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roosterforme · 2 years ago

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Batting Practice Part 8 | Rooster x Reader

Summary: A lazy Sunday at the park with you and Everett has Bradley wondering why he ever thought this wasn’t what he wanted. When work keeps you away from practice during the week, he’s desperate to see you and get you alone for a proper date.

Warnings: Fluff, angst and swearing (eventually 18+)

Length: 3500 words

Pairing: Bradley "Rooster" Bradshaw x Female single!mom Reader

Check my masterlist for more Top Gun fun! Batting Practice masterlist.

Bradley texted you on Sunday morning, asking for your address, insisting he come pick you and Everett up. He could have just looked it up in the coaching portal online, but he wanted you to send it to him instead.

When he pulled up in front of your house, he saw Everett come running out the front door. "Hey, kiddo," Bradley called as he got out of the Bronco.

"Coach! I have my glove all ready, and my mom is finishing her makeup, because she said she wants to look nice today!"

Bradley grinned and let Everett take him by the hand. "I kind of think your mom always looks nice," Bradley mumbled, and then there you were, stepping out onto your front porch with a bright smile.

You were wearing a cropped tee shirt and black leggings, and Bradley's mind took him back to making out with you yesterday.

"Hi, Coach," you said, wiggling your fingers at him as you walked down the steps.

Suddenly he had no idea what to do. Was he supposed to refrain from calling you Kitten? Did you really expect him to keep his lips away from you right now?

"I missed you," he told you, and even though he hadn't meant to say it, it was true.

"I saw you yesterday," you said with a soft laugh. "We spent a lot of time together in the kitchen."

"Not enough."

Bradley noticed Everett was looking between the two of you with curious interest. "Did you really bring Gatorade? Can we ride in your car?" Everett asked.

"Yeah, I really brought Gatorade. And yes, we can ride in my car."

"We'd have to put the booster seat in the back?" you asked cautiously.

So Bradley ended up with a car seat in the back of his Bronco, something he never imagined would have ever been happening. And then he drove all three of you to the park.

When he reached across the seat and let his hand settle on top of yours, you bit your lip, and turned your hand palm side up, lacing your fingers with his.

"Hey, Kitten?" he asked softly as he pulled into the park. You turned to face him right away, your eyes unguarded. "Thanks for letting me do this."

Bradley parked and climbed out of the Bronco before helping you and then Everett out as well.

"Okay, your mom's got a lot to learn today," Bradley told Everett, handing him a bag of gear. "Think we can help her out? She doesn't even know what a catcher's mitt is."

Everett laughed and tossed his head back. "She doesn't know what a slider is either. She just didn't want to tell you that."

"Ev, I'm standing right here," you told your son, running your fingers along his hair. But you were looking at Bradley and smirking. "And I do know what a slider is, because I watched a video on YouTube."

"Aww, come on, Kitten. You're killing me," Bradley said, handing you three bottles of cold Gatorade. "YouTube? You need some first hand experience, and Ev and I are your guys."

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

You weren't sure how to feel about Bradley calling you Kitten in front of your son, but every time he said it, you felt a little silly.

"Is this the catcher's mitt?" you asked, picking up a dusty, brown thing and holding it up.

"Sure it. Go ahead and put it on." Bradley said as he got a regular baseball glove on Everett's hand.

You thought it was too big for your hand, but you put it on anyway, waving the mitt at them. "Okay, I'm ready!"

Bradley handed Everett a baseball and jogged over to where you were standing. "Hell no, you're not, Kitten. Gotta protect that pretty face." He bent down and rummaged in the bag a little more, pulling out a weird looking mask and another Phillies cap.

"You're going to make me wear that?" you asked with a smile as he approached you.

Bradley turned to look over his shoulder to where Everett was tossing the ball into the air and catching it a few feet away. Then he turned back and kissed your lips softly. "Told you I wouldn't let you get hurt. I meant it."

He looked serious now, and you wondered if his words had a dual meaning.

"Now, let's get this cap on you first," he said, pushing your hair back behind your ears and setting it backwards on your head. "Oh, what do you know... you look cute with a backwards hat, too."

You scrunched up your nose in embarrassment, but he laughed and eased the catcher's mask over your head, securing it in place. "Perfect."

"Ready?" Everett called, starting to sound impatient. Meanwhile you wanted Bradley to keep touching you and telling you about your pretty face.

"Yeah, kiddo," Bradley called. "Just getting your mom in position." He looked down at you, wrapping both hands around your hips and guiding you back a few steps.

"Here?" you asked softly when he stopped moving you around.

"Yep," he whispered, squeezing you through your leggings. "Now, squat down like this."

You tried to imitate what he was doing, but you were getting distracted by the way his thighs looked as his gym shorts rode up higher on his legs.

"That's good," he told you before he stood up again. "Now do your best to catch them," Bradley said, grabbing a few more balls from his gear bag. "Everett and I will go easy on you. Won't we, kiddo?"

Your heart swelled as you watched Everett grin up at Bradley and laugh. "Yeah, but only at first mom!" he called out to you.

"Oh great, thanks a lot." But they weren't even listening to you. And now you could only focus on Bradley as demonstrated the correct pitching posture a few times for Everett. He was all flexing muscles and rippling biceps, and meanwhile your thighs were already starting to hurt.

"Here comes your first pitch!" he warned, winding up and sending the baseball directly into the mitt on your hand.

You jumped up in shock, still holding it. "I caught it!"

Everett was cheering, and Bradley winked at you. "Nice one, Kitten."

After you caught a few more and tossed them back, you were feeling so confident. Then you managed to catch most of the pitches that Everett threw as well, even though you had to really reach for some of them.

"So, which one do you like better? The slider or the curveball?" Bradley asked Everett after a while, and you stood up, barely even able to feel your thighs now.

"Slider!"

"Me too," Bradley agreed, getting a high five from Everett. "And guess what. That's the harder one to throw, so you're already advanced."

"No way!"

As you watched them interacting with each other, you wished you could have this in your life every Sunday. Maybe a late breakfast after lounging in bed with Bradley while Everett watched cartoons. Some time at the park, and then dinner.

All the things you never quite got to have with Danny felt somehow more attainable with Bradley. Which was really scary to you.

You cleared your throat and tossed the catcher's mitt toward the bag before trying to remove the mask, but Bradley was already on his way over to help you.

"Will you let Ev and I treat you to some ice cream as a thank you?"

He swiped his fingers along your jaw when he removed the mask, but he left his backwards hat on your head. "I would love that."

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

The ice cream shop was packed with people out enjoying the perfect San Diego spring day, but Bradley didn't mind waiting. You were standing in front of him while Everett bounced around a bit and kept asking questions.

"Will you pitch balls with me again?" Everett asked, looking up at Bradley.

"Of course, little man. You've gotta practice if you want to keep getting better." Bradley felt you lean back against him slightly, and he let his hand rest just above your ass. He was stroking the soft skin of your lower back with his thumb and running his fingers along your leggings. You turned and briefly rubbed your cheek against his chest, just like a kitten, and he wrapped his arm around you a little tighter.

"And can you show me a fastball too? And a changeup?" Everett asked, just before it was time to order.

"Not my strongest pitches, but for you, sure, kiddo. I would love to embarrass myself in front of your mom."

Everett was glancing between the two of you again as you said, "Have you forgotten that I had to watch YouTube videos about pitches? You think I'm going to know the difference?" You were looking up at Bradley and laughing, and he wanted more than anything to kiss you.

"You looked like a world class catcher today. Could have fooled me, Kitten."

Bradley tried to pay for the three ice cream cones, but you had Everett drag him away to a small bench while you paid. He sat side by side on the bench with Everett, waiting for you.

"Hey Coach, do you think my mom is pretty?"

Bradley froze with his ice cream cone halfway to his mouth and watched Everett try to eat his strawberry scoop before it melted.

"I think your mom is beautiful."

"Do you like her? I told you she was cool."

Bradley nodded as he watched you make your way over with your own cone. "She's the coolest, kiddo. Here, make some room for her to sit with us." Bradley picked Everett up with one arm and plopped him down on his thigh, and then you eased into the spot next to him.

"Thanks for the ice cream," Bradley told you softly.

You grinned at him and Everett on his lap. "Any time you want to treat Ev and I to a day in the park, I'll be more than happy to treat you to some ice cream, Coach."

Bradley finished his cone and then let Everett ask him a bunch of baseball related questions while his strawberry scoop melted. He watched it drip on his jeans, but he didn't really care.

"Ev, eat faster! It's melting onto Coach," you scolded, jumping up to get some napkins.

Bradley tried to stop you, telling you it would come out in the laundry, but you insisted on wiping up the ice cream which landed basically right where his dick was. So he slid Everett into the spot you vacated while you bent down and tried your best to clean him up.

"Kitten," he rasped. "Please. It's okay." If you kept rubbing him, he was going to get hard. On a bench. In front of your son.

"Are you sure?" you asked, and your hand paused on his thigh as he nodded at you. "Danny would have had a living fit."

Bradley took your hand and rubbed it with his thumb. "Yeah, well, I'm not Danny."

You looked at him as you stood up tall again. "Ain't that the truth," you mumbled, but your eyes stayed on his.

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

When Bradley walked you and Everett up to your porch, you watched Ev hug him tight. "See you at practice tomorrow?"

"Yep, see you tomorrow," Bradley replied, messing up his hair before Everett went inside.

"Thanks for today," you whispered as Bradley's big hands settled on your hips. "That meant a lot to him."

"I had fun," Bradley said with a smile as he pulled you a little closer to him. You let your hands rest on his broad chest, and a little gasp escaped your lips before you were even kissing him. But then you were, and it felt so good. His lips were gentle, and his hands were firm, and your body wanted more.

"Can't wait to see which sexy pantsuit you wear to practice tomorrow, Kitten," he mumbled against your neck, prickling you with his mustache.

You giggled as his lips made their way down to the top of your shirt. "I'm not going to be there tomorrow."

He paused and asked, "Why not?"

"I have a late meeting. Molly is going to take him to practice. And speaking of Molly..."

"Yeah?" Bradley asked, looking at you with a small grin. "What did your reliable sister who is more than willing to watch Everett for you have to say?"

You started giggling again, and Bradley pulled you so your body was flush with his. You knew you were on your front porch, and you knew Ev could pop back outside at any time. But you let Bradley hold you, because you wanted him to.

"Molly said she can watch him on Friday night. If you feel like going out?"

"Fuck, yes," he said, kissing your cheek. "I have it all planned. Let me know when to pick you up."

You felt warm inside for the rest of the evening, because Bradley would be yours on Friday night. No sharing him with Everett or Sandra or Coach Bob or the other kids on the team. All yours.

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

Bradley really missed you at Monday's practice. He had nobody to look at on the bleachers. The few times he glanced over, his heart skipped a beat, because Molly did look quite a bit like you. But then he just sighed in disappointment.

He did, however, notice that Bob was looking toward your sister with some frequency. That was interesting. He would definitely have to ask Bob about that later on.

Bradley wasn't even surprised when Bob suddenly joined him to walk Everett and Molly to the parking lot when practice ended. Bradley ended up trailing behind the two of them with Everett on his shoulders, watching them chat the whole way.

"Hey, Everett," Bradley asked. "Does your Aunt Molly have a boyfriend?"

"Not anymore," Everett replied. "She told me she had to break up with Casey because he was tiny, but I don't really get it because he was really tall."

Bradley had to bite his lip to prevent himself from laughing out loud. "Oh, okay. Poor Casey," Bradley muttered.

Bradley helped get Everett settled in Molly's car before heading to his Bronco to text you. He noticed that Bob was still hanging out with Molly after he had walked away, and he could occasionally hear Molly's laughter. Lord, she thought he was funny! Hopefully he was bigger than Casey.

Bradley thought about mentioning Bob and Molly to you, but he thought better of it.

Kitten, I missed you today. Are you still in your meeting? Are you coming to practice on Thursday?

Bradley watched Molly pull out of the parking lot, waving to Bob as she went. "Bob! Come here!" Bradley called out his open window. He watched his friend turn around and head his way.

"What's up?" Bob asked him, leaning against the side of the Bronco. Bradley just smirked at him, and almost instantly, Bob started blushing. Bradley smirked harder, and Bob adjusted his glasses and rubbed the back of his neck. "I noticed her when she came to practice last time, too. Are you going to make fun of me for having a crush on her?"

Bradley started laughing. "Not at all. She's really nice. And Everett said his Aunt Molly is single."

"Is she really?" Bob asked softly as a grin spread across his face.

"Yep. The kid is a wealth of information."

Bob just mumbled something and walked away with a wave, leaving Bradley alone as you texted him back.

You sent a selfie of you smiling in what Bradley assumed was your office. He could see your cream colored lace top peeking out of your gray suit coat.

Kitten. I should not find your business attire this sexy, baby.

Once again, instead of responding with text, you send him another photo, one in which you had removed your suit coat. Bradley was staring at your tits straining against your lacy tank top, nipples peaked against the delicate looking fabric. You were smirking at him.

Fuck, his mind took him to your office, you sitting in your chair with his face buried in your pussy. He'd eat you until you were screaming.

It's not nice to tease, Kitten.

He was now sitting in the parking lot at the ballfield with an erection, and he wasn't even surprised. He started up the Bronco and drove home where he could take care of himself.

By Thursday, when he laid eyes on you at tee ball practice, it was like he finally felt his body relax. Everett bounded over to him as usual before going to greet Bob, but Bradley was watching you try to change into your old sneakers while you walked through the grass. You were wearing your tight, black skirt again, and your hair was pulled up off of your neck.

"Jesus," he mumbled before fielding some questions from Sandra and the other moms about the upcoming schedule.

When you were seated on the bleachers, and practice was about to begin, Bradley debated heading your way and giving you a kiss on your cheek, but Bob was already blowing his whistle to start practice.

Bradley watched you raise your hand from your lap and wiggle your fingers at him, moutching, "Hi, Coach," while you smirked.

Alone. He'd get you alone tomorrow. He loved Everett, but he was antsy to really get to be with you. But he could wait one more day to kiss you and taste your skin. So he just winked and joined Bob near home plate.

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

Practice was pretty typical on Thursday, except now your body was humming the whole time. You knew exactly what Coach Bradley's lips tasted like. You know how heavy his hands felt on your hips. You knew how he smelled and sounded when he was right in front of you, teasing your body.

"Tara, I can't stop thinking about the swim party last weekend. Both coaches shirtless? A literal dream come true."

"Same. And I'm one thousand percent sure Coach Bradley flirted with me when I was getting a slice of pizza."

You wanted to snort. You were standing five feet away from him the entire time he'd been in the clubhouse getting pizza, and neither of those moms had been anywhere near him.

But it didn't matter, because as soon as practice ended and you were helping Everett change out of his cleats, Bradley made his way over to both of you, right in front of everyone just like he always did.

"Nice hustle today, kiddo," he told Everett, earning him a high five.

You looked up at Bradley over your shoulder as you tucked Everett's cleats into his gear bag. He reached down to help you stand, and his other hand brushed along your butt.

"I expect a nice hustle out of you tomorrow night," you told him, giggling as his eyes went wide. "It's going to be our first date and all."

He just shook his head, walking up to the parking lot with Everett between you both. "Nope. It's our third," he said.

"What? No, our first!" you insisted, trying to keep the conversation vague for your son's ears. You still weren't convinced that going out with his tee ball coach was your best move, but you couldn't stop yourself now.

"Snack bar was our first. Now, I wasn't on my best game, but you did come back for round two with baseball in the park."

You were cracking up now. He considered soft pretzels and an outing with Everett to be dates? Oh, you were going to melt. You'd never make it. He was a single mom's dream date.

"So you don't mind that sometimes there's a tagalong?" you ask, nearing your car where it was parked next to his Bronco.

Bradley opened the back door for Everett, gave him a fit bump and then closed it as Everett got himself buckled in.

"I don't mind. As long as I can get Kitten alone on occasion. Really want to see your claws again."

You grabbed at his jersey, and Bradley immediately had you pushed back against your car door with his lips on yours. It was broad daylight, there were still some people in the parking lot, and Everett was in the backseat. But Bradley's hands were grabbing at your hips, and you could feel him through his thin athletic shorts as you moaned his name.

"Fuck," he gasped against your lips, kissing you hard one more time. "Get in your car, Kitten. Before I embarrass myself. I'll pick you up tomorrow night."

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Kitten and Ev plus Coach. It just makes sense! Fair warning, the next part will be for ages 18+. Thanks to @beyondthesefourwalls and @mak-32!

PART 9

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caltropspress · 7 months ago

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Spittin' Wicked Randomness with Small Professor

or, Bizarre Rides II the Pharthest Cyde;

or, A beginning doesn’t need an ending, only a portal

Make your body a temple. Make your home a shrine. You are a God, live like one!

—Timothy Leary, “You Are A God, Act Like One!” (1967)

Psycholinguistic structural confusion leads to insidious beat wrecking missions and continuous speech recognition, prescription, vocal anecdotal object impressions…. Synergistic sample arrangements.

—Jungle Brothers, “Trials of an Era” (1993)

EXORDIUM

I long for the anonymity the internet once provided. Everyone was faceless. Vacant visages—not even an avatar. I’ll often try to remanufacture this premillennial experience for myself. I deliberately avoid seeking images to accompany the names I see on the screen. Many people nowadays—most people, the writer bemoaned—make this nearly impossible. Vanity of vanities—all is vanity! But I do try, I do. I look away; I increase the scroll speed; I squint to blur and becloud. Like Iris DeMent desired, I try to let the mystery be. On Rakim’s plodding “The Mystery (Who Is God?),” the God MC suggests you can solve the mystery if you realize the answer revolves around your history. But I need the mystery to stay intact. So many years on, and I’m still figuring out da mystery of chessboxin’, looking all the way back to when Wu-Tang was in black hoodies on the man-sized chessboard—cloaked rooks shouting peace to all the crooks with bad looks. “You cannot hook up a 100 million years of sensory-somatic revelation to your puny, trivial personality chess board,” so says Timothy Leary. I’m inclined to agree.

Aside from his music, I’ve known Small Professor—Jamil Marshall, if we split the veil—only through his words, through his text on my chosen screens: pixelated patterns of character images. But late last year, I stumbled across an image of him appearing not unlike a cloaked rook. Draped in a black robe, Small Professor appeared beside his Wrecking Crew brethren as a Sith Lord. The occasion was a Halloween performance at Cratediggaz Records in South Philly. Small Professor’s face was hidden, and so I could fuck with this type of qualified exposure. His shrouded appearance elevated my intrigue rather than diminished it. This was no flashbulb, soul-capturing, photographic evidence of existence; this was no selfie self-absorption; this was simply some spooky shit.

Of the many messages that Small Professor measures out into the ether[net], the ones that have frequently caught my attention make some mention of hallucinogenic drugs. Here again, we have [e]strange bedfellows—that being technology and drugs. Twinned conceptualizations: drugs as teknology; teknology as drugs [scanned as tricknology, too, two]. Programming in the Silicon [Uncanny] Valley with the capital-I Internet reformatted as a Third [Eye]nternet. You scream as it enters your bloodstream. “Build, elevate to a higher comprehension, / Let your third eye rise above evil interventions,” if we’re properly tuned in to the Jungle Brothers’ “Troopin’ on the Down Low.” Teknology and drukqs might be more familiar than we (Eye) thought.

As we know from Jesse Jarnow, psychedelic saints were known as “heads,” which, underground hip-hop stalwarts of a certain age will wreckonize as an honorific for their own dedication to a way of life and listening. Stewart Brand, author and publisher of the Whole Earth Guide, would later speak of computers and online communities as the most auspicious collective force “since psychedelics.” Hua Hsu brings this to my total attention, but with my full cooperation (word to Def Squad), so there’s a few more things I’d like to mention. Computer science research centers saw networking and information sharing as devout acts “borrowed directly from Deadhead communalism.” Again, not dissimilar from the tape trading so crucial to the spread of this thing of ours called hip-hop. John Morrison writes of how “hip-hop owes much of its early development and propagation to an underground economy,” to the “recording and circulation of cassette tapes of park jams, live battles, DJ sets, and radio broadcasts” that brought a burgeoning and insurgent art form to the masses. The backchannels and clandestine conduits that made this dissemination possible suggest a secret organization with figures like Geechie Dan and Elvis “The Tapemaster” Moreno as its stewards. These cross-cultural, cross-generational connections exist despite Jerry Garcia’s abhorrence of rap as a legitimate musical form [see below: “Deadhead” diss-poem]. Small Professor centers himself within the radial lines of this complex mandala. His production isn’t strictly for the psych heads, or the hip-hop heads—his musick is For the Headz at Company Z.

Small Professor understands the possibility and catalytic practices of rappers, much like William S. Burroughs did: “With computerized tape recorders & sensitive throat microphones we could attain insight into the nature of human speech & turn the word into a useful tool instead of an instrument of control in hands of a misinformed and misinforming press.” Somewhere you can hear the echoing call of Newwwspaaaaperrrr from the Jungle Brothers’ “Book of Rhyme Pages,” a song with a prophetic register, a song that reads.

In Burroughs’ essay “Academy 23: A Deconditioning,” which appeared in the San Francisco Oracle (c. 1966-1968), the beatific junky proposes that “academies be established where young people will learn to get really high…high as the Zen master is high when his arrow hits a target in the dark…high as the Karate master when he smashes a brick with his fist…high…weightless…in space.” As high as Wu-Tang get, I might add, Allah allow us pop this shit. Burroughs believes it’s “[t]ime to look beyond this cop rotten planet.” The students in Academy 23 “would receive a basic course consisting of training in the non-chemical disciplines of Yoga, Karate, prolonged sense withdrawal, stroboscopic lights, the constant use of tape recorders to break down verbal association lines. Techniques now being used for control of thought could instead be used for liberation.”

Small Professor is already present in such an academy, his “lab”—be it Albert Hofmann’s Sandoz Laboratory or RZA’s antediluvian lab. Like Bobby Digital, Small Professor experiences the “Lab Drunk,” the studio stupor: Stumbled into the lab half-drunk—honey-dipped, stinking blunts. The neural activity of Madlib’s psilocybin; the mind expansion of MKUltramagnetic; outlaw practices: tripping on LSD or sampling on an MPC—same diff, really. “The experience,” Leary wrote in the East Village Other, “must be communicated, harmonized with the greater flow.”

PART I

[December 23, 2023 | 9:10 PM]

Small Professor: Ah, fuck. I was supposed to plan this out. Just took 2 tabs to the dome officially at 9:00 PM. At some point tonight I will be looking around at my room like I just got here from outer space.

[10:14 PM]

Caltrops Press: Where’s your head at right now?

SP: Difficult to see. Always in motion is the right now (to paraphrase Yoda). Right now I am listening to “Right Now” (HAIM, live).

CP: Are you alone?

SP: I believe that to be true, but we can never be 100% sure, can we? I don’t presume to speak for you of course, but I’d wager that you may have, at least once, considered that The Truman Show could be real life, after all. According to this, though, yes:

CP: Somebody once said, “Every day is Truman Show. True men show their face and expose flesh…” Do you think acid allows you to see beyond this reality?

SP: No. It allows me to see this one more clearly. Time, or whatever it is that we collectively agree is this forward feeling momentum, seems to slow. So you (me) see the same things that you see everyday, but that your brain kinda knocks aside after a while. Things look new.

CP: Are you typically playing music when you trip? Does the music slow down? Not literally. But do you process it differently? And, of course, I’m curious if you ever try to make music in this state?

SP: I like making music that barely makes sense in whatever state I’m in at that time, so when I come back to it I’m even more confused. Like leaving yourself a drunk voicemail, but on purpose. I’m generally high—it’s just a matter of how. And to the last question: Do or do not, there is no try.

PremRock: I think [Small Professor's] work has benefited from discovering [hallucinogens]. He’s pretty passionate about ’em! I think it’s made him more expansive and he’s more eager to try far out ideas. He was always psychedelic in nature, but this just provided more of a conduit.

Zilla Rocca: Even without shroomz he always had a bugged-out sense of melody, rhythm, and layered samples. Smalls has always been a seeker. We connect like that. We love unearthing old rap to learn from it while appreciating all the new styles.

When brothers start buggin’, I bug the most.

—Jungle Brothers, “Simple As That”

CP: I’ve never fucked with psychedelics, so I generally have either a romantic or sensational notion of what it must be like. Have you ever had any experiences where things went really weird, or have you ritualized it enough so that you know what to expect? Like it’s become yoga or meditation for you by this point.

SP: Yeah, it’s pretty meditative. The first time I had acid was so surreal that nothing else could dream to compare.

CP: When was that? Do you still remember the details?

SP: Well, first of all, I couldn’t have started such a journey without such caring guides, for they did not have to take time from their lives to explain how much to take, how much not to, to be mindful of the kind of media you’re ingesting while in that space—like nothing too scary and shit like that. They specifically said, “Maybe watch a comedy tonight. Something on the lighter side of things.”

CP: I’ve heard that’s important, having a guide.

SP: So I believe I initially started off with the smallest amount I could take, cuz I didn’t know any better. But the effect was immediate. I remember going outside and just standing in an empty parking spot in front of my crib and watching it rain. It was night already. I was like, Wow, this is the best rain I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen a lot of rain. And then I went out to get more tree. On my way home though, so…okay. How do I explain this? So, my Lyft driver on my way back to my house, he and I strike up a conversation. At the end of our talk, which included a phone call to someone of high stature in the 5% community who spoke to me directly, I embarked on the path to knowledge of self.

CP: Like, sincerely? Or only until you stopped being high?

SP: Well, I know now it started there. But I’ve always known that I am god, in some way. It’s just that, after you find out, what do you do with that knowledge of your own god-dom? That’s one thing I can appreciate about psychedelics. It’s like, Alright, well, if I know my brain is capable of such a thought or a piece of music in this one state, then I should be able to get back to it.

CP: I get that. Like, “I’ve done this before, so I can surely do it again.” But, for so many artists, they struggle to capture whatever it is. I know a lot of times I’ll look back on something I’ve written and then ask myself, How did that even happen? Because the process—the making of something—is often so unconscious.

Curly Castro: Smalls calls me after the fact (bka “a trip”) and regales me with a cornucopia of odd and odder occurrences. I will say that one time [redacted] and that’s when [redacted] and what could say after [redacted]. I just told him, Say Less.

CP: How long will this trip last? You took two tabs at 9 PM, and it’s been 4.5 hours.

SP: Oh, I’ll be up for a while. Night hasn’t even begun.

CP: I need to crash because I’ve got to be up early. But keep dropping whatever random thoughts you have here. We’ll call this Part 1.

SP: Fantastic, Pt. 1

SP: “God is never small.” Those are the words that man said, and my reply was, “...I am? I am. Ohhhh. I am.”

[Small Professor links me to a video showing Donald Lawrence & The Tri-City Singers performing “I Am God.”]

SP: Also, I’m quite proud of the fact that my government name [Jamil], oddly Arabic considering how Christian my dear mother is, quite literally translates to “Beautiful Ruler,” with my first name actually meaning “god” in certain places (“Jamil” is one of Allah’s 99 aliases—I found that out earlier this year). My mom HATES THIS BOYEEEEE. She thought it just meant “handsome.”

SP: Words mean things but don’t have to.

SP: [Denmark Vessey & Scud One’s Cult Classic] (This is my official trip soundtrack.) “Throw bricks at him if you can’t build wit ’em, / Whoever marquee, top bill, I’ll Kill Bill ’em.”

SP: It’s 8:23 AM. Still trippin’.

PART II

[December 24, 2023 | 9:15 AM]

CP: You awake? If so, talk to me about “Dettol.”

SP: I feel like that beat was made along with a few others in that same span of time with Roc Marci in mind. Not only in terms of the drum un-emphasis but also being intentional about giving an MC room to operate, to breathe. On Midnight Marauders, both “Electric Relaxation” and “Lyrics To Go” are special beats because they operate within the parameters of 4/4 time but the bar lengths aren’t the typical 8. On “Dettol,” you have mostly 8-bar loops until it shifts to 12 for one measure, and then it starts over. (Not sure about my beat math there.) So the Armand Hammer guys had to each approach that in their own way. Couldn’t have drawn it up any better. “Numbers look crooked like King Kong shook it.”

CP: (That’s your second Slum Village reference in this convo.) Paraffin was the first album I heard by them, so that beat would’ve been the third Armand Hammer song I heard overall. And that “giving them space” idea definitely benefited me—a guy who hadn’t been paying attention for years, specifically because lyrics weren’t grabbing me like they used to.

The psychedelic experience is not just an internal, private affair. The “turned on” person realizes that he is not an isolated entity, a separate social ego, but rather one transient energy process hooked up with the energy dance around him.

—Timothy Leary, “You Are A God, Act Like One!”

CP: How did you originally connect with woods and ELUCID?

SP: I may have been aware of ELUCID as early as 2005 by way of his Tanya Morgan/Lessondary/Okayplayer fam associations, but 2007 when he dropped Smash & Grab is when I instantly knew, Ah, this guy’s one of the best rappers ever. By 2009, that became, The best ever. That was the Myspace era, so we connected on there musically but also on some homie shit. We were working on a song of his in like 2011 or ’12 for the BIRD EAT SNAKE mixtape, “Dumb Out.”

ELUCID: BIRD EAT SNAKE is a whole lifetime ago. I had just met woods. I was also just beginning to develop the Cult Favorite record with AM Breakups. I was super charged creatively and was fortunate enough to have a lot of space to develop that. “Dumb Out” was such a strange beat that made my pen move immediately. Nothing overthought or drawn out. Just really chunky, vibed out, and punchy energy. I just began to acquire these attributes during the making of that tape.

CP: “Don’t eat the brown acid…”

SP: Originally woods was supposed to be on there. I distinctly remember this being one of the first times I heard him because…okay. He recorded a verse on this beat and ELUCID sent his acapella but no reference to guide from. And I’m very good at matching up acapellas, so the fact that I could make no sense of his flow—where to place it in the mix—always stuck out to me.

CP: Is that why he didn’t end up on the song?

SP: I don’t believe so. That would be funny if true, though. Because it feels like I have more music with those two than what tangibly exists.

CP: Also funny because, as their audience has grown—exponentially of late—the “discourse” returns to whether woods raps “on beat” or not.

SP: Once I understood that the question of if he’s rapping on- or off-beat is the wrong one—when it should be, Why do I hear this as off-beat? How do I hear what he heard to deliver it that way?—that’s when it clicked for me.

CP: Was “My Blank Verse” your first beat for them officially?

SP: That was the very first song me and ELUCID made together. Don’t think it was for anything in particular, initially.

CP: Got it. So it wasn’t approached as an Armand Hammer track, per se. Just ended up on an AH project. When did you connect with ELUCID in person?

SP: I wanna say I met him in person at a show in Philly, at the Khyber. But the time I remember the most is when I was in Brooklyn with him (this actually might have been when we met up to record “My Blank Verse”), and he showed me the block where B.I.G. grew up. I like to imagine my power levels increasing on that day due to the residual holy hip-hop energy on the premises.

CP: That’s dope. I’m surprised to hear you recorded the track in person. Both because so much is done remotely now—the producer and the MC separate—and also because ELUCID, I’ve read, is pretty private when it comes to recording. Maybe that came later, though.

SP: Yes, that did come later to my knowledge. But also, I’m special.

ELUCID: This was the era when Willie Green’s studio was still in his apartment. I had just started recording with Backwoodz, and “My Blank Verse” was indeed recorded that afternoon. I usually don’t have people hanging in the studio while I record, but I think my comfort level with Jamil speaks to the ease I feel in our dealings.

SP: I also remember going to meet ELUCID in New York specifically to get a flash drive that had he and woods’s verses for the Sean Price “Midnight Rounds” song they all should have been on together. His internet was down.

CP: Why didn’t that track come to fruition?

SP: woods’s hook was an interpolation of Apache’s “A Fight” (because, midnight rounds). The label was like, “Oh nah!” Word for word! Bar for bar! Sean P would have appreciated it.

CP: Jersey’s own.

billy woods: At that point in my “career,” I was kinda disappointed to get cut but not surprised. I guess I had a long history being snubbed regularly by peers and institutions in the indie music scene, so it just seemed like, Yeah, more of the same. I was pleasantly surprised to be invited, and unpleasantly unsurprised to be disinvited.

SP: So, kept ELUCID’s verse and subbed in my man Castle, making this song the spiritual successor to a track I did on me and Guilty Simpson’s Highway Robbery, also featuring those two. Things fall apart, but they also come together. How they’re supposed to.

CP: What’s the story behind “No Grand Agenda”? Also, where are we at in terms of the trip?

SP: It’s slowing but at a light jog now. The beat for “No Grand Agenda” was originally part of an album I did made up entirely of exactly 1-minute long songs called You’re Killin’ Me Smalls. There were 60 songs. ELUCID was one of the only rappers I sent it to, specifically because it wasn’t “supposed” to be for raps. I had an ex who stomped out my computer and hard drives one day, including the original files for this project. All except for that one.

SP: “Are we sure there’s no grand agenda?” And ELUCID took my stems and arranged it how he heard it. It was meant to loop in on itself, like the other songs on that project. It was originally named “Kelvin Spacey,” and I’m sure I’m misremembering but I wanna say “Dettol” was originally named “Kelvin Duckworth,” if only to verify Zilla Rocca’s guess that I was the producer in question that had sent woods a beat named after his favorite Portland Trailblazer.

CP: So you’re saying, like any good friend, ELUCID jacked that beat?

SP: Oh, I remember him asking to rap on it, perhaps for nothing in particular at the time. But who am I to deny the goat? And it’s obvious to me that this is how it was supposed to go; ain’t nothing coincidental or accidental, dunn.

ELUCID: The making of “No Grand Agenda” was a cornerstone for a foundational era of style for me. I felt like I made a song that seamlessly weaved both verse and chorus in a way that felt absolutely hypnotic. It was a new belt for me, this sense of control. Small Pro was one of the first producers to trust me enough to send his beat stems. During this period is where I began producing more of my own music, so I also wanted to arrange the song how I heard it. Thankfully, Jamil dug it.

CP: What do you like about ELUCID’s rapping?

SP: Some of it is the voice. Some of it is the things that he’s saying. But mostly, my favorite rappers all share this in common: they can get busy on any style of beat, any tempo, any sound, any Small Pro time puzzle. I was listening back to his older stuff a little while ago and heard him doing whole specific styles on one song, and never doing it again. The versace, versace flow, in particular. It felt like he was bored at the time and peered ahead three years to see how everyone was rapping, came back, did it, and that was that.

ELUCID: [Working with Small Pro] is a special thing. Something that I’m still exploring. I think a Small Pro x ELUCID tape would be ill. Knowing his attention and care in the translation of my bars and flows is the type of partnership real MCs aspire to. It just hasn’t happened yet!

SP: He and woods both have had a way of inspiring me through specific lines. “Go where the drummer commanded me,” for example. It’s me. I’m the drummer. And woods, a few songs before “Dettol” says, “Beg producers to take out the drums,” which he said was meant to be a joke, but I took it literally and started making beats that could exist with or without drums equally.

All of my Backwoodz-related songs are credited as “Small Pro,” not “Small Professor.” I was on shrooms the week after my birthday earlier this year when I realized those are now different entities. Especially because woods was once like, “Wait, you did ‘No Grand Agenda’?” And I was like, “I did….I think? No, that was Small Pro.”

The last full project I—or I—did before moving back to Philly was a reimagining of A Jawn Supreme 1-3 from the Small Pro remix perspective. It was my—or my—first time remixing my own music, hearing things without the drums I put on them originally. It was an enlightening time. I hear voices at the fortress.

CP: I think it’s rare for a producer to be so attentive to what the MCs are saying, let alone to look at what they’re saying as guideposts. The idea of a differentiation between “Small Pro” and “Small Professor” is interesting. Where does the Small Pro path ultimately lead? Into this larger Armand Hammer universe?

SP: I feel like when I started out making beats my natural inclination has been to make things as busy as possible. Small Pro is like, What if I take away instead of adding? Or, How can I still have a million things going on in the track but it sounds bare or like, not done? “My girl say this beat sound unfinished, / I said, ‘Yeah, that’s where my voice go.’”

SP: (Not sure when I passed out. I knew the crash was inevitable.)

[December 24, 2023 | 6:47 PM]

SP: To your point about it leading to the AH-verse, that may be part of it too. They’ve both inspired me as rappers but also their production decisions and choices—ELUCID quite literally, as his production has always confounded me, but woods too. Two producers who have had just as much an influence on me as anybody I worshiped when first starting out are August Fanon and Messiah Musik—modern legends. Fanon can make beats for literally anyone. But Messiah’s natural style is one that both Hammers can sound great on from the get-go, whereas I have to consciously get myself into that mode. They also both sometimes do odd and potentially challenging things regarding time in their beats, as I do, but in their own way.

CP: Do I remember seeing you mention somewhere that you still use Fruity Loops and Cool Edit?

SP: Yup. I wanna say since 2008. Well, technically since 2003. But I’ve been using the same versions of those two programs for a minute now. Still using Windows XP, too. It’s comforting to me. And ridiculous. Like Rasheed Wallace faithfully wearing Air Force 1s his whole playing career.

CP: I love that. Some real “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” ethos. Any rules for yourself when it comes to sampling? Strictly vinyl or are you irreligious when it comes to source format?

SP: 98% of my beats are made from mp3s. The remaining fraction is YouTube or some other source. Haven’t used vinyl for sampling purposes in many years but ironically try to make my beats sound like vinyl. As far as rules, everything I thought was law were things I later learned the musicians I look(ed) up to sneered at.

CP: Ain’t that the truth. Very little is sacred when it comes to process, I find. That’s a lot of ego. What efforts do you make to have the beats “sound” like vinyl?

SP: On “Dettol” is my go-to record crackle sample. That’s also in 98% of my beats, and something I specifically remember was like, corny or something, but—ah, here it is: Slum Village reference #3 to fulfill the rule—on “Hold Tight” Dilla uses a needle pop as a snare bolster as well as the accompanying static. It’s there for added depth and texture but also can act as a counter-rhythm to your percussion. Reality features an inherent level of static in the form of cosmic microwave background radiation around us at all times. Art imitates life.

[December 25th, 2023 | 11:41 AM]

CP: “No Christmas this Christmas…”

CP: I always like to think of the story—apocryphal or not—of Evil Dee using bacon grease hissing on the stove for extra crackle.

SP: The turntable hum is freakable too. Makes for a great bass sound but also something you can feel.

CP: Do you ever have acid trips accidentally interfere with other obligations? I imagine you’re always planning for a blocked out number of hours. But best laid plans…

SP: There’s a recovery period the next day, so that can be interesting to navigate. But yeah, I usually am in my room avoiding external interactions on whatever kind of trip it is. In my experience with acid, you gain more control over your “self,” and shrooms is the opposite, where your sense of self and awareness is reduced. Go home, brain—you’re drunk.

CP: The loss of control is something I just can’t handle. Have you ever found yourself in a situation on shrooms where you emerge later, like, “Damn, that was a bad look”?

SP: Yeah. My first time taking an 8th to the face (I ate it on a burger) after getting to and past the point of looking in a mirror and not recognizing my face for a sec. I later came upstairs and my BM had made some, like, lasagna? And it was so good that I’m just there demolishing it over the stove—like I was Garfield. Her friend walked in the kitchen at that moment and I should have been mortified, but in that moment there was only delicious lasagna.

CP: Real Gs move in silence like lasagna…

CP: Listening to Terror Management on Xmas morning. Is “Marlow” your beat/song with the most synchronicity between you and the rapper?

SP: It’s up there. That album is interesting to me because of the repeating motif of having two beats from different producers for one song—always thought that was cool. The intro on that beat had the spoken part added after the fact, so it did really feel like some good ole fashioned teamwork.

CP: And specifically the serendipity of you naming the beat for your late father, correct? I imagine an artist won’t typically name their song after the name of the beat. Was there a reason you named that beat, out of so many, after your father?

SP: Originally it was a play off of the artist’s name I sampled (a lot of my song titles are born this way), but I can also say it makes me think of my father’s dark side. He was one of the happiest, generally cheerful people I’ve ever known, but I’ve seen him go into green belt mode when pushed too far—only a few times, but it was like, Oh snap.

woods closed his set with “Marlow” at a Philly show last year shortly after my pops passed, and it’s one of the nicest gestures anyone has done for me. I was at the bar crying like a newborn fucking baby, god.

billy woods: That was a special moment for me, too. I really love that song. Pro and I have not worked that much together, but a lot of what we have done is really dope. He has produced a handful of Armand Hammer songs but they all hit, in my opinion. But [“Marlow”] is a song I really love and has come in and out of my setlist, but always makes it back in. The fact that it happened at that moment, and that it had that extra meaning for him was an honor for me.

SP: That album [Terror Management] as a whole has always intrigued me because of the repeating motif of two producers each having a beat on one track (this happens on some Armand Hammer albums too, now that I think about it, but it’s a different effect when it’s two MCs on each beat instead of one).

CP: Lots of doubles—the name, the sides of your father, “Small Pro” versus “Small Professor,” two beats, etc. Double-consciousness, perhaps. Not necessarily in a Du Bois sense; more so in the sense of realities.

SP: I’m all about man’s rugged duality.

CP: Did you and your father connect over music?

SP: Oh, absolutely. Our music rooms were down the hall from one another when I got started in college, and over the years he would start wandering in to hear what I was working on. Eventually, as he started transitioning into working in DAWs, he would ask for advice with things he knew I would be able to help with. He loved showing me whatever he was working on, and I knew he valued my opinion as one of the people responsible for a lot of my music edumacation in the first place.

[December 26, 2023 | 12:26 AM]

CP: Would you reciprocate and show him what you were working on? Did he look upon hip-hop favorably?

SP: He was from probably the last generation that didn’t grow up with hip-hop, and by and large it was probably offensive to him on two fronts: as a pretty religious dude the language and subject matter was too much, and musically all he heard were the loops, repetition, and sounds he loved and recognized being used all over again in an inferior, simple way. (I found a lot of the samples from Mobb Deep’s second album amongst his tape collection.) But over the years, as he saw how seriously I took it—as well as being impressed as a person who played 7-8 instruments by what I was able to do with two computer programs and mp3s—he was able to appreciate it as an artform (at least, the production side) even if it wasn’t quite his thing.

He’s also half the reason I’ve always been enamored with non-common time signatures, a key feature in a lot of the music he dug—that Weather Report, Yellowjackets, Return to Forever, Herbie Hancock, Steely Dan, late ’70s, early ’80s chamber. My mother was more into “traditional” jazz and classical. They shared gospel personally—and professionally—as working church musicians. On my first album, there’s a 5/4 beat that I remember excitedly showing him because it took me forever to get the chops lined up in an un-choppy fashion, and there’s a switch on there between drum pattern grooves much like what you would find on a jazz fusion-type song. I felt like if I could impress him, I must be doing something right. The last time we hung out before the cancer did him in, he was showing me how far he had gotten learning how to play drums, and I got on the sticks and tried to replay the patterns on some of my beats (emphasis on tried). The “trouble don’t last” jawn, in particular, to which he responded by telling me I was already a drummer. Memories live.

The times I saw his email pop up in my Bandcamp purchase notifications, I figured it was just a proud dad supporting his firstborn…nah, he was actually listening. His favorite project was the album I did along with my group Them That Do, which was my version of Madlib’s Shades of Blue on the beat tip. Besides digging the actual sound (updated jazz rap), I think he was most taken by the fact that he couldn’t quite tell what was sampled from where and that I had made all these sound from sometimes vastly different records seem like they were supposed to be together, and the beats made sense from the perspective of a person who understood music theory.

CP: “I said, Well Daddy, don’t you know that things go in cycles.” Beautiful that you guys got to share those moments.

SP: (I even said the part about two beats on Terror Management twice.)

SP: My brother (the actual drummer of the family) just sent me “Spain” by Chick Corea, one of our dad’s favorites. Speaking of my brother—who I credit with teaching me how to program drums and how to count bars and all that—one time we were on our way to church with my dad, and Steely Dan’s “Black Cow” was on. Pops started to try to explain the lyrics, what a “black cow” was, why they were very high…all that.

So a few years back I was proud to send [my father] “Gas Drawls” from Operation Doomsday because this story has always cracked me up, but also that’s a great-ass sample chop (and one that he appreciated, as opposed to the time my broski and I were buggin’ out over the beat for Jay-Z’s “Kingdom Come” and he was like, Is nobody doing anything original anymore?).

[December 28, 2023 | 12:56 AM]

CP: You should’ve sent him Lord Tariq and Peter Gunz after “Gas Drawls” and been like, “See.” As a drummer, does your brother fall more in line with your musical tastes or your father’s?

SP: I’d definitely say my brother has a much more diverse and varied musical vocabulary/understanding/tastes than I. We both grew up hearing, and then eventually listening, to rap. Twenty-three to twenty-four years ago when the neo-soul era was beginning, we were smack-dab in the middle of it, in the literal eye of the storm. Things Fall Apart, Like Water For Chocolate, Black on Both Sides, Reflection Eternal were just coming out. Musiq Soulchild was on the radio. Voodoo (which I didn’t get into until much later when I listened to it riding through Zanesville, Ohio countryside in 2007 [it’s still “Brown Sugar” over everything, though]) was everywhere. But there was also his actual school music education from primary to college, as well as listening to people from all instinctive travels and paths of rhythm, so he knows it all—or because he’d be like, “Shiiii, no I don’t!—a bit about a bit.”

I keep saying “my brother” when I have two. My younger bro is the drummer but my older brother’s tape collection was everything in high school (actually, even before that I was stealing his It Was Written tape when I was in seventh grade to play on the way to school). Being eleven years older, he was in high school when the great 90s east coast revolution was happening, and his Nike shoebox archives reflected the sounds of the time. As far as his tastes go, if DMX was still with us and dropped an album today, he’d get it without a second thought.

[December 28, 2023 | 11:10 PM]

CP: Sorry to trail off. Got a bit busy on my side. Would you be down to hit me with a handful of your most interesting beat names at the moment?

CP: This is art.

SP: The “Will Smith as…” series is new. They all slap.

[Small Professor posts a since-deleted message on X quoting Werner Herzog talking about stealing a 35mm camera from a Munich film school. The quote: “I don’t consider it theft. It was just a necessity. I had some sort of natural right to this tool. If you need air to breathe, and you are locked in a room, you have to take a chisel and hammer and break down a wall. It is your absolute right.”]

CP: I love this. “A natural right” to make something. Like a compulsion within. (I also love Herzog, so I appreciate the anecdote.) Do you remember where you first acquired that cracked Fruity Loops (and maybe Cool Edit, too)? If I think back, I probably had a friend hand me a disk, a CD-RW, back in like 1999 or something. God knows what sketchy site he downloaded them from.

SP: In college when I first started doing beats, I torrented everything—movies, programs, especially music—with nary a second thought. It’s a good way to give your computer a bad cold, which I did on several occasions. And I too appreciate Herzog because I love no myth more than my own as well.

CP: Have you got any myths on par with rescuing celebrities from wrecked cars or nonchalantly brushing off bullets to your abdomen?

SP: No, but I can say I did albums with both Sean Price and MC Paul Barman.

CP: Indisputable. I think this is an appropriate spot to (un)officially close this. Anything else you want to talk about?

SP: Gotta give a shout-out to the Jungle Brothers for making Crazy Wisdom Masters in 1991. PremRock told me legend was that they made it on shrooms and when I listened to it on acid I was like, Oh, yeah, y’all were high as fuck when this was made. I could tell not only because the music itself is bugged out but even the pace of the record is accelerated. They had some songs on there that were a minute-and-thirty-seconds but so much was going on , sometimes different things in either stereo channel that it gives off the effect of being on a trip and you’re noticing—for what feels like the first time again—that everything is happening everywhere at once.

Listen to Crazy Wisdom Masters when you get a chance. It’s a personal classic that I’ve listened to at least fourteen times this month. Warner Brothers did them dirty (this was their M.O. apparently—this was the same time period they were beefing with Prince) by delaying the entire record two years and having them clean up the tracks, and disrupting the carefully curated listening experience by taking tracks away and rearranging the entire thing. J Beez wit the Remedy, the resulting hodgepodge, would drop on my birthday in 1993, and when I first heard it, I was like, Hmm, something’s awry here, and that’s how I found out about Crazy Wisdom Masters.

CP: I think I downloaded it or thought about downloading it recently when people started talking about it again. Is there a “definitive” version to look for? I know Bill Laswell had uploaded a version to his Bandcamp page a while back.

SP: That’s a good question. The version I found that concludes with “For the Headz At Company Z” is the album as the god(s) intended.

Just as Small Pro is distinguished from “Small Professor”, “Crazy Wisdom Masters” is a distinct personality from “Jungle Brothers.” Small Pro is a definitive, lost Laswell version—a ra ra kid who catches wreck with randomness. He doesn’t channel, but grooves, as the most psychoactive Afrika Baby Bam and Mike G doppelgänger. We end up doubled-over; “dope-sick,” if you will. You sleep on it, then you wake up in the morning and dwells on it, as Small Pro casts his spells on it. (It’s as Simple As That.) SP’s Comin’ Through, and when he does, multiple realities accelerate as he explores radical possibilities. He’s chewing on the chemicals and raising up the levels on the decibels. We—his audience of lab assistants, his dilated pupils [and peoples]—“experience the ultimate, the infinite.”

Images:

Most images are from the Vol. 1, No. 10 October issue of the San Francisco Oracle or unknown issues of the Chicago Seed | Small Professor “Sith Lord” photo courtesy of Matthew Shaver for WXPN | The Grateful Dead tapers section photo, Unknown | Screenshots by Small Professor | Apache tape photo by Caltrops Press | Gilbert Shelton, “The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers,” East Village Other (detail) | “Deadhead” poem by Joseph Rathgeber

#small professor #backwoodz studioz #underground hip hop #elucid #billy woods #zines #armand hammer #wrecking crew #zilla rocca #premrock #curly castro #acid trip

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