#the bad thing about having a favorite artist with a small catalogue of music is that THERES NOT ENOUGH MUSIC ITS NOT ENOUGH

[josecariohca]

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[shallow-seas-we-sail]

“Okay!” Alex bellows and claps her hands together, “Next game! You gotta partner up!”

Nia scoots in close around the coffee table and pushes into Brainy’s side, while Kelly settles down on the arm of the chair that Alex is sitting in and cards a hand through her hair.

“I’m with Lena!” Sam claims across the room from the kitchen and runs over with two precariously balanced glasses of wine in one hand, plopping down next to Lena on the couch.

Kara, hunched over in front of the fridge, stands up quickly and lets out an indignant scoff, “That’s not fair! Lena is my partner by default. House rules.” Kara closes the door and jams her finger into the scoreboard stuck the front of the fridge. “See!”

“She’s my best friend!” Kara and Sam say in unison, and Alex swears she can see her sister’s eyes pulse with a burst of hot anger and sinks down into her chair a little further.

“I am the property of no man.” Lena counters, which causes an elbow to jab her in the side from a smirking Sam.

“Ain’t that the truth,” Sam says conspiratorially under her breath, and Lena snorts into her wine glass as she brings it to her lips.

Kara’s brow crinkles as she makes her way over to group and takes a spot on the floor across from the couch, “Fine, I guess I’m the game master.”

Kelly glances down at Alex, who gives a small grimace as she reaches into her pocket and removes her phone, “Uh, okay. So I-..”

“Not going as planned?” Kelly dips her head and whispers into her girlfriend's ear.

“Nope,” Alex reponds under her breath with a pop.

Nia clears her throat and gives Alex a pointed look from across the room and motioning with her eyes discreetly towards the couch.

Alex opens her mouth to speak, but realizes she is taking too long and juts her hand with her phone out to Kara, “You gotta read the questions and keep score.”

Kara eyes her sister suspiciously and she plucks the phone from her hand. She scrolls through the screen for a few seconds before glancing up and looking around the room.

“Really?” Kara deadpans.

Alex tries her best to hide her pained expression, so she picks up her beer bottle and presses it to her lips and tilts her head back with an emphatic thumbs up.

This is going to be a disaster.

Kara rolls her eyes and places the phone down on the table and picks up a pen and paper to keep score, “Okay, so, you gotta guess the answers based on what you know about your partner.”

“Like the Newlywed game?” Nia asks, perking up.

Brainy tilts his head, taking in his girlfriends information, “Yes. Exactly like the Newlywed game, we discussed this earli-.. OOF! ” He is effectively silenced by a sharp elbow in his side. Brainy clears his throat and forces a smile, “continue” he whines through a breath and raises his hand weakly, relinquishing the floor back to Kara.

“What is the Newlywed game?” Lena asks, arching a quizzical eyebrow.

Sam waves her off, “Don’t mind her. She has never had a stay-home-from-school-sick day and watched daytime tv.”

Lena scoffs and presses hand to her chest in offense, “I would never watch daytime tv.”

Sam turns her hands over in a so-there gesture, “See.”

Kara smiles softly, because of course Lena doesn’t watch daytime tv. Though, she does remember the one time she had to convince a hungover and couch-bound Lena not to order Lifelock  just because “Jane Rizzoli said so.” Lena had relented only after Kara made her a mimosa to nurse her headache and sang “Take my identity as a Luthor, take all my money too, for I can’t help falling in lo-..” until Lena’s bright laughter had cut her off and filled the room.

“Hey,” Alex leans forward, snapping her fingers in front of her sister's face, “ground control to Major dork. Let’s go!”

Kara shakes her head, loosening the memory from her thoughts, but a floating warmth remains in the center of her chest. She adjusts her glasses and smiles in Lena’s direction, who has a single finger pressed against her lips and a curious look.

“Wha-.. oh, yeah, right. So, I ask a question, and both of you come up with an answer. If the answers match, you get a point.”

Everyone nods agreeably, and Kara lifts her glass, and takes a long pull of the amber, alien liquid inside, “First question, what is your partner’s favorite movie?”

Alex and Kelly raise their hands in unison, “Terminator 2!”

Alex pumps her fist and gives her girlfriend a high-five, “Yes! And yours is....” Alex snaps her fingers, hoping that perhaps it will jumpstart her brain, “honestly, anything black and white. She’s a sucker for classics.”

Kelly nods and presses a quick kiss to the crown of Alex’s head.

Brainy’s favorite is ‘any movie with Keanu Reeves’, which causes a ten minute reprieve of the game as he launches into nearly a film-thesis-length speech about the transgender allegory of The Matrix until Nia clasps her hand over his mouth.

“Babe, I love that you know that, but just answer the question.” she says.

“Ah, yes. Nia Nal’s favorite movie is the Harry Potter series. She is a Gryffindor and her Patronus is a dapple grey stallion.”

Kara tallies two points each under their score column, and taps her pen against the table with growing impatience as Sam stares intently at Lena.

“God, you had the VHS box set in college. I can picture it on your shelf.. fuck, I can’t remember it!” Sam throws her hands up in frustration.

“Titanic.” Kara says under her breath to no one, and averts her gaze down the point sheet in front her, because how could Sam not know that? Best friend, her alien ass.

“Yours was that obscure French one, Jeux d’enfant,” Lena laughs, “God, how many times did you watch that? I swear you just wanted to impress that French exchange girl. What was her name?”

Sam lets go of a breath, “Esmée.” she says, dreamily, “I could be living in the French countryside right now as a vineyard wife.”

Lena gives Sam a playful swat against the arm, “What’s yours, Kara?” Sam asks between playful attacks and fits of laughter from her friend.

“Working Girl,” Kara and Lena say in unison, and Lena’s laughter dies down, “she always cries at the end.” she says, punctuating with a wink at Kara.

“All of the hair in that movie is just so horrifically 80’s. It would make anyone cry.” Kara counters as she marks down a one under Lena and Sam score column.

The game continues, and Alex and Kelly are so finely tuned that Kara reminds herself to tell her sister to wife Kelly quickly, because she has already started a mental catalogue of what she is going to need for their wedding.

“Favorite TV show?”

“Game of Thrones!”, “Greys Anatomy!”

“Worst handwriting?”

“Alex. She writes like she finished medical school.”

Brainy and Nia seem to find a rhythm, even if Brainy keeps going on tangents about each of his answers.

“Her favorite musical artist is Taylor Swift, but not 1989 era Taylor. She considers that album too popsugar polished, especially since it is widely believed that she played up her so-called ‘beef’ with fellow singer, Katy Perry.”

Kara’s scoring has started on a sideways slant, because every time she ends up on Sam and Lena, she finds herself drinking more and tempering down her annoyance at Sam who can’t seem answer one fucking question right.

Kara instead has started a running tally in the corner of the score sheet, checking off each answer as she mentally screams.

Lena’s favorite junk food? Big belly burger. Check . Silliest pet peeve? Lena hates fliers and leaflets because “They are a waste of our time and trees, Kara. Honestly, if one more follower of Rao tries to shove one in my hand, I’m going to shove a redwood tree up his ass.” Check.

Lena’s favorite color is purple. Check. Lena hates salmon. Check. Lena doesn’t like tequila, but if she is buzzed enough will take a shot of it, but only with lick of salt and a lime as a chaser. Check. Lena hates her brother. Triple Check. Lena takes her coffee black. Check. And Lena always looks like she stepped out of a noir film with a dark shade of red on her lips that Kara is sure, ‘so sure’, would not smudge if she was kissed. Check (tbd).

Kara is throwing her head back, finishing off the liquid in her glass, burning and hot in the back of her throat when Sam answers ‘Maleficent’ for what Disney character Lena would be.

“Oh my god,” Kara shakes her head, “how are you so bad at this?”

Sam seems taken aback and looks between Lena and Kara, “Excuse me?”

“This.” Kara gestures towards Lena and then drunk and loose over the scribbled score sheet in front of her, “You haven’t gotten one answer right. Lena is carrying your team. You,” Kara sits up straight, trying to center herself but sways as she points an accusatory finger in Sam’s direction, “suck.”

Sam looks around the room. Kelly and Nia are both suddenly very interested in their phones, while Alex’s eyes have grown wide, wondering briefly if her sister is going to rear up off the floor and throttle their friend. Lena is staring at Kara with a bewildered look from over the rim of her wine glass while Brainy’s searching eyes move across the room from each person, trying to form the proper reaction to this level of intensiveness.

“Relax, Danvers. It’s just a game.” Sam scoffs as she leans forward to pick up her wine glass from the table.

“No!” Kara shouts a little too loudly, and brings her hand down on the table, splintering a corner and nearly rattling the drinks off of it, “No.”

“Kara,” Kelly leans forward, and with her best therapist voice, tries to defuse the situation, “perhaps we should just take a break from the game, and get some wate-..”

“No. Anyone with eyes knows that Lena is Moana. She would cross oceans and fight Gods and do whatever it took to do the right thing.” Kara says resolutely towards Kelly, and then turns back to Sam, “Lena is Moana. She is a Queen and she is good, and she isn’t fucking ‘Maleficent’!” Kara punctuates with air quotes.

Sam’s eyes grow wide, and she settles a steely glare on Kara, “Fine. You wanna do this?”

“You’re damn right I do.” Kara bites back, pushing her sleeves up her arms, “Lets go.”

“Well, fuck me I guess.” Kelly mutters under her breath as she sits back, defeated. Alex cautiously leans forward, and takes her phone from in front of her sister.

Brainy narrows his eyes and glances between Kara and Sam, “Am I to believe they are fighting for Lena’s honor?”

Nia waves a hand frantically in Brainy's face, “Just.. shush.” she says squeezing her eyes shut, “Shhh.”

Sam finishes the last of the wine in her glass, and juts out her arm in Lena’s direction, a silent demand for a refill. Lena rears back and plucks the wine glass out of her friends hand at the stem, “Oh kay, then.” and cautiously moves from the couch towards the kitchen.

Kara and Sam’s eyes never leave the others as Lena scoots past.

Alex clears her throat and lets a silent prayer float up into the rafters of her sisters loft that Kara has home insurance in the event Sam ends up dangling over the fire escape.

“Describe your partner in one word.” Alex says, and glances up from her phone.

“Bitch.”

“Good.”

Kara nearly digs her fingers into the hardwood floor beneath her.

“How are we gonna keep score?” Nia whispers over the table to Alex.

Alex grits her teeth at the realization and shoots the woman in the kitchen a sympathetic look, mouthing “I’m sorry.”

“Oh, no.” Lena shakes her head, “No.” she says, pointedly.

Brainy perks up, “So Lena must determine the answer, and then deem one worthy of her affections.”

Nia smacks him in the chest.

A pair of bright blue and honeyed eyes look towards Lena, who is gaping in the kitchen with one quaking hand holding a scotch tumbler and a wine bottle in the other.

“You must decree it so, Lena. Who gets the point?” Brainy bellows enthusiastically, and then flips a single kernel of popcorn into his mouth with a smile.

“Where the hell did you get popcorn?” Nia asks, dumbfounded.

“Inconsequential!” Brainy declares, shoveling a fistful into his mouth.

Lena swallows hard, and dips her head towards the living room, “Kara.”

“HA!” Kara barks, and raises her hand, which is promptly high-fived by Brainy.

Sam cranes her neck side to side and shakes out her arms, “Again.”

Alex glances up at Kelly, “Is this how I die?”

Kelly gives a noncommittal shrug, and leans over her girlfriend's shoulder, scrolling through the questions on her phone, “What is your partner’s worst habit?”

“Biting her nails when she is nervous.” Sam says, glancing at Lena as she sits, who promptly pulls her thumb away from her mouth.

“Running on three hours of sleep and thinking of a large, black coffee as a meal.” Kara counters.

All eyes land on Lena, leaving her drumming heart echoing in her ears and the steady crunchcrunchcrunch of popcorn filling the room, “Nails. It is horribly unsanitary.” she says with a wince.

Kara curses in Kryptonian under her breath, and Sam sits back on the couch, arms crossed with a smug smile plastered across her face.

Nia raises up on her knees, and reaches across the table, quickly snatching the phone from Alex’s hand, “My turn!” she declares and scrolls for a few moments, “Ideal vacation?”

“Beach, getting her cute, pale ass burnt in the sun with a margarita in her hand.” Sam waggles her eyebrows, and nudges Lena with her elbow.

Lena sways and keeps her eyes set on a single thing; the door, her only escape from this current hell on earth.

“Swiss alps. Skiing and just relaxing in the lodge,” Kara answers with a smile that shifts with a distant look, “bundled in some cozy sweater, hands curled around a cup of Irish coffee. She’d probably read a book and enjoy the quiet of the falling snow. She’d doze off on the couch by the fire, and she’d look so at peace and warm that you wouldn’t want to move her, but you know she’d complain in the morning about the knots in her neck, an-..”

“Okay,” Sam raises her hand, “we get it. You’ve put a lot of thought into this.”

Lena turns her head and looks at Kara, who gives her a soft smile, one that she returns.

“Oh, you gotta give Kara that one.” Kelly says, propping her head up in her hand, nearly swooning.

Alex takes in her girlfriend’s dreamy reaction and looks around cluelessly, “I’ve lost her.”

“Whatever,” Sam rolls her eyes, “you’ve clearly never seen her in a bikini.”

“Oh, snap!” Brainy bounces in his spot.

Nia places a calming hand on his shoulder, “Not the right time, babe.”

“Yeah,” Lena concedes with a sheepish smile that she masks behind the tumbler at her lips, “you get that one.”

Kara straightens and gives a quick nod and bright smile towards Lena, who gives a subtle wink.

Brainy flips up fingers on his hand, “So, that makes two for Kara and one for Sam. At what score does Lena determine the winner?”

“Best of five?” Nia offers, and Lena tips her glass towards her friend, “Five is good.”

Nia hands the phone back to Alex, who smiles as she lands on the next question, “Who is your partner's hero?”

Lena nearly spit-takes her scotch, but instead dribbles it down her chin and shirt.

“Well, it sure as hell wasn't Reign, that’s for sure.” Sam mutters under her breath. Lena gives her friend a sympathetic smile, and a reassuring pat on the shoulder.

“Oh, I’ve got this,” Kara says, pushing up on her knees so she is nearly level with Lena on the couch. She clears her throat, and pulls back her hair into a tight ponytail, “Supergirl may have saved me, but Kara Danvers,” she gives a sly smirk, donning her best Lena impression, “you are my hero.”

Lena pulls her bottom lip between her teeth and forces a tight smile, “Oh, so you can do me now? You think you’re so clever.”

“Oh my god,” Sam breaths out under breath, and looks over to Alex, “do they even hear themselves? Are they always this stupid?”

Alex closes her eyes and gives a pained nod, “ No, and always.”

Kara quirks an eyebrow and shuffles on her knees closer to the couch, “Am I wrong?” she asks, all the alcohol having burned out of her system. She is simply gloating for the sake of gloating at this point.

Plus she likes the flush that is creeping up Lena’s neck, and settling in her cheeks.

Nia leans over towards Brainy, “Now you can ‘ oh snap.’ ” she whispers.

Alex puts down her phone, “Sorry, Sam. It goes to Kara in the best of five.”

Brainy suddenly stiffens, “Wait,” he turns fully towards Nia, “this is not going according to our original plan.” he says, conspiratorially.

“Ya think?”

“Lena was supposed to partner with Kara, so that Kara would gradually be led into her feelings for Lena. Sam has co-opted this entire operation!” he hisses, “every scenario that I ran had Lena and Kara confessing their feelings to each other with 98.6% success rate, leading to their eventual coupling.”

“Does she always have that lovesick puppy thing going on with her face when she looks at you?” Sam says out of the side of her mouth.

“Samantha!” Lena admonishes.

“What?” Kara’s gaze shifts from Lena to the woman beside her, and a warm pulse flickers behind her eyes.

“Oh, chill with the theatrics. I already handed your ass to you once, I can do it again.” Sam says a little drunk and with far too much bravado.

A round ‘WOAH’s’ quickly moves throughout the loft. Kara is on her feet, along with Alex.

“I’m going to say it. Lena must know how Kara feels. Their future depends on it.” Brainy says resolutely, and stands, taking in a deep breath.

“Brainy, don’t!” Nia pleads, pulling on her boyfriend's arm, trying to reel in the control of a situation that has clearly lost it.

Kara takes a confrontational step forward and cocks her head to the side, “You need a flight back to Metropolis?” she says raising a fist, “Oh? You have a layover? Then I’ve got your connecting right here.” Kara mocks, raising her other fist.

“How about I dangle you over the fire escape and drop you off the side of a building again?” Sam sneers.

“HEY! WOAH!” Lena stands abruptly, positioning herself between the blonde and brunette, “We are all friends here. What is going on?!”

“She started it!” Sam and Kara say in unison, pointing an accusatory finger at the other.

“Lena! You must know that Kar-..” but Brainy is effectively silenced by his girlfriend’s hand clasping tightly around his mouth.

“Shut it.” Nia says curtly, and pulls Brainy back down the floor with her.

Sam closes her eyes for a moment and shakes her head, “It’s just a game. Why are you so bent out of shape about it?”

Kara scoffs, “Because you claim to be Lena’s best friend, and you don’t know a damn thing about her!”

“Defensive much?” Sam counters, and arches an eyebrow as her eyes flit to Lena, “I know more than you think.”

“Sam.” Alex warns, quietly.

Sam scoffs, and rolls her eyes, “Watch this.” she says, raising a finger, “I’m going to take care of this in less time than it took you dummies to set up this game night coup.”

An offended noise rumbles in the back of Alex’s throat, “Wh-..what are you talking about?”

Sam cranes her head back, “Ugh, you’re what? The director of a covert government agency? Kelly has a Phd in psychology, so she should really be better at this. Nia is...” Sam glances down to the woman on the floor.

“A journalist.” Nia finishes.

“A journalist, and Brainy is what, a twelfth generation Texas Instruments calculator?”

Brainy’s mouth falls open, and he lets out an offended, high pitched whine.

Sam turns her attention back to Kara, “You wanna be Lena’s partner?”

“More than anything.” Kara grinds out.

“Oh my god. Grant me the serenity.” Sam mumbles under her breath, “Lena, you have what? An IQ of 168?”

Lena straightens slightly, and tilts her head, “180, why?”

“Because you’re the dumbest genius I know.”

Lena’s mouth drops open, “I beg your pardon?”

“And Kara” Sam glances over Lena’s shoulder,  “I bet you learned calculus at seven.”

“Five.” Kara says, the anger draining from her tone.

“And you probably know all about quantum entanglement.” Sam says with a smirk, which causes Lena to turn around with a surprised look.

“You do?!” Lena asks, affronted.

“Pfft, of course she does. She just likes to hear all the words that come out of your dumb, pretty face.” Sam says with a tone that leaves no room for an argument, “Do you know how long I had to hear Lena go on and on about your stupid, cute, dumbfounded face after that conversation?”

“You think I’m stupid?” Kara asks dumbly.

“You think I’m pretty?” Lena says, giving a hopeful smile.

Sam cuts her eyes to Alex, who raises a hand, effectively cutting her off before she has the chance to ask the question, “Yes, it is like this all the time.”

Sam sighs, “Look, I’m going to ask you both rapid fire questions. You need to answer at the same time.”

“Why?” Lena asks, glancing over her shoulder.

“Because we ,” Sam gestures vaguely around the living room, “can no longer live like this. Just humor me, okay?”

“Fine.” Lena says sharply and turns her attention back to Kara, “Ready?”

Kara gives a resolute nod.

“Okay, great. Favorite color?” Sam starts.

“Navy blue!”

“Purple.”

Lena and Kara both smile at each other, and Kara gives her a playful poke in the shoulder, “Nice.”

“Favorite junk food?”

“Eliza’s chocolate pecan pie, but that is only rivaled by Noonan’s sticky buns.”

“Those little scones from Dublin.”

Lena’s eyes flutter shut for a moment, “God, those are good.”

Kara leans forward and winks, “I’ll make a trip soon.”

Brainy narrows his eyes, “This is actually quite clever. I did not take this into account during my scenarios.”

Kelly, Alex, and Nia nod in agreement and continue watching in rapt awe.

“Who is the little spoon?”

“Lena.”

“Me.”

Sam pinches her chin, and taps her index finger against her lips, studying the two women in front of her, “Anything clicking yet for you two?” When she is met with resounding silence, she continues, “No? Great. This isn’t painful to watch at all.”

“What song best describes the other?”

“Where You Are.”

“Glass Vase Cello Case”

Kelly throws up her hands, and Alex sinks down into her chair, nearly collapsing onto the floor, “Oh my god, from the movie?!” she groans.

“I didn’t know Kara was so emo.” Nia whispers towards Alex.

“We went to Warped Tour three years straight,” Alex says, pulling herself back up into her chair, “It was a whole phase.”

“It wasn’t a phase.” Kara says, keeping her gaze fixed on Lena and taking a tentative step forward.

Sam quirks an eyebrow and takes a step back, “Phew, it’s like a sexual tension black hole,” she glances over her shoulder at the audience behind her, “how do you guys deal with this?”

“You get used to it.” Nia says nonchalantly, throwing some popcorn into her mouth.

“Right, so last question,” Sam claps her hands together and rubs them together,  “are you two in love with each other?”

The collective gasp nearly sucks the remaining air that Lena and Kara haven’t already burned up out of the room.

“Yes.”

“Undoubtedly.”

“Great!” Sam chirps, “My work here is done.”

There are a few beats of silence, and Lena blinks hard, breaking the moment, and bringing Kara back to reality along with her.

Kara’s hands shoot up and clasp over her mouth tightly, skewing her glasses, eyes wide behind the sideways frames

Lena lets out a bubble in incredulous laughter and shakes her head in disbelief, “Oh.”

“Ho-..how did you do that?” Alex asks.

“Sometimes you just gotta light a fire under their asses.” Sam chuckles, and smacks Lena firmly on the backside, the impact sending her forward and into Kara, who catches her with steady hands on her hips as Lena’s arms wrap around her neck

Brainy is the first to stand and offers his hand to Nia, assisting her to her feet, “This is our cue to leave.”

“Mhmm.” Alex hums in agreement, swatting Kelly against the leg, “Let's get out of here.”

Sam scoots past the two intertwined women and gives a sly wink as she passes, “This was a fuckin’ blast. You two have a great night.”

“Oh, they will. There is a 100% probability they will be engaging in a copious amount of lovemaking tonight.” Brainy says, gathering his and Nia’s jackets from the coat rack by the door.

Alex’s face scrunches up, “Ew. Copious?”

“Nice.” Sam says, opening the front door.

Brainy waves his hand towards nothing in particular as he steps into the hallway, “It will be an entire thing in the future. Any available surface will be a target for their insatiable sexual appetite: work desks, kitchen counters, the bathroom stall at Al’s, Alex’s bed.”

Alex turns on her heels in the threshold of the door, “My bed, Kara?!” she shouts as Kelly pulls her back, and leans around Alex, closing the door and muffling her girlfriend's curses.

“I-..I haven’t done anything yet?” Kara says confused, looking back at Lena, who is barely containing her laughter.

“What’s so funny?”

Lena loosens a hand from around Kara’s neck, and waves in between them, laughing “It’s just... have we always been that clueless?”

Kara snorts out her laughter, “I mean... I guess so?” she says with a growing, bright smile.

“Well,” Lena says quietly, bringing her hand up and removing Kara’s glasses, “I’m glad we figured it out.”

Kara hums her agreement, and kneads her fingertips firmly into Lena’s hips, and walks them around her lower back, pulling her in closer, “So now what? I heard something about copious lovemaking ” she says in her best Brainy impression.

Lena tosses the glasses behind her, somewhere forgotten on the couch, and wraps her arms around Kara’s neck, absently twirling soft, blonde hair around her fingers, “How about,” she presses a soft kiss to Kara’s cheek, who turns her head in an attempt to capture Lena’s lips, “you explain quantum entanglement to me.”

Kara drops her head to Lena’s shoulder, and sways in their embrace, groaning her displeasure into the fabric of her shirt before lifting her head and flipping her hair dramatically away from her face with a pout.

“Alexa, play Warped Tours greatest hits.”

[2paclegacynet]

2Pac, Mouse Man, Gerard Young, Darrin Keith Bastfield For Born Busy & East Side Crew

Pictured, from left 2Pac, middle row fifth from right, as a middle school student. Dana Smith aka Mouse Man, bottom left, and 2Pac with family friends. Born Busy is rap group formed in Baltimore with Tupac Shakur, Gerard Young, Darrin Keith Bastfield and Dana Smith aka Mouse Man. At age 13, Tupac moved to Baltimore from New York City in 1984 with his mother, Afeni, and younger sister, Sekyiwa. The family lived in the first-floor apartment of a brick row house at 3955 Greenmount Avenue in the small, North Baltimore neighborhood of Pen Lucy. Tupac went to Roland Park Middle School for the eighth grade. That year’s photo for Mrs. Gee’s class shows him in the second row, near the center. With close-cropped hair and dressed in a light-colored, short-sleeve shirt, he looks lanky, even scrawny, among his classmates. Still, it’s easy to spot him thanks to his thick black eyebrows and dark eyes. And then there’s the mouth. While the other kids sport tight-lipped smiles or teeth-baring “say cheese” grins, Tupac strikes an altogether different pose. Actually, he doesn’t appear posed at all. His mouth is open wide, and he seems engaged, not docile or mindlessly compliant. It looks like he might be talking to the photographer. Dana Smith sits in the front row, to Tupac’s left. Smith, nicknamed “Mouse Man,” forged a musical bond with Tupac and remembers the first time he spoke to him on the bus home from school. That day, in September 1984, the No. 8 bus was nearly full and Tupac took the only open seat, the seat beside Smith, who was itching to get home and listen to WEBB’s Rap Attack show at four o’clock.

“He kicked a rhyme to me, and I was like, ‘Whoa, this is crazy.’”

Smith, a talented beatboxer, asked the newcomer if he was into hip-hop and knew how to rap. “He kicked a rhyme to me, and I was like, ‘Whoa, this is crazy. It was really good.” He later learned the rhyme wasn’t original—it was actually lifted from a Kurtis Blow song Shakur knew from New York, which hadn’t made it to Baltimore yet. Their friendship blossomed, rooted in a shared love of hip-hop acts like Eric B & Rakim and Run DMC and an appreciation of different types of music. As Smith recounts the story, he walks around The Sound Garden, the now venerable Fells Point record store, and points out some of the nonrap music Shakur enjoyed. Kate Bush? “Yes, indeed,” says Smith. “‘Wuthering Heights’ was the song.” Sting? Yup. Steve Winwood? Yup. “Hey, we were also listening to Brian & O’Brien on B104, playing the hits all day long,” he says, referring to the then-popular top 40 radio program. Smith picks up a CD copy of Dire Straits’ Brothers in Arms. It, too, was a favorite, but not for hits like “Money for Nothing.” Smith starts singing lyrics from the title track that resonated: “Through these fields of destruction/Baptisms of fire.” The tune, sung by Brit Mark Knopfler, traces a protagonist who faces death and treasures his comrades’ loyalty—ground Shakur covered in songs he later wrote. When asked about this type of music’s appeal back in the day, Smith claims much of it was practical, a lesson in song craft: “For us, it was all about identifying transitions in songs and how smooth they were.” They would meet up every afternoon to write rhymes, after Smith finished his homework. Sometimes, they’d hang out at a rec center on Old York Road, but Shakur wasn’t into playing basketball or pingpong, because “he sucked at sports, all sports,” says Smith. Most often, the two of them simply composed raps, either sitting inside a plastic bubble on the playground behind Tupac's house—“the acoustics were so good in there,” recalls Smith—or hunkered down in Smith’s basement on nearby 41st Street. Smith’s house was lively, populated by an array of family members including grandparents, his mother, an aunt, and two uncles. Music was always playing. Smith was the youngest of his group of friends, a self-professed “good kid, the freshest kid on the block” who had all the latest fashionable clothes and sneakers, thanks to his uncles, who dealt drugs in the neighborhood. Tupac, on the other hand, came from poverty. His father wasn’t around; his mother had been arrested and charged with conspiracy to bomb New York City landmarks while a member of the Black Panther Party in 1969. A month after being acquitted of the charges, she gave birth to Shakur, on June 16, 1971. Afeni, who passed away in May and was the inspiration behind the song “Dear Mama,” struggled with substance abuse issues (“And even as a crack fiend, mama/You always was a black queen, mama”) and with supporting the family (“You just working with the scraps you was given/And mama made miracles every Thanksgiving”). Tupac wore hand-me-downs, including pants that were so big they had to be stapled. He slept in a small bedroom, while his mother and little sister slept in the dining room Afeni had converted into a bedroom. Smith says the Shakur house was “always dark, dim. They had lights and it was clean, but it was dark with not a lot of stuff in there.” Smith’s family and friends razzed him for befriending the raggedy newcomer. “This guy is cornball—everything about him is corny,” he recalls them saying. “Why are you hanging out with him?” The answer, says Smith, was simple: “We loved to rap.” Darrin Keith Bastfield, CEO of Born Busy Films and BecomeAPatron.com is currently working on developing projects in television and two upcoming theatrical film projects that he’s written and will debut direct such as ‘Shakurspeare’, inspired by Bastfield’s painting ‘Shakurspeare’ that the late Tupac Shakur posed for at age 16 is a romantic comedy/drama that’s centered around the controversial world of art, and ‘Born Busy’, a coming of age true story based on his memoir ‘Back in the Day: my life and times with Tupac Shakur’ published by Randomhouse/Ballantine in 2002 (Hardcopy) and Perseus/Da Capo Press in 2003 (Paperback). Bastfied is also a featured artist in the upcoming ‘Black Artists on Art’ Catalogues Volumes 3 and 4 published by Samella Lewis, renowned Art Historian/Artist/Art Collector. Darrin Keith Bastfield: Although rap was Tupac’s true love, the variety of music he listened to was amazing. This became clear to me one Saturday morning when he, Richard, and I sat around the living room of the apartment in our boxer shorts and undershirts talking about music.

Born Busy (the rap group we formed in Baltimore), with Gerard Young, Tupac Shakur, and Darrin Keith Bastfield  Richard was definitely a cool guy, who had a pleasant disposition and a free-flowing approach to life. His bedroom door was never closed, even when his girlfriend was in there with him. In the mornings I would see them lying on a single mattress on the floor (no box spring underneath), still asleep. I showed him respect, and he was always cool to me. No matter how much time I spent there at the apartment, he never gave me even the slightest hint of a bad vibe. We periodically had chill sessions when he was around (which wasn’t a whole lot). And when I wasn’t there, he and Tupac would bond.

A page from Back in the Day My Life and Times with Tupac Shakur shows photos of the author with Tupac and other friends. In this Saturday morning discussion, Tupac floated along with Richard easily, unmoved by any of his older roommates' detours in various directions that were completely unfamiliar to me. Despite Richard’s dramatically different background and social orientation, Tupac never once lost his footing, and comfortably expounded upon many of the different artists who came up over the course of the conversation which spanned the full spectrum. From LL Cool J to Peter Gabriel, and Sun Ra and Jimi Hendrix to Eric Clapton and Muddy Waters, Tupac had something meaningful to say. I tried to imagine where he had gotten this exposure, how he had become so familiar with all of the divergent artists, but was unsuccessful. The picture of him listening to much of this stuff in his mom’s apartment did not fit, nor could I see it occurring up in New York among his family or friends up there (whom I would later meet). In fact this is still a mystery to me. The best answer I have managed is that he absorbed it all in a few months of his residence at the apartment. There the large collections of the two older roommates (Richard and John’s brother) would have been available to him and played regularly in the apartment. It wasn’t just the variety of music to which Tupac listened that struck me, but the fact that he was genuinely interested in and knowledgeable about the music, and the various artists behind it. Richard played the role of DJ through the discussion, putting on a succession of different records that they would then discuss and critique after hearing only a few bars. I specifically remember Tupac talking about Tracy Chapman. He felt she was a musical genius. After quoting several lyrics from a favorite song of hers, he concluded, “That’s a true poet.”

Cover of 'Back in the Day: My Life and Times with Tupac Shakur' by Darrin Keith Bastfield. Tupac was definitely a sponge of amazing efficacy, particularly with information at all dealing with either of his two loves in life: rap and acting. As an actor, the ease with which Tupac remembered lines was incredible, and his knowledge of craft impressive. When I asked him one afternoon the type of actor he wished to be, his reply was immediate: “A Shakespearean actor.” He said this without emotion, from a windowsill at the fore of the apartment, not breaking his passive yet focused gaze outward. “A what?!” I replied, taken aback. And he repeated himself. “Why?! They don’t make any money.” I was thoroughly confused. The Tupac I knew was destined for far greater things than low budget productions in small playhouses. I envisioned him marching through the entertainment industry to some star-spangled movie or TV career, and untold millions. And I just assumed that his vision for himself was twice as grand as any I could conjure for him. His reply was disappointingly anticlimactic, and downright troubling. Dana Smith aka Mouse Man was Tupac’s friend during his teenage years in Baltimore. Together, they created rap groups East Side Crew & Born Busy. Which is where Tupac’s first recorded audio came from. At the young age of 14 years old, “Born Busy” created their first song “Babies Having Babies. Gerard (High School Friend): "First time I ever saw Tupac, he was in eighth grade. I seen this kid that had this shirt with the old school iron-on letters, MC NEW YORK. And he was rhyming. All these people was around him -- even back then. We was adversaries at first, but we formed a crew. Born Busy and shit, MC New York, DJ Plain Terror, Ace Rocker, and my man D on the beat box. Taking mad peoples out--the invincibles. Then we started writing little rhymes for Jada (Pinkett). Jada was rhyming a little bit too. Don''t Sleep." Songs recorded during 'Born Busy'' era: Babies Having Babies ft Dana Mouse Smith (Acapella) 1987 Produced by Born Busy Check It Out ft Dana Mouse Smith (Acapella) 1987 Produced by Born Busy Terror On The Tables ft Ace Rocker (Acapella) February 1988 Produced by Born Busy That's My Man Throwing Down ft Ace Rocker (Acapella) Februaury 1988 Produced by Born Busy I Saw Your Girl ft Ace Rocker (Acapella) March 1988 Produced by Born Busy Girls Be Tryin To Work A Nigga April 1988 Produced by Born Busy

Mouse Man & 2Pac Songs recorded featuring Mouse Man: N.I.G.G.A., Black Cotton, What goes On & Niggaz in the Pen

Mouse Man, Baba Bojang aka Slick D and MC New York aka 2Pac ''In the mid-1980s, rap wasn’t yet the commercial juggernaut it has become—it was gaining popularity, but hadn’t arrived in the mainstream. The Enoch Pratt Free Library, ahead of the curve, sponsored a youth rap contest in November 1985. Tupac spotted a flier with “Calling All Rappers!” across the top, urging anyone under the age of 18 to “write the best rap about the Pratt Library and be eligible for a cash prize.” All entrants had to submit a written copy in advance (“No Profanity Allowed”), and the finalists performed at the library at Pennsylvania and North avenues.

Mouse Man & MC New York aka 2Pac / 1985 Tupac and Mouse Man created “Library Rap,” which Shakur wrote out in longhand, in black pen, on a piece of lined notebook paper, and Tupac and Mouse Man’s group The East-Side Crew entered the contest. Deborah Taylor, then the Pratt’s young adult services coordinator, organized the contest and remembers Tupac and Mouse Man as “very polite boys. They were nice kids.” She drove them to the contest because they didn’t have transportation. Tupac and Mouse Man’s winning performance opened with Tupac declaring, “Yo’ Enoch Pratt, bust this!” and urging Baltimoreans to get library cards. They told kids to stay in school, learn to read, and “get all the credits that you need.” (Tupac's handwritten verses now reside in the Pratt’s Special Collections archive, alongside works by H.L. Mencken and Edgar Allan Poe.)

Mouse Man & MC New York aka 2Pac Taylor, who still works at the Pratt, recalls all the judges commenting on the same thing: The scrawny kid lit up the room with his rapping. “When Tupac performed,” she says, “you could not take your eyes off him.” Tupac and Mouse Man performed whenever and wherever they could: for the drug dealers working on Old York Road, opening for rap group Mantronix at the Cherry Hill rec center, and even at neighborhood funerals. They also wrote rhymes with titles like “Babies Havin’ Babies” and “Genocide Rap” that reflected the political and social awareness Shakur inherited from his mother.

Mouse Man, 2Pac & Mopreme “Tupac was always conscious of that shit,” says Mouse Man. “He schooled us on those sort of social justice issues, and hip-hop was the perfect outlet. It allowed us to say what was on our mind, and people listened.” sources: baltimoremagazine.com | biography.com Read the full article

[lovetheplayers]

Concert Review: A spectacular Taylor Swift at Mercedes-Benz Stadium

Last year, shortly after the release of the “Reputation” album, Taylor Swift posted an Instagram video with paper cutouts of the stage she had designed for her stadium tour. Seeing that stage brought to towering, flamethrowing, fireworking, gargantuan snake-hissing life inside Mercedes-Benz Stadium was truly a spectacular thing to behold. And that was just the main stage; there were two smaller ones at the opposite end of the field also put to dramatic use. Swift said she wanted to get as close to the fans as possible for the  “Reputation Stadium Tour” and she succeeded, making even the massive MBS seem, at times, intimate.

Before we get to Swift’s hit-filled headliner, let’s start with the night’s two opening acts: Brit electro-pop queen Charli XCX and Camila Cabello, the former member of Fifth Harmony whose ubiquitous “Havana” includes a shout-out to East Atlanta. Charli XCX surely deserves MVP for getting the still-arriving audience fired up with a set of danceable hits like “Boom Clap,” “Boys,” “I Don’t Care” and a sing-along solo version of “Fancy” without Iggy Azalea. Cabello infused her opening slot with some agile dance moves and nods to dancehall favorite Sean Paul and icon Prince. Our favorite: “Never Be the Same,” a proper power pop ballad that showcases Cabello’s soaring vocals.

But the night was really all about Taylor Swift and her wall of sound and vision. The entire stage – including the floor – was made up of seamless video monitors that projected not only closeups of Swift and her troupe of backing vocalists and dancers, but eye-popping, crystal clear imagery. It’s truly a wonder. When jets of flame – hot enough to be felt on the floor midfield – and fireworks burst from the set, we thought for sure MBS’s newly-completed roof would, literally, be toast. And what about the sound? Garth Brooks had an audio debacle when he performed an inaugural concert at MBS, but those troubles are long gone. Swift’s sound was impeccable – from the pounding opener “Ready For It?” to the tender “Delicate,” which she crooned drifting over the audience in a lighted gondola.

Another way Swift connects with fans on this tour is by giving every concert-goer a bracelet switched on just before the show and synchronized to pulse and glow in time with the music. MBS was a constant sea of moving light, which helped add the aforementioned intimacy. The lights also helped propel the narrative of the show, which tells of Swift earning her “bad reputation” after intrusive tabloid coverage of her love life and a nasty social media war with Kanye West and his wife Kim Kardashian, who described Swift as a snake. Swift laid claim to the reptile and has made it a centerpiece of the show. Snakes slither across the monitors, coil around microphones and tower over the stages. “Look What You Made Me Do” and boisterous show-closer “This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things” are a big middle finger to West/Kardashian wrapped in power pop sophistication. Swift went silent for a few years in a self-imposed exile where she obviously licked a few wounds, found real love and discovered a much more powerful version of herself.

After arriving at the second stage on her gondola, Swift was rejoined by Charli XCX and Camila Cabello for a rousing version of “Shake It Off” before she picked up her guitar for “This Love” from her previous album, “1989,” and an effective acoustic version of the moody “Dancing With Our Hands Tied” from the new one. Swift then walked through the audience shaking hands on her way to the other small stage for a trio of tunes including “Dress” and fan-favorite “Bad Blood,” which was sung as she crossed back to the main stage inside the chest of a floating python. Swift certainly knows how to work a theme.

What Swift gets so right is the pacing of the show, easily transitioning from the choreographed dance numbers to strapping on her guitar to sitting down at the piano for a moving medley of “Long Live” and “New Year’s Day.” While this tour primarily draws on the “Reputation” album, there were enough past hits like “Style,” “Blank Space” and “You Belong With Me” thrown in to keep the fans happy. Swift excels at deftly blending and reimagining her early catalogue so that it fits seamlessly with the new, edgier tunes. Massive tribal drums and crunchy power guitars also helped give much of the evening a true rock ‘n roll feel. Swift has come along way since her innocent, country music days. This is a woman in full command of her stage and the audience – many dressed in Swift’s various music video incarnations – were loud and proud in their adoration. She, in turn, was chatty, funny and had some nice things to say about Atlanta and the new stadium.

The bottom line is this (and other artists should take note): Swift has set the bar sky high for what a stadium tour can do. It’s no small feat to bring 60,000 people together and make them forget they are in a sports arena. The “Reputation Stadium Tour” is a fabulous spectacle from a top-notch showman, who also happens to be a damn good singer/songwriter. If you can pick up a ticket for Saturday night’s show, it’s worth every single penny.

Link

[ekakinomi-forgrownups]

Questioning Neverland--My Thoughts On the Michael Jackson Controversy And Idol Worship In General

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Warning!

The following post deals with a disturbing, but important social issue that I feel people should know about. If you’re not in the mood to read that, however, use that symbol as a reminder to back away from this post and read another one.

10 days ago, HBO released a documentary called “Leaving Neverland”, which out-lines the lives of two men, Wade Robson and James Safechuck, who explain they were sexually abused by pop mega-star Michael Jackson as young boys for years, in disturbing detail.

The documentary explains how Mr. Jackson used a friendly facade to “befriend” the then-super-fans Robson and Safechuck at different times, and used his super-star glamour to charm and enchant their mothers into letting their little boys stay with this man (who, in both cases, only knew him for a few hours) at his Neverland Ranch, a sort of indoor amusement park for kids…which served a much more devious purpose than just a fun getaway with their favorite pop idol.

Because Mr. Jackson’s favorite attraction at that “park” was, in fact, his bed–where he took the boys almost immediately after meeting them…so that he could start touching them inappropriately, on a regular basis, for years and years–as if these innocent children were just his play-things. And many witnesses report that there were a lot more where that came from–no girls, no men, no women–just little boys. He even went as far as to buy an engagement ring for James Safechuck! (*shudders!*) And to ensure that nobody knew about this “dirty little secret”, he lied to the boys’ parents, brain-washed the boys into thinking that this was how people “show love” to one another, and anybody who would dare tell on him would either get paid huge sums of money to be quiet or be threatened with anything from jail-time to death.

This documentary practically shook the world when it came out–America in particular. It seems everybody’s taking sides now– one side who absolutely won’t defend him after what he did to innocent children, and another side, mostly loyal followers and family members (the Jackson Estate tried to stop HBO from releasing this documentary at first) who say that these men are compulsive liars and/or just out for his money, and that Jackson was just an innocent, child-like weirdo.

And then you’ll find people like me, who don’t know the real truth, and are confused and completely conflicted as to whether it’s better to burn or hug their posters and record collections. Now, I’m not saying I’m a fan of his work myself–but I have experienced this dilemma many times over the course of my life. In a different way than most, however.

You see, it’s odd, but when an autistic person loves something (and that can be anything from a pop star to, say, a pretty color scheme on a fictional character), they feel this sense of true love for that particular thing, and like it could never do us wrong in any way. So when anything even remotely bad does happen (and that can be anything from the character changing designs and getting an ugly new color scheme to the pop star turning out to be an abusive scum-bag), it’s complete emotional turmoil, and we feel like the thing we love had just been ruined for us forever. And this happens for two reasons–1. Autistics tend to think of things only one way or the other, and it’s weird for us to think of something in a neutral way. And 2., we’re way too emotional. Neurotypical (“normal”) people tend to think that we’re not able to feel any complex emotions or empathy. The truth of it is, we actually feel too many–far more than we can express sometimes.

There was a point where I felt like everything I love has been “ruined” for me at some point. To name just a few examples: “The Amazing World Of Gumball” had its aesthetic changed to something I don’t like after its first season. “Pastel Yumi”, a magical girl anime I really liked when I watched the first episode, turned out to have loads of fan-service (meaning characters acting sexy to please the audience) of the 10-year old protagonist. The “My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic” toys only became better-built and actually accurate to the show after I stopped liking the show (I stopped watching it after Season 3). And speaking of My Little Pony, even though I think Nightmare Moon had the prettiest color scheme of any character on the show, I’d feel bad for liking her more than Princess Luna, because call me a goody-two-shoes, but I usually don’t root for evil characters. And, the same goes for the Once-Ler from “The Lorax”.

Since then I’ve changed a lot, and I’ve started finding ways to cope with most of these things and “un-ruin” them…but that’s because they’re all small things, mostly media of different types. I feel very differently on the matter of real people–which brings me back to empathy. While I’m all for #MeToo, it also devastated me. Not because a lot of my favorite creators and directors were being put out of jobs–but because they turned out to be horrible human beings that only think of women as helpless toys that they can stalk, grab and kiss whenever they want. I’ve never been in any of these situations (*knocks on wood*), but just hearing the fact that beautiful, innocent people are getting treated this badly just boils my blood and, at the same time, makes me want to cry for years.

Yet that still doesn’t stop me from watching the kids’ sit-coms created by Dan Schneider or the Disney/Pixar movies directed by John Lasseter, and it doesn’t stop me from wanting to check out The Loud House, which was created by Chris Savino.  All the men mentioned here were very talented, but all sexual predators themselves. Which brings me back to Michael Jackson.

He was a house-hold name when I was a kid, and my first knowledge of him came from both “The Simpsons” episode “Stark Raving Dad”, which featured his uncredited voice, and the Jackson 5 song “ABC”. But I got my first real exposure to his artistry and music during my Dad’s 50th birth-day party last October, where we all sat around, ate cake and watched music videos, and we played several of his hits in a row. I fell in love with the song “Remember The Time”. I also binge-watched that corny “Jackson 5ive” cartoon from the 70’s (which featured a huge portion of their early catalogue) the following November. So to be exposed to such amazing talent and good looks only to be compelled to forget about it all a few months later because he was a horrible person certainly boggled my mind a little. (Bad or confused reactions to sudden changes in plans are another casualty of autism which can be difficult to handle at times).

Suddenly, I begun to seriously ponder my own morals. If I’m a so-called “social justice warrior”, then how can I possibly still enjoy work made by awful people? If I care about minorities so much, then why do I still get joy out of art made by people who obviously don’t care about them? If I can’t bring myself to sympathize with people with such horrible attitudes, then why is it so hard to just ignore them completely? It’s going against my character, and it’s going against my own common sense. Yet if I push these things out of my life, my life will turn up-side-down. What’s a poor puzzled panuki like me to do?

Well, if there’s one up-side to this whole Michael Jackson thing, it’s that it gave the entire world a huge lesson in the dangers of idol worship. So naturally, everybody else is writing about the same types of issues I’m having with this, and how they choose to resolve them. I looked at some of the things they wrote for answers. After looking at the opinions of several different people, I finally found the one article that rang with me the most, and it was written by Constance Grady of Vox. It’s called “What do we do when the art we love was created by a monster?”. You can read it here, but to put it more shortly, this woman basically looked to 3 different literary professors for advice and reference, and they all explained different ways of separating art from artist through different types of methods, created by classical literature theorists. Ms. Grady presented each one in her article, and how it works, to show that there are many different ways of handling a situation like this. To quote Ms. Grady: “All these tools are there, just waiting for me, just as they are waiting for you. And the moment we start to question how we should think about any work of art, we can pick them up and wield them accordingly.”

Another helpful piece of advice came, believe it or not, from Pete Davidson of “Saturday Night Live”, who gave a surprisingly insightful lecture on the “Weekend Update” segment of the show that basically said, that it’s OK if it feels right to let some artists go. But if there’s another artist whose work resonates with you on a personal level so much that they’ve become a part of your heart, you shouldn’t put them out of your life completely. But you should acknowledge that these people did bad things each time you enjoy their work. Basically, that just because someone is talented doesn’t mean that they’re just as good on the inside, and you should acknowledge that. One of the things he said was very smart: “Any time any of us listen to a song or watch a movie made by an accused serial predator, you have to donate a dollar to a charity that helps sexual assault survivors.” After reading all these articles, I found my final, set-in-stone stance on the matter, that bridges the gap between my morals and my enjoyment of a piece of art. Here’s what I think:

If you really don’t like what an artist did in real life, then directly rooting that to their art will only give the real person power over your brain, your fun, your happiness. My mommy told me that no matter what the original artist intended, a piece of art stands alone, and is open to interpretation by anybody who looks at it. Anybody. It’s what she told me to help me understand the appeal of abstract art. And on top of helping me separate art from artist, it also helps me read (some) fan-fiction without cringing, watch modern adaptations of classic books without being to critical, and on top of it all, it also mirrors the Barthes and Livingstone theory mentioned in Constance Grady’s Vox article.

Besides, acknowledging or enjoying their work doesn’t necessarily mean I support the people behind it (as far as their companies are concerned, at least). To these famous people, money is one of the most important things in the world–a lot of times, more important than other people. So unless you have some money to throw out, you’re completely anonymous as far as they’re concerned, because you’re not rewarding them for their work, even if you enjoy it.

The only time I’ll completely make an exception with any artist is if the work they make is too similar to their real life. For example, the Cartoon Network show “Clarence” is about a boy…named Clarence…who has a positive attitude, but things and does things in very weird ways. An eerie mirroring of Skyler Page, the creator, who was fired from Cartoon Network for grabbing the breasts of a crew member for “Adventure Time”, and was later revealed to be a complete mental case…by one of his best friends, who turned out to be the inspiration for one of Clarence’s own friends! (*shudders again!*)

The same thing is very real for R. Kelly, an R&B singer who I never took interest in or even listened to, but who is said to have a catalogue full of highly sexual songs, a lot of which regard age differences and mutual consent. (*shudders one last time.*)

As for Michael Jackson…I don’t really associate his songs or performances with his real self because, if you really think about it, it’s pretty obvious that his pop persona was way different from that. a lot of his popular hits never mention hanging out with little boys. He mentions girls, a lot of which actually prey on him…he also never mentions any of his child-like interests that he had in real life…in fact, I think the only connection the artist Michael has with the real Michael are a few songs that are based on the good side of him (his humanitarian values) and those that are based on his awful childhood, where he himself was abused (not sexually, but still abused) as a boy…which could actually be one of his reasons behind his own abuse crimes. Almost as if he had this secret mentality, like “if I couldn’t have a childhood, then no boy will.” Or maybe he became overly obsessed with male children because he felt like he was getting back a piece of his life that was stolen from him, but expressed his love and sentimentality for it in the most disgusting way possible. I’m not excusing it at all, I think it was still horrible and completely uncalled for. These are just a few theories I had.

Yes, these are all just my personal opinions. And of course, you shouldn’t take that, or any of my personal opinions, as the gospel truth just because you’re reading my blog–everybody has their own individual opinions. And if you haven’t really formed your own, I suggest getting opinions from everyone and everything around you–your friends, your parents, other news sources, other blogs–and see what other people have to say on the matter, and let what you find help you form your own. It’s just like building a puzzle–it takes more than one piece of information to get the full picture.

As for my big picture, the real Michael Jackson doesn’t exist, as far as I’m concerned, and doesn’t deserve to. Just his character that he plays on the stage. And just like the rest of the male characters I’m attracted to, he’s someone I’d never want to be around in real life–just pretty, talented, and charismatic. And in a world where always thinking about the little things can drive you completely insane, sometimes that’s all that really matters.

[meadow-dusk]

Top 50 Artists Challenge

Approach: Go to this link -> http://107.170.81.187:8080/public/top <- and enter your Spotify username. Then fill out the 50 questions below based on your top 50 artists!

I’m choosing long-term top 50 cause it’s most representative of stable trends in my tastes, for better or worse.

1. How did you get into 29? [One Direction] Kari is in the know about relevant boy bands these days. Plus there was a creepy guy who made a parody of “What Makes You Beautiful” for the 2012 Olympic Gymnastics team 

2. What was the first song you ever heard by 22? [Cream] I’m guessing either “Sunshine of Your Love” or “White Room,” the ones most played by classic rock radio

3. What's your favorite lyric by 33? [Eric Clapton] The one that’s coming to mind is “bet you didn’t think I knew how to rock and roll” but I do have a soft spot for his Christmas lyric “when everything is white outside, how can it be so dark?” I’ll be honest I don’t know enough

4. How did you get into 49? [The Fab Four] Chris Carter of BwtB introduced me to their Christmas songs. Now their HARK! album is a Christmas standard in my home.

5. How many albums by 13 do you own? [Lin Manuel Miranda] Hamilton official broadway soundtrack!

6. What is your favorite song by 50? [The Beach Boys] While challenging, I think the one I would almost always be in the mood for is “Don’t Worry Baby”

7. Is there a song by 39 that makes you sad? [The Spinners] No because they are a disco party machine

8. What is your favorite song by 15? [Backstreet Boys] This is insanely challenging. I can easily choose an album, and that would be Never Gone. 

9. What is your favorite song by 5? [John Lennon] Apparently when I filled this out in 2009 it was “Watching the Wheels,” but now I’m inclined to say “I Know (I Know).” Certainly not by a landslide 

10. Is there a song by 6 that makes you happy? [Ringo Starr] Omigosh isn’t that just his mission in life, to make us happy? Easily though “OK Ray” is one with amazing memories attached because my mom and I blasted it for the “we can still have a ball, Paul” lyric before going to see Paul live. 

11. What is the worst song by 40? [Jonathon Groff] I’m guessing he’s on here because of his tenure as King George III in Hamilton, so I will say that “What Comes Next” is my least favorite of those three

12. What is your favorite song by 10? [Leslie Odom Jr.] “Room Where It Happens”

13. What is a good memory you have involving 30? [Bob Dylan] My old boss absolutely fangirling over him shamelessly and telling us that you have to get past the voice to appreciate him. He was right.

14. What is your favorite song by 38? [Queen] I’m going to be basic and say “Bohemian Rhapsody.” It might be the most popular but it’s that way for a reason

15. Is there a song by 19 that makes you happy? [Jason Mraz] “Live High” because it reminds me of the kind of music George Harrison would be making if he was still around.

16. Is there a song by 25 that makes you sad? [Big Time Rush] “We Are” can be emotional if you remember how they ended the show with that

17. What is the first song you ever heard by 23? [Pink Floyd] Probably “Money” or “Learning to Fly”

18. What's your favorite lyric by 11? [The Rolling Stones] I don’t listen to the Stones for the lyrics, but I’ll give you my top song = “Shine a Light”

19. Who is a favorite member of 1? [The Beatles] I love them all equally and differently but most often it’s George.

20. Is there a song by 14 that makes you happy? [The Yardbirds] Obviously because so many of them are running songs. I will say “Happenings Ten Years Time Ago” because it has both Jimmy Page AND Jeff Beck

21. What is a good memory involving 27? [Fall Out Boy] Getting really into running in Spring 2007.

22. What is your favorite song by 16? [Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers] “Mary Jane’s Last Dance”

23. What is the first song you ever heard by 47? [Andy Gibb] "I Just Want to Be Your Everything” a classic Bee Gees sound

24. What is your favorite album by 18? [Tom Petty] Being that this is different than when he was with the Heartbreakers I will confidently say Full Moon Fever

25. What is your favorite song by 21? [Small Faces] Holy crap I love Steve Marriott’s voice. Let’s say “Song of a Baker” although I'm not 100% certain.

26. What is the first song you ever heard by 26? [Simon & Garfunkel] Probably “Mrs. Robinson.” I heard all these songs before I cared to learn anything about who sang them

27. What is you favorite song by 3? [Paul McCartney] my favorite ...Paul song?...of the 3000 he has written? It completely depends on the mood. Right now I’m feeling “I Don’t Know” but don’t think for a second I don’t spontaneously sing his songs all day while “working from home”

28. What is your favorite album by 2? [George Harrison] Living in the Material World (see? Spotify records corroborate that he is in fact my favorite).

29. What was the first song you ever heard by 32? [Phillipa Soo] “Schuyler Sisters!”

30. What is your favorite song by 8? [Hamilton OBC] “Non-stop”

31. How many times have you seen 17 live? [Traveling Wilburys] aw.

32. Is there a song by 44 that makes you happy? [Rockabye Baby!] Better believe this is on here because hearing lullaby versions of classic rock songs on a run is so hilarious and silly, and sometimes a much needed slow-down. They’re all made to make you happy.  

33. How did you get into 12? [The Who] Started listening to classic rock radio in college. Got really into them right before they played the Super Bowl and then again in 2015 for no apparent reason. They’re just so solid. Plus my mom hates them which is added ammunition

34. What is the worst song by 45? [Billy Joel] I don’t know his full catalogue, but the one I have saved that I would be most likely to skip is “She’s Always a Woman,” which is by no means a bad song.

35. What was the first song you ever heard by 34? [The Naked Brothers Band] “Crazy Car” of course

36. What is the first song you ever heard by 48? [S Club 7] "S Club Party”

37. How many times have you seen 42 live? [Michael Jackson] never

38. What is your favorite song by 36? [Zoom Karaoke] hahahah this is on here because sometimes I have karaoke parties with myself. I’m gonna say “Downtown” by Petula Clark because I am never not in the mood to sing along with that

39. What was the first song you ever heard by 28? [Anthony Ramos] “Aaron Burr, Sir” if you can count that as his song

40. What is you favorite album by 7? [Wings] I don’t know!!! I guess Red Rose Speedway because I love most of the songs on it and there’s few I would ever skip. That’s also true of Band on the Run but I am sticking with my original opinion.

41. Is there a song by 31 that makes you happy? [Christopher Jackson] So was my Hamilton phase obvious yet? “One Last Time”

42. What is your favorite album by 41? [Three Dog Night] I have the whole “Best Of” saved on Spotify so I’m cheating and saying that.

43. What is your favorite song by 24? [Fleetwood Mac] “Gold Dust Woman”

44. What is a good memory you have involving 46? [David Bowie] Just discovering who he was in middle school

45. What is your favorite song by 35? [Neil Diamond] “Cracklin’ Rosie” cause I had to sing the whole thing when I remembered it existed.

46. Is there a song by 9 that makes you happy? [Bee Gees] Yeah obviously! I love “My World” and “Mr. Natural” among others, that’s why they’re ninth on the list...

47. What is your favorite album by 4? [Led Zeppelin] Look at Zep, holding out the #4 spot after all this time!! I think my favorite is Physical Graffiti now though.

48. Who is a favorite member of 37? [The Rutles] oh Neil Innes obviously

49. What is the first song you ever heard by 43? [Cast of Galavant] The theme song

50. What is your favorite song by 20? [The Monkees] Another challenging one but I think I’ll say “Goin Down”

HAVE FUN 😊

[newyorktheater]

These posters are from the Federal Theatre Project, a massive government program during the Great Depression to offer relief to artists, writers, directors, and theater workers by employing them. The just-passed $2 trillion stimulus deal, called CARES, does nothing close to that. The FTP created a system of regional theaters, encouraged experimentation, and made it possible for millions of Americans to see live theatre for the first time.

Congress passed, and the president signed, a $2 trillion stimulus deal that includes specific relief for arts organizations and artists, although advocates say not enough.

Officially titled CARES (Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security), the law gives $75 million each to The National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities to pass on to institutions that need it and $50 million to the Institute of Museum and Library Services. There was also $25 million for the John F. Kennedy Center (although it didn’t stop the Center from laying off all 96 members of the National Symphony Orchestra with only a week’s notice.)

Arts advocates had asked for $4 billion.

“Germany has rolled out a staggering €50 Billion ($54 billion) aid package for artists and cultural businesses, putting other countries to shame” –Artnet

“Although $150 million isn’t chump change, it’s only 3.75 percent of the original ask. You could film a season of Westworld with that money; you will obviously not be able to restart an entire sector.” – Helen Shaw, New York Magazine.(who is counting just the NEA and NEH grants.)

“,,,the institutional damage done by the coronavirus looks at first glance to be especially devastating to theater. Even the biggest regional theaters have either laid off staff or are days away from doing so…Imagine, then, the plight of the smaller companies, the no-budget storefront and off-Broadway houses whose risk-taking productions supply the artistic fertilizer for America’s theatrical culture. Many of these groups—perhaps most of the smaller ones—simply won’t reopen when the crisis abates. As for the actors, directors, playwrights, designers and other professionals who make sure there’s a show onstage when the curtain goes up…well, they’re in can’t-pay-the-rent trouble…” — Terry Teachout, Wall Street Journal

Still, other provisions in CARES will likely aid these theaters and individual theater artists (F.A.Q. on Stimulus Checks, Unemployment and the Coronavirus Plan – NY Times.)

The $1,200 “paycheck” to individuals making less than $75,000.

Calculate how much your stimulus check will be (likely, $1,200)https://t.co/sKLsGs6yES

— New York Theater (@NewYorkTheater) March 26, 2020

$377 billion for small businesses with fewer than 500 employees, which may offer a boon to eligible arts businesses and nonprofits – Jamine Weber, Hyperallergic

Expanded Unemployment Insurance  that includes coverage for furloughed workers, freelancers, and “gig economy” workers, which describes, for example, almost all actors, directors and playwrights. The bill increases such payments by $600 a week for four months, in addition to what one claims under a state unemployment program. – Hayley Levitt, Theatermania

What the theater industry would hope for the future:

“One of the things we’re talking about internally,” TCG’s Corinna Schulenburg told Helen Shaw, “has been the way in which the scale of this catastrophe — a wholesale shutting down of the field — is only really comparable is the Great Depression. We’re looking at 20 percent or higher unemployment! So what lessons can we find in the Federal Theater Project?” Under the New Deal, the government’s super-spending effort that put America back to work in the ’30s, the Federal Theater Project only accounted for 0.5 percent of the Works Progress Administration spending, which, if you applied that to the current bailout, would come to $10 billion. Schulenburg has dreams for that money. And oh, oh, oh — a new New Deal is a heady thought. We’re still surrounded by the structures the WPA gave us, including dams, bridges, airports, roads — and, yes, our regional theater system. Maybe a new one could bring it back.”

Summer theater canceled too?

Three Broadway shows that were scheduled to open in April are facing facts, and moving to sometime in the Fall: Roundabout’s “Caroline, or Change” and “Birthday Candles” and Lincoln Center Theater’s “Flying Sunset.” Since both “Hangmen” and “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf” announced they would not be returning at all when Broadway resumes, that leaves 11 shows still officially scheduled to open in the 2019-2020 Broadway season.

No surprise: The 74th Annual Tony Awards  will be postponed to a date that will be determined after Broadway reopens. It was originally scheduled for June 7th

A bad news/good news announcement: Ars Nova has canceled the remainder of its 2019-2020 season, originally set to conclude on June 30, 2020. But it’s committed to paying all 150 staff, crew and cast through June 30th.

New York City Center has announced the cancellation of Thoroughly Modern Millie, an  Encores concert scheduled for May 6-10,

  “As nonprofits around the country cancel all spring programs, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival halts performances through Labor Day, and will lay off 80 percent of its staff….Lincoln Center Theater has decided to move two summer productions to next season; the Public Theater says it is awaiting guidance from local officials before determining what impact the pandemic might have on its popular Shakespeare in the Park program. And in the Berkshires, a summer destination in Western Massachusetts with a rich concentration of cultural institutions, Barrington Stage Company has already canceled its first production, which was scheduled to run from mid-May to early June….“ — Michael Paulson, NY Times

  To avoid any more little jolts of disappointment, perhaps we should just assume the following for all theater: Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, __ (theater) has announced the cancellation of __ (show) which was schedule for __ (months from now!)

— New York Theater (@NewYorkTheater) March 29, 2020

Hope Goes Online

A huge amount of theater is going online, which I’m trying to track by continually updating my roundup, Where To Get Your Theater Fix Online, Old Favorites and New Experiments

Some highlights in the  last week:

TrickleUp, a new “grass-roots subscription platform”  for $10 a month, hopes to raise money for artists in need.  Launched March 23 by a group of downtown artists and artistic directors, It promises “videos of solo performances, conversation, and other behind-the-scenes goodies,” Its catalogue so far features such fare as Taylor Mac reading scenes from “Gary”, Sarah Ruhl reading some of her poems, Mia Katigbak singing La Vie En Rose, Dominique Morisseau doing a monologue from Skeleton Crew, Suzan-Lori Parks singing “Colored All My Life,” Lucas Hnath reading material cut from his play “A Doll’s House Part 2″

Starting April 2nd, and every Thursday thereafter, ‘National Theatre at Home” will stream FOR FREE on its YouTube channel a production from its NT Live collection, recordings of their stage productions that are such high quality that they are normally presented in cinemas worldwide. The first production online April 2 (and for seven days after that) is “One Man, Two Guv’nors,” the slapstick comedy with a Tony winning performance by James Corden.

PBS  has unlocked a selection of its shows in its Live From Lincoln Center and Great Performances series, from April until the end of May. These includes a few of my favorite things (yes, “The Sound of Music” — not the movie — as well as “Red” and “Present Laughter.”)

Playing on Air, a decade-old podcast of original radio plays, announces its star-studded season of ten plays, unfolding each week through the end of May.

There is new immersive theater for the age of self-distancing. For details on these and other virtual theater, again, check out Where To Get Your Theater Fix Online, Old Favorites and New Experiments

My reviews of Theater Wit’s Teenage Dick and Rattlestick’s The Siblings Play, both stage plays that were recorded right before the theaters were shut down, and now presented online.

Anne (Courtney Rikki Green) teaching Richard (MacGregor Arney), who has cerebral palsy, how to dance, in “Teenage Dick,” Mike Lew’s update of Shakespeare’s play Richard III, streaming online through April 19.

Ed Ventura as Leon/Lee/Chookie. and Cindy De La Cruz as his sister Marie/Rie-rie/Sweet-pea, in “The Siblings Play” by Ten Dara Santiago, now available online

Other Theater News:

a closeup of the Coronavirus

Broadway and the Coronavirus: Updated Questions and Answers

Hey everyone. I just wanted to update you all that I’ve found out that I’ve tested positive for Covid-19. I’ve been in quarantine since Broadway shows shut down on Thursday, March 12th, and I’m feeling much better.… https://t.co/KwJSPgcRct

— Aaron Tveit (@AaronTveit) March 23, 2020

Congrats to playwright @willarbery, winner of $50K @WhitingFdn Award “intellectually audacious, formally sly, w/ the courage to let characters seize the stage with impassioned arguments” My review of his “Heroes of the 4th Turning”https://t.co/pSA2Ebywgj pic.twitter.com/OxCHztANU2

— New York Theater (@NewYorkTheater) March 26, 2020

On #WorldTheatreDay2020, a look at the world’s gorgeous theaters. We can’t enter them right now, but we can still celebrate theater in our hearts (and online) Theater is more than buildings. It’s 2,500 years of history, & literature, & tradition & lovehttps://t.co/i2RtwDGU3H pic.twitter.com/3tdoqBYHHM

— New York Theater (@NewYorkTheater) March 27, 2020

NY Theater Blog Roundup: Responding to COVID-19 in unexpected ways https://t.co/mRwicA4Sz5 pic.twitter.com/BX2ZgZchL3

— New York Theater (@NewYorkTheater) March 29, 2020

Great idea from @BroadwayWorld & @jenashtep — #BWWBookclub. First up Jennifer’s book, Untold Stories of Broadway Vol. 1 — free on Amazon via Kindle, and then discuss each chapter on Broadway World’s message board weekly starting Monday, March 30https://t.co/D8hyYZyrPM pic.twitter.com/7QpVSsPIBJ

— New York Theater (@NewYorkTheater) March 26, 2020

Advice and Uplift

Step-by-step advice for surviving isolation from an astronaut, a journalist, and a political prisoner, who each spent long stretches alone: Read. Exercise. Laugh.

Message from the medical personnel of an Emergency Room, via @MaudNewton, whose sister is an ER nurse. (My brother is an ER doctor) pic.twitter.com/1XmpE10gR2

— New York Theater (@NewYorkTheater) March 28, 2020

Cheerful https://t.co/g7TKl7rMgH

— New York Theater (@NewYorkTheater) March 29, 2020

Isolation latino style… pic.twitter.com/17AlnYHYIk

— Enrique Acevedo (@Enrique_Acevedo) March 28, 2020

What The World Needs Now….are virtual choirs and orchestras https://t.co/OrTJrNGMuH https://t.co/ijv1Z0wbOK

— New York Theater (@NewYorkTheater) March 29, 2020

  Rest in Peace

McNally as a young man

Terrence McNally

Playwright Terrence McNally standing in front of Martin Beck Theater where “The Rink” was playing in 1984, the Kander and Ebb musical for which he wrote the book, his first musical on Broadway

McNally receiving Doctor of Fine Arts from NYU in 2019

Playwright Terrence McNally, 81, from complications of the coronavirus. (“Theater Changes Hearts…”:My gallery of scenes from some of his 36 plays and 10 musicals, plus his Tony Award acceptance speech..)

We love this quote from Terrence McNally—his response to Jonathan Mandell (@NewYorkTheater) asking, “Can theatre change the world?” We are sending love and light to his family, friends, and collaborators today.https://t.co/7pfmi99yqy pic.twitter.com/2A1vrEjU4q

— HowlRound Theatre Commons (@HowlRound) March 25, 2020

Mark Blum

Actor Mark Blum, 69, from complications of the coronavirus.A familiar presence on the NY stage: nine-time Broadway veteran (Assembled Parties), 26 Off-Broadway plays (Rancho Viejo, Amy and the Orphans),teacher (HB Studio)

With love and heavy hearts, Playwrights Horizons pays tribute to Mark Blum, a dear longtime friend and a consummate artist who passed this week. Thank you, Mark, for all you brought to our theater, and to theaters and audiences across the world. We will miss you. pic.twitter.com/NMVZFB5hPb

— Playwrights Horizons (@phnyc) March 26, 2020

David Schramm, 73,  Broadway veteran and founding member of The Acting Company best known for playing Roy Biggs in the television series Wings

What the $2 trillion stimulus means for the arts and artists. Summer canceled too? Hope goes online. #Stageworthy News of the Week Congress passed, and the president signed, a $2 trillion stimulus deal that includes specific relief for arts organizations and artists, although advocates say not enough.

[rephemera]

Label · 21st Circuitry

20 November 2018

For the last major type of posts (the other two being "Concept" and "Store"), the "Label" posts are going to introduce ephemera specific to record labels.  This will mostly be limited to CD inserts and, unlike price tags, not be an exhaustive collection—if I have five identical instances of a specific reply card, I'm going to detail the first I come across, and I photographed these going through the collection alphabetically, with compilations coming toward the end.  Any of these which show up as compilations is a demonstration that I don't have anything from the label outside compilations, soundtracks, tribute albums, and related material.

Typically, as I mentioned in a previous post, I don't want to get into "record reviews" of a 20-year-old label compilation.  These are going to be nearly impossible to find in a physical record store, and the only real market is the second-hand market.  The "support the artist" argument for actually buying a record like this in 2018 is utterly facile—the label ceased to exist in 1998, the same year of this release, releasing only two more albums after this album, artists typically stop getting paid when a label goes under, and the ugly truth is that retail sales of albums isn't how most artists are paid in the first place, now, in 1998, or in 1958.  Most artists are paid by touring, and merch at tours.  Even under the best record deals, artists are typically paid $0.10-$0.25 per sale of their own album.  But more on that later under "The CD as Tour Souvenir".  Appearances on compilations are not lucrative for artists, to say the least.

As far as the difficulty of obtaining something like this on streaming services, this is a great example of why solutions like that aren't complete solutions for many people.  The Luxt track is there, but that's it.  Spotify would have to hunt down whoever owns the rights to 21st Circuitry's catalogue to even bother with something like this; label compilations are a frequent casualty of streaming economics, this is common when the label is small, as 21st Circuitry was, and particularly unfortunate when the compilation is actually good, as Newer Wave and Newer Wave 2.0 were.  The return on investment for Spotify for doing that much legwork is incredibly low, and really only works in reverse–some company acquires 21st Circuitry's catalogue, probably with the intent to re-press key albums, and an eye to target feeding the back catalogue to streaming services like Spotify to pull in some relatively low-effort residual cash to fund future projects.

There are, of course, other methods of obtaining albums like this that often have very little to do with the economics of buying a CD or a streaming service, and they're treated quite differently for reasons which are often quite hypocritical—the first is YouTube, where the listener is fairly given a free pass on the supposed moral ramifications of listening to a song that literally nobody is able to legally "monetize" under a label-dominated intellectual property structure, and the second is file sharing.  File sharing is treated as a moral outrage despite the fact that the artists will literally receive as much money from it as they did from my walking into a Harmony House and paying the princely sum of $4.88 since I almost certainly purchased it after 1998.  The same would have been true had I bought it as a cut-out (more on that later), or at a second-hand music store, or today via Amazon or eBay.  Rather than take a rational look at whether any particular aspect of intellectual property law makes sense, however, we shroud it in meaningless phrases like "support the artists" without examining whether any particular act actually does.  Make no mistake, there are many ways to spend money on an album which either do not "support the artist" either in any meaningful way or in any way at all, and there are many ways to get music for free which are entirely legal which are different from other ways of getting music for free which are entirely illegal whose differences to the end listener are mostly matters of delivery mechanism, convenience, legal fictions, or which website or software one uses.  This is not a matter of agenda, as I am not advocating any particular agenda here, it is an easily documentable fact.  Whew.  What agenda I will reveal, however, is that this and its predecessor album, with wider exposure, might have been good enough on their own to justify this label by themselves.  They're very fun:  exclusive (I believe) industrial dance covers of 1980s New Wave hits, which is a spot-on combination in terms of influences and audience.  It may not have been tenable for the long-term unless 21st Circuitry had a stable of artists under its own imprint, but Cleopatra could easily have taken this formula and ran with it as well.  They came close to it, but usually focused on single-artist tributes of wildly varying quality.

There's some delicious tangents out of the way.  On to the regular staple of Label posts:  the reply card.  I've got a lot of these because if I've ever turned any of them in, I simply don't recall ever doing it.  Maybe I did send one or two in for a favorite band early on and stopped since I never got much out of it, or maybe I stopped since I never got anything out of it, I'm not sure.  I never quite grasped the value proposition.  By the time the CD era kicked in and I was buying them with my own money, I was toward the end of high school and they were still quite expensive.  By the time I was buying them frequently, I was in the military, and while I signed up for six years and was almost positive I wasn't going to re-enlist after those six years (and didn't), and even though that only covered two different assignments, it still involves a considerable amount of address instability:  Basic Training, Technical School, an AE zip code where you're overseas but you have what is effectively a US PO Box zip code for most purposes, then in the US, a series of apartments, and eventually a townhouse.  I'm not entirely sure what a person was expected to receive:  more little catalogues of the sort that CDs already came with, US Letter or European A4 printed sheets of new label releases, swag?  I'm sure if it was swag, someone would have clued me in and I would have actually bothered.  The concept of new releases is helpful enough, as this period I'm mostly talking about—1990 to 1999—largely either predates the internet or is concurrent with the internet.

Be sure that by "the internet" I mean the public internet, not the military, university, and contractor internet which is the predecessor to which it owes everything but bears almost no relationship to in terms of culture—the dividing line for culture is quite simple, on that early internet, the closest thing you could be to a normal person and be on it was a university student in particular universities in particular computer labs, and the culture was hemmed in by the requirement that no commercial activity was allowed over the NSFNET, making it a culturally separate creature from the public internet post 1995.  This makes the internet before May 1995 and after quite distinct.  For all real intents, we can talk about April 1995 as "pre-internet" in terms of what we actually use the internet for today, who uses it, and how many people use it.

In that pre-internet era, getting information about new releases wasn't exactly handy compared to today, that much I can admit.  But if you were an active consumer of music, even the increasingly niche corners of musical interest I was getting into at the time, it wasn't exactly obscure gnostic mysticism (unless it was Current 93, then it may have literally been that, but I wasn't interested in David Tibet yet).  I found out about new music and "new to me music" that wasn't new the same way my friends with the best taste did:  by raiding the collections of my friends to find out what was worth borrowing and then buying, scouring record stores relentlessly, some of the few good music shows (120 Minutes Europe on MTV Europe was much better than the US version when someone would either buy a subscription to Sky TV or more likely ... ahem ... hook it up illegally involving a weird proprietary wrench), and most importantly, the best music magazines.

The best music magazines for what I was into at the time included Spin (which wasn't great, but often included short reviews about better albums), AP (which was better), NME (which covered a very broad range of music, but was printed frequently and was huge at the time, both in terms of pages and reach—this was a British magazine which was printed in tabloid newspaper form), and to a slightly lesser extent, Melody Maker (NME's rival which was, at the time, physically similar and a bit more interested in pop music than NME).

Unlike many people, the public internet wasn't a revelation for me, it was an improvement of an older idea.  That older idea wasn't the science-and-military pre-public internet, however.  That older idea was BBS culture typified in the 8-bit and 16-bit consumer computer era, mostly the Commodore 64.  When I'd left the BBS scene in September 1990 to start military training, I didn't have the opportunity to have any actual leisure time until my first assignment in the UK in January 1991.  While I had my C64 there, and purchased my Amiga 500 there from a fellow American (getting a UK PAL system instead of a US NTSC machine would have introduced a lot of unnecessary complications once I had the system back in the US that any retrocomputer YouTuber will happily nod at), what I didn't have running is my handy Volks6480 1200 baud modem—using a US modem in the UK wasn't just a bad idea, it wasn't possible for local systems, and for long distance calls, it would have been some combination of incredibly difficult, incredibly expensive, and incredibly illegal—there was no possible way to do it that would not have actually covered some of all of those grounds.  Getting a new UK modem and exploring the UK BBS scene would have still been incredibly difficult and incredibly expensive, due to technical considerations not entirely worth getting into involving electricity, device compatibility, and the considerable expense of getting a private line into the dorms in the early 1990s.  The dorms had both UK and US power, but that only solves one part of one of the problems.  When my second assignment brought me to the US in January 1993, I re-connected to the BBS scene at the height of its power shortly before its death due to the public internet.

This BBS scene—particularly the version of it which I encountered upon my return to the US—was quite good for having discussions about music, including new releases.  Part of this had to do with the venue—the DC-Baltimore corridor rather than a disappointing rural Michigan bedroom community—but a lot of it had to do with technology, most notably FidoNet, which allowed for distributed conversations.  With FidoNet, it didn't matter if nobody else in your county knew about an artist like T.H.C. (Total Harmonic Distortion, not the other acronym), they could be in Alaska or even Finland since FidoNet was a distributed conversation.  Imagine if Reddit was distributed by a peer-to-peer network where you logged onto a local host instead of a central server, and those local hosts exchanged packets of posts, usually every night.  Some of you might immediately be thinking of Usenet, and that's a good comparison.  The conversations took on a more freewheeling nature since they were slightly asynchronous.  But it was better than talking on the local exurban BBS in the mid 1980s where there were ten regulars on the BBS total, and the only people you shared any music in common were your other two friends who were computer enthusiasts, probably listened to similar music, and who had the same equally good-or-bad information as you did because we were all at the ass-end of the music information food chain as high schoolers in a rural midwestern hellhole safely insulated from challenging trends.

Moving back to the early 1990s, the best approach for a label to get their releases into my hands was to get them into record stores.  With the exception of must-have albums by favourite artists, if I was in a record store, I was more often than not looking to spend money on something interesting to listen to, I wasn't merely looking for a specific record.  If your new release wasn't there, I'd probably find something else.  If I was looking for something specific, and it wasn't there, I'd be annoyed, but if it was one of those stores where the store could "special order it for you", they might as well have asked me if I'd like to order it from China and ship it by sailboat and it would take two months.  "No, I don't want you to special order it for me and take forever, I want you to have it right now and I leave with it and listen to it when I get home, that's what I want.  Figure it out."  Barring that, what I want to do is find another record store that has it.  It should be pretty obvious that I enjoyed being in record stores, so this wasn't exactly a high bar, so that wasn't an infrequent internal response.

What I didn't see the value of was a mailer being sent to wherever I lived when I originally returned the reply card.  I do some work with statistics and music, so I completely understand how the questions on this reply card have value in getting a handle on the demographics of the listeners, particularly in the pre-internet era (putting aside for the fact that this particular album is from 1998, the practice was constant throughout the era where the CD was a primary delivery media).  You couldn't just link it with data from Facebook or Google or Spotify or Apple.  This reply card is replete with questions that smack of this sort of thinking.  It screams "please give us data points" to the point where it sounds like a database asking the questions.  There's no voice of a human in it, much less of a human talking to another human who is interested in the sort of music their record label is actually known for.

Given that there were only two albums released after this, it seems very likely that few, if any, of these cards were ever dealt with in any way—meaningful or otherwise.  What happens to mail sent to a company that goes out of business?  In 1998, and even today, it's very easy for a record label to go out of business and someone to fill out a return card and not realize they're effectively sending a dead letter.  What usually happens in the case of a PO Box, it's just put in the PO Box regardless of who's currently renting it.  Today, that PO Box is owned by an unrelated company, which is unsurprising since the San Francisco Post Office is kind of a big deal.

[artistsofaustin]

 J. Sam Frankel

“Don't live life as an artist, live life through the eyes of an artist. Even if your purpose in life is to be an artist/creative/visual story teller, life doesn't always call for paint or pen.”            

Instagram:  @scribe23creative Webpage: www.jsamfrankelart.com Shop:  www.scribe23creative.com

What triggered your initial interest to make art?

I was around 6 or so when I showed my initial interest in art - it would be heavily inspired and fueled by my grandmother, Kaye. Or Neenaw as we called her. She was involved with Art Therapy at a rehabilitation center in Lexington, Kentucky. There is a small doodle I did at this time while visiting her, its my first still life done on a pharmaceutical company post it note. A boot-shaped looking vase with a couple sad flowers in bic pen. From then on, I was doodling in the margins of dog-earred notebooks, from kindergarten with Inspector Gadget/Get Smart-esque spies to middle school textbooks. 

I don't remember a time I was not doodling or ideating on anything I could get my hands on. I was a fan of coloring books when I was much younger, but I just wanted to create my own cool things. A lot more so to escape a troubled and tumultuous childhood. Small Rural towns don't provide a lot of artistic inspiration, I looked to comic books for both inspiration and escape.  I had this one issue of Amazing Spiderman circa 1997 that I copied the pages from over and over again, getting caught dozens of times by this hellish Social Studies teacher. 

Yet, again my fated location didn't provide opportunities for great art supplies either. Using what i could - typically an art box kit my mom bought from the Sears Catalogue or an assortment of Crayola Markers/Crayons. Not getting a hold of a paint brush till I was twelve. Neenaw had set me up with oil painting lessons with an old, country-lady version of Bob Ross named Edith King. 

From then on I attended a magnet program for the arts in High School - which afterward it was non-stop art, sketching, doodling, painting, creating. 

What have been some of your main sources of inspiration?

My grandmother played a major role. Not just in the facilitation and access to the arts - but in a love of color and making your own thing. She always added a bit of her own personal flare or touch to everything she owned: clothes, furniture, home and so forth. Creativity was something you lived not just did.

Of course, my favorite teachers - with few exceptions - were my art teachers. I had some amazing, and patient, professors while attending Northern Kentucky University (NKU). At that time, I was very interested in graffiti artists - mainly mural and poster work. I was in college during the early days of GIANT by OBEY/Shepard Fairey and Banksy, but it was Sam Flores out of San Francisco who got me going - he plays with a lot of confluence between humans and animals, touches of his Asian-American roots aesthetic. 

Overall my love of comic books and graphic novels opened up the desire to be a comic book artist in my own right. I was a fan of mainstream names for sure - but it was the one-off Superman/Batman stories that grabbed my eye, those with unique artist/writer mashups. Frank Quitely & Grant Morrison for one - their work on All-Star Superman and New X-men was phenomenal. It was the art of David Mack in Kabuki and Daredevil (also an NKU Alum) that got me on the style of work I aspired to make - watercolors, ink washes, and just a free style of art. It was because of him I wished to attend NKU itself. More recently, finding Rafael Grampa as a newer artist I am inspired by. (Frank Miller's DK is a must)

My travels to the Middle East and connection to Judaism has played a role in my work. Religious imagery and subjects; and an eye for the architecture. There is a lot of color palette, iconography, and lighting being used in all kinds of interesting ways in religion. I have fun combining it with surreal subjects to add this holy aspect of the scene. 

My other Artist inspirations: Winsor McCay, Geoff Darrow J.M.W. Turner, William Stanley Haseltine. 

Lastly, music - I grew up with an 80's mom who loved Fleetwood Mac, Prince, Robert Palmer, and Madonna - with a grunge rock brother to follow.  I feed off a lot of visually strong artists these days - Arcade Fire - Queens of the Stoneage, The Decemberists, TV on the Radio. 

What’s your purpose as an artist?

I always baffled my art teachers when I would explain that my art was just for fun. It was difficult for me to express my feelings through art that read well to others. Art's purpose for me was an escape, something that doesn't exist, a new idea or place. Away from life. 

The want to tell a narrative stems from the dream to be a comic book artist, but I want my viewers to come up with their own narratives. I want it to be a snapshot of a moment or from another world that has different stories to tell. Much of my art is derived from an idea I had about a comic book series that went from conceptual character to a series of mutated vegetation. 

Art is definitely therapy or a healthy distraction for me. I wear my emotions on my sleeve, painting it down helps properly express myself. Diverting that energy into something I control, followed by a sense of accomplishment. There is nothing like having a finished piece(s) having been made during a time of turmoil or emotional distress. I am one who thrives in chaos and under pressure. It took my mind of my deployment to Afghanistan, a small sketchbook and plethora of sharpies. 

What would you recommend to other artists that seek for inspiration?

Don't live life as an artist, live life through the eyes of an artist. Even if your purpose in life is to be an artist/creative/visual story teller, life doesn't always call for paint or pen. You have to be in the moment in-order to enjoy it; that enables you to take the full experience and translate it on paper/canvas with that much more vigor.  But always bring something to take notes with - I have mountains of notebooks from my military days that I jotted all my ideas for work and comics, it kept my creative side engaged while I did my job at the same time. 

For me - the experiences I had where I couldn't be knee deep in art are what defined me as a person, later deriving what I learned from those experiences to my art. From the Army I understood that if you want to succeed you have to lay those pounds of flesh down - special forces guys are good because they dedicate their lives to being proficient with their craft. If you want to be a big bad artist, you have to start somewhere, from one sketch a day to one sketch an hour. No one starts out as good artists, even those with natural talent, only that can carry them so far. 

Curating your Instagram is a good way to have a non-stop flow of inspiration. Follow new and up-coming artists to see what the trends are. Follow artists who do the kind of art you wish you could, they share techniques and advice. Follow other visually strong people, not just the popular people. Don't follow artists who have more photos of them "thinking of the next big piece" or have huge numbers of followers with very little work to show. 

If you are nervous about a new medium but dying to dry it out, do an experimental phase with it. Grab your favorite CMY relative hues, just the basic colors Blue Red Yellow even, plus a black of the same medium. This is a low cost investment. Use the colors in the new medium to create small pieces in your style and usual subjects. Experiment with techniques, tricks, and process. If you like the results or feel the potential - then grab a few more basic colors. The scary thing about new mediums is that artists feel like we have to take a header into full kits - when just the basics are good enough. 

Embrace your fear of all things in the creative world - for those who are afraid of using colors there are those afraid to use black in their work. For those who are afraid of putting their work in shows there are those who are afraid of going bigger with their work. We learn more from our mistakes than our successes, if art was so easy of a win - every five-year old kid that parents say could do a Jackson Pollack would be rolling in Instagram fame. 

[therappundit]

I think the thing that bothers me the most about this year’s always controversial 2017 Freshman Class list, is how heavily they played to one specific “sub-genre” of hip-hop. At a time when hip-hop feels like it has splintered into many beautiful fractals of different sounds (from the resurgence of 90′s boom-bap, classic funk & soul, to alternate takes on trap bounce, to cloudy, emo-inspired, “trance-rap”...which I may have just made up?), XXL decided to play it as safe as possible: appeal to the younger demographic with the type of artists that pop up with the “sponsored” content tag on your social media feed.

My credo has always been whatever you do, do it well...so I’m not going to dwell on how mainstream potential factors into who lands the coveted XXL Freshman cover - because let’s be honest, it should play a factor. Just not the only factor. Years before the internet, a kid could depend on two publications for (mostly) non-biased  coverage of rap music: The Source and XXL. Oh my, how things have changed. The 00′s saw the decline of both the print industry itself and the reliability of these magazines to be a trusted source of what’s hot. So here we are rap fans...on our own, to discover the music that we truly love, without being able to find music in one or two specific spots...

But is that a bad thing? With the speed that our multi-tasking brains now demand, everything we love must be in front of us now-now-now, so it’s probably a good thing that we’re not able to parrot back to our friends whatever The Source/XXL told us are the best releases of the month. It’s probably a good thing that we all have so many tools at our disposal with the click of a button, and need to peruse XXL, Pitchfork, Stereogum, Pigeons & Planes, OnSmash, 2DopeBoyz, NahRight, FakeShore Drive, DJBooth, SoundCloud, Spotify, Pandora, Apple, TIDAL - and yes, THE Rap Pundit :-) in order to to pull together our own customized playlists, sampling music from all over the globe, for FREE (or a small monthly fee)!

So with that, I have had a few hours to cool my jets and turn my initial angst into productivity, and positivity. Keeping in mind that XXL is just ONE voice, and even though it might not feel like a familiar voice to me anymore...it’s still just one website’s take on the music they wish to support.

Now here’s mine. These aren’t all of my favorite artists of the moment, but they are all rap artists that I feel meet the ideal criteria of a “Freshman List” (many of them are veterans, only Freshmen/Freshwomen to the casual listener): skill, catalogue of music, longterm potential, and chance of a larger impact - or mastery of their own respective lane. With that, here’s THE Rap Pundit’s List...

Noname

(excels in the Chance the Rapper/Kendrick lane, capable of both sweet soul and sharply pointed lyricism)

ex. “Diddy-Bop” feat. Raury & Cam O’bi

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pUncXbXAiV0

Saba

(another skilled Chicagoan, exemplifies the city’s gift for cranking out talent that sound wise beyond their years...Saba is equal parts fierce spitter and socially conscious story teller)

ex. “Monday To Monday” 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mm_WnWVNhQ4

Maxo Kream

(the Houston rapper has great presence on the mic, but he’s more than just a voice...he’s a great song writer, can flow his ass off, and when pushed - capable of sounding as menacing as the fiercest in the business today)

ex. “Grannies”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0p4S9P1DFrE

Cousin Stizz

(has the skill to be the biggest rap star to ever rise out of the Boston area...his beat selection, charisma and ability to craft memorable hooks again and again, make him an easy pick for this Freshman Class)

ex. “Coulda Been”

https://soundcloud.com/cousinstizz/coulda-been

Tate Kobang

(like Stizz, Tate has big mainstream potential...maybe not as strong lyrically as Stizz, but the Baltimore MC’s hook game is wavy as hell - and I hate the term wavy, but I don’t know what else to call this!)

ex. “Tell Em”

https://soundcloud.com/dtlrradiofm/tell-em?in=dtlrradiofm/sets/tate-kobang-silent-waves

Dae Dae

(when it comes to future stars from the ATL...Dae Dae is near the top of the list for me. He rhymes with the conviction to push an average trap beat over the top, his energy’s straight infectious...)

ex. “Bullshit” feat. 21 Savage

https://soundcloud.com/daedaelovelife/bullshit-ft-21-savage

Kur

(the next in line to carry on the tradition of hungry, HUNGRY Philly MCs...)

ex. “Quick Money” feat. Chynna

https://soundcloud.com/kur-sound/quick-money-ft-chynna-prod

Young M.A

(in spite of a reeeeally lackluster EP, I haven’t given up on Young M.A and neither should you...”Oouuu” was one of the strongest NYC-centric tracks from a mostly unknown rap artist since A$AP came on the scene - if you weren’t feeling that, you really need to loosen up a bit)

ex. “Summer Story”

https://soundcloud.com/youngma/summer-story-prod-by-gsparkz

Benny

(quite simply the finest street poet to bless the mic since Beanie Sigel...)

ex. “Pissy Work” ft. Westside Gunn

https://soundcloud.com/user-5212897/pissy-work-ft-benny

Playboi Carti

(not much lyrically, his songs are more of a collection of adlibs than actual thoughts...but that’s what the kids are into these days, and Carti has enough contagious flow to crank out more club hits and lead the mush-mouth generation...“Magnolia” might end up being his biggest hit, but definitely not his last one)

ex. “Magnolia”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LgbxbSSybmM

T.F

(coming with a strong Schoolboy Q co-sign, T.F is under too many radars right now...which is a shame, because his fierce No Hooks project had him coming off like the West Coast Roc Marciano)

ex. “Unprofessional Shit” 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6LDl9en-MyQ

Mach-Hommy

(possibly the most distinct writer on this...Mach seems to play by his own rules, which has lead to some exclusive releases, and a pleasantly unpredictable rhyme style that makes every verse as rewind-worthy as whatever his next move will be)

ex. “H.B.O.”

https://soundcloud.com/mach-hommy/hbo-beats-by-august-fanon?in=mach-hommy/sets/hbo-haitian-body-odor

Joey Purp

(possibly the next to blow in Chicago, the next gifted artist out of the Save Money collective can swing wildly from explosively screaming a hook, to subtle picture painting...his pen game and vocal skills are strong enough to make it big even without his connections to Chance the Rapper and Vic Mensa)

ex. “Still Got It” feat. Vic Mensa & Two Fresh

https://soundcloud.com/maddecent/joey-purp-vic-mensa-two-fresh-still-got-it

Conway The Machine....

(if raw Wu-era, grimy hip-hop got an injection of steroids and transplanted into today’s era, Conway would be the embodiment of that sound. Capable of out-rhyming just about anyone in the game verse for verse right now, there are a whole lot of folks eagerly awaiting his G.O.A.T. album...)

ex. “Broken Safety” feat. Prodigy

https://soundcloud.com/user-5212897/broken-saftey?in=user-5212897/sets/conway-x-prodigy-hell-still-on

...and Westside Gunn

(the Ghostface to Conway’s Raekwon - they’re actually brothers - the Buffalo icon has helped build Griselda Records into an underground movement that might not stay underground for too much longer. Behind Westside Gunn’s distinctive voice and adlibs, you’ll find a business-minded rap artist that knows exactly what he’s doing over tracks....FLYGOD is a modern-day classic)

ex. “Vivian at the Art Basel” - feat. Your Old Droog

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DcAsqwOrlOg

J.I.D.

(the J.Cole signee from Atlanta is racking up Kendrick comparisons, and not just because of the nasality in his voice...the kid can flat out bring it with bars, but he also has a positive energy about him that makes even his more experimental tracks prevail....and oh yeah, and he has one of the best rap projects of the year out, The Never Story)

ex. “Somebody”

https://soundcloud.com/jidsv/somebody-1?in=jidsv/sets/the-never-story

[theworstbob]

yellin’ at songs, 04.21.2007 + 04.22.2017

the songs that debuted on the billboard chart this week and ten years ago this week. today: songs i... like? that are... good? ???

4.21.2007

7) "What I've Done," Linkin Park

Ah, yes, the era of Sensitive Linkin Park. When Linkin Park replaced the teenage angst with, I guess, adult angst? What do we want to call this? Decidedly non-specific hand-wringing? "I did something bad!" Okay, what did you do? "A bad thing!" Yeah but we've all done bad things? "As long as we don't say what bad thing we did, you can relate your own dark secrets!" Oh okay cool thank you for the opportunity, Chester.

65) "Stolen," Dashboard Confessional

So here's how I justify being a little into this song after giving Big & Rich shit for making a "gosh, I sure love the woman I'm getting married to" song. One, I'm an emokid from way back, and this is that wuss-ass poetry shit I need, even if I wasn't that into it way back when. ("Don't Wait" wasn't really a jam, and it put me off purchasing Dusk & Summer, so.) I'll openly admit I'm predisposed to enjoy this song more. Two, I might be misinterpreting this song as being about a wedding, like I could actually be wrong about my interpretation, so it's more complex than the Big & Rich song where the dude literally says the preacher talked to Jesus. Three, "Lost in This Moment" is just about the moment. We don't know who any of those people are, short of the fact everyone's super into Jesus and the bride and groom love each other. Here, there's a clear setting (wedding reception at the end of summer), there's a small lyric thrown in there that lets you know, even at their own wedding, the couple feels mischievous, so they're more fully-realized people ("crash the best one/of the best ones"), and Dashboard Confessional takes the time to state that there's more to their love than this specific moment, that this is what they've been working for and what they want to be ("our dreams assured and we all/will sleep well, sleep well"). I never realized how into this song until I sat down and thought about it.

81) "Kiss the Girl," Ashley Tisdale

What in the absolute fuck did I just listen to. I don't think I've felt this way about a song since I heard "Pokemon Christmas Bash" for the first time.

83) "Diamonds," Fabolous ft./Young Jeezy

I don't wanna talk about this song, this song kinda blows, can we talk about "Breathe?" Can we talk about "Breathe," Fabolous' 2003 song that far outpaces most of the rest of his catalogue? "Breathe" is a fucking amazing song, and I have no idea where it came from. Does any artist have as glaring an outlier as Fabolous' "Breathe?" I'm struggling to come up with one. I'm just going to listen to "Kiss the Girl" and "Breathe" on repeat for the next few hours, BRB. "Secret Service me with some of that Lewinsky love." Absolutely not! Ugh, that's not even a hack line in 2017, that was hack in 2007, that would've been hack in 2002.

84) "Makes Me Wonder," Maroon 5

Like all Maroon 5 songs, this is acceptable.

91) "Release," Timbaland ft./Justin Timberlake

I didn't have to listen to this. I hadn't heard this song before, but I heard this song a thousand times before I sat down with it. I could have guessed. "This was gonna sound awfully loud and busy, Timbaland was gonna try to rap and bless his little heart, and it would be a party jam that I'm probably not qualified to discuss since I don't party." I could have written that and lied about having listened to this song, but I need to come by this displeasure honestly, for reasons.

94) "Find Out Who Your Friends Are," Tracy Lawrence

Four songs ago I was listening to "Kiss the Girl" and the world was a magical place where love was real. I want to go back. I want to go back to that land of awkward dancing and spunky pop guitar riffs. I hate this world where some fucking dude tells me if my truck breaks down someone, not necessarily him but someone, can fix it. Great. Great, OK. That's useful, I will do something with this information. Forgetting is doing something.

95) "Apologize," Timbaland ft./OneRepublic

I heard the original version of "Apologize" on Alternative Addiction in summer 2006 I think? And I loved that song, and I wanted more people to hear this song, because I thought it was really impressive. ...I don't want to say Monkey's Paw? But this feels like a wish made on a cursed monkey's paw. I didn't want it like this. Why would I ever want it like this. Why would I ever want this song to get big because Timbaland said, "Hey, I think I can add twelve different things to this, really take it over the top." Like, for me, this was the only thing I got between the release of "Apologize" and the release of OneRepublic's debut a year and a half later, was this nonsense, and you can't imagine my disappointment that this was the only new OneRepublic thing I had for a year and a half, especially since it turned out that OneRepublic was OneRepublic.

99) "When I See U," Fantasia

R&B isn't one of my main genres, as I'm sure you can tell, so I've largely missed out on the career arc of the last true American Idol, as it's taken place entirely on that chart. I clearly need to get reacquainted. R&B isn’t something I come to easily. I like songs that go 1000 miles an hour on a path to DIZZYING EMOTIONAL HIGHS and that’s not something R&B really does, it slowly burns until there’s a full-on fire, and the fire crackles gently but still has devastating power, and while I’m not here saying Fantasia did just that with this song, I’m saying there’s enough I love about this song that I’m sure I can find some song in Fantasia’s oeuvre which does the thing, ‘cuz man, this song almost did it for me. (How often do I pull “I’m not saying, I’m just saying” bullshit? I need to see if that’s a tic I should edit out. Fucking own an opinion, dude, jiminy.)

The Top 20 singles of 2007 through this week: 20) "Kiss the Girl," by Ashley Tisdale (4.21.2007) 19) "Kiss the Girl," by Ashley Tisdale (4.21.2007) 18) "Kiss the Girl," by Ashley Tisdale (4.21.2007) 17) "Kiss the Girl," by Ashley Tisdale (4.21.2007) 16) "Kiss the Girl," by Ashley Tisdale (4.21.2007) 15) "Kiss the Girl," by Ashley Tisdale (4.21.2007) 14) "Kiss the Girl," by Ashley Tisdale (4.21.2007) 13) "Kiss the Girl," by Ashley Tisdale (4.21.2007) 12) "Kiss the Girl," by Ashley Tisdale (4.21.2007) 11) "Kiss the Girl," by Ashley Tisdale (4.21.2007) 10) "Kiss the Girl," by Ashley Tisdale (4.21.2007) 9) "Kiss the Girl," by Ashley Tisdale (4.21.2007) 8) "Kiss the Girl," by Ashley Tisdale (4.21.2007) 7) "Kiss the Girl," by Ashley Tisdale (4.21.2007) 6) "Kiss the Girl," by Ashley Tisdale (4.21.2007) 5) "Kiss the Girl," by Ashley Tisdale (4.21.2007) 4) "Kiss the Girl," by Ashley Tisdale (4.21.2007) 3) "Kiss the Girl," by Ashley Tisdale (4.21.2007) 2) "Kiss the Girl," by Ashley Tisdale (4.21.2007) 1) "Kiss the Girl," by Ashley Tisdale (4.21.2007) Some tough cuts -- so long, "Get It Shawty," we knew you well -- but the cuts are only tough since 2007 really stepped up its game, and after next week, it'll have a fairly unfuckwitable Top 20. 2017 better respond well.

4.22.2017

2) "HUMBLE." by Kendrick Lamar

So, relative to the rest of Kendrick Lamar's catalogue, I understand why the Internet would be angry at this song, but relative to the world at large, this is kinda just not a great song? Even setting aside the lyrical content, this song is bleh, something that sounds more like a throwaway than even anything on untitled.unmastered. From a lyrical standpoint, it's misguided and has some bad opinions, but Kodak Black has a legitimate hit record and two other songs debuting this week, and XXXTENTACION is rising in popularity. This is a smart man doing something dumb. I dunno, I'm just not really in the business of punishing a dude for not being woke all the time. Insomnia is a disease, y'know? I don't think this song is worth getting angry at. It's worth a stern lecture, to be sure, but we need to fix the clear and present problems before we set our sights on what is merely problematic. It's a bad song. People make bad songs sometimes.

53) "Craving You," by Thomas Rhett ft./Maren Morris

...I hate how into this I am. I listened to the Static Version. Is that the reason this is such a jam? This is basically the best pop duet in years. (The term 'duet' is being used here loosely. Maren Morris harmonizes and at one point goes "yeah" real loud.) It's so good, I can't even use this as a launching pad for a complaint about bro country, though, of course, the reason it's so good is that it does away with any pretense of being a country song. Like this is bubblegum-ass pop right here. This track would have been right at home on E MO TION Side B. (Not on E MO TION proper, of course, that album is Perfect (and now that opinion is a matter of YAS record), but this kinda reminds me of something that would be on a more dramatic version of Side B.) And I 100% get behind it? I'm behind this! Why the fuck not!

59) "Everybody," by Logic

Y'know what, I said 2017 needed to step its game up, and by golly, here we are, with a Kendrick song (Kendrick's C-game being better than most dude's A-games; to use The Sopranos as a point of comparison, "HUMBLE." is basically Kendrick's "Columbus," not a great song but still a Kendrick song), it had something that came out of nowhere to be among my favorites for the year so far, and we have this, which is just delightful! Evidently, I should have heard of Logic by now, but this seems as good an introduction as any.

60) "You Look Good," by Lady Antebellum

MORE. HORNS. IN. COUNTY. MUSIC. So, okay, first of all, I gotta note, the producer of this song, busbee, once made a song with Girl's Generation, so finally I know of the link between country and K-pop, ok now HORNS. Imagine how unnecessary this track would be without horns, if this were another country song with nothing to say but "it's nice when things are nice!" This gives it a dirty edge, but it somehow never feels skeezy, which is a miracle, considering, y'know, the dudes in Lady Antebellum. It took a little over a year but hey! Someone in the pop/country game listened to Sturgill Simpson! Better late than never!

75) "Tin Man," by Miranda Lambert

it's miranda lambert singing a sad country song with a wizard of oz metaphor, of course i'm into it

81) "Subeme La Radio," by Enrique Iglesias ft./Descemer Bueno, Zion & Lennox

Maybe it's because, of the four so far, this is the only one by an artist I've heard before, but I was less enchanted by this Latin pop song than I have been by the others. Even that Romeo Santos thing had its charm! I disagree with his choice to sound the way he does, but it's a choice he made that I still remember so really how bad a choice could it have been? This doesn't sound like anyone made a choice. It sounded like Enrique Iglesias just heaved a sigh and said, "Guess the fellas upstairs are expecting something. I dunno, people still use radios? Let's make a song about how they should turn the volume up on their radios. I don't know what we'll do for people who listen at max volume, but now at least we have the idea for album song two." According to the only English translation I am going to look up, the lyrics for this song features the line, "Time goes slow/And I'm gonna die." That is so not the vibe I got from this song.

88) "First Day Out," by Tee Grizzley

I really loved the way this song moved, like, the way it would switch it up every half-minute or so but still felt consistent, never felt like a thousand things were happening at once, and I thought the dude kept up with what the track wanted to do quite nicely. I'm. I don't know if he's a good rapper? I mean I won't pretend to know my stuff, again, I am out of my depth just wading into criticism on a technical level, but it sounded like he was talking over a beat for most of the song, and I can't tell if that's a relaxed flow or if the dude was just talking. And I KNOW he's a shit lyricist. He rhymed "blessing" with "happened," and immediately after that rhymed "status" with "castle." Like I'd be down with free verse, I think the world is ready for free verse rap, but then there’s eight consecutive bars end with the n-word? Like man, I think there's a lot to work with, I kinda wanna see where your whole thing goes, but boy, you sure amn't well-worded!

91) "The One," by The Chainsmokers

Please don’t make me listen to The Chainsmokers. I love "Closer" like I love few things in life. I thought "Roses" was fun. I could do without all these other Chainsmokers songs. Stop letting the dude from The Chainsmokers sing. He can't do it! He is unable to do it! He should not be carrying emotional ballads about letting someone go! Please tell me I'm not going to listen to ten other Chainsmokers songs next week. Oh god please tell me I do -- it's bullshit, because I can't take a principled moral stance like I'm about to take with Kodak Black, there is no ethical reason to not listen to the Chainsmokers, I will have to listen to every Chainsmokers song that comes on the chart, and it's BULLSHIT, because somewhere along the line y'all decided "Closer" wasn't an outlier. We all listened to "Closer," and that told the Chainsmokers people liked it when they were sensitive, and now next week, I'm going to have to listen to ten shitty EDM sad boy tracks, and all the good vibes I was feeling for 2017 are out the window because I can't believe the world is going to put me through that. Tell me this is the only cut from the album I have to endure, for the love of whatever gods you worship, tell me that.

93) "Conscience," by Kodak Black ft./Future 94) "Drowning," by A Boogie Wit da Hoodie ft./Kodak Black

As previously stated, I'm not listening to this dude's songs because I think he's a terrible monster and do not wish to support him more than I already have.

96) "Heatstroke," by Calvin Harris ft./Young Thug, Pharrell Williams & Ariana Grande

and now THIS, somehow, is the best pop duet in years? how the fuck does a duet between young thug and ariana grande work. what dark fucking sorcery is this. calvin harris is 2/2 so far this year, and i just, it's so good! i don't get it! it's like when someone told me that peanut butter, sriracha, and green apple made a good sandwich. i didn't believe it, but i still tried it, and HOT DAMN THAT WAS A SANDWICH. there is no way all these people coming together should work, but here we are, it worked and i'm happy.

98) "How Not To," by Dan + Shay

even the music video for this song doesn't wanna listen to this song

100) "Human," by Rag'n'bone Man

So are Rag'n'bone Man and Kaleo gonna have to fight for the title of Gotye 2017? Or does Rag'n'bone Man recognize that having a name one can make sense of precludes him from consideration for Gotye 2017 and is content to let Kaleo ride with that title? I don't mind that there's two Gotyes, though, especially since this one's pretty dope. I knew this was gonna be cool when I saw "Fast Car" pop up in the recommended videos sidebar and it delivered on that promise. Hot damn, though, this was a fun week for 2017. Like, last week, "Swalla" did a second week in the Top 20, and this week, Rag'n'bone Man can't get in. Well met, friend.

Speaking of, I moved some things around in the 2017 Top 20 again because I haven’t had a decade to spend with these songs and figure out my relationship with them, I’m sort of judging what’s good and isn’t good as I go, and sometimes that means bouncing Ed Sheeran from the Top 20, y’know? 20) "Tin Man," by Miranda Lambert (4.22) 19) "Everyday," by Ariana Grande ft./Future (3.4) 18) "Everybody," by Logic (4.22) 17) "Guys My Age," by Hey Violet (2.11) 16) "Heatstroke," by Calvin Harris ft./Young Thug, Pharrell Williams & Ariana Grande (4.22) 15) "Yeah Boy," Kelsea Ballerini (3.4) 14) "You Look Good," by Lady Antebellum (4.22) 13) "Selfish," by Future ft./Rihanna (3.18) 12) "Slide," by Calvin Harris ft./Frank Ocean & Migos (3.18) 11) "Now & Later," by Sage the Gemini (2.25) 10) "It Ain't Me," by Kygo x Selena Gomez (3.4) 9) "Craving You," by Thomas Rhett ft./Maren Morris (4.22) 8) "That's What I Like," by Bruno Mars (3.4) 7) "The Heart Part 4," by Kendrick Lamar (4.15) 6) "Chanel," by Frank Ocean ft./A$AP Rocky (4.1) 5) "Run Up," by Major Lazer ft./PARTYNEXTDOOR & Nicki Minaj (2.18) 4) "Green Light," by Lorde (3.18) 3) "Despacito," by Luis Fonsi ft./Daddy Yankee (2.4) 2) "Issues," by Julia Michaels (2.11) 1) "iSpy," by KYLE ft./Lil Yachty (1.14) Fucking Thomas Rhett in the top ten, this week was amazing and the worst.

WHO WON THE WEEK? 2017 took 2007 to the cleaners. It’s the first time either year has had the best bunch AND best individual song in the same week, and somehow, it’s a Thomas Rhett joint. I like “Stolen” more than I remember and “When I See U” more than I thought, but the top five from 2017 this week, man. Solid group, that. The problem, of course, is that next week, 2007 delivers an unassailable classic and two of my favorite songs from the year. 2017 may win battles, but it’s not quite prepped for war. 2017: 2 2007: 2