d slowly walked up to where Derek was, focused on nothing but the man.

“Stiles, you have to help me,” Derek had said.

The logic part of Stiles’ brain knew he should be confused, but Dream!Stiles just kept walking closer and closer.

“What happened?” He finally asked, close enough to see Derek clearly. Close enough to see the charred skin around his neck, and the slight smoke wafting off his clothes.

“I’m stuck, you need to help me,” he repeated, this time flickering in and out of view for a split second.

“What happened?” Stiles repeated.

“Bardo…” Derek said, before Stiles found himself waking up in a cold sweat.

Wiping the sweat from his face, rolled over before sighing deeply. “What the Hell was that…” he whispered to himself, unable focus on anything else.

There was another sigh before Stiles reached over and grabbed his cell off the beside table. It was 3am in DC, and he needed to make a phone call.

The line rang twice before a familiar voice picked up, “Stiles?” It exclaimed.

“Scott, what the hell happened out there? I never claimed to be psychic or magical, but care to explain to me why Derek Hale came to me in a dream saying he’s stuck in Bardo and I need to save him?”

“Oooooh, that’s what the Sheriff means by complicated,” a distant voice said over the phone.

“Eli, shut up,” Scott harshly whispered, before focusing back on Stiles. “The Nogistune came back… he sacrificed himself so Parrish could destroy it.”

“For the love of God, I leave you guys alone for once in your lives and you get him killed again… Jesus Scott, why didn’t you call me?”

“We didn’t want to bring you back into this, after what happened the first time,” Scott said sympathetically.

“I get that, but you know how bad your plans are…”

[caltropspress]

ShrapKnel in the Bardo

Two Nights on Tour with Curly Castro and PremRock

19 June 2024 | Brooklyn, NY | Public Records

20 June 2024 | Rutherford, NJ | Soldato Books

How many intelligent people in the house tonight?

—KRS-One for Boogie Down Productions, “Poetry,” Live Hardcore Worldwide (1991)

When I say it’s about wanting to live, I just say that because that’s how I feel. When you get hit with death, sometimes as horrible as it is, one of the things that can come out of it is a reaffirmation of how much you don’t want to go…

—El-P, Cancer 4 Cure press junket (2012)

This is beyond my wildest dreams. Every fucking minute of this hip-hop shit. I’m here to live it, and I’m here to love it.

—Curly Castro, prior to performing “Dreadlocs Falling”

1.

I am not a spiritual person. But when something’s got cha opin, it’s a must to be receptive to the signal and the signs. Ignoring the counsel of billy woods, I was at soundcheck. Public Records was sparsely populated when I arrived around five o’clock, earlier than the artists even, the soundman assuming I was the talent. As Prodigy says on “Live Nigga Rap,” “NYC, U-N-I-verse, seriously.” Because, seriously, a universality and a convergence would be taking place in New York City this evening. The first of the night’s performers to walk through the door was Controller 7, flanked by Emynd and Scott Matelic. 

CONTROLLER 7:  The last time the three of us were together was Scribble Jam in 2000. I think we fell right back into the old flow. I was staying at Scott’s and he lives in Brooklyn, so it made things a lot easier. He knew where things were and I didn’t have to worry about anything. He and I hung out at Dove’s studio the night before with Sharif and Dose. That kinda helped break the ice a bit too, since I knew Sharif was going to be a guest in the ShrapKnel set. Emil and Scott ended up walking with me to the venue and it probably did set me at ease. When we were at the venue, I just kept meeting person after person, faces I already knew from the internet, and I really never had a chance to even get too nervous about anything. Everyone was so cool that I felt really welcomed. I hadn’t done a show in about 15 years and, in all honesty, I’ve never really done a show. It’s just been like 2-3 beat sets over a 26-year period.

We immediately started conversing about production credits from 25 years ago. There I was, a disembodied voice from the telephone made manifest, warping time, fixated on facts and fictions from another lifetime. But they indulged me, kindly.

1.1

Watch me breathe…feel me breathe, Mike Ladd spoketh on “Blade Runner” in 1997. I want to believe in the Latin sense of spiritus—that windnbreeze, that inspiration, that black star respiration, the collective breath that circulates communally, historically. And then there’s the spirit-rapping. Not breath control, per se, but when mediums had their way and say in society, they listened for the knock, knock [GZA adjacent] of paranormal communications. U.N.K.L.E. and Kool G Rap called it the “drums of death.” In the 16th century, Paracelsus cited the [something like a…] phenomenon as pulsatio mortuorum, or “death omen,” homie. 

1.11

On Live Hardcore Worldwide, Boogie Down Productions’ live album from 1991, KRS-One’s performance of “Breath Control” exhibits mostly that, though I must confess he sounds, ironically, a bit exasperated as he repeats, Breath control, breath control, breath control… This, in no way, sacrifices his reigning supreme. To err is human. (And the adverbial doubt inherent to “Over Nearly Everyone” tells me he recognizes this as well.) ShrapKnel, on the other hand—emcees Curly Castro and PremRock—make no such sacrifices. They amethyst rock with ānāpānasati, zen masters of the ceremony. Amethyst rockstars heed the cautions set forth by the Blastmaster on “Breath Control,” though. They know what the weaker performers among us rely on: “They want dancers, they want lighting, / They want effects to make ’em look exciting, / But it’s frightening, ’cause without that, / The whole crew is wick-wick-wick-wack.”

1.12

I introduced myself to Controller 7. We’d been acquainted for several years, but had never met in person. I [un]officially began gathering notes for a book on the Anticon collective, of which Controller 7 was an early member, in March 2017. Seven years later, that book is nearing completion. Tommy (Controller 7) was one of the first interviews I conducted for the book—we had that phone call in March of 2019. Scott Matelic and Emynd, affiliates to Anticon, were also some of my earliest interviews. I spoke with them on the phone in January and February of 2019, respectively. Caltrops Press was born in July 2020, concurrent with the underground rap renaissance that we’re now experiencing. One of the central themes of the Anticon book (title TBA soon) examines the underground scene(s) as a sprawling network. So when Tommy confided in me early last year that he had been commissioned to produce the new ShrapKnel record, I began to feel the thrum of an everything that rises must converge momentum. I’d considered alternate realities in the seven years spent working on the book—those preexisting, premillennial networks couldn’t have completely collapsed—and now time and space seemed to begin to bend and bow in strange and suggestive ways. 

1.2 On June 1, 2023, I attended the Maps record release show at Baby’s All Right. ShrapKnel opened for woods and Kenny Segal. They performed “Illusions of P,” a song they had started to debut on tour stops around the country. I sent a woefully insufficient iPhone 6 video of the performance to Tommy.

1.3

In August of 2023, Tommy messaged me: “I can’t tell you what, but there is a song that features Aesop and he says ‘caltrops’ on it.” Two months later, that song would turn out to be A7PHA’s “Many Headed,” a hell-bent hydra head nadda’s journey featuring the likes of Self Jupiter and Buck 65. And there was Aesop Rock speaking of “hopscotchin’ caltrops, / Cloud of black smoke, no black box.” On April 19, 2024, the “Many Headed (Controller 7 Remix)” was loosed upon the world. Tommy recruited Curly Castro and PremRock to contribute to the ever-expanding posse cut, a guest appearance in anticipation of Nobody Planning To Leave. Therein, Prem promises a “double-edged sword on the neck of an edgelord,” and Castro paints a militant picture: “Once it took a nation, / Now it takes a phalanx.”

CONTROLLER 7:  I asked them to do a trade-off like on “Babylon by Bus.” The remix feels a bit like my Deep Puddle Dynamics remix [“Rain Men”], 25 years later. Posse cut, changes in the music, unexpected. It feels kinda full circle. Dose is at the end of both. The Deep Puddle remix was kinda the “Well, let’s see what I can do,” and my skills and equipment were so basic at the time. This is now the 25 years later “Let me show you what I can do.” But somehow they actually come very much from the same spirit.

Spirit. Convergence.

2.

By 5:30, PremRock arrived in his unassuming human form—a man who has measured out his life in cocktail spoons, to paraphrase Prufrock; Castro appeared not long after that in camo pants, prepped with silent weapons for the loud wars to come. Prem, I noticed, had a mic in his pocket.

PREMROCK:  I bring my own mic everywhere! A gift from Willie Green some years ago. I believe it was a beta test and now many venues use it. It’s more suited for live performances and the dynamics don’t change with cupping. Also, I’m a bit of a germaphobe, so there’s that too.

For soundcheck, they got right into “Metallo.” Soundman checked the levels in the center of the room while Prem mentioned bots trying to sell tickets to the show online—“a breakthrough,” he called it. Where Prem is gregarious during the pregame, Castro is focused with the concentration of Simeon Stylites atop the pillar (Simeon says, Shut the fuck up!)—he makes medieval monasteries of any modern venue. When they ran through “Deep Space 9 Millie Pulled a Pistol,” the venue experimented with casting a red light over them—the color of De La’s predator Santa suit and the guns pointed at El-P. Ideas began to click for me while listening to the guys test the levels on “LIVE Element” acapella. When Castro raps, “Prem and I, two-headed Cerberus Killa Show,” he’s not kidding. In that moment, even in an empty space with no audience to witness it, they were the “iLLest Duo, Known throughout the Known Earth.” Prem claims to be a “one-man tour machine” on “Dadaism 3,” but he does better with a two-man (like Duncan and Parker operating under the Coach Pop playbook).

PremRock and Castro don’t rehearse in any traditional way. Their method of preparation relies on trust in one another’s craft, and they covet a spirit of on-the-go recalibration. 

CURLY CASTRO:  Considering how far away we live from each other (Philly & NY), our rehearsals are slightly unorthodox in its practice. We select a set list with extreme detail, and then put in the hours on our own to master our parts. Usually, at the start of each respective tour, we are doing a fistful of songs for the first time. Then as we do the songs multiple times, we see what works, and by the end of a run, we have figured out the Live incantations of said songs. For the most part, once we settle into a set before a run, we have certain interchangeable Blades, but the set remains the same for most of any run we complete. Once upon any stage we can lengthen or shorten, or adapt our alchemy, for any Live setting in any Location.

I think about the aptness of their group name: ShrapKnel—with that capital-K stolen from Cube’s amerikkka. Lethal fragments and filings. The chorus on “Dadaism 3” tells the story: “Metal from the blast zone flying Each and Every Way.” Later, on “Steel Pan Labyrinth,” Castro describes using “the blades to write bars.” ShrapKnel with a K that cuts. A grapheme sans curves, a razor-sharp letter. “Sharp” and “Shrap” kindred as anagrammatic matters go. “Shrap is here to sharp the Blade,” Castro spits on “Uru Metal,” “De La Soul skits, decode and you’ll find the answer.” By the conclusion of soundcheck, the other performers and notable attendees—Child Actor, August Fanon, phiik and Lungs, even E. from The Next Movement podcast who picked up the ubiquitous Fatboi Sharif as she drove through Jersey—had filled the floor. 

AUGUST FANON:  I saw Lungs walking up to the venue right as me and my girlfriend Khadija were arriving, so we walked in together. phiik was already in the venue and, once together, they quickly jumped into their soundcheck. When I heard phiik spit that shit live sounding crispy like the record, I went crazy inside. I was like, Hell-fuckin’-yeah! Let’s go!

3.

I am Lungs…this is phiik, and it’s good as fuck to see so many familiar faces…

If phiik and Lungs—jointly recognized as Another Planet—have received much buzz of late, that buzz reached Havana Syndrome levels while opening for ShrapKnel on tour. Straight C.I.A. shenanigans that leave your neural-well unsteadied. They talk in maths and buzz like a fridge, like a detuned radio. They are Red and Meth for the anthropocene—a blackout, one-two, one-two punch who smoke bud and sniff a bee’s ass to get a buzz. 

phiik:  Prem & Castro really showed us the ropes & were such a joy to travel with. This was the first tour for both of us, so it was really helpful to get so comfortable so quickly. Something that Castro put us on to was drinking tea constantly. Pretty much every show we did he would be sipping on some beforehand. I never realized how your voice can go at any point.

CURLY CASTRO:  Prem and I caught wind of [phiik and Lungs] a few years back. Their respective style(s) appeared unparalleled. They were a galvanizing duo, who’s YouTube clip on “Off Top” gets the internet’s panties inna bunch and generates mega-bandwidth, as folks argue over their particular brand of word sorcery. The only surprise (even though I knew them capable, but it’s another thing to see it) was that their whirlwind quicksilver tongues were identical to what was put down on tape. An impressive feat all in itself, but a reassurance of the Blade protocol needed to run with us Wolves.

PREMROCK:  That was Nik Oliver, our booking agent, who suggested the pairing [with phiik and Lungs]. I was already a fan, and Castro was very tapped in too. I saw the vision pretty quickly. They are a rising duo and their reputation as people was strong. Always important to have folks vouch for you. It was a home run, in my opinion. They are special artists making special music. For their first tour, they approached it like seasoned vets. The road is a grind and your comfort zones and routines are shattered. They adapted quickly, and I was impressed by their nightly performances. Shout-out GAM, too. He’s a GRIP mainstay and a real stabilizer on the road. We had fun and got the job done. The best result.

phiik and Lungs fed off and ate up the hometown crowd throughout their unswerving 40-minute set at Pub Rex. They started with “Captain Picard” from Another Planet 4 (and they’d be planet-hopping haphazardly with quick shouts of “AP2!” and “AP3!” and such for their setlist), and they proceeded to “burn the house down like David Koresh,” as Lungs says, or like David Byrne in ’84 blackface. It’s good to be home, phiik said after the first number, sounding like Dorothy windswept and word-vexed. Drink of water demands were made prior to “SCOOBY” (off Planet X), but not in a diva way, just to stave off dehydration from the tireless spittin’ over the haunted industrial plant of a noface beat. Lungs taunted MCs who “can’t rap better than [him]” on “Kurt McBurt,” and by the middle of “She Could” I began to notice the full and crushing support that TASE GRIP offers up to each other. The whole cru pushed up against the stage, slapping and banging it when emotion flowed and numbers thronged, finishing bars for phiik and Lungs, sometimes screaming the whole damn thing. Wavy Bagels, AKAI SOLO, and S!LENCE at the center of the Dark & Stormy scene. When phiik rapped, “Never took a village to be the villain, / But we still in the building,” and a chorus of voices join him in dragging the end-rhyme out (...buildinnnnnn’), we felt the thrum. It takes a phalanx.

phiik stutter steps when it’s his turn on the mic, rapping to the ground. Lungs leans toward the edge of the stage—skinny elbows out, eyes bulging—and raps to the sky. Hell and heaven unified—purgatory raps for a cleansing of your soul. A barrage, as many have remarked. It’s like putting your face to the fan, your visage to the vents. “Make some noise for Lungs!” phiik shouts, hyping up his homie. “It’s not easy going from one track to another. The fuck is he doing? He’s a nut. He’s a crazy fuck.” There’s a symbiosis of support between phiik and Lungs, rooted in friendship. 

phiik:  Our work ethic together has definitely only developed & gotten better over the years, but our foundation of knowing each other so well helps without a doubt. Lungs & I have known each other pretty much our whole lives, so it was almost seamless in a way when we started to work on music together.

My mind goes to Live Hardcore Worldwide again—“The Eye Opener”—where it’s said: “Make some noise! This is all live, as you can plainly hear and see. There’s no lipsync business going on here!” Listening to them perform “Secret Power,” the titular secret power, I contend, is a guttersnipe glossolalia. Some trip-wire of tryptamines, divine DMT entities exiting their maws, untranslatable.

The affair became even more familial as phiik and Lungs invited GAM to kick a verse (“He DJs, drives us around, fucking raps…”). AKAI was brought onstage for a song triad. He rocked a keffiyeh in a classic P.L.O. style and demonstrated the muscular rapping we’ve come to expect when he’s in front of an audience, each word a heavy load to lift and spirit into your soul, slackening the suspensory ligament of your Third Eye lens. Confident, AKAI only has to lead the crowd with a “TASE” for them to follow back with “GRIP.” The chant doesn’t require any instructions of When I say… That’s the command he has.

phiik:  Heads are really a unit & move as such. And on top of that, everybody fully understands what’s going on & how much the support means. After seeing random heads for the majority of the tour, it was so nice to see the team when we came back home.

Another Planet closed their set with “Don Quixote,” but these MCs are less tilting at windmills than slicing at windpipes. “This is not mom’s spaghetti,” phiik raps, apropos. They’d recently been subject to some Eminem-like internet parasocial Stanic panic when P.O.W. Recordings put out a message saying “Funcrusher 2024” with a clip of Lungs’ “Off Top” Freestyle from 2022. Lungs, a man of bare minimum words on the interwebs, said: “Mfs really crashing out over the clip for the 4th time lol. All haters please keep hating we don’t give a fuck and the shit makes my PayPal go crazy every time.” 

phiik:  Honestly, we reaaaally don’t pay any mind to it as far as what the end result is. After a certain point, the discourse almost just becomes word vomit. Tons of people saying the same thing over & over. But at the same time, any press is good press. So I definitely didn’t mind it at all, and if anything it only creates a brand new lane of people who maybe have never heard of us, and those people develop into lifelong fans. Heads who dislike it will hate on it for a week & then move on. But, yeah, it’s absolutely only used as fuel & motivation.

On “Don Quixote,” Lungs raps about how “hip-hop fans from around the world [are] stalking on [his] page,” which seems hard to dispute. He pushes further: “Rappers behind on bills talking shit online in the same stinky Jay’s”—a prognosticator shine to his studio mic. The song ends with a GRIP-led crowd chorus of “HOLD ON A MINUTE, HOLD ON A MINUTE, HOLD ON A MINUTE!” but I couldn’t hold on to a single second in the set. It happened, and I was the better for it. “Read the book, it said Gimme mine,” phiik rapped. I have read the book, and Cervantes writes—and I was thinking to myself—“...with what minuteness they describe everything!”

CHOP THE HEAD:  I’ve never seen Lungs and phiik get that kind of reception—to have a few hundred people screaming the lyrics of those verses is an accomplishment in itself. I laugh every time I watch them live, because it just doesn’t make sense on a virtuosic level. Later that night, my man Q No Rap Name and I hung out with Lungs at his crib and, after meeting him, his music made even more sense to me. From the time we left the venue to the time we left his crib, he didn’t stop talking. He told fifty of the most bugged-out stories I’ve heard, and they all dovetailed off one another. Lungs and phiik are not affecting any part of their output; those dudes are really rapping about how they live and think. 

3.1

August Fanon and Child Actor stood side-by-side on the stage, laptop leaning as they went “back and forth and tr[ied] to surprise each other by playing some very rare unreleased things,” according to Child Actor.  

CHILD ACTOR:  It was Prem that originally pitched the idea of August Fanon and me doing a set together. I had assumed it was because he had heard about us sharing a bill last year (his and my first beat set of any kind), but according to him it was completely unrelated. August and I routinely bounce beats off each other and have been working on a project together, so it couldn’t have been a more serendipitous pairing. I had loosely prepared a longer set, but several days before the event I was notified that he and I were sharing a half hour. I thought it’d be fun if instead of going one after the other, we went back and forth in 2- or 3-minute chunks. That ended up feeling perfect. I didn’t let him send me anything beforehand because I knew it’d be fun to hear everything for the first time onstage. He certainly did not disappoint. I made sure to play only unreleased beats and songs-in-progress. One of them was a song that was mixed at the Greenhouse the day before. It may have been one of the nights with the highest percentage of people in the building that were friends/collaborators of mine. I definitely felt a great deal of support and appreciation—a very fun and fulfilling first NYC beat set for sure!

CHOP THE HEAD:  August Fanon and Child Actor’s friendly beat battle blew my mind several times over. They are both on the razor’s edge of traditionalism and pure experimentation. 

While I listened to a Fanon remix of Biggie’s “Suicidal Thoughts,” Mo Niklz and I stood in the audience chopping it up. I looked around and saw so many familiar faces in the space. Mo noticed it, too.

MO NIKLZ:  The room was packed and about 50% of those attending were artists, which is incredibly uncommon.

I asked Mo a couple questions, and in no time at all I was subject to what Castro calls “The Philosophy of Mo.” He talked about being roommates with Ceschi, meeting woods through PremRock and Willie Green, and making frequent trips down to NYC from Connecticut. “I wanted to let people know I was around,” he said. About once a month, woods would offer his couch to crash. They built a friendship and artistic relationship from there, with Mo functioning as woods’ DJ. Mo had played a crucial role on the New England leg of the Nobody Planning to Leave tour as well.

MO NIKLZ:  The tour actually stayed with me in New Haven on Sunday. They had their day off on Monday, and I booked the show in New Haven that was Tuesday. I bought everyone Sally’s Apizza Monday night and then made everyone an omelet for breakfast on Tuesday. I’ve known Prem and Castro for a while now but just met phiik and Lungs. I always like to think I’m the tour dad, but phiik and Lungs were kidding that I worry these rappers can’t take care of themselves when I’m not around so, sadly, I guess I’m more like a tour mom. The show in Connecticut was great. There were a lot of unfamiliar faces, which was cool. I normally know just about everyone at a CT underground hip-hop show. The tour went to NYC that evening. I just had to bring their merch to the Brooklyn show the following day. I got there for doors and both phiik and Lungs told me they ate well that day. “What will these rappers eat if Mo doesn’t bring them food?” they said to me. Prem helped me bring their merch in but it took him about fifteen minutes to get out the door. He kept running into a bunch of great people congratulating him on the album. We got outside and somebody else congratulated him and left. Prem said, “Did you not know him? That was Swordplay.” I was like, Oh damn, that sucks. I would’ve liked to have said hi. We finally get the merch from the car, and on our way back in, Prem got stopped again by a guy wearing some dope glasses and a Black Moon shirt. Prem said, “Hey, have you two met? Mo this is Doseone,” which was funny because we both turned to each other and said, “Oh man, I was just talking about you.” It was bizarre because Child Actor and I were talking video games a week ago and Doseone had put him on to a game he was enjoying. I said [to Child Actor], “You know he’s like one of the OG indie hip-hop legends I’ve never met.” It was pretty surreal to me. He already knew a lot of my DJ work, my job shipping records for Fake Four, and that I make pickles. Wild because basically nobody in my family has any concept of what I do, but he knew the gravity of it all.

3.11

Mo’s nourishment and maternal nurturing helped contribute to what Prem and Castro would consider their most successful tour yet.

PREMROCK:  I think we started seeing the ripple effect of fan support online translate to a tangible crowd in a realer way this run like we haven’t before. The record had only been out 1.5 weeks so to see the interest it generated so quickly was really encouraging. Touring is difficult financially—that’s been discussed at length—but seeing results and trending upwards makes you feel like it’s a viable path to growth, and nothing kills morale more than a couple duds in a row and fortunately we had none.

CURLY CASTRO:  This tour evoked a grand feeling of support. Other tours have had bigger rooms, other tours have had longer durations, but this one seemed rooted in classic Hip-Hop community. Some very welcome surprises, as to who showed up, along the way. Finally, this was our first time, in some time, we actually toured the record close to its initial release. And since this was/is our best work, then it can be perceived that this was our best tour. But I find us advancing levels with every MadMax jaunt across this wasteland we call ’Murica.

3.2

The Fanon/Child Actor set was immediately followed by Controller 7’s brief set, a prelude to ShrapKnel taking the stage. The order of performers was the subject of some debate during soundcheck. I sort of felt like I was watching Meth and Ghostface argue on the Bullet Train in Japan in The Show when Ghost took umbrage at Meth speaking too much during radio interviews.

PREMROCK:  Castro disagreed with the proposed order at Pub Rex. He thought beats first then phiik & Lungs. Beats/raps/beats/raps with Controller 7 on before us. Makes sense, right? Well, I disagreed. I saw Fanon and Child Actor as an event and not a head-nod lo-fi hangout. phiik and Lungs just before us and Controller 7, in my opinion, dwindled the impact and the inevitable smoke break may have had heads missing their opening set. There’s nothing like immediate decapitation! Crowd is transfixed. There’s the, “Well, where do you go from there?” argument, but I contend… How about two of the greatest producers doing it going cut for cut?! Also, I had exceptions with the late proposal. It would’ve been difficult to audible, and I was exhausted from the road already and high tension at our hometown release show receiving a good dozen texts per hour with dumb questions already, so I may have been terse! But we are brothers and we talk it out and stand our ground and always come to a solution. End of the day, we believe in each other and what we are doing and we will check each other if the math is not mathing. Any collaboration needs to hold space for disagreement. We do it well over here.

Controller 7 was as sheepish-as-ever, letting the crowd know how uncharacteristic it was for him to be standing on a stage playing music. But the crowd was nothing if not supportive, cheering him at every turn. 

CONTROLLER 7:  When I started the set, I ended up talking as an intro. Then I ended up talking through the set, sort of explaining what I was playing. I didn’t intend to do that, but it just kinda worked out that way. I don’t usually think of “me” as being part of the music. I hate being in photos; I’m not trying to be in the spotlight. I just make stuff for people to listen to. Being in front of a group of people staring at me while music plays is not my ideal format, so I think I ended up talking as a way to bridge all of that.

I looked to my left and saw Dose standing in the center of the room. To know, in an epistemological sense, is a strange feeling when you’ve spent so many hours documenting a person’s life and work in words, and then suddenly there they are in the physical—circulatory system, blood, bile, nerves, skeleton frame standing upright. Like seeing a ghost. Like spacetime sealing shut—closed curves appearing in my pathway. My head is a repository of the knowledge I’ve been remembering, acquiring, and word-rendering over the past seven years, so I thought about a story Tommy told me on the phone back in 2019—how he hauled his 4-track over to Dose and Jel’s Berkeley apartment in early 2000, the dawn of a new millennium, and watched Dose record a track for Left Handed Straw from the page of a randomly selected book. I found a pattern within the chaos of a complex system. 

DOSEONE:  Seeing Controller 7’s metamorphosis and rebirth into the beast he is today made my year.

Tommy played the instrumental portion of the “Many Headed” remix that’s home to Dose’s closing verse. Every fiber of me thought Dose would cut through the crowd and perform it onstage, but alas… A standout moment was hearing Quelle Chris’s evocative voice over an atmosfearik beat—a yet-to-be released “demo” (it sounded finished to my novice ears) with lyrics every bit as unnerving as the production: “The killer’s in the room, / The call is coming from somebody clearly watching what I’m doin’, / You can sense impending doom.” Another unreleased song featured Nappy Nina and Sam Herring/Hemlock Ernst, and it hit like a feel-good and melodic radio friendly unit shifter.

CONTROLLER 7:  I’m not a finger drummer or a live performer; I’m more of an overly anxious obsessive. I tried to find a way to make [my set] something that would be interesting for people and also not super complicated for me. I had to fly out there and I don’t usually perform, so I didn’t know what equipment to bring. I had an SP404, which I’ve never used to make beats, but it came in handy for what I wanted to do. I spent a week or two leading up to the show mapping things out. I knew that our time was short because we had to end at 10:30, so I was just doing a fifteen minute set. I ended up making a handful of new things, shortened a few older things, and made working demos of some unreleased songs I had. I basically made it the way I wanted to hear it and then I just mapped it out over the pads.

4.

“Some of us have children that age!” is what Castro said of Controller 7’s years-long absence from the stage. As he and Prem positioned themselves, arranged mic cords, prepped their mentals, Controller 7 pressed play—like a detonator switch—on the intro to Nobody Planning to Leave (“It worries me…a lot”). Prem invited the crowd in closer: “The moat exists.” He set down the drawbridge and raised the portcullis between performer and assembled people. But, as “Metallo” began, I recognized it takes more than infrastructure to traverse the alligator-infested muddy waters that Prem and Castro put before us.

4.1

The sounds that you’re about to hear shall be devastating to your ear.

—introduction to “Mellow My Man,” The Roots Come Alive (1999)

The hallmark of a ShrapKnel song is the ridiculoid referents. PremRock and Castro present a maximalist vision that is part and parcel to what Secret House Against calls their “b-boy sensibilities.” They’re from an era when, in Castro's words, “white labels [were] like bibles” (“Deep Space 9 Millie Pulled a Pistol”); they're guys who “used to rock all Naughty gear” (“Kaishakunin”). The two deliver a nostalgic notion for anyone that might’ve spent hours flipping through Tommy Boy perforated liner notes in the 90s.

Even an interlude (such as “Bogdan Interlude”) can yield Kemetic symbolism alongside quotidian city dwelling (“Bum a loosie offa Sekhmet”), can twist and turn from Swahili to Chicago hip-hop (“Habari gani, / One day it’ll make sense”), and conclude with a blaxploitation film screening that leaves whitefolks’ eyebrows raised. Curly Castro, a tru master of maximalism In the Ways of the Scales, word to Brother J.

ShrapKnel flex mechanical shells, and Curly Castro is a b-boy fabulist. Rather than eschew surplusage, he welcomes it. He moves maxi- and mega- in what Stefano Ercolino calls the “encyclopedic mode” wherein each song becomes an archive of subcultural signs. On “Metallo,” Castro’s maximalism bends into a barrage of references: Breaking Bad, Killarmy, Darrell Walker, J.R.R. Tolkien, Gordon Ramsay, Raekwon, Outkast, Monta Ellis, AZ, et cetera. His allusions collapse under the weight of each other, resulting in hybrids—mongrels. Mongr-allusions like “Slick Ricky in dah Foxhole” in which rapper Slick Rick and pretty-boy baller Rick Fox become one entity. These hypertrophic lines accumulate bar by bar, and—before long—you’re lost in the deluge. A twenty-first century rendition of what Hugo Ball did in the Dada Manifesto, dated July 14, 1916: “Dada Stendhal. Dada Dalai Lama,” conflating the French novelist and the Tibetan tulku. Tack on Black Thought’s “South Philly, Dalai Lama” slight rewrite for the performance of “The Next Movement” from The Roots Come Alive, and we edge closer to what Castro achieves. El Producto once called them “manimal hybrids” on “End to End Burners.”

Even when ShrapKnel doesn’t explicitly construct the mongr-allusion, it’s implicit. If you’ve done the work, shown and proven yourself worthy, the matrices will materialize right before your very eyes. [Rappers got on colored contacts but they better realize, as a wise intelligent redhead wonce said.] In Prem’s words (from “Dadaism 3”), you’ve got to “read in between the seams of the embroidery.” All of their verses amount to what Ray Bradbury called “fearful puzzles”—and lethargic listeners avoid looking too closely or delving too deeply. The past is present and the future is now, and so when Prem promises to “let a bygone be bygone” only to revoke it (“...even though I won’t”), he suddenly back-slashes to Mase in an utterly different context: 112’s “Only You” (1996) where a girl goes around with thousands in her palms. “Why you can’t let bygones be bygones?” Because nothing is ever gone for ShrapKnel; nothing outmoded, nothing defunct, everything of use.

Prem immediately invokes the “funhouse mirror” on “Metallo”—everything appears in the funhouse mirror, but its reflection is warped. This is another maximalist turn, true to John Barth’s Lost in the Funhouse (1968). “For whom is the funhouse fun?” Barth asks. Perhaps it’s fun for the MC who observes that we’ve “been in post-singularity since that AI Georgetown Hoya team.” He’s Hugo Baller. Prem, who has “learned to astral project since quarantine,” adroitly sustains a trisyllabic rhyme scheme [“nightmares deployed in threes,” for the uninitiated] throughout his verse on “Dadaism 3.” His intensive and keen listenings [to the likes of an 89.9 detrimental frequency] over the years have led to a constant state of becoming, of being, of becoming a radiohead. In his own way, he’s the “paranoid android loitering,” absorbing knowledge—be it a Fondle ‘Em 12-inch from 1997, “speaking noxious” like Cage Kennylz; or the debut LP of a quintet from Oxford in 1993, wondering about the “creeping doubt” that “keeps rattling [his] cage” like Thom Yorke—and then he dispenses it to his audience in the form of Aesop fables (“splitting hairs[/hares], slow and steady on my Tortoise speed”) and Wojnarowski scoops (“Otto Porter top-of-market deal”). This process—playing the long game—might have you “forget the words [he] just blurted out,” but he’s gonna continue to get “open till he’s brain-dead, till you’re brain-dead.”

4.11

The Roots Come Alive (1999) begins—not with The Roots—but with Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five traveling through time to hit us “Live from the T-Connection,” nesting one of the earliest hip-hop recordings of a live event within the content of a live recording on the eve of Y2K destruction. Lineage matters, The Roots acknowledge, and these transmitted words are just as relevant to a ShrapKnel performance in 2024:

Now I know this ain’t the best party in the world, but let me explain something to y’all, New York. It ain’t no party unless each and every one of you try to make it a party—you dig what I’m saying? Make each record your best record, and we could rock all night long.

4.111

Supporters came from across the country, from overseas even, to experience the ShrapKnel showcase. “A whole lot of superstars in the house tonight,” Prem said at one point, echoing Rev. Run. Friends and kinfolx from Switzerland, California, Seattle, New Mexico, Texas, Philadelphia, Connecticut… Fuck it, we’ll do it live! Prem shouted to his tourmates standing stage-side—an inside-joke, an O’Reilly parody—but keeping that same passion and energy through “Dadaism 3” and “Steel Pan Labyrinth.” “If anyone ever asks you the question,” the intro to Live Hardcore Worldwide declares, “Who is the number one set and sound? You will quickly reply…”

<whispered>

“ShrapKnel.”

4.2

On “Why Is That?” off Live Hardcore Worldwide, KRS-One breaks down the genealogy of Blackness in the Bible acapella and announces that “the age of the ignorant rapper is done.” That was in the 1-9-9-1. But in the 2-0-2-4, Curly Castro finds himself disillusioned by KRS’s pontifications and panderings to the likes of New York City’s top coprophage, Mayor Adams. “Halcyon Hip-Hop inna Temple, / Membership would Bend, / KRS, of course, would sell the course, / But then the Fun would End.” Let’s all hold hands and hum along to Co Flow’s “Happy Happy Joy Kill,” hmm?

Castro resembles one of Dada’s “honored poets,” in the words of Hugo Ball, “who are always writing with words but never writing the word itself, who are always writing around the actual point.” Castro writes around the actual point, but he’s never pointless. You can listen to his 9mm go bang on the chorus of “Dadaism 3” (Wa da da Dee Dee da da Dee Dee da da Day), and it harmonizes with Ball issuing forth an invocation: “dada m’dada, dada m’dada dada mhm, dada dere dada.”

5.

Before I go on live all my enemies try to contrive

plots to make my whole entire routine take a swan dive.

But this ain’t commercialized hip-hop…

—Buck 65 (1999)

“LIVE Element,” but DEATH pervades Nobody Planning to Leave. LIVE in all CAPS—a stylized emphasis on life and living, but O DEATH, none can excel. ShrapKnel refuse & resist! They arrive as a def fresh crew, and like the haintish vocal of Roxanne Shanté echoing across galaxies, they came here tonight to get started, but not to cold act ill in any sense other than she intended. Certainly nothing cellular. No icy hands get ahold of them. Hip-hop, each and every mic check, is Life or Death—you’re breathing the sniper’s breath. DEATH is everywhere on Nobody Planning to Leave, from the David Berman references, quotations, and puns to PremRock’s opening words on the album. Prem spurns DEATH; instead, he will go thou and preach his gospel (Luke 9:60 KJV): “I don’t wanna bury the dead, / Pallbearer for carried dread.” He lifts the gossamer veil so that he “might sneak through” and survive. He knows from Black Thought—in sharing some of the blackest of thoughts—that if you “step into the realm, you’re bound to get caught, / And from this worldly life, you’ll soon depart.” 

Prem knows this region well; he knows the feel of ash beneath foot and the hematic heat against his face. On “Bardo,” the CD-only bonus cut from Load Bearing Crow’s Feet, he grapples with the pre-grief of existential knowing. “See, I’ve been told a lie,” he raps on the chorus, “swans don’t actually sing when they die, / They hit the same note you do when you croak, / No poetic epilogue or even goodbye, / But I be waiting over here on this side.” He’s on the side of the living, of poetic monologues, of greetings and gratitude. The only death rattle he recognizes is the one he hears at the end of a night of performing, his voice ragged. He imagines the walls “stress[ing] the importance of time… / Muttering something ’bout chakras and alignment.” But for his living self, what matters is more material than all that. “I be at the mom and pop shop to drop me off some consignment,” he says. To “get [his] affairs in order” has nothing to do with firming up his estate; it’s about getting paid in full. Equating his music career [Doseone calls “music career” an oxymoron, by the way] with impending death is only one example of the artist qualifying/quantifying life and livelihood—but there’s really no quantizing Death’s drums. On “Nutkracker Blues,” Castro talks about the urgency of having a verse “at the deadline and it’s Gotta be Perfect.”

Conventional thinking insists that there’s a transitory nature, a finitude, to doing what they do, these rappers. In 2002, on “Shrapnel,” Slug said, “I can’t remember who asked me, but someone asked me, / How long I thought that I would be allowed atop this trash heap.” Atmosphere, it just so happens, is the quintessential indie hip-hop success story, touring extensively and endlessly, selling out thousand-seat capacity ballrooms, pavilions, and amphitheaters—even two decades after those words were recorded. But most artists end up with “shards of pulled cards scattered on the carpet” (as Slug raps on “Shrapnel”); as Prem says on “Human Form,” you’re hustling from “bassinet to coffin.” On “Illusions of P,” he cloaks the agony of abbreviation in a clever pun about Royal Tenenbaum (“you fake ill”). The gut punch, though, is realizing “none of this will last forever.” While he can, he continues: “You only pray it will. / Illusions of hunting permanence, you pray still, / Ay still, lay still, lay still.” What’s the worst fate of all? Another dearly departed artist yet to make a dent.

5.1

The monetizing of emotions and songs, the dividends paid or owed, the commodification of life lived, could make it feel like you’ve been dealt a bum hand. “You got all these songs that you never play for anyone,” Prem raps on “Death on the Installment Plan,” and so he goddamns it. Death on the installment plan—a phrase he cribbed from Céline in 2021—has transformed into Nobody Planning to Leave in 2024. NOBODY DEATH-PLANNING, in other words. If we look at the novel itself from 1936, we can find a shred of hope, though. Provided here, context-less, a page from Céline [apply it to Prem and/or Castro, won’t you?]: 

To command his audience… He explained the working of the valves, the guy rope, the barometers, the laws of weight and ballast. Then carried away by his subject, he embarked on other fields, expatiating, ad-libbing without order or plan, about meteorology, mirages, the winds, cyclones… He touched on the planets, the stars… Everything was grist for his mill: the zodiac, Gemini…Saturn…Jupiter…Arcturus and its contours…the moon…Bellegophorus and its relief… He pulled measurements out of his hat… About Mars he could talk at length… He knew it well… It was his favorite planet… He described all the canals, their shape and itinerary! their flora! as if he’d gone swimming in them!… While he was perched up there shooting the shit, spellbinding the masses, I took up a little collection…

I was in Public Records to take up a little collection.

5.11

ShrapKnel spellbinds the masses with everything from superheroes to supervillains to sports figures of legend and little renown. Castro is MC John Corben—Metallo with metal lungs. The fluoroscope reveals the metallic structure of his bones and organs, and he’s got kryptonite in his fuse-box, which is to say he’s got a kind of death totem close at heart. The trouble is, Castro found himself stricken by the sense of green, glowing death that Metallo delivered to Superman. He won’t relinquish his life, though. He refuses the sick-box. He’s riding to Babylon by bus but persevering through every torment or trial, hell or high water. He will lively up himself against all odds. 

5.111

“The bus door opened and I placed my foot upon the step. Quite suddenly, there was music swelling up into my head, as if a choir of angels had boarded the Second Avenue bus directly in front of me. They were singing the last chorus of an old spiritual of hope: Gonna die this death on Cal—va—ryyyyy BUT AIN’T GONNA DIE NO     MORE…! Their voices sweet and powerful over the din of the Second Avenue traffic. I stood transfixed on the lower step of the bus.  “Hey girlie, your fare!” I shook myself and dropped my two coins into the fare-box. The music was still so real I looked around me in amazement as I stumbled to a seat. Almost no one else was in the late-morning bus, and the few people who were there were quite ordinarily occupied and largely silent. Again the angelic orchestration swelled, filling my head with the sharpness and precision of the words; the music was like a surge of strength. It felt rich with hope and a promise of life—more importantly, a new way through or beyond pain. I’ll die this death on Calvary ain’t           gonna       die                no     more! The physical realities of the dingy bus slid away from me.”

—Audre Lorde, Zami: A New Spelling of My Name (1982)

5.2

When Curly Castro writes his biomythography, it might well be titled Babylon by Bus. Footnotes might detail the routines of road life, like Warren G vacuuming the tour bus in The Show; early chapters might reflect on the Kris Kross-type innocence of missing a school bus (“And that is something I will never ever ever do again”); he might dispense with rumors and “dickhead logic,” celebrating collaborations like “Babylon by Bus” with woods and Prem; but he most definitely will amalgamate his years of movements and commotions into a totalizing whole. Everything that rises must converge, as Flannery O’Connor says. Bob Marley and the Wailer’s Babylon by Bus will evolve into Mike Ladd’s “Blade Runner” (1997), which in turn becomes “Bladerunners” (1999) with Co Flow featured, but retains the same lyric nonetheless: “As we do babylon by bus straight to Rikers.” See, it’s about building, about building, about bringing more bodies onboard the bus.” The bus stopped with a sudden jerk and shook him from his meditation.

5.21  THE CENTRAL PARK CHAPTER

The biomythography will provide a meta-commentary on ShrapKnel’s arc as a group (just as “LIVE Element” does). The chapter might be titled “Hip-Hop Heaven,” which is what Castro has called the weekend of August 13-15 in 2021. He meant heaven in terms of enthroned deities rather than death, but DEATH determined itself.

The SummerStage performance was headlined by Armand Hammer and The Alchemist. Moor Mother, Kayana, Fielded, and GENG PTP were also on the bill. It was a major booking for ShrapKnel. “We got at least two lives to give tonight,” Prem raps on “Nutkracker Blues,” and though the song sympathizes with Group Home in flashes, the sentiment speaks to the duality of that Central Park performance. “You are what you leave unexhumed,” Prem adds, and so the death knell resonates endlessly, like tinnitus. Leave it all out there on the floor, on the stage. Dig deep; don’t look back.

CURLY CASTRO:  The Central Park show was a level up for an Armand Hammer-led show w/ Backwoodz as support. It was our first time meeting and performing with The Alchemist. Unbeknownst to me, my back and spine was riddled with cancerous Tumors. I was in a good amount of pain; I just didn’t let anyone know, not even Prem. Couldn’t phuck up this opportunity for ShrapKnel and the live premiere of my “Phuck Puff” verse on “Wishing Bad.” So, in essence, it was the last show before I broke my hip a few months later and found out just how sick I actually Was.

PREMROCK:  I don’t think woods could believe it was actually happening while it was either. I watched Backwoodz artists go from horrendous sound at a fifty cap room to this? Truly a sight and testament to what can happen when you stick to your guns. Having Alchemist back us onstage and just before sit in the trailer and tell us stories of hip-hop lore probably made our year at the least. A high point of our career followed briskly by the biggest tribulation. A microcosm of life and dedication on several levels. A day and night we will never forget!

Castro has called that Central Park performance “the last moment of ignorance.” PremRock, presciently, also recorded “Bardo” that same weekend. On “LIVE Element,” Castro cuts through the static: “Central Park show while my Cancer was Raging, / Stage 4 on the Stage for Edutainment.” He enta’d the stage to exhibit to the audience how the Blackman’s in Effect. The performance stage and the stage of his cancer replicating like cells. But no Cell Therapy to speak of. He was backed by Alchemist, a stroke of luck “how the Game Spin,” but the Wheel of Fortune spins centrifugal, spins like the minds of children at the carnival listening to the “carousel calliope, among the hills, piping [Chopin’s] ‘Funeral March’ backwards,” to borrow something from Ray Bradbury. “LIVE Element” refrains from becoming a dirge. 

5.22

In December 2001, Ray Bradbury posted his origin story to his website:

During the Labor Day week of 1932 a favorite uncle of mine died; his funeral was held on the Labor Day Saturday. If he hadn’t died that week, my life might not have changed because, returning from his funeral at noon on that Saturday, I saw a carnival tent down by Lake Michigan. I knew that down there, by the lake, in his special tent, was a magician named Mr. Electrico. Mr. Electrico was a fantastic creator of marvels. He sat in his electric chair every night and was electrocuted in front of all the people, young and old, of Waukegan, Illinois. When the electricity surged through his body he raised a sword and knighted all the kids sitting in the front row below his platform. I had been to see Mr. Electrico the night before. When he reached me, he pointed his sword at my head and touched my brow. The electricity rushed down the sword, inside my skull, made my hair stand up and sparks fly out of my ears. He then shouted at me, “Live forever!”

Castro raps forever on “LIVE Element,” leaving behind any pressure or protocol to limit himself to sixteen bars. He raps endlessly, staving off death. He raps like his life depends on it. He “roam[s] Earth” and will “give [his] Old Bones the Last Word.” He raps “Back & Forth” with Prem like “When the Lox work[ed] with Made Men.” The song was “Tommy’s Theme,” another eerie premonition if we consider the role of one Tommy McMahon (Controller 7). “Something this way Comes Wicked,” Castro raps, inverting inversions. Bradbury’s “Something Wicked This Way Comes,” a 1962 dark fantasy novel inspired by his own carnival experience, forebodes a chilling prospect. Not quite as frigid as Castro’s “Cold Vein back-to-back Liquid Swords Winter,” but as grim as hospital corridors and morgue thermostats nonetheless.

Mr. Dark, Bradbury’s sinister carnival barker, feeds off fears and engenders negative energies from his young audience:

Alive! Mr Dark’s lips licked and savoured. Alive. Come alive. He racheted the switch to the last notch. Live, live! Somewhere, dynamos protested, skirled, shrilled, moaned a bestial energy... Dead dead, thought Will. But live alive! cried machines, cried flame and fire, cried mouths of crowds of livid beasts on illustrated flesh.

Microphones and preamps and 4-tracks and DAWs—these are the machines that make civilization fun. Curly Castro and PremRock wield their own spiritual powers. Prem, according to Castro, “lifts crowds,” but together, they can “open [a] portal on stage,” The Prestige style, and “flip crowds.” Some true Aleister Crowley-type Magick (Elemental Theory); pentacles and penwork. The ShrapKnel lyric booklet is a grimoire. They “crack the codex like a soothsayer,” so says Prem.

5.3

“Sometimes we draw dead and draft failure,” Prem admits. They draw dead crowds, that is—lifeless and disinterested. “The math fails ya” sometimes, and the Supreme Mathematics go stupid-simple. But it’s okay when the ticket sales and rating scales don’t add up, because they “don’t need the accolades,” Prem says defiantly, assuredly. What they share is stronger than those metrics. Prem and Castro shared a phone call with billy woods the night before Castro fell and found himself hospitalized—an ill communication.

Facing uncertain futures, PremRock steadied the shaking stage. “When we got the diagnosis,” he raps, “I didn’t know how to pronounce that, / Plus I was already thinking ’bout the bounceback, / And with every bounced track I know no illness can slow the blade of a determined razor.” Note: when “we” got the diagnosis—the fraternal order of MCs; the die-cast duo; Shrap and the Family Rock; i.e., no one suffers alone. Prem helps them stay afloat with the assonantal buoyancy of “pronounce,” “’bout,” “bounceback,” and “bounced track.” Music will get them there (“every bounced track”). 

And thus we get Castro spitting his verse from Armand Hammer’s “Wishing Bad” on the Center Park SummerStage. We hear his prophetic lyric: “Phuck Puff, / Survivor’s remorse should keep him phucked up!” (“Did any line age better than that one?” Prem asked the crowd at Public Records. “My man knew.”) And thus we hear that very audio clip at the conclusion of “LIVE Element,” a song which chronicles. “Phuck Puff” now immortalized on tour t-shirts available at the ShrapKnel merch table. At Public Records, Castro picked up the last line of Prem’s refrain (“3rd Eye glow like Hiero, / Seen it comin’ like 5-0 at the live show”) and made it a call-and-response. At the live show! AT THE LIVE SHOW! Inspired, Castro cut into an impromptu acapella version of his “Wishing Bad” verse, only to call-and-response the “Phuck Puff / Phucked Up” hook, damning those which need to be damned.

6.

Prem mentions “selling enchantment by the package” on “Steel Pan Labyrinth,” but you can’t commodify craft. He’s not a peddler, anyway—he’s a performer. For one of two solo performances, Prem rapped about how his “human form” is a “uniform” (with that lovely autological bent), something he does, or dons, “to belong.” Is his performing self the authentic version, or is his non-performing self the stock character? Is his uniform a “Uni-4-Orm,” like Canibus in ’97, a hired hand meant to “pulverize MCs and blow up mics, / From street corner cyphers to international websites?” Does raw imply honest? (Funny how Prem’s regular employment is bartender, while on stage he’s also a bar-tender.) The blurry boundary between these opposing selves leaves Prem rudderless: “I’ll admit I’m catatonic, / Chart the pattern of vomit, / Sonnet in the style of Vonnegut, postmodernist.” He spews, minimalistically, like so many bar patrons spinning on stools, but discovers purpose in the identifiable “pattern[s]” and emerging “sonnet[s].” Turns dreck to “Protect Ya Neck”-level compositions. And—even impressiver—he pivots political-cum-analogical to bring us back to the idea of selling one’s self and/or selling one’s wares: “You are who you’re in Congress with, / Closeted moderates post black squares / Then act scared of actual progress ’cause it’s profitless.” But lemme chill…

6.1

“Doseone is in the house,” Castro shouted-out between “Human Form” and “Mescalito.” “If you don’t know, get acclimated. And if you don’t know, you’re stupid.”

6.11

NAHreally:  Some shows really feel like an indie rap convention, and this was definitely one of them. Everywhere you turned was someone you knew or knew of—and the steady stream of special guests onstage only added to that feeling. The way the room erupted when woods came out for a few songs was special. The first time I ever saw (and heard of) PremRock and Castro was at a sparsely attended (perhaps more so poorly promoted) Armand Hammer show in 2018 at The Kingsland in Brooklyn. Castro was an opener and Prem jumped up for some tracks throughout the night. If I remember right, the crowd was probably high single digits. Since then, I’ve seen woods and ELUCID headline some packed rooms, but to get to see ShrapKnel fill up Public Records and bring woods up as a guest felt like a full circle moment. Triumph was definitely in the air at this show—something like a victory lap for putting in the work and staying true.

MO NIKLZ:  woods came out in an Adidas Jamaican-colored jacket I gave him as a present. I bartered pickles for that jacket.

woods performed “Babylon by Bus,” “383 Myrtle,” and crowd favorite “Spongebob.” “Babylon by Bus” required some mic manipulation. “Why you give me the feedback mic though?” woods scoffed. Castro sang woods’ praises (“He has created the greatest label on the planet…”), and woods spread the love right back: “Prem booked my first real tour in this country, and Castro’s been down forever. This is just family.” After a “Spongebob” false start (“My babysitter’s getting 40 dollars an hour…we’re doing this!”), woods gave the crowd—in full darkness—what they wanted to hear. What’s apparent is that the whole operation is no longer under water.

billy woods:  I was just proud and happy to see Castro and Prem have that kind of night. They are my colleagues and co-workers, but they are also my good friends, and great human beings, to boot. Also, I love ShrapKnel's records; I put them out because I love those albums, but I really feel like they are better live than on record, which is not something you can say for a lot of acts right now. So, this was also my first time seeing their new live set, and it’s just the kind of thing that makes you say, Yes, this is it right here. So I was happy for my friends, I was proud of whatever role Backwoodz has been able to play in their ascendancy, and I was really soaking in the music.

7.

Fatboi Sharif got onstage in his capacity as King Geedorah in a pink summer hat and open-chest button down, his magnetism throbbing like gravity beams as he splattered words over a schizzing loop.

FATBOI SHARIF:  [The track’s] not even recorded—I just do it at shows. I had DJ Boogaveli loop the first three seconds of Redman’s “Basically” from Dare Iz a Darkside.

CHOP THE HEAD:  Watching Fatboi Sharif dance and sway his way around the show, laughing and turning people up, and then step on stage to deliver wide-eyed haunting intensity in a huge pink church lady hat… He left my house fifteen minutes ago after an hours-long argument with DRIVEBY about the nature of evil, more specifically about whether Charles Manson is more evil than Popeye’s Chicken. 

7.1

By the time SKECH185 stepped onstage, having already witnessed woods and Sharif before him, I felt like I was watching Brian Robbins’ The Show documentary, and Public Records was transformed into a more modest version of the 32nd Street and Lancaster Avenue Armory on December 10, 1994—wormhole shit. SKECH performed “Up To Speed,” a rafter-rattler I’ve seen him rock on several occasions. Did I go hard enough? he asks a multitude of trusted friends and musicians. The answer is never less than a resounding YES. “You did go hard enough for me,” Prem deadpanned.

SKECH185:  I hit [Prem and Castro] up to see if they had booked the bill. I guess they had, but they said they would bring me out for a song. It was my night off, so it was a no-brainer. We all went on tour last year, and I have music with those cats, so it made sense. It was fun. They rocked at my release party last year so it was full circle. I’ve been doing music with Castro going back ten or so years, and Prem and I were co-workers for a time, plus we have music together. Those men are like family.

CHOP THE HEAD:  I’ve never seen anyone rap like SKECH185. Raw conviction. 

“We roll with killahzzzz!” Castro shouted after SKECH put the mic down.

7.11

AJ SUEDE:  We knew about a month or two in advance that I’d be landing in NY (from the UK/EU G’s Us tour) the day before the album release party. I was invited to be a guest and, of course, I couldn’t refuse that. It was great to see everybody I know and meet a couple new people in the process. Since I was in New York, I knew it was only right to play a song from Reoccurring Characters. Everybody featured on the album was in the building. “Tell Me When to van Gogh” always goes crazy in a live setting. The drums!

8.

On “Deep Space 9 Millie Pulled a Pistol” (a title coined by Controller 7, but he must’ve done so while interiorizing a certain ShrapKnel modality, methodology, modus operandi), Prem alludes to not one, but two, El-P classicks: “Deep Space 9mm” and “Last Good Sleep.” He interpolates the latter’s chorus:

At night I cover my ears in tears the man right in front of me drank too many beers. Every dream, every night, I take his life, waiting for my chance to make it right.

Prem’s death-obsessing is externalized elsewhere, onto an [un]worthy subject.

8.1

When El-P performed “Last Good Sleep” at the final Company Flow show (“The Open Casket Show”) on March 28th 2001, he did so through tears. His mother, the subject of the song who was swallowed when she was hollow, stood in the audience. I should’ve been at the Bowery Ballroom that night, bearing witness, but instead I skipped. Maybe because it was a school night and I didn’t have permission; maybe because I was too lazy to buy a ticket; maybe because I was just a fucking dumbass with no sense of historicity. But my friend Omar (the producer The Shah) attended, telling me peace out as he exited his driveway to head to the city while I played ball in the street with his younger brother. I gave him shit for going without me, but the fact is I could’ve gone with him if I’d made the effort. My only consolation was the flyer he brought me back as a memento.

“Worry Doll,” the wobbling, comedown closing track on Nobody Planning to Leave, finds Castro reflecting on the fleeting isolation he felt in college. “Lune TNS warp my anthem on Campus, / While every other dorm blast the Unit with Whoo Kid.” That alienation that invigorates; a specialized sensibility that inspires—John Singleton couldn’t capture that “higher learning turned End to End Burning” to camera. And so it seemed fated that El-P’s face would appear on a tablet, wishing Castro well while he was wheelchair-bound, recovering from his illness. Castro suddenly had the man behind “Bad Touch Example” at his fingertips with touchscreen technology—it was an emotional moment, but also apropos. There was something so psyence fiction about that mode of communication—something so Blade Runner, so 2001: A Space Odyssey, so Deltron 3030, Megaton B-Boy 2000, 5000 Miles West of the Future. It was everything for the man—the MC and producer and godhead of independent rap—to reach out and express his strength and support. Cancer 4 Cure, sure—El had dealt with Camu Tao’s lung carcinoma diagnosis and death, and so too had the underground scene experienced it from the sidelines. The tablet message to Castro essentially said: You should pump this shit like they do in the future.

9.

Before the closing number, Prem told the audience that they “wanted to build a night that you wouldn’t see anywhere else,” and that objective was achieved. Castro and Prem then literally leaned on each other as they performed “Running Rebel Swordplay” to end their hour-long set. 

9.1

Lights went up. The crowd thinned out. I straggled, wall-flowered, wondering, What’s next? I eventually exited the main space and found all those same recognizable faces from the show lined up in the trellised tunnel leading to the street. Controller 7, lugging his box of gear, Curly Castro, and PremRock all emerged from the venue and exited through that corridor. Friends on either side cheered them lovingly. Mo Niklz unfurled a folding table on the sidewalk and displayed a small pyramid of pickle tupperwares. 

9.11

Oh shit, now here’s a cypher…

—Curly Castro, “Sadatay”

As AKAI SOLO and his TASE GRIP contingent exited the tunnel, AKAI—feeling the thrum—began to elucidate all the things that are hip-hop, which is to say, everything. “Brooklyn is…HIP-HOP, the dark sky is…HIP-HOP, my people are…HIP-HOP!...” There was a particular cadence and rhythm to his speech, which could be easily misconstrued as rapping, and that was all Doseone needed to set it off. I’d seen him on the sidewalk, like a predator tracking the bloodscent, his broad shoulders hunched as he dragged on a cigarette. As AKAI and his crew turned curbside, Dose stepped into the street and began freestyling. A circle spontaneously closed around him. I maneuvered with the quickness to the outer perimeter and pressed record on my Dictaphone, positioning myself to Dose’s left.

Doseone, that rough beast slouching toward Butler Street, that clutcher of a thousand skulls, expectorated a string of freestyled words:

I find myself turning science into gutting an entire abdomen of a cheetah, When I work harder, it goes world of words, hearth-beater. I’m out here looking for yourself, Conceiver of entire men out of mud, What he did, what he did with these rappers was duds, and I exploded like a whole lot of love lava.

I could tell from the expressions on faces that only about half the crowd gathered knew who Dose was, and even fewer computed what was unfolding. But those in the know knew what time it was. Dose spit another few bars (“Bleeding possibly with a tourniquet, / I go at it, and I burn ’em once again, / Resurrect ’em and pull up by the sternum and pull they chest out”), and then the beatbox joined in (courtesy of Q No Rap Name, with later contributions from Wavy Bagels). Castro, possessed with the same cypher-sense as Dose, entered the circle and rapped with a hesitant flow:

Do things as we flip ’em, get ’em, Flying over ya head like a gryphon, forgiven,  You can’t even believe me, I made it out the system, The Matrix ain’t got four parts, you better listen.

Castro passed to SKECH185: “Similar to devils, like to hell, breaking heaven down, / It don’t matter, the bread leavens, and everybody moves around.”

[fragments, because transcriptions are no substitute for being there]

Doseone:  “I disappear and then I reappear again wearing your very favoritest rappers’ skins…” AKAI SOLO:  “I’m armed with just bravado and still bend the metal…” Castro: “Let me catch wreck, / Commercial’s ITT Tech…” Doseone: “Rappers need everything and their mothers to hug ’em…” AJ Suede:  “The world keeps spinning on its own time…” Castro:  “We underground, under rap, under earth, under term, / And if you need something, get under, get burnt…” Doseone: “Every bath I take is completely red…” SKECH: “High-tops made out of human skin…”

CHOP THE HEAD:  I watched ShrapKnel body that set, Curly leaving everything on the stage, and then walk up to SKECH outside and say, We rhymin’? SKECH started beatboxing and started up the cypher. When SKECH wanted to rap, my man Q No Rap Name held the beat down for them. He told me later he had no clue Doseone was there until that happened, and he had been a huge fan of his for years. That moment showed me everything I needed to know about those artists. Are we rhyming, or what?

DUNCECAP:  The cypher outside was magical and reminded me why I love hip-hop. Seeing Legends commingling with Future Legends.

Q NO RAP NAME:  That cypher was crazy. Fuckin’ Doseone was there spittin’—I couldn’t believe it. 

SKECH185:  It was cool but relatively uneventful as cyphers go. I was mad my voice was going out. Doseone is one of my heroes, so it was cool to freestyle with him. Castro and I usually freestyle together when we are in the same place. It reminded me that freestyle cyphers rarely happen nowadays (as you could tell by the lack of beatboxers), but it was refreshing and much needed. Dose talked to me about starting a cypher earlier in the evening.

DOSEONE:  I truly feel perfectly lucked to have experienced a creative competitive healthy hardcore group of people who push themselves to make outstanding rap as art!

9.111

I [re-]introduced myself to Dose, having not spoken to him since our marathon phone calls a few years ago for the aforementioned Anticon book. This was my first time seeing him in-person in 22 years. I last saw him in Tribeca at the Knitting Factory in 2002 performing alongside Jel and Alias—a night I documented as well (on 8mm video). He thanked me and expressed his appreciation for the work I’ve been doing, which felt good, especially considering I don’t think he really has any concept of how exhaustive the Anticon book is going to be. To be speaking to him at a Backwoodz event, rhyming beside artists that have rekindled my interest and engendered this indie rap renaissance, was yet another symbol of convergence. He told me had been at Dove’s the day before with Tommy, Scott Matelic, and Fatboi Sharif. Sharif, I said, was a seeker. (He knew.) Moments later, I saw woods and Dose huddled together in hushed conversation. Someone put out the call for a group photograph, and everybody gathered in the middle of Butler Street for a Gordon Parks “Great Day”-style flick. “FREE PALESTINE on three,” AKAI shouted. One, two, three…

9.2

“Just peep the words of my agnostic prayer,” Open Mike Eagle raps on “Dadaism 3.” Every word I write isn’t 25-to-life, but if all goes well, each paragraph will be received as an agnostic prayer. On his most recent solo effort, Another Triumph of Ghetto Engineering (2023), OME told the world, “We got people though.” Two tracks—“We Should Have Made Otherground a Thing” and “Dave Said These Are the Liner Notes”—speak to the power of our scenes and communities, which, truly, is a single unified community. (It’s an acknowledgement that Slug made in songform in 2000 with Atmosphere’s dewy-eyed “Travel,” a B-side on the Ford Two 12-inch—like OME, Slug was “calling all heads of the Earth.”) The underground—or otherground—has been building (steam with a grain of salt) for approximately thirty years. Back when many of us started in this in the late 90s and early aughts, we had no elders (I spoke to NAHreally about this while posted up in Public Rex). We were just a room full, or message board full, of teenagers and heads in their early twenties. We didn’t know shit. Aceyalone might’ve called us Knownots. But now we’ve got representation across generations—we have mentors from the pre-millennium, youngbloods learning the way of the subterranean walk, and whoever else falls between.

Spirit. Convergence.

10.

MO NIKLZ:  After the show, a group of about twenty of us started heading out to another bar. Controller 7 asked me, “Is this normal?” I said, “It depends on the group and performer, but with PremRock, it’s very common, yes.” We ended up closing out the next bar we went to. Doseone had the nicest conversation with me saying, “Keep up the good work and especially all the shipping for Fake Four—it’s so important for the kids,” which I hadn’t even really thought about in a long time. I told him how happy I was to meet him and how there’s such a short list of people I’d actually want to meet, and he did not disappoint. He agreed saying, “Yeah, don’t meet your heroes.”

10.1

We were at the Brooklyn Inn. I ended my night like I began it—in conversation with Controller 7, Scott Matelic, and Emynd. Tommy was clearly elated with how things had gone. He awkwardly gripped vinyl to his chest as he sipped his beer and smiled ear to ear. Castro hopped in a car after the cypher, but Prem, the eternal nighthawk, reveled in his post-show glow, holding barside conversations with peers aplenty. Dose, too, was making the rounds, affable as he is, and he eventually joined our conversation. Ever the hip-hop historian, he entertained us with an invented—though no doubt veracious—account of one Parrish Smith arriving at Power Play Studios for the Business As Usual sessions in 1990, only to describe the premise of “Mr. Bozack” to one Erick Sermon. “And you’re going to play the part of my dick!”

11. CODA

The next night, I was privileged to see ShrapKnel perform in North Jersey. Soldato Books in Rutherford sells both books and records, but it’s housed in the Williams Center, which functions as an arts center and movie theater as well—and just steps from the former residence of William Carlos Williams. The Jersey tour stop was more sparsely attended (I counted about 25 heads, many of which were family, friends, and fellow performers) and suffered from some pretty significant technical difficulties. The soundsystem was little more than a PA, and the acoustics left much to be desired, especially in the shadow of what we all experienced just 24 hours prior at Pub Rex. The performance space was essentially a mezzanine with couches and balcony access. Roper Williams and Sharif were posted up outside, hopefully brainstorming and mindfucking the basis for their Something About Shirley follow-up. NAHreally endeared the crowd with his didactic raps, a consummate performer with a comedian’s sense of timing and poise. He passed out bookmarks advertising his album with The Expert, BLIP. (I took two.)  DRIVEBY went to work for a short but potent beat set. OneShotOnce got on the mic and ripped. Sharif went shirtless for a raucous rendition of “Fly Pelican,” his vocals lovingly distorted. The only performer who was lucky enough to evade sound trouble was L.I.F.E. Long. The performance of his “Battle for Asgard” verse nearly split the atom. 

PREMROCK:  L.I.F.E. Long is a person that truly embodies hip-hop. He is also a beacon of positivity who seemingly never ages! I vividly remember him watching me at an open mic in Bed-Stuy in ’08. I would scour the web for any opportunities that looked like I could get up there to get my reps in. This one was definitely on the lower rung of quality, but I showed out for sure. It was shortly after my song or two that L.I.F.E. walked up to me and said, “You killed it! You’re too nice to be at this one—you should come to mine,” and handed me a flyer for a Newark mic he ran every Saturday. I looked at the flyer and realized who he was. Can Ox!? Stronghold!? I was very aware and it really energized me, and I didn’t miss any of those shows for a while. We went on to do a few things together and become fast friends. I would say his advice and belief in me was a big factor in my development. Time and life (no pun) has a way of losing touch, but I’ll always give props and try to let him know his importance. I hope I am to others what he was for me. There’s importance in paying things forward. Nobody is going to look out for us if we don’t. To quote Onyx, ALL WE GOT IZ US!

phiik and Lungs negotiated the microphone feedback through their set as best they could, but it made me long for the chorus of TASE GRIP voices that were present to support them the night before. Prem and Castro seemed demoralized when they took the stage, which wasn’t a stage. They, like phiik and Lungs before them, chose to perform from behind a makeshift bar on the mezzanine. The bar top served as merch table during the performances, and Castro began by leaning forward and asking the audience, “What can I do for you?” He later went hat-backwards and stood precariously on a folding chair for “LIVE Element.” He left his arm frozen in the air at the end of his verse—a rapper in the Rodin exhibit—holding it there until Prem spit his line about the “bounceback.” They weren’t demoralized, I realized—they were just performing in a more suitable register to the space.

PREMROCK:  We are from the open mic era. Ten MCs, one mic, fighting for space to be heard. Imperfect sound is nothing when we think of what we’ve dealt with in the past, and we’re also blessed with good voices that can cut through the bullshit. Hiccups are always going to occur—shit soundperson, unexpected detour, less than ideal sleeping conditions, etc. Malleability is extremely important. To aspiring touring artists: there ain’t no glory out there, but there is truth! And the truth shall set you free!

12.  THE CHOIR OF ANGELS BOARD THE SECOND AVENUE BUS TO BABYLON

phiik:  Shout out to jesse The Tree. Was intro’d to him by Prem & Castro, and we just hit it off with him immediately. One of the funniest dudes. We had gotten this weed syrup from the Cookies store in Massachusetts, and it just had all of us rolling. But especially Castro, man—he was at the point of tears because of Jesse + the syrup combo. Mind you too, Prem said it was the highest he’s ever seen Castro, and they’ve been kickin’ it for a while. That experience definitely bonded us all right then & there. Can’t wait to get back on the road with everybody again soon.

AUGUST FANON:  [It] was like a family reunion of sorts. All the performers have worked together and the listening community that came out to the show felt like they come to all the shows. I’m just getting to NYC and this was my third show as August Fanon, so it’s all new and beautiful to me.

WAVY BAGELS:  The ShrapKnel show was magnetic. They ripped the stage as well as everyone that got on. Controller 7 wowed the crowd with his beat set, August Fanon and Child Actor kept the heads nodding with their B2B set, and Lungs & phiik looked comfortable being back home after being on the road. It was also great to run into so many familiar faces and those I finally got to meet in person (Marcus Pinn, AJ Suede, Fanon). Overall an event to remember.

HEIGHT KEECH:  This show was inspiring to me as an NYC transplant that’s trying to get my head around the live music landscape. When I saw the Brooklyn stop on Shrapknel’s tour the year before, the crowd was a little light and I thought that their spirits seemed to be a little bit down. It was quite an exciting contrast to see them receiving a massive hero’s welcome like this. Towards the end of their set, I took out my phone to snap a quick picture, only to realize I had been pocket-dialing ten different people since I walked in. I got a few texts like, “Come on, Height,” but Lord Grunge of Grand Buffet had stayed on the line to peep my pocket-dial (while at his job as a Pittsburgh paramedic) and checked the rhymes. He responded with, “New York Flows? Fire.”

STEEL TIPPED DOVE:  The buzz is building. I had the pleasure of fully mixing the new ShrapKnel album. Controller 7 sent beat stems and the guys came to my studio to record it all, so I was recording engineer too. I think it’s amazing how packed the show was and who was in attendance too—lots of indie rap legends, for real. People literally traveled from across the country and one guy from Europe. And the album itself is so good. I think that’s proven by the continuing growth of the group.

E. FORTSON:  I had a brief conversation with Nosaj at the bar in between sets. At one point, he looked around the room and said, “We built this community.” After the show, when I had a moment to reflect on the night, I realized that the heartbeat of this community is Fatboi Sharif. He’s connected to so many people in this beautiful collective that Nosaj described, and I don’t think that’s a happy accident. He’s deeply invested in this community, in this culture, and people can feel that energy. Seriously, he’s the best hype man out there, and the support he shows his peers, particularly at live events, is incredibly genuine. I don’t know who I watched more at the ShrapKnel release party: the MCS and producers onstage or Fatboi Sharif. If he wasn’t dancing or shouting a “WOOOO!”, he was rapping along to every song. It made the show that much more special for me, and I’m sure that was the case for everyone in that room.

FATBOI SHARIF:  It was certainly the feeling and energy that you hope and pray for when you come to a hip-hop show—from the beat sets, to the special guests, to the outside freestyle cypher after the show. I hadn’t experienced all that at one show in some years.

NOAH ANTHONY MEZZACAPPA:  Castro and PremRock are great showmen and MCs and clearly put a lot of effort not only into their own performances but into the whole bill. Seeing guys like August Fanon, Child Actor, and Controller 7 and knowing it was a line-up unique to that show was really cool. Like Prem said, he wanted to give the fans something they wouldn’t get anywhere else.

Q NO RAP NAME:  ShrapKnel is one of one. Their chemistry is unmatched, and it works for them in real life and on record. I had never seen SKECH185 live before—that was mind-blowing. It was very ill to meet some of these folks who I only ever usually hear on record and learn that they are solid individuals in real life. The underground is like that, and I love it.

DUNCECAP:  That night felt like a family reunion. It felt like a couple different facets of the same diamond coming together. It was really special. Lots of love and respect in that room.

NOSAJ:

THE POWER OF SYNERGY

MASTER SPECIALIST

SOUNDTRACK FOR THE MOVIE TAKING PLACE IN THE ROOM THAT EVENING 

A STEP FORWARD FOR THE GENRE

PRIDE

CHOP THE HEAD:  The show felt like all the heads coming together to celebrate each other, and all these rappers that we recognize are pushing themselves and musical boundaries forward and really getting their due in a proper venue. I’ve seen Armand Hammer in big rooms before, but that bill was 100% killers—everybody knew everybody. The sound was perfect. The speakers were big as fuck. ShrapKnel absolutely burnt it down. As a duo they play off each other so well, and this was mid-tour so their set felt effortless and intense. Curly Castro is a tremendously gifted rapper. In his own terms, he is a master bladesmith and swordsman. 

MO NIKLZ:  The whole event was definitely something of an NYC indie rap family reunion/networking spot in a lot of ways and hasn’t really existed since Uncommon Nasa and woods stopped doing Yule Prog.

billy woods:  It was dope to see all those different energies being exchanged in one place. That sense of community and camaraderie was palpable. There were a lot of great artists in the audience, or jumping on stage to play supporting roles for ShrapKnel and phiik & Lungs, but there was also an August Fanon + Child Actor beat set!!!

DOSEONE:  That evening, it meant a lot to me. Most importantly, witnessing underground rap thriving and reforming in the hands of the Backwoodz humans—it’s endlessly important to me. Seeing impeccably written and produced and rapped rap be received entirely and adored is a beautiful thing. Every rapper and producer up there gave perfectly unique artistry in rap form as dictated by their individuality and creativity—FUK YES to that. That competitive collaborative creative energy they are harnessing is so similar yet different to what burned behind anticon as it first formed. And I am really lucky to have experienced that twice in one life.

CONTROLLER 7:  It kinda feels like the people that were there maybe just enjoyed it and it was what it was, nobody really reposted for clout or anything, it was just something we all shared that night.

13.

So, nah: I’m not a spiritual person, but I can be inspired—inspired by the expansion of the underground hip-hop canon and rap pantheon. Bigg Jus’s voice reverberates: A hot wire, like the third rail, is live. I can, and did, thrum with the collective breath of those present on these two nights in June. Forevermore, I’ll expect more from june. No death in June. Life is real, word to the Mighty Mos and Roy Ayers Ubiquity. My life, my life, my life, my life. Reporting live for you suckers.

ShrapKnel setlist at Public Records

“Metallo” “Dadaism 3” “Steel Pan Labyrinth” “LIVE Element” “Human Form” “Mescalito” “Babylon by Bus” (billy woods) “383 Myrtle” (billy woods) “Spongebob” (billy woods) “Bogdan Interlude” “[untitled]” (Fatboi Sharif) “Bardo” “Illusions of P” “Up To Speed” (SKECH185) “Dreadlocs Falling” “Tell Me When to van Gogh” (AJ Suede) “Deep Space 9 Millie Pulled a Pistol” “Night of the Living Analogue” “Running Rebel Swordplay”

Performance photos from Public Records courtesy of E. Fortson