#though it sounds like they were mostly recorded in the 2000s

[gothmusiclatinamerica]

"Siete a​ñ​os m​á​s" by Montevideo, Uruguay-based goth band (and oldest goth band in the country) RRRRRRR off of their 2023 EP Nictálope, a collection of songs recorded in previous decades

[emeraldspiral]

It's honestly crazy how people have so many misconceptions about the behind the scenes drama with Invader Zim that's mostly just fabricated based on what we expect because of what we hear happens with other shows.

Like, the network censors did have some weird bones to pick with certain things the Zim crew wanted to do, but I think it should be obvious given the stuff that made it to air that they were actually quite lenient about what was allowed. I think somewhere there's even a quote from Jhonen saying he didn't actually have a lot of fights with them and that the only thing that would've changed if Zim were on something like Adult Swim where he could go totally hogwild is that people would just randomly explode sometimes. Like, Nick were the ones who asked Jhonen to make a show for them after reading his extremely violent and mature comic books. They knew what they were getting into and they knew what they were signing off on when they let episodes like Dark Harvest go to air.

Contrary to popular belief, Nick never "hated" Zim. It wasn't cancelled for being "dark" or getting complaints from Karens or inspiring serial killers or having low ratings, and they certainly didn't try to sabotage it on purpose with their wack-ass scheduling (how would that have benefited them?). Dark Harvest was in like, the third episode and they were mid-production on season 2 when the show was cancelled. It was Nick's most expensive show at the time and while it was getting good ratings it wasn't as profitable as they wanted it to be. So when Viacom's stock tanked and they needed to cut expenses they gave Jhonen a few different options to reduce the budget, and when they couldn't come to an agreement the show was cancelled. When deciding what episodes to finish Jhonen suggested changing the ending of 10 Minutes to Doom to have Zim die in order to give the show finality, but Nick wanted to leave the door open for the show to come back. Ultimately, it was decided that the Xmas episode should be the finale because it would make the most money.

Nick actually loved the show. They got exactly what they asked for and it did well despite the issues they had with scheduling it and their own ineptitude at marketing and merchandising it. When they ran a Zim marathon on Nicktoons Network in the late 2000s the ratings were something like the highest ever or second only to Avatar, and they did reopen negotiations with Jhonen to revive the show again. But they still couldn't agree on a budget so nothing came to fruition. Eventually though, we finally got the comics and ETF and I believe Jhonen said that there was supposed to be a revival series or some other continuation following ETF, but negotiations on that fell through because just when they were about to come to an agreement there was a change in leadership at Nick that caused negotiations to be scrapped.

It wasn't Jhonen and the network who had "creative differences". From what I understand, the only drama with "creative differences" on the show were with director Steve Ressel (and this was waaaaay before he got outed as a groomer in 2020). Apparently, there was enough bad blood between him and Jhonen and the rest of the crew that he said he wouldn't return to Zim if it ever got revived (and in fact he did not for ETF). I think it's actually quite telling that Steve recorded commentary tracks for the show by himself that didn't even make it onto the DVDs while Jhonen and all the writers and actors who were on the commentary tracks that actually got officially released sounded like they all got along really well and enjoyed working together. I think there was also even a conscious effort to avoid talking about Steve in the official commentaries.

Also, there's a whole blog post by Rikki Simons titled "Character Assassination Long Since Past Due" where he reams Steve Ressel for not only being a dick at work but for talking shit on his own platform and being the source of a lot of the misconceptions about Jhonen's attitude toward the show that persist to this day.

[xotaemintol]

(Ot5 ofc) SHINee As Your Boyfriend HC: Black Girl Edition (slight nsfw)

“Love is so nice” - JONGHYUN

Mostly SFW but it includes slightly or very nsfw themes at least once for everyone, if you are uncomfortable with that, feel free to leave feedback and tell me how it could be more comfortable for you or scroll :)

JINKI

-Buys you bonnets from different places made out of different materials, he once bought you an extremely expensive silk bonnet from Italy because he thought that you’d like it and that it would look good on you

-He loves it when you do different hairstyles, he loves your hair period, and loves anytime you change it or anytime you do something you’ve done before, he just loves your hair in general and loves to play in it, he’ll even put flowers in your hair when you’re going on walks and take adorable pictures of your hair with pretty flowers in it. he once made you a flower crown to wear and posted it on Instagram, everyone lost their minds and kept begging him to post more of you because they loved the pictures so much

-He’ll sit with you and wait for you to finish getting your nails done, even if it takes 15 minutes to 4 hours, he’ll wait and pay for it when you get done, then he won’t let you lift a finger when they are finished and gives you princess treatment, he loves the sound that they make when you type, it’s not usually loud, but the small tapping sounds always make him feel so relaxed and at home

-Your family invited him over for dinner so they could meet him and he sang for them, afterward he ate and experienced the itis, but he didn’t even make it back home before he fell asleep full and satisfied, he said that if you ever feed him like that again he’d marry you blind. He always asks when the next time you’ll visit your family is because he loves their cooking, they even sent food once because he kept asking about it and when he tried the peach cobbler he got literally weak in the knees and almost put it over cake

-He almost turns into a dog whenever he sees you putting on lotion, you’ll be sitting on the edge of the bed rubbing your legs down and he’ll come in and be like “Are you trying to seduce me? It’s working.” It’s like he goes into heat when he sees you fresh out of the shower and even in the shower, not just because you’re naked but because seeing you lathered up just sets off something in his head and gives him the unstoppable urge to be inside of you, he’ll literally go from “You’re so pretty, my pretty girl” to “I need to fuck you, now.” Like soft cuddly boyfriend Jinki, to daddy Jinki in seconds just from seeing you putting on lotion

JONGHYUN

-Steals your bonnet and wears it himself, he’ll wear it to dance practice or to recordings and when someone asks what it is he’ll be like “Oh, it’s my girlfriend, she usually wears it to sleep, but it fell off last night so I took it:)”

-Posts heavily edited pictures of you on Twitter and calls you beautiful in the caption even though the picture is distorted, he posts pretty pictures of you all the time but likes to switch it up and will post a picture of you sleeping with drool down the side of the face or with food on your face because he thinks it's cute when you whine about it. He especially likes to post pictures of you during wash day, he thinks that it’s cute, he likes to shape your hair into horns or do the early 2000’s mustache thing and post pictures of it

-Once someone said that your hair was too ‘wild’ and he had Shawols attack them and the person apologized and then deleted their account, once he made the two of you his profile picture when a certain colorist idol made a comment about your relationship, he posted a bunch of pictures of the two of you together and made it clear to everyone that he didn’t care about their opinions on his relationship with you and Shawols were quick to call out that person and after an overwhelming amount of well deserved backlash he apologized, but Jonghyun kept his profile picture as you and him because not only does he love the picture, but he always wants it to be clear that it doesn’t matter what anyone says, he’d love you if you were blue

-Sends you one million texts in three seconds and when you don’t respond in 0.1 he’ll have a whole fit and swear that you’re trying to break up with him and will have an attitude when he gets home because you took five minutes to respond every time he texted you even though it took you five minutes to read all the texts he sent. He hates it when you take too long to respond but tries not to get too upset, you only make it worse by spoiling him with attention and picking up your phone for him no matter what, so you fully expect him to complain when you take a little longer than usually to respond

-His texts consist of ‘I miss you’, memes or pictures of SHINee, pictures of him extremely close to the camera, pictures of him shirtless, videos of him chasing Minho around because he called him short, steamy texts that would make his PR team faint, thirty voice messages all sent within a minute of each other, and lengthy heartfelt texts about how he loves you so much and how you’re the most beautiful girl in the whole world and how he he’d get your face tattooed on his brain if he could

-Is a victim to sundress season, something about you in a sundress with your hair done and a smile on your face sends this man off the rails and he swears that he’s not a perv but will intentionally go out and buy you a sundress that’s too short and too low for you to wear out in public, but perfect for you to wear in front of him

KIBUM

-Steals your bonnet part.2 but only because he thinks they look good on him, he wore it once because you put it on him and after that, he'll wear it himself whenever you aren't and if it falls off when you're sleeping because he wakes up before you, he'll slip it back on for you and then take a picture of you so he can send it to you later and tell you about how he's such a sweet boyfriend for keeping your hair safe

-Once he took it instead and went to dance practice with it on and left it there by accident so he ended up buying a new one on the way home, when you asked about the one he took he pretended like he didn’t know what you were talking about

-Sooooo much gossiping, you’ll see something online and show it to him and be like “baby! Look at this!” And he’ll get just as messy as you, “Oh no honey! This is all wrong!” (I can’t stop thinking about the fact that he’s definitely the type to get messy with you and then make out with you because he thinks your attitude is hot like)

-Even if he comes home late he’ll stay up longer to do your skincare routine with you and will even help you with your hair, if you need to put it in a protective style before bed or wrap it up, retwist it, comb it, brush it, curl it, wash it, or cut it off, he’ll help you with it because he loves how beautiful your hair is and will always help you maintain it

-The type of boyfriend to sit with a face mask on with you, help you with your nails, and listen to you talk about your day and get all engaged in it as if he was there, the “Oh! And then what?!” Type, and even though he’s listening he’ll start giving you those “I want you right now” eyes just because something about your voice and the way you look turns him on, then sets you back five steps by ruining your hair because he found you just talking attractive and decided that it would be an amazing idea to fuck before bed (it was)

MINHO

-The type to slip your bonnet back on if he wakes up in the middle of the night and sees it off because he knows that you don’t want your hair to be ruined, it makes him feel so proud of himself for having such a beautiful girlfriend, he loves how you look when you're sleeping with your bonnet on, cuddled up to the pillows and sleeping on the bed he bought, he'll go out of his way to buy you bonnets (you already have too many) just because he likes to see you in them

-Super supportive type, If you want to try a new style he’s the first to tell you that it’ll look amazing, you want to post a picture of yourself that you think others may not like he’ll be the one to encourage you to do what you want

-If you wear a lipliner prepare for it to only last for about five minutes because he’d kiss it all off and be like “It looked pretty! What was I supposed to do? Aren’t your lips for me to kiss?!”

-Posts vague pictures of you because he wants to show you off but understands if you aren’t ready to go completely public yet, so he’ll post pictures of you with a bouquet he bought, pictures of you in front of the sun setting, pictures of your hands while you’re out at dinner, pictures of your hands with a pretty ring he bought, and as many more that he can without overwhelming you, but when you finally do get comfortable enough to show your beautiful face, he’s immediately like “Oh! We have to do this challenge! We should do that one dance!”

-Would also wait for you while you get your nails done, he’ll help you pick out a color or shape and if you get a color he likes then he’ll go crazy about it and post pictures of your hands on his story

-Likes to spoil you and get your hair and nails done as often as you want, something about pleasing a woman as beautiful as you turns him on and even though you’d probably just get your hair done he’ll ruin it in half the time it took to finish it, if you get braids he’ll try his hardest not to pull or do too much grabbing since he knows that it hurts, but anything else and he’s pulling like he lost his mind

TAEMIN

-Bought a matching bonnet because he thinks it looks cute on you so now you, Kkoong, Daeng, and Taemin wear one to bed and even just to lounge around the house, he loves how domestic and cozy his apartment looks with his cat babies and his girlfriend matching with pajamas on and a bonnet

-Lipliner/lipstick or gloss ruiner part two only it’s ruined because you kept kissing his face, he doesn’t mind how sticky the gloss can be or the marks on his cheeks and lips, he actually thinks that it’s cute and will leave the house like that when he can

-Unfortunately, he won’t sit with you while you get your nails done, he’s too much of an introvert for that, but he will FaceTime you and hold the phone even if you aren’t talking about anything, even the silence is comfortable for the both of you so he doesn’t mind it at all, especially because he ends up missing you while you’re out

-He started using your lotion because he likes how soft it makes your skin but he uses so much that it’s always gone in a week, so you made him promise to buy more every time he uses the last of it and he always does

-You’ll post a picture of yourself dressed up and even though he never likes or comments on them, he’ll send you a text about it and be like “when I get home be ready” you posted a picture of yourself in a sundress and this man turned into a dog, right after he finished recording he sent you a text saying “keep that on, I need you in that tonight” needless to say, Taemin falls victim to sundress season

[eskawrites]

Hello!

I submit to you, if you should choose to accept it at any point, a not exactly a prompt? more of a writing challenge: (only If this sounds like fun to you of course)

Write something standalone that is LESS than (or equal to) 2000 words.

(Please feel free to ignore me, this is mostly a joke in response to your 'elden ring au 2 is 19k oh god' post. and also for the record i love every word you write and am excited for all 19k of those words even though im guessing many of them will upset me. But I also think it would be fun to see what you would do in super short form if you were at all interested!)

<3

love like love's no loss (1988 words) by EskaWrites Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Stranger Things (TV 2016) Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Robin Buckley/Nancy Wheeler Characters: Robin Buckley, Nancy Wheeler Additional Tags: a silly but cold little thing, Snowstorms, Protective Nancy Wheeler, Mild Hurt/Comfort, idk they're just soft for each other, and also nancy is a little feral it's fine Summary: “You’re getting that look on your face again.” “What look?” “Your ‘I’m planning something impulsive’ look.” She rolls her eyes. “Nancy. Please tell me you’re not planning on going out into the freezing cold just to check on Robin.”   or, Nancy goes out into the freezing cold just to check on Robin

okay i wrote this in like two hours (and at least half an hour of that was finding a title) but it's under 2k words (barely) and it's better than i thought it'd be so i'll take it as a mission accomplished

[dustedmagazine]

Broadcast — Spell Blanket: Collected Demos 2006 - 2009 (Warp)

The 16-year career of Broadcast elicits not just nostalgia for psychedelia, but for the bygone, awestruck moment when new studio recording technology made it possible to build entire worlds in sound, and in some sense to live in those worlds. Until lead singer Trish Keenan’s untimely death in 2011 at age 42 Broadcast dwelled in sound.

Broadcast was influenced to an outsized degree by one obscure album, the self-titled and only release from the United States of America in 1968. That album brims with the exuberance of some young, newly minted electronic music obsessives, several of whom later made careers as academic composers, avant-garde musicians, or sound artists working in media. That early album is marked by both beauty and no small share of clowning — electronics could be sonically eerie, but they could just as easily generate mechanistic slide whistles or burps.

Broadcast retained the United States of America’s sense of awe and play with sound, though they streamlined this approach through disciplined musicianship as well as a number of stylish signatures, including Keenan’s finely threaded vocals, James Cargill’s forceful drumming, a tendency to write in waltz time (it works) and sometimes an overdriven organ. In place of silliness, Broadcast often inserted something more aloof, but there is not a song in their catalog where they aren’t clearly reveling in sonic atmospheres, just as the United States of America had done. Broadcast’s shows were deeply immersive experiences, as complete and convincing a gesamntkunstwerk as I’ve ever seen from a rock band.

In the years before she died, Keenan kept a kind of sonic diary via MiniDisc, a format which in the 2000s enjoyed a brief moment as a medium of choice for sharing larger files. The entries she made ranged from grainy snippets of vocal melodies to relatively polished song demos recorded with Cargill and others, advanced drafts that might have become songs on a subsequent Broadcast album. As Spell Blanket contains 36 tracks, it is difficult to know which of these sketches were bound for release and which were only fleeting ideas. (Cargill must have endured an emotionally enormous task in curating this material). But a track like “Follow the Light” suggests what might have been. On that recording, Keenan sings a haunting, minor-key melody in gorgeous counterpoint to two organ lines, one high and one low, both swimming in reverb in a way that exemplifies the group’s métier of crafting sonic worlds. “The Games You Play,” with its motorik drums and clouds of recorder grot pitted against the vocals, likewise sounds almost finished. On the other hand, “The Song Before the Song Comes Out” seems to be Keenan sketching a possibility with her voice and whatever device she had at hand. This kind of intimacy is evident on a number of the collection’s tracks.

There will be a final Broadcast album later this year, a recreation by Cargill using the fragments Keenan left behind. In the meantime, we have Spell Blanket, a mostly unexpurgated view inside the process of building worlds in sound, at the sort of unfinished stage that the band’s albums ardently never revealed when they were together.

Benjamin Tausig

[toasty-self-shipping]

Some info on my Gorillaz self insert

Background on how tashuna joined the band (this takes place during phase one)

Murdoc was looking for a backup vocalist for his band while noodle did sing for some of the songs like 19-2000 and 5/4 he was looking for someone with a deeper voice and well can sing more English words Russel brings up how he has a cousin from Brooklyn who can sing really good and can played the electric guitar

murdoc being himself immediately wants Russel cousin to come to kong studio (mainly because he saw a picture of her and had different intentions) but after getting threaten by Russel to not do anything weird with her murdoc promised him that he won’t try to flirt with Tashuna

He said as he crossed his fingers behind his back

general info

Tashuna Hobbs is a 20 year old girl from the streets of Brooklyn and is the only family member who still talks to Russel Tashuna is a little self conscious about her voice due to it sounding deep and masculine but when it comes to her singing it’s the most powerful thing you ever heard in her spare time she enjoys videos games and watching anime and doing her makeup

her relations with the band

Russel

well obviously they are cousins though he secretly sees her as a little sister hence why he is so overprotective of Tashuna the two also enjoy listening to rap music though Tashuna likes the girls group music like spice girls tlc and destiny Child

Noodle

she sees Tashuna as big sister figure noodle even calls her oneesan Tashuna finds noodle adorable while she doesn’t understand what she says most of the time the two can always agree that power puff girl is the best cartoon ever

murdoc

Tashuna finds him… strange she doesn’t really try to be around him by herself the only time she would only be in a room with murdoc is either they are recording for a song or unless Russel is there

(She doesn’t hate him she just finds him creepy)

2D

She is pretty mutual with him since they do sing together the two start to bond over their love for horror movies while 2d like zombies tashuna is a big fan of the Halloween movies and chainsaw massacre movies

2D doesn’t immediately fall for tashuna immediately because he is still a little heartbroken over Paula cracker but later on in phase two he will try to make his move on her if Russel doesn’t kill him

phase two

after the band break up and everyone went their separate ways tashuna went back to Brooklyn to help out her aunt with the hair salon business since it was the y2k era and hair styles like micro braids beaded braids and asymmetrical bobs were getting popular

one day she gets a letter it was from noodle it mentions about the new album demon days and she wanted tashuna to come back at first she wasn’t going to come back but after a couple of weeks of thinking tashuna decided to pack her bags along with her electric guitar and head to London to join the band again

tashuna doesn’t really sing a lot on the album she mostly played her electric guitar her relations with the gang is still the same except he feelings for 2D is starting to get more obvious and dropping some small hints on him

[caltropspress]

ShrapKnel in the Bardo

Two Nights on Tour with Curly Castro and PremRock

19 June 2024 | Brooklyn, NY | Public Records

20 June 2024 | Rutherford, NJ | Soldato Books

How many intelligent people in the house tonight?

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

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

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

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

—Curly Castro, prior to performing “Dreadlocs Falling”

1.

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

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

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

1.1

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

1.11

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

1.12

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

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

1.3

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

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

Spirit. Convergence.

2.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

3.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

3.1

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

3.11

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

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

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

3.2

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

4.

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

4.1

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

4.11

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

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

4.111

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

<whispered>

“ShrapKnel.”

4.2

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

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

5.

Before I go on live all my enemies try to contrive

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

But this ain’t commercialized hip-hop…

—Buck 65 (1999)

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

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

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

5.1

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

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

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

5.11

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

5.111

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

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

5.2

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

5.21  THE CENTRAL PARK CHAPTER

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

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

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

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

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

5.22

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

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

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

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

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

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

5.3

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

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

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

6.

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

6.1

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

6.11

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

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

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

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

7.

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

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

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

7.1

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

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

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

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

7.11

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

8.

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

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

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

8.1

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

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

9.

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

9.1

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

9.11

Oh shit, now here’s a cypher…

—Curly Castro, “Sadatay”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

9.111

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

9.2

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

Spirit. Convergence.

10.

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

10.1

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

11. CODA

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

NOSAJ:

THE POWER OF SYNERGY

MASTER SPECIALIST

SOUNDTRACK FOR THE MOVIE TAKING PLACE IN THE ROOM THAT EVENING 

A STEP FORWARD FOR THE GENRE

PRIDE

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

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

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

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

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

13.

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

ShrapKnel setlist at Public Records

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

Performance photos from Public Records courtesy of E. Fortson

[heysawbones]

Vibes, Lore, and Ghost Stories

—

I don’t consider myself a “ghost person”. As in, I don’t specifically believe in ghosts. Mostly, I believe in vibes. Some places have vibes, and the vibes are bad. Here is some Vibes Lore about the house I spent the most time in, growing up.

—

The house was one story. Brick. Mid-century vintage - 1952, IIRC (Ed. I looked it up; it’s 1956). Pretty big, maybe around 2000 square feet. 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms. My grandparents bought it after my uncles thoroughly destroyed the house they lived in before. Other houses on the block were probably from around the same time period, though they were in better condition. We were right next to a city ditch, one of the real big ones. We had lots of roaches - the normal ones and the tree variety. Animals liked to fall down in the walls and die from time to time.

The first things I remember about the place are dust so heavy it hung in the air, and how overgrown the backyard was. Clearing the backyard revealed a stone block set into the ground with dates engraved on it. I don’t remember the dates, and I don’t think anybody ever found out why the stone was there. One was inevitably reminded of a grave marker.

—

Nobody said as much initially, but it turned out that I was not the only person who found this stone at least mildly off-putting. I didn’t find this out until later, but supposedly, one of my uncles asked our neighbors about the history of the house. Again, supposedly, nobody had lived in the house for a long time. The last people who lived there were a group of stoners. One of them was a redheaded woman who hung herself from the tree in the front yard. Somebody else was either stabbed or killed on the side of the house between us and the neighbors. It was true that a branch of the big tree in the front yard had conspicuously been cut off, but I have never found any historical record verifying any aspect of this story. All I know is that some parts of the house were more oppressive than others. I didn’t find that the oppression vibes correlated specifically to the story, though the front bedroom facing the neighbor’s house certainly qualified. The other notably oppressive places: the kitchen, and “facing the backyard”.

—

I’ve had sleep hallucinations and nightmares as long as I can remember. They didn’t start in that house. They sure were vivid, though. I remember waking up to get water. I would go to the bathroom because the kitchen was Scary. I wanted to sneak past the sliding hall door that opened onto the dining room and kitchen, but it was open. I was greeted with the distinctive sound of a barbershop quartet coming from the living room. I peered out. The TV was off. Everything was off. Nobody was out there. Once, I woke up to a shirtless man sunk half through the floor, jerking in uncontrollable spasms while screaming. Another time, I got up to get water and the hall was full of stalactites and stalagmites. I’m pretty sure that one was a hallucination. Once, my mom threw a roll of toilet paper at me to wake me up, and then insisted she hadn’t when I asked her about it later. I’m pretty sure that one was real and did not involve anything even remotely spooky.

—

Here’s a fun example of horror movie shit turning out to have a completely rational explanation: my mom, my stepdad, my stepbrother, and me all slept in that front bedroom. One day, dark brown-red drippy looking stuff appeared on the walls around where my mom and stepdad slept. - the walls facing the purported suicide tree and the Stabbing Zone. It got darker over the next few days. It really, really did look like dried blood appearing out of fucking nowhere and scared my stepfather so badly that he refused to sleep in there for a while. I noticed that the wall, in addition to being Haunted as Fuck, seemed oddly shiny from some angles, but I had no further insight.

My grandfather told my mom to turn off the humidifier she slept with. She did, and the blood (mostly) went away. As you might’ve guessed, it wasn’t blood at all, because this isn’t the Exorcist or whatever. It was just fifty fucking years of nicotine build-up on nasty, nasty walls. Apparently hydrating it caused it to congeal and change color. Scrubbing the walls took care of the rest.

—

Shortly after, my stepbrother set their mattress on fire. Not ghosts. Just vibes.

—

I constantly felt like I was being watched. This probably wasn’t ghosts, either. It was probably also vibes. This didn’t stop me from trying to bargain with said vibes. I thought it would be nice if I didn’t feel like the vibes were boring holes into the back of my head.

—

Once, at dawn - when it was bright enough out, and I was old enough, not to avoid the dark of the kitchen - I went in there to get water. One of my uncles shuffled in at the same time. Someone had left some Kraft singles out on top of the microwave overnight. They lifted off the microwave, then kinda,, nonchalantly plapped onto the floor. We looked at each other, said nothing, and left the room. Later, when I asked my uncle, he replied, “sometimes I hear people talking in the vents when nobody is home.” That was all he had to say about it.

—

I still have nightmares about that house.

[cozmonaughty]

“Bambi” - The lost media of Yasuyuki Okamura

In honour of his 59th birthday - - -

This song has always been a topic that has interested me in Okamura’s works because it emerged during an awkward period in his career entering the 21st century. At this time in 1999, Okamura had partially returned from his brief hiatus where he produced songs for other artists, releasing The Forbidden Purpose of Life(禁じられた生きがい) album in the December of 1995 as well as the single Harenchi(ハレンチ) in 1996. But otherwise it was mostly radio silence and inactivity until the year of Bambi.

On the 14th of August, 25 years ago today, Bambi was released on the now discontinued music distribution site “Realrox.” The song was only aired once under the internet special program “Yasuyuki Okamura Summer Gift ‘99”

MP3 + lyrics under the cut ~

Because of this, only low quality rips of the song are available currently. These were taken from the website’s audio player, making it difficult to discern or transcribe the lyrics, but overall it’s pretty clear the song has a somber tone. Though it maintains the Okamura heavy funk style that he began to use around the early 2000s. Some fans compare the sound to “Sex (Old Version)” but personally it kinda reminds me of SOPHIA’s “Hard Worker” (which Okamura had also produced).

Either way, it’s really ‘distinctly Okamura’ in the way he uses SFX and sampling. There’s crow cawing throughout the entire track and engine sounds with reversed speaking weaving through the sections. What I like about Okamura’s music during this era was the very industrial and machine-like sound he produces, but it does feel incomplete here; especially when it transitions into an acoustic performance of “Ikenai Kotokai” … which sounds very different from its 1988 studio version. I don’t really know how to put it, but it feels so ominous and solemn. Though I guess it’s always been a sad song…

Looking into the actual lyrics for Bambi gives some insight, which were partially transcribed by an uploader on Nico Nico Douga (thank you!). Translations by me!

Bambi - Lyrics Translated

If I were Bambi,

Puppies and Pandas,

Rabbits and Ladybugs,

When they jump

They’ll smile and follow me around

But around us,

There are crows, crows

Crows surrounding us

They don’t even look aside, destroying only themselves

Their souls are corrupt

Hiding my hands, definitely a crow

[ Unintelligible ]

It’s my fault I can’t do live performances anymore

It’s my fault I can’t release records anymore

It’s my fault I’m pretentious

It’s because I’m brazen

It’s my fault I can’t do live performances anymore

It’s my fault I can’t release records anymore

It’s my fault I’m pretentious

It’s my brazenness

I’m brazen

—

Now this part is a bit speculative, but my reading of these lyrics is that they appear to be a personal reflection of Okamura’s struggles during the late 1990s. It’s expressed discreetly through the stark tonal contrast between the fairytale scene and the dark imagery of the crows, but then there’s the overt reference to his period of inactivity, where he blames himself. 1997-98 were pretty barren years, with no activity in the latter, so this must have been indicative of an intense struggle in Okamura’s life. From his debut he was able to release an album every year, as well as working on music for Misato Watanabe among other artists he had produced for. I’d hypothesise that during this period is when he would have started using stimulants, which he would later be arrested for. I can’t say for sure, however some fans attribute his significant weight gain to these drugs and excessive consumption of alcohol.

The song titled “Bambi” is perhaps an homage to Prince’s song sharing the name, as from the beginning of Okamura’s career he’s drawn heavy inspiration from the artist. Though the similarities are only surface level here as there’s no musical or lyrical similarities between the two.

—

25 years later, it all worked out. After his prison sentence was lifted, he returned to creating music and almost instantly returned to success. Since then, he’s announced his sobriety.

[thisworldisablackhole]

The Holy Trinity of Risecore (imo)

Risecore is a somewhat derogatory term for bands who released music on Rise Records in the mid 2000s to early 2010s. It was applied mostly to metalcore bands that basically took the blueprint of Attack Attack's "Stick Stickly" and printed copies of that shit like dollar bills from the proverbial money tree. Synth laden crabcore breakdowns and sing along choruses repeated ad nauseum until the style quickly became a parody of itself. I personally have a huge soft spot for this kind of music. Asking Alexandria's first album in particular was hugely influential to my life, and even though I don't think that album aged well, it singlehandedly introduced me to the world of metalcore and made me a fan for life. For all the shit that people give risecore bands, I think their accessible approach to heavy music did a lot to bring new fans into the fold, and ultimately bolster the health of the alternative music scene more than people give them credit for.

Despite the brain mushing mundanity of this particular scene, there were a few standout Rise bands from that era that I think got unfairly lumped in with the rest of the crowd. Real ones know what's up, but the average person might not be able to discern these acts from the rest of the roster. These bands broke the mold by pushing the boundaries of the formula and experimenting more with atmosphere and vibes. Unsurprisingly, these bands are all connected in a way. After Of Machines drowned in a gofundme scandal and Oceana morphed into an electronic indie band named Polyenso, members of both bands joined forces to form Lead Hands. Finding this out years after being a fan of all three was mind blowing but also like... a big "no shit sherlock" moment.

Of Machines has possibly the saddest tale of tale of the bunch. This band had all the right ingredients and so much potential that was squandered by poor band relations and a singer that allegedly ran off with the GoFundMe donations that was supposed to fund their next recording. As If Everything Was Held In Place would still go down as a celebrated landmark in the genre, garnering a cult following where everyone who knows it seems to love it. This whole band was great but the quality that really elevated them was the combination of Dylan Anderson's knack for crafting beautiful vocal melodies, and super clean guitar leads drenched in reverb and delay walking all over the album with a gentle stride. I wouldn't say Anderson's vocals are that unique in sound, but he has a sense of power and control that is really hard to achieve with such a high range. It's impressive. The contrast between the soaring atmospheric leads over breakdowns and Bennet Freeman’s screams also creates a hypnotic dichotomy that is impossible to not grab your attention. They don't just rely on cheap tricks to sell their music either. Underneath the pretty leads and impressive vocal performances is just solid song writing that encapsulates moments of serenity and passion with effortless style.

Oceana had a more average career but was nonetheless riddled with member changes and major shifts in sound direction. Their first album was honestly fantastic, but it wasn’t until they got a new vocalist and doubled down on the atmosphere that they really came into their own. One of my absolute favourite things about this album is Brennan Taulbee’s voice. He utilizes a more subdued range than a lot of other singers in the scene, but he has this immaculate quiver to his voice that makes him sound like he’s trembling while confessing sins from the altar. It’s uniquely addicting, and if I ever did clean vocals in a band, he would be my number one inspiration. His harsh vocals are also deafening, and when combined with Jack Burns tasteful guitar riffs, they create haunting vibrations that you can feel in your bones. The vibe of this whole album is oppressive and you can feel it from the first few seconds. It'd sad, it's angry, it's depressing, and the fantastic production work really conveys these feelings with a staggering clarity.

The lyrics on this album is another story, and as I'll admit that I had no idea what they were singing about when I initially fell in love with this album. Oceana was comprised of some christian boys who thought they were fighting the good fight for the sake of their god, and they essentially created an anti-abortion concept album (birth eater... duh). Most of the lyrics are penned from the perspective of an unborn child, angry at the world for taking away his chance at life. I've had to do a lot of mental gymnastics over the years in order to keep enjoying this album, because the music is just too fucking good. The lyrics on their own are actually quite good too if you completely remove and ignore the context, and I think - for the most part - they did a good job at leaving the lyrics vague enough for the listener to apply their own meaning to.

After this album, the band went through a major stylistic change. They dropped the screaming and the breakdowns, cleaned up their tones and wrote an EP that was much more light hearted and non controversial, albeit still spiritual in nature. The Clean Head EP is honestly some of their best work, and I will go to my grave wondering what would have happened if the band followed it up with a whole album in the same style. It probably would have ended up in my top 5 albums of all time. Jack's guitar playing is so creative and impactful. Brennan's lyricism and vocal delivery is phenomenal. Denny Agosto's drum work dances around with a gentle intricacy that never fails to make my ears perk up. This EP is a spiritual experience whether you believe in a god or not.

Lead Hands was a post hardcore band born from the ashes of Oceana and Of Machines, and their existence was much more similar to the latter. They released one fantastic album before squandering their potential in a battle of interpersonal and financial dramas. This band saw OG Oceana screamer Keith Jones teaming back up with guitarist Jack Burns, Of Machines drummer Brent Guistwite, and VeraEmerge vocalist Spencer Pearson (who sounded quite like a dreamier version of Dylan Anderson).

This band took the heavy, moody riffs of Oceana and the atmospheric leads of Of Machines and then cranked up the ambiance and slowed everything else way the fuck down. Lead Hands is heavy, but it's also soft and pretty. How they managed to do both so well is still a wonder to me. Guitars are tuned to drop B, but they are played clean, and only have a bit of overdrive during the heaviest parts. Riffs plod along methodically and every major shift in dynamics feels intentional, like a seed planted in the earth and given time to grow. They really tried to trim the excess here and approached the writing with a less is more mindset. This album can be an atmospheric slow burn and has been criticized for it's monotony, but I think it's beautiful. It can easily fade into background noise if you aren't paying attention, but it's intricacies blossom with repeated listens and it becomes very rewarding over time. God only knows how good a sophomore from this band could have been.

[randomvarious]

Today's compilation:

Out Patients 2000 Future Jazz / Broken Beat / Drum n Bass

Checked out this sweet turn-of-the-millennium electronic comp over the past couple days called Out Patients, the first installment in a three-volume series that was put out on UK label Hospital Records. Originally launched in 1996, Hospital was founded by London Elektricity, a duo who, sometime in the early 2000s, decided to downsize to just one member, Tony Colman, so the former member, Chris Goss, could devote more time and energy to running Hospital himself.

Now, if you know anything about either Hospital or LE beyond what I've just told you, then you know that what they're both primarily known for is their drum n bass output. In fact, in their first four years of existence, that's all Hospital pretty much ever released. However, in 2000, with the launching of this little, cleverly titled Out Patients series—songs that largely laid outside of Hospital's own sonic radius—they decided to venture a little out of their comfort zone.

So, ultimately, what we have here are a bunch of groovy electronic lounge-type vibes that largely come in the form of future jazz and broken beat—a pair of oft-intertwined electronic genres that were both surging at around the same exact time. Broken beat was this wonderful, broadly-defined music that saw fundamentals of drum n bass taken to a sharper, more complicated and unorthodox abstraction, and its rhythms would be integrated into future jazz, a type of jazz-infused electronic music that succeeds the late 80s-to-mid-90s UK phenomenon of acid jazz, and hearkens back to the halcyon days of free-flowing jazz fusion from the 70s and 80s too; also known as nu jazz.

And even though this is just an exclusive dozen tracks from a label that'd never really put out this type of material before, Hospital was still able to get a few notable names to contribute to this release here: veteran Uschi Classen, who in addition to her own solo material, had also been in a bunch of groups, like Ashley Beedle's Black Science Orchestra and the Ballistic Brothers; dnb trio Aquasky; and Mr. Scruff, whose biggest claim to fame is this very popular electro swing tune—one of the only decent ones that's ever been made—and if you're an American of a certain age, you might remember it from an old ad campaign for Lincoln's full lineup of vehicles too.

Here's one of those ads with Michael Clarke Duncan!

But, to me, the best song on this release has to be "Action," by Japan's Yukihiro Fukutomi. Fukutomi himself was his own entity too by the time this song had been included on this very comp, but the vast majority of his music had only ever been released in Japan; so when he appeared on Out Patients, it was likely the first time that many people outside of Japan had ever heard him before. And those people were probably fuckin' dazzled, because the combination of constantly shifting broken beat drum rhythm and Fukutomi's whiny old school keyboard improv here is simply diabolical 😈. Get lost in this super craggy shit!

And something that also needs pointing out here is that even though most of this comp isn't drum n bass, there are still a couple dnb tunes on here anyway. And as someone who really loves it when people just *straight-up rap* over drum n bass beats, I can't leave this post without mentioning MC Mello and London Elektricity's bouncy "Melloizdaman." This is just such a cool and fun tune, overall, and I especially love how LE add this warm coat of ambient synth to their double bass-infused beat after the first verse. Usually rappers need to rap over steady beats in order to maintain their own timing and flow, and while LE don't mess with the rhythm itself here, they're still able to enhance their tune further with this added synth in order to keep it sounding fresh. Really great stuff 🤩.

So a pretty dope set of early 2000s tunes from Hospital Records here. Mostly not the kind of electronic music that they're typically known for releasing, but they included some nice, previously unheard tracks on this album nonetheless 👍.

And if you want the type of stuff that Hospital *is* known for, check out this post I did a few months ago on Plastic Surgery 2, a double-disc comp and DJ mix that featured them on the 2-step liquid funk trend, a more mass-appealing strain of drum n bass that grew to be very popular in the UK in the mid-to-late 2000s that they themselves were on the forefront of.

Highlights:

Liane Carroll - "The Trap" Uschi Classen - "Tocatta (The Indigo Blue Mix)" Aquasky - "Another Day" Skitz + Julie Dexter - "Be...." Landslide - "Golden Cavalier" London Elektricity - "Incurable" Space Clique - "Exit #1: Luna Park" MC Mello vs. London Elektricity - "Melloizdaman" Yukihiro Fukutomi - "Action" Marcus Intalex & S.T. Files - "Taking Over Me"

[brokethedrawer]

Ran into this while browsing through some older sites--an article/interview from 2004, mostly about Everybody Loves a Happy Ending. I especially love what Charlton says about "Size of Sorrow."

In case the Wayback Machine link ever stops working, here's a copy:

INTERNAL CONFLICTS ARE PRACTICALLY a requisite for every pop duo, the in-fighting associated with Simon & Garfunkel, Oasis and The Everly Brothers almost as well-known as the songs they produced.

Up until recently, Tears for Fears had sustained an impressive impasse of their own, with one half of the pair, Curt Smith, abandoning the synth group for more than a decade. What was thought to be a permanent vacation, however, is snapped on April 6 with the release of Everybody Loves a Happy Ending (Arista), the first CD by the original British duo since 1989’s Top 10 album The Seeds of Love.

The full track list: "Everybody Loves a Happy Ending," "Closest Thing to Heaven" (first single), "Call Me Mellow," "Size of Sorrow," "Who Killed Tangerine?," "Quiet Ones," "Who You Are," "The Devil," "Secret World," "Killing with Kindness," "Ladybird" and "Last Days on Earth."

Smith and partner Roland Orzabal grew up as childhood friends in Bath, England, devoting many years to the cultivation of Tears for Fears (and Graduate, prior to that) before breaking though with The Hurting in 1983.

The band ruled the airwaves in ’85, tallying two singles that topped the charts for a combined five weeks: "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" and "Shout." But despite the mega-success of Songs from the Big Chair that year (five-times platinum) and the strong reception garnered by its follow-up, The Seeds of Love, four years later, the union eventually proved ill-fated. Smith exited in 1992.

Orzabal upheld the Tears for Fears moniker despite Smith’s absence throughout the ’90s, but the amount of material he created was minimal: Elemental in 1993 and Raoul and the Kings of Spain two years later. In the meantime, Smith periodically issued obscure solo discs, including 2000’s Aeroplane.

"About two-and-a-half years ago, they started talking again," newly recruited guitarist Charlton Pettus, who also played on Aeroplane, tells ICE. "I think they had both arrived at similar places musically, and whatever personal stuff there was, it was long ago enough that no one cared anymore. Their dynamic partnership is one that they didn’t fully appreciate until they didn’t have it. When they got back into it, they just kept going."

Once the reunion became official, the band devoted winter 2002-’03 to writing and laying down demos. The bulk of the recording took place in Los Angeles starting in February, and lasted through the summer.

"We took about four trips between Roland’s house in England and [L.A.] before we really started recording," says Pettus, who co-produced the album with the band. "So it was a gradual, get-back-into-the-water thing at first."

Whereas Orzabal traditionally performs guitar and keyboards and Smith the bass, the members occasionally swapped duties during this recording. Pettus filled all three roles when needed, and Orzabal even stepped behind the drum kit for "Closest Thing to Heaven." The album is also infused with B3 organ, Wurlitzer, acoustic piano, Mellotron, clarinet and other instruments.

While Pettus claims the recording was slow-moving, "Ladybird," the first song the duo attempted, "went fairly quickly and naturally," he says. "There was no conscious effort to sound like Tears for Fears… they just do."

Despite the long gap of time between recordings, the group only looked to the past for one Everybody selection, "Size of Sorrow"; the rest were all written specifically for the new album.

The Orzabal-penned "Size of Sorrow," at least seven years old, was casually recalled during the recording sessions, eventually winding up on the album. "It was from the period right after they broke up, so hearing Curt sing it was kind of an epiphany," Pettus states. "When we were going through songs midway through the process, there was a song of Roland’s that he’d never recorded a version of which he liked. Me and Curt thought it was a beautiful song… we messed around with it for awhile and loved it."

Pettus says that the majority of initial tracks were preserved for the final versions of the songs.

"More than half the tracks on there are first-take quickies," he says. "A lot of the guitar solos are first-take noodles that we got attached to. It’s a demo/record hybrid — nothing was erased."

He points to the title track specifically: "The middle part of that song is Roland singing and playing acoustic guitar together on one mike. He did just one take as a reference, so we could lay out the song structure. We thought there was something magical about the take, so that was it."

The studio residency resulted in roughly 12 leftover tracks, some of which will surface as B-sides and others that will not be finished. Pettus hints at one track in particular, "Out of Control," as being an especially beloved remainder.

Once the recordings were finished, the pair inked a deal with Arista — the first time they had ever been involved with the label. "[Arista president] L.A. Reid has always been a big fan," VP of Marketing Adam Lowenberg tells ICE. "Everyone at Arista is so excited about this… there’s nothing else like it on our roster."

–Kurt Orzeck © 2004 Howard Communications, Inc. All rights reserved.

[instaquarius]

For the Full Res since I know it's like REALLY hard to read (tbh even on dA you might have to just zoom in like 500% and also on dA hit full screen and you should be able to read it. It's mostly including pokedex entries or stuff I found on bulbapedia to further support why I pokemon where they are in the timeline/family tree and stuff

PTA (PokeTale: Ascendance) Legendary and Mythical Pokemon timeline or Family Tree (specifically for my Undertale/Pokemon AU), including Headcanons and so on.

About the lines and stuff and connections:

Black lines are Creation Lines.

Aka for Pokemon directly and intentionally created by another Legendary like Arceus Example: Personally, i like to think that Arceus came first as well and created some of the "bigger" Pokemon Gods *like the Creation Trio and Lake Trio* and then Mew was the last one after the Earth was made/Universe and all that stuff. Though I also personally headcanon that Arceus also created more Pokemon than just the 7.

Like The Original Dragon (or Reshi, Zek, and Kyurem since they're the OG dragon that got split in half) as well as the Life and Death duo ((simply just because... ya know. The literal GODS of Life/Death/Truth/Idealism etc., kinda just sounds like they would be right up there in terms of power scaling with the literal Gods of Space, Time, and Antimatter/Gravity *for the Life Deer and Death bird* and Truth/Idealism, etc. kinda sounds like the Lake Trio territory *Being they're the literal gods of Knowledge, Determination/Willpower, and Emotion* and humans just haven't figured it out yet when writing the Pokedex entries))

(Plus, as much research as I did on Xerneas, Yveltal, and the Tao Trio, nothing I looked up reaaaaaaaally didn't give me an answer on where the hell they came from, unlike most other legendaries soooo ye. Going with my headcanon instead for my AU)

Note: All Legendaries besides the Creation Trio, Lake Trio, Tao, and X/Y duo are more or less all created by the Mew species before they all eventually basically went extinct except for one. Same thing for the humans as well. I believe all humans and Pokemon were mews back in the day, like 10 billion years or so ago, then eventually, through convergent evolution or whatever, they all became what the Pokemon world is today. (And yes. In PTA, Mew was created by Arceus. Arceus was the original/first Pokemon to be made)

The red lines are Related links. Pokemon like the Legendary Dogs was created by Ho-oh when he revived the Pokemon that died from the Burnt Tower. Or Legendary Birds being governed over by Lugia as implied by the Pokemon 2000 movie etc.

Purple lines are the avatar lines. Covering Pokemon that are more or less on Arceus level or even being straight-up stronger than Arceus, like Ultra Necrozma (Ultra Necrozma has a base stat total of 754 which is a fair amount higher than Arceus's previous record of 720.) Also, same reason why I added Eternatus to this (besides also the fact Eternatus straight up looks like a MASSIVE hand in his Gigantimax form, which makes me think Eternatus could have been a part of Arceus at one point but then accidentally fell off or something while Arceus was making all these pokemon/the universe and shit) and even the third legendary from Scarlet and Violet that's been hella implied throughout the whole game. At least just guessing by the whole mystery surrounding it-

Blue lines are artificial lines. Aka, artificial Pokemon made by humans like Mewtwo, Type: Null etc. It's basically self-explanatory.

Pink lines are monitor lines Example: We know from the pokedex Heatran was created from a volcano/lava pool (which was created by Groudon waaaaaaaay back in the early stages of the Earth being made/Groudon creating the continents etc.) Ho-oh is added cuz of his connection to a phoenix and phoenix's are created from ash etc. Ash comes from volcanoes sooo that's why I added him as part of the Groudon fam/part of his sort of "Court" in a sense as a lesser God that sorta serves Groudon etc. and miiiiiight be implied o be the God of Resurrection? or Lugia being Guardian of the Oceans to help Kyogre who's King of the Ocean/God of it etc.

And finally, the yellow line is the Adaption line. Example: Like how the Koraidons had to adapt to the future changing and learn to use his freaking wheels built into his body to become cyclizar then even more modified into miraidon- (maaaaaaaaaaaaaybe same can work the Tao trio?) them adapting to being split into 2 or 3 technically-

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And before anyone says shit like "Uwu this pokemon shouldnt be connected to this because in canon it doesn't say so" I didnt want to just have every single legendary connected to Mew even if in my headcanon i said that Mew HELPED in creating all these legendaries.

Like for example I think a Pokemon like Celebi was "made" by Dialga cuz it has time powers so I kinda feel like Mew made Celebi but Dialga also helped maybe giving Celebi some of its powers so it can time travel and so on.

But also, other legendaries are like- kinda implied to have a connection to this legendary (Like Melloetta singing to make people happy sounds like something that's in Mesprits kingdom or whatever or something she'd rule over, so that's why I had Melloetta as TECHNICALLY being Mesprits kid) and so on.

And it doesn't help either 50% of the time past maybe the 5th gen its like nintendo stopped caring giving all these legendaries cool backstories and stuff or they just KINDA exist to like- giving a prince a ride (looking at the 2 horses from Galar) or Victini being the "Victory" God etc.

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Oh yeah, also in case anyone wondering why the Hell Zero is also here/eventually becomes Chara's adopted Sibling is because at some point after the Giratina movie, and he leaves Jail he ends up in Paldea and basically eventually meets Iono and ends up on her streams and stuff and they kinda end up dating in PTA (since both like electric-type Pokemon and have Magnetons and shit) 

Chara eventually runs into him again and they talk out about what happened and what Zero almost did to the Giratinas and smoltina and after realizing he changed and such she began to trust him and eventually he ends up as a part of the Arceus family as her brother

Also I crackship Iono and Zero. Cuz I think it'd be a cute ship 

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

For PokeTale: Ascendance

An AU based off of an RP between me and a friend of mine from my Discord server discord.gg/pQf9ZsdF6E where the Creation Trio as babies (a time they all cant really fully control their powers and junk) accidentally create a portal into the Undertale Universe and meet Chara and basically Arceus finds Chara and adopts her after finding out about her shitty human parents and Chara ends up helping Arceus raise the babies and basically lives in the Pokemon Universe now

[lunatic-fandom-space]

OKAY i just finished the 2000s Jesus Christ Superstar movie and I really enjoyed it as well. At the start I was under the impression that this was meant to be like, an actual movie adaptation and not 'just' a filmed version of the stage musical but when the last supper scene started I realized that theyve been on the same set the whole time and the only other set theyve shown was that small room where they sang This Jesus Must Die, so this was probably meant to be a fairly straight forward recording of the stage show only with some more elaborate and cinematic camera work. And I made that whole post complaining about the more theatrical staging of the 2000s film and why it didnt work and then I realized its because I really misjudged the filmmakers intentions and I was able to enjoy the movie way more after that.

Id say both movies are equally good, they just have different strengths. Like, if you prefer something thats grittier and closer to reality and is filmed more like a traditional movie, Id recommend the 70s film but if you prefer something more colorful and theatrical and presumably more accurate to the stage show, Id recommend the 2000s film.

Personally, I think im leaning more towards the 70s movie because while theres so much to like about the 2000s one, I just cant get past the actors they got for Jesus and Judas. I already didnt like Jesus in the original movie so the only thing that really changes here are my reasons for disliking him. I think in one of my previous posts I said that 70s movie Jesus brought the Jesus Christ while 2000s movie Jesus brought the Superstar and I prefer Jesus Christ and. yeah, cant sum it up any better than that

What they did with Judas was just awful though. The second the actor came on screen I was like "ohhhhhh noooooooo I dont think Im gonna like this guy" and yeah, I didnt. But unlike with Jesus where he really wasnt written or framed different and it mostly came down to the performance, i feel like they really went out of their way to portray him as way more malicious and antagonistic and it was just bad man. Like, when Mary is done putting Jesus to bed and singing her song about how He Scares Her So they reintroduce him like some kinda horror movie villain and like we're meant to be jumpscared by him its so weird. And then during that last song hes not wearing white and singing exclusively with presumed angels, hes wearing red and black like he did before the betrayal and hes singing with all these women who are also dressed in red and black but theres also this choir of angels in the background and its just messy and confusing. Like, I was kinda confused by that scene in the original movie but thats because the location suddenly changed, the actual point of it was pretty clear to me; Judas and his backup singers are audience inserts who are trying to make sense of Jesus and the things he did. In the 2000s movie there are two groups, the angels and Judas' guys and the latter appear needlessly antagonistic towards Jesus for no real reason because of the framing and because of the way Judas has been characterized. It feels like theyre taunting him, its so weird and I really dont like it. Also, while the actors singing voice was alright for most of the film (I didnt like his delivery but he wasnt an awful singer or anything) during the song right before he dies his voice just sounds so rough and raspy and awful, I really hate actors in a musical movie are like "oh Im letting the acting take precedent over the singing, oh im applying the reality of the situation I cant sing this pretty" because thats not the point of musicals!! stop it!!!

The other big issue I had was that there were no breaks between musical numbers whatsoever so Id often get whiplash because there was practically no breathing room between songs. Like, JCS is entirely sung-through with no real spoken dialogue but you gotta have a few breaks in there man (also they had those breaks in the 70s movie and it was a lot better that way)

But thats enough complaining, lets get to the shit I liked!! Right off the bat, I liked Judad kissing Jesus because the way it was filmed and acted made it look like Judas just went in for a straight up makeout session and I love that. Judas/Jesus shippers stay winning!

I also adored the lighting and and the camerawork, there were so many striking still images and they made great use of contrasting colors and dark silhouettes like during the crucifiction and when Mary was telling jesus to rest and the set was bathed in this cool shade of dark blue while they were both this warm orange and when they were singing This Jesus Must Die in that black room with the cool lighting and then the screens on the walls suddenly turned on and brought in these warm orange undertones

Speaking of This Jesus Must Die, I loved the way they handled that scene and the Hosanna, Heysanna scene right afterwards, its probably one of my favorite sequences in the movie

The scene ends with a bunch of guys in like riot police gear coming out and trying to arrest everyone/beat everyone to death and then right after that we get the bit where theyre all like Did You See I Waved I Believe In You And God So Tell Me That Im Saved and theyre passing around guns and stuff and I have no strong feelings about that, I just dont know why its there. I get the vibe that they were trying to go for more relevant political commentary since they were modernizing this story about a guy being wrongfully executed by a tyrannical government anyway, but then just gave up abount a third or a quarter of the way through only for it show up again for a brief moment at the very end, its pretty strange.

That being said, I really liked this anachronistic setting they managed to build here. One of the things i really enjoyed about the 70s movie was that it was set in the actual time period of Jesus death and then they would just throw in a small filler scene of Judas running away from some actual fucking tanks. It was really bizarre but it also really adds to the charm of that movie imo. They were definitely more deliberate about it here and had a more consistent tone as a result though, so I think I prefer the 2000s movie

I still didnt really get Pilates deal, even after someone in my replies graciously explained it to me. He just doesnt really have a clear through-line and he feels oddly unimportant considering hes yknow, the guy who gave the order to crucify Jesus, which is a pretty big deal Ive heard

Tangentially related to that guy, I love love love the scene of Jesus getting whipped. If theres one thing Ive learned about myself in these past few weeks its that I like my men how I like my sidewalks; wet n dirty. And BOY did they get our guy wet and dirty!! with blood. And then afterwards when the crowd is trying to get Pilates to crucify him and all these black hooded figures reach out to him with with blood red hands and its visually similar to a previous scene where Jesus was surrounded by beggars, ough I was going sick mode babeyyyyy

Speaking of that scene with the beggars, I think they did a good job of conveying the claustrophobia and the urgency and the rapid escalation, but they shouldve done less of those slow fade transitions and more hard cuts. Also, this scene, that scene where he gets caught and the crowd is taunting him as hes walked to his execution and the scene where he gets whipped and each strike is one person individually hitting him and coating him with blood are all great at conveying how uncomfortable being touched without consent like that is even if its not sexual or anything. It tapped into something very specific for me and i dont know if I'll be able to explain it well but here it goes: i like to write these fucked up little short stories in my free time and Ive recently developed something of a fascination with religion, mainly as a concept I can use to write more interesting stories. And a common theme in all those stories i came up with since i developed that fascination has been the horror of having bodily autonomy taken away from you, specifically how awful it feels to be touched in a non-consentual non-sexual way and those scenes were very striking to me because of that

7/10, they shouldve stayed more faithful to the original and had every guy show some boob

[ijustwantedtobeoneofthestrokesuk]

Wot U Call It?

East London

While all these (mostly) white boys were forming bands in London, there was another sub-culture in the capital’s underground that was just as exciting…  

Grime is not hip hop and not all UK rap is grime. 

Garage (not garage rock) was a dominant scene of London’s underground and it influenced 2 very different sounds and cultures. One being grime, which first exploded in 2003, then again in the 2010’s but there was also Original Pirate Material by The Streets, an album that stands out like no other, nobody has been able to replicate what Mike Skinner delivered on the debut album, a “cult classic, not bestseller” (charting at no.10).  

Then the is Boy In Da Corner…

The debut album from Bow rapper Dizzee Rascal was a catalyst for the breakthrough of the first-generation grime, a defining moment for black Britain. Released on XL Records, it might have only peaked at no.23 in the UK album chart but its legacy is huge as it brought grime, a niche and very specific sound to the mainstream for the first time. It gave black youths a voice and an aspiration, they could see Dizzee’s success and aim for it. Boy In Da Corner was loved by many, an album that was celebrated outside of its genre just as much as it was within, and won the 2003 Mercury Prize. 

First Generation Grime 

Hip hop has been the biggest growing genre in the world for the majority of the century, it has become the new pop and pop flirts with hip-hop. It has given black people a voice, and for the first time they aren’t censored by the white middle-aged men running the music business as the internet has given them the tools to do it themselves.  

There’s a host of sub-genres in hip-hop and for the last 20 years, grime has dominated it in the UK (drill has become a close second), even if it has lost its truest meaning and personality in recent years. Grime in the 2000’s was very different to the second wave of grime in the 2010’s, it was 21st-century punk. 

A popular misconception of grime is that it’s hip hop with an English accent as it is people rapping over a beat, however the sound was born from a quick, aggressive beat (140 beats per minute). A New York rapper would struggle to keep up. It is culturally specific. 

The genre emerged from the garage scene in London on pirate radio and in clubs. There was MC’s at garage nights but they would act like hosts whereas these MC’s wanted to express themselves over a beat while people would continue to dance. Grime rappers live for energy when performing and to get crowds revved up DJs often restart a song, known as reloads and wheel-ups. The live element for the genre is big business, even though the police effectively shut it down towards the end of the 2000’s. A decade later, Wireless is pretty much a grime festival, Stormzy has headlined Glastonbury while Dave is an arena artist. Both of these artists, from the second generation have become global megastars which would have been unthinkable in the 2000’s. 

It’s a trend comparable with the first generation of the New Rock Revolution who had to break the door open for the next wave of artists to walk in and dominate. Wiley and Dizzee being The Strokes and The Stripes, Stormzy and Dave being The Killers and Kings Of Leon. However, grime artists have had greater challenges because of the neighbourhoods they grew up in and the colour of their skin. 

So Solid Crew and The Streets took garage rap to the mainstream but a scene, particularly in Bow, East London was starting in the late ‘90’s and it was fronted by Godfather of Grime, Wiley. The mainstream garage acts were rapping about the usual stuff pop artists speak of, Wiley bridged that gap and he spoke to his audience about street life which was unheard of in the UK. 

In March 2002 Pulse X by Musical Mob is credited as the first grime beat. Later that month Lethal Bizzle’s More Fire Crew released Oi! which charted at no.8, the first grime song to get attention outside of London. 

4 months later Wiley released Eskimo Riddim, an instrumental beat that would define the genre. Wiley called the sound EskiBeat, however pirate radio presenters described it as ‘grimey’ because of its dirty, aggressive tone and ‘grime’ stuck.  

Lethal Bizzle’s controversial banger, Pow! (Forward) which had been banned from being played in clubs because its aggressive beat was believed to incite violence. It also received no radio play because of the lyrical content but it still charted at no.11 in October. The same year, the whole scene was given exposure when Jammer launched Lord Of The Mics, a compilation series celebrating the best of grime. 

In June 2005 Roll Deep released debut album Into The Deep End while grime’s other supergroup, Boy Better Know (BBK) formed. The collective featured brothers Skepta and JME as well as Frisco, Jammer, DJ Maximum, Preditah, Shorty, Solo 45 and Wiley. Skepta and JME’s sister, Julie Adenuga has also been an influential figure as a DJ on Rinse FM and later on Beats 1. 

Grime became a soundtrack to the streets, giving a platform to those underrepresented in the mainstream while uniting diversity and it began on pirate radio, emerging in different postcodes in London before spreading throughout the UK. The sound is influenced by the homes grime artists grew up in. These teens were mostly first or second-generation Brits, their parents being part of the Windrush Generation, they were surrounded by their Afro roots from a young age. At the same time, US hip hop had started to break through on a commercial level in the UK, exposing them to rappers like Jay Z and Snoop Dogg.

Without pirate radio stations, there would be no grime. It was the only way to get music out there. Unless you were in an underground London club you’d have to listen in to pirate radio to hear this new wave which wasn’t easy. Up until 2004, for most grime fans, their only option was to tune in to pirate radio. If you missed it, you missed out. 

These stations were illegal and hyper-local. If you weren’t within a mile or so of the station it would be hard to pick up. As they were illegal, listeners would feel like they were insiders, part of ‘their’ movement while the broadcasters risked their lives (climbing on buildings to erect aerials) or their freedom to make it happen. They really cared about what they were doing. People would tape the shows and pass them around to others who weren’t in the postcode.  

Rinse FM launched as a pirate radio station in 1994 as a garage station but it’s where the origins of grime began. On Sunday’s Wiley’s Roll Deep had their own show on Rinse while Kano’s N.A.S.T.Y. Crew were on Deja Vu FM and Skepta DJ’d on his own show on Heat 96.6 FM where the transition of grime could be heard as he played a mix of his own instrumentals, UK garage, US hip hop, early grime alongside jungle and reggae.  

These artists only had their weekly moment to stand out which created a unique energy. As the radio wasn’t visual, rappers had to be different to be heard, when they were part of a crew with a dozen or so members, they needed to be larger than life, have their own characteristics, phrases and flows. Everybody knew who D Double E was because of his personality. 

In 2005 DJ Slimzee, who co-founded Rinse FM was given an ASBO (Anti Social Behaviour Order) when broadcast equipment was discovered during a house raid. A year later, running a radio station without a licence to broadcast became a criminal offense which could lead to 2 years in prison and fines. This was the beginning of the end for pirate radio which coincided with the internet becoming the new Wild West.  

This made pirate radio stations irrelevant which was one of the contributing factors to grime fading out in the late 2000’s. The stations played such an integral part in the culture early that, even though they weren’t needed, it just wasn’t the same. By 2010 Rinse had become an established and legal station which had its pros and cons. It continued with its DIY ethos, breeding new talent, not only in terms of music but also in broadcasters and taste makers without the risk of life or prison but the Community FM Broadcast License which they were rewarded came with consequences as they were regulated by Ofcom. This meant that they had to be censored, grime was never intended for this, the rappers didn’t want to be censored and they couldn’t afford extra studio time to record radio-friendly versions.  

This wasn’t just Rinse who had to dial down from the rough and ready pirate radio days and it created an on-going battle for underground artists who wanted radio play but didn’t want to make music that would cater for the mainstream. 

Music is a creative outlet but it's also a business and a way for artists to pay their bills. The negative connotations of grime led to discrimination by police in London with the introduction of Form 696, a risk assessment that promoters had to complete 14 days ahead of an event taking place in London. At one point there were questions included that clearly targeted grime events, based on ethnicity and how music was performed. This led to many grime events being cancelled, at the point where the genre was at its first peak, artists were affected financially as well as missing out on other opportunities. They were either forced into different styles of music, (Dizzee had already broken into mainstream pop, Wiley had a couple of huge bangers and Skepta tried to follow) or back to the streets which is another reason why the genre went quiet towards the late 2000’s and early 2010’s. 

The third, and arguably the most disrespectful reason for grime losing its spotlight was because of the ‘business’. Grime wasn’t created for the masses, it was a sub-genre that spoke to a specific audience, for it to become mainstream it would need to be watered down, which would be inauthentic and nobody wants that. 

As soon as Boy In Da Corner (released on an independent label) was winning awards major labels jumped on the scene to piggyback on its success however, it wasn’t exactly a mainstream phenomenon. Labels saw potential in other artists which they heavily invested in (this was peak music piracy era and grime artists didn’t release music in a traditional format) which they didn’t see a return on. Suddenly, this new wave of ‘next big things’ were being cast as failures and tied up in contracts, leaving them stranded, effectively killing the first generation of grime. 

NEXT CHAPTER

[from-dre]

Pop-Punk: The Aesthetics

The staples of an average millennial high-schooler’s bedroom: a skateboard propped up against the wall, a closet full of Hurley, and a Tom DeLonge Signature Strat in the corner. The fact that most of us can relate isn’t an accidental coincidence. Pop-punk reigned king of the airwaves during the late-90s/early-2000s. While various sub-genres such as midwest emo and shoe gaze had already been around for a while, nobody could’ve really predicted the rise of simple four-powerchord choruses with catchy hooks. Thanks to a plethora of the era’s bands and record labels—most notably blink-182 and Drive-Thru Records, respectively—a ceaseless wave of wide-eyed dreamers invested in the scene with utmost sincerity.

And so the story went that with the sound came the image and finally, the characteristics of any pop-punker the world over: wearing one’s heart on their sleeve, being overly emotional, and having a very stylized flair for the dramatic. The romanticized idea of “soulmates” wasn’t a new one and certainly not unique to any genre of music. It was, however, deeply embedded within the sentimental lyrics like an on-demand cookie-cutter. High school sweethearts were essentially doomed for inevitable heartbreak that they could then nurse with their favorite songs on repeat.

This isn’t a criticism. I myself was a frontline pusher of the aesthetics in every way with scraped knees from failed kick flips and calloused fingertips from constant “What’s My Age Again?” riffing to match. I embodied the look every chance I could and while it never really did much for me in return, it did make me feel part of something bigger than myself. I suppose the same could be said for nearly all counterculture movements. The ultimate consequences to this lifestyle weren’t just a bunch of nautical star tattoos and a colorful wardrobe thanks to local PacSuns everywhere. It created a generation of excessively softened hearts. Those who would jump at the sudden sight of a failed relationship. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with wanting things to work out with a loved one. But the reality is that it often doesn’t when you’re still in the midsts of adolescent dreaming. And if it’s one thing we all eventually learn along the way toward adulthood is that there is always someone else to give our hearts to. The sea is big, the fish are plentiful. That’s one thing they don’t teach in the school of pop-punk: a goodbye is not the end of the world.

Now in my 30s and having a new perspective on all-things-love, what are my lasting thoughts of it all? I can safely say that it was well worth it. Not just for the sense of belonging that it brought or the memorable concerts or even the self-made punk songs, but for the way that if one wasn’t around during that very specific time, they wouldn’t have those very specific memories. The oversized Discmans stuffed into our front pockets may’ve been uncomfortable, but the peeling back of a new CD’s sticker more than made up for it. Mostly though, those who lived through the era will always remember the subtle innocence of it all. That’s something that can’t be replaced and for that, I’m forever grateful to have experienced it.