Black Jack Johnson NYC, R-O-C-K-I-N-G.
The title of this post consists of lyrics from one of my favorite Mos Def songs, on his album The New Danger. Many of the tracks on this album are about Jack Johnson, the first ever black heavyweight boxing champion. I could listen to it all day. And it’s in my head this fine Sunday morning because I’ve been catching up on Dexter Season 6, in which Mos Def, I mean Mos, I mean Yasiin Bey, plays Brother Sam, a born again murderer who Dex befriends. I am on episode 4, and I already love this character. I was curious, so I Googled Mr. Bey and I found a great clip from The Colbert Report in which Mr. Bey graciously gives no explanation as to why he changed his name, and from which I learned that Black Star has a new record. READ MORE >
On Influence: ‘DOOM, DOOM, DOOM!’
I was at a reading end of last year or sometime, this guy, reading words on paper, talked between the things he’d written previously, to explain the things he’d written previously, though in a way so that the lead-ins were way better than the things themselves, making me huddle in the head some for the idea of making words, at least in there.
Word schools. “My father was a steel man: me, I’m in syllables, ones that don’t quite say.”
Me too, me too, I’m sure.
Regardless, during one of these monologues between glossies the dude said something about how when he teaches fresh writing students, the first thing he tells ’em is how they have to get out of the mode of imitating what they love. How they needed to stop trying to mimic other writers in the mind of ‘using their own voice.’
I seriously had to grab my pitching arm from grabbing a book off the shelf of the store the reading was in and lobbing it at dude’s head.
I bit my mouth and forgot about it for a while, so I could get out without hemorrhage.
All this acting as a lead-in for the real post I wanted to post, my current favorite viral video of the month:
Mos Def in admiration for his man the MF Doom
Magic begets magic, like how I get up any day at all, maybe.
Those ones that make you glow.