First things first, you’ve got to come to this. Don’t make excuses. You’re cominnng. It’s part of the giant Culture Shock shebang that’s taking over Harbourfront all that weekend, and it’s going to be SLAMMIN. Krump sessions meet Tumi and the Volume meet international doc screenings meet live aerosol demonstrations and did you say this is all FREE?! Bring your mom! Tell your cousin! There’s rumours of a bush party somewhere in there too, but you’ll have to come find that out for yourself.

Apart from planning this monstrous (and wonderful) poetry festival, I’ve been filling my minutes and hours with school. Yup. I’m back in school. Starting my third week of classes. Some of my initial excitement has started to fade, and all the reasons why I couldn’t wait to get out of university a year and a half ago have begun to resurface. The people in my courses seem pretty bent on discussing how guilty they feel for being in a university setting and addressing their privilege, which is something I never once encountered during undergrad at my 99%-rich-white school. You’d think this might be refreshing, but it’s actually becoming a drag. They don’t actually address their privilege, they just whine about it… as though they are victims of privilege. Also a drag: a comment one of the older ladies in my Popular Education course let fly about how some days she feels privileged for being able to afford university, and other days, when she doesn’t have tokens for the bus, she’s not privileged. I wanted to explain to her that privilege doesn’t vary like weather–it’s more like climate. If you’re tropical, I don’t care how chilly it felt that one time in the rain two weeks ago, I see palm trees and you’re still fucking tropical. I may wind up playing the role of obnoxious, angry POC loudmouth at some point, it looks like.

In rap news, congratulations to Eternia on her video release and upcoming album release! Long time coming! Please check “Evidence” when it hits a video channel near you, if you still peep channels of that sort. I’m the sucka in yella, and Mindbender’s the (uncharacteristically) agitated badass.

Off to speak with Aceyalone for the first time in a few minutes. I think the world of him (on wax), and I’m always nervous about walking into an interview situation with such high expectations. Plenty more to say, but not much time to say it in. Come to Culture Shock next weekend. Listen to Haiku D’Etat. Brush your teeth. My comments feature refuses to work, no matter how much Movable Type tweaking I do, so either hold your thoughts or email me.

Oh, and the new Pocket Dwellers album is beautiful.

Wordemup.

Yesterday evening I had the immense pleasure of gathering with about a dozen others in the Al Green theatre to watch the very very very fresh-from-the-editing-room final cut of NEXT: A Primer on Urban Painting. Pablo Aravena was in attendance, and the man was just beaming, four years’ worth of crazy travel stories and interviews and bombing international walls having finally come together in one fluid, share-able product. His eyes were dancing, and you could tell that he couldn’t wait to get back out there.

This isn’t “just another graffiti documentary”. Though some of the sequences were shot years and continents apart, NEXT managed to capture this intense, quiet dialogue between the artists in each locale. São Paulo had something to say to Osaka had something to say to Amsterdam had something to say to Montréal. There’s so much I’d love say (and I could probably wax poetic for hours like some disconnected art school kid), but for now there are two sections in particular that stand out for me:

1) the footage from Paris, where they go crawling through soppy, crumbling tunnels deep deep below city streets, scribbling on walls side-by-side 19th century tags;

2) the section on pixacão — a real badass, highly stylized form of writing native to Brasil. I kind of wish this part of the story had been extended, but I guess I’ll just have to wait for the DVD extras. That, or travel to São Paulo myself. Pablo, I’m there if you need a translator! Let’s make it happen!

There’s almost no mention of hip hop in the film, except for a few off-hand references toward the end, which I was grateful for. It’s a fine and smart piece of work, with Sixtoo & Moonstarr & other lovelies on the soundtrack, and I look forward to seeing it blow up. The site is out of date something awful, but go check some of the clips and images for a teaser.

- - -

It’s always tricky when you step into someone else’s territory and attempt to appreciate or understand or capture their culture. It’s something I’m sure Pablo was very aware of when he dragged his camera and microphone across four continents; he already had something very big in common with all of the people and places he featured in his film, but all of their stories and images were ultimately filtered and presented through his eyes. It’s something I’m trying to be careful of as well with this new project I’ve got going on the side, Beautiful Struggle. (And it’s something I wish some of the paler patrons of Thymeless reggae Saturdays would be more conscious of too, because I stopped in last night for a few jams, and that crowd’s attitude was just painful.)

This outsider-peeking-in pet peeve is in part what fuels my hateration for 90% of the arts & culture writers or reporters I’ve encountered over the years. Some professional distance is definitely important for many forms of journalism, but in no way does your journalist status give you an unlimited, all-access pass to write on what you please. I don’t mean to say you need to be down-since-the-eighties to draw up a fifty-word blurb on the new Bow Wow movie, but I’m tired of these bland hip hop academics and herbs trying to write in-depth features and “think” pieces with little more than a one-dimensional, out-dated understanding of the culture to go on. I find it absurd and insulting. Do we need more outsiders, with their pre-conceptions and mislead (and misleading) cheap tactics, writing more simple cliches about such large, complex subjects? Do we need any more stories that start out like: “Unlike the popular hip hop artists of today, who glorify a lifestyle of violence and bling, MC XYZ is different…” I really do applaud musicians for their patience in having to give so many cookie-cutter interviews to cookie-cutter writers who write cookie-cutter articles, because I know I would banannners from being asked the same dry, uninspired questions over and over. And these journalists’ sense of entitlement especially… oh gosh.

Music journalism is just so funny to me. Why don’t I write about jazz or drum ‘n bass? Because I don’t know anything about either one, I would be a shitty jazz or DnB writer, and nuff people who DO know something about these genres would call me out in a second. So why do these know-nothing herbs insist on claiming instant expert status? It does nothing for their credibility, nothing for the readership, and absolutely nothing for the cultural movement being highlighted. Very few people will question this practice — except for k-os, bless him. Every time he writes an editorial or a letter blasting another writer’s ignorance, my heart swells with the slightest, softest touch of joy. Checks and balances.

I guess the point I’m driving at is: if you’re not in a position to teach me anything, why should I listen to you? Why should anyone listen to you?

Not that I would ever consider myself an authority on any subject — and I’m not hating because I’m bitter, but more because I’m ashamed of how low some of the standards have become. I’m ashamed that possessing a degree from a j-school is good enough for so many people. I’m ashamed that not enough care and understanding is going into people’s work. Mind you, I’m usually quick to watch what I say and where I say it, knowing full well that there’s always at least a few people around that can teach me a thing or two about what I’m doing. I feel like I knew a lot more about music before I stopped doing college radio, and I fell off quite a bit when I stepped out of that intense little environment. I’m so anxious to step back up, to learn more, to love harder.

Anyway, I’m hardly articulating this properly, and probably getting myself into trouble for being so mouthy. It’s been a crazy week and things are only going to get crazier over the next month. I desperately need the following things:

#1 A get-rich-quick scheme.

#2 To get rich, quick.

#3 A new place to live.

#4 Office space.

#5 The cure for writer’s block.

Holler if you’ve got the hook-up.

I read the hiphopcanada messageboards and so should you.

I bumped into (the legendary) Fatski on the weekend, and we had a loooong discussion about all the ways Toronto rap has and has not grown since he first started emceeing over a decade ago. It’s funny, but Toronto rap has changed so much in the last several years, and I’ve really only recently come to accept and recognise that my perceptions of the scene from one particular, happy timeperiod are now horribly outdated. When I first moved away from the city in 2000, I had such a strong grip on what I perceived to be the local hip hop sound… but now? Pffft. One night of hanging out in a south Etobicoke studio with some grimey street freestylers was all the slap-awake-cold-to-the-face I needed to set me straight.

Those late-nineties days are done. The local tunes that made me want to flow wild on college radio in 2000 are nothing like the music that’s being made now, and those original heroes of the first T-dot rap Renaissance have since slowed down and retired in favour of other pursuits. I am being fully selfish when I say “Dang, that’s too bad, son.”

Is it just my nostalgia talking, or was local hip hop more musical in the late nineties? I have a hard time getting excited about too many of the newer talents in the city in part (okay, 9 times outta 10) because it sounds like they just picked something random off a third-rate producer’s beat tape and flowed over top. No real care or artistry or poetry. No fresh, large personalities or unique approaches or engaging takes or anything. I’m not jaded, I’m just stuck on the sweet stuff that first made me jones for Mr-Emcee-From-Up-The-Block’s latest 12 inch or mixtape. Remember the Mastermind Street Jam on Energy? Remember the Sunshine Sound Crew? Sheeeit.

This is a bit of an ode to the Toronto hip hop I fell in love with when I first got into college & community radio in 2000. Here’s to living in the past. I’ve probably played each of these tracks a million times over, either via the airwaves or mixtapes or as part of live sets or whatever. Much love to the locals that first made my heart jump and my hips sway to their crafted, artisaned sounds:

[There’s plenty Kardi just cause, you know, he’s the man, up in the neighbourhood, represent, and cause he’s got an album droppin rrrrrrrrreal soon, xo.]

TWELVE! // Nautilus The Navigator + Arcee [cut off, shitty sound q]

The Enlightening // DJ Serious + Nish Rawks

Record Making Manual // Nautilus The Navigator + Fatski

You Ghetto! // Kardinal

Ol Time Killin // Kardi + Jully Black + Busta Rhymes

Runaway dub // Kardi Kardi, who likes to party

Monolithic Cipher // Shaman Harage

PS Remember The Circle? And Monolith Crew? WTF?! <3

…about race and racism not being an issue unless you’re the one being directly affected?

Exactly.

ADDENDUM:

Back in early July I fly down to Chapman University in Orange County for an IHS seminar on Art, Liberty and Culture. It was, essentially, an exercise in libertarian brainwashing, where almost everything (a screening of The Incredibles, the television industry, the rights of cigarette advertisers, the Canadian healthcare system, etc) was filtered through their skewed lens. I knew next to nothing about libertarian philosophies before I left for the OC, but by the time the week was through I had come to see it as one of the most selfish, blinded, irresponsible political systems anyone could choose to live under. Capitalism to the max, elevated to the holiest, most heavenly heights. Throughout each of the lectures, discussions and debates, I took to venting my frustration on my notebook pages, scribbling furious one-liners, blowing unfocused steam through ink:

THE FALLACY OF THE INDIVIDUAL !!!
LIBERTARIANISM IS ABANDONMENT
A LIBERTARIAN SOCIETY IS AN IRRESPONSIBLE SOCIETY
“appropriation is what artists do” – NO, IT’S WHAT COLONIALISTS DO
WESTERN ASSUMPTIONS
DON’T BITE THE HAND THAT FEEDS YOU !!!

…and so on. The more I learned, the angrier and more impatient I became. I nearly Lost My Shit on a number of occasions, quickly developing a reputation amongst the faculty as an uppity Socialist, but right now only one issue sticks in my mind.

At it’s very base, libertarianism values personal independence and individual freedom. Fair enough. They value minimal government intervention and equality for all. Fair enough – but herein lies the fatal flaw. Their vision of freedom and their vision of equality exists in an ahistorical vacuum. It does not acknowledge the centuries of inequality and injustice that have framed our present, and that reason alone makes this line of thinking very, very dangerous.

On one particular afternoon we spent some hours going over the example of airbags. A professor put forth the argument that the consumer should be able to choose whether or not they wanted to spend extra money to install airbags or seatbelts in their vehicle. It would not be fair, he argued, to force them to purchase a car with safety features if they would rather spend the money on something else. There are several sides to this argument, of course, but what I couldn’t wrap my head around was the assumption that everyone would be able to choose. And, I thought, why wouldn’t these safety devices be mandatory? Why wouldn’t the government subsidize a nation-wide standard for safety? The wealthiest consumers could choose to install airbags, but why weren’t the poor allowed to have that choice as well? Equality and freedom of choice fall to give way for the big piggy rule that “some are more equal than others,” and the value of your life increases with the value of your bank account.

Classism and racism are so closely tied, it’s sometimes hard to distinguish the two. Although – and in particular with the case of what’s happening in New Orleans right now – I would be careful not to divorce them too much. The people who stayed behind don’t just happen to be the poorest, and the poorest don’t just happen to be black. It’s all connected, and as far as I’m concerned, we’re all connected. Individual rights are a wonderful thing, but individuals don’t live in self-sufficient isolation. Those people in New Orleans didn’t leave, not because they did not choose to, but because they were not in a position to make that choice. And it’s not their fault, it’s our fault.

I almost feel guilty for saying this, but part of me is hoping for a class war, or at least hoping that something happens soon. If the wealthy, oblivious, mostly white-privileged sectors of Western society keep shitting on the poorer workers they depend on (read: that their prized political systems and economic structures are built upon), something is eventually going to snap. There’s only so much weight, so much abuse you can heap on someone’s shoulders before they start to build resentment, and that resentment explodes into action.

Kanye’s impassioned remarks are a sign, and I hope that they’ve woken a lot of folks up or at least sparked some doubt and debate. I hope that this leads somewhere, that things start to change.

C’mon, something’s gotta give.

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