SKEWBY x EVERYDAY: THE PUREST MEMPHIS SO FAR...

I got this Skewby "Everday" on repeat right now as I post up by the living room window looking out at Bed-Stuy Brooklyn!  I remember Sept 25th 2009 like it was yesterday.I almost moved back to Memphis because I felt so stressed out in NYC.  I rode a Greyhound Bus back home, got into a debate with this young black woman yelling at her small child and ended up staying at my Mom's.  I walked the city streets, riding the bus, visiting friends, eating Lenny' etc. (All of my favorite Memphis past times)  I linked up with Ify and Logan Bradshaw and went with the flow to Downtown Memphis for Skewby's Mixtape Release Party.

I didn't know quite what to feel at first.  I had mixed feelings about being back in the city and at that point no one really knew that I was gone and that I was back; temporarily. I liked that.  As I was standing outside catching up with the folk, I was handed a mixtape.  I graciously accepted it, put it in my pocket and kept it moving.  "Another rapper from Memphis is trying to do his thing", I said to myself.  I had to support it.

Honestly, I didn't know what was in store for me.  As I made my way back to Brooklyn, pausing in Chicago O'Hare, I popped the mixtape into my computer and immediately was impressed.  I had come to realize that the same hungry cats that were helping Skewby with his movement were the ones that I was building with on The University of Memphis Campus back in '06.  Big shouts to Charlie White!

Tiime passed.  I watched from afar.  My high school homie is Skewby's Manager and the leader of 715 Management.  Surpassing college, in a retograde like fashion, I appreciated that he had cats from my HS working with him too.  I wouldn't be surprised if he had cats I knew from middle school in his crew.(Ha)  I liked Skewb but didn't really feel his music that much.  He was new to me.  Being a poet/writer,  I felt like I needed more.  As the days turned into months and months turned into years, I continued to listen to Skewby  and see his growth.  He was doing his thang in a city that stereotypically supports a lower level of music culture.  I could see that things were still the same in Memphis but Skewby and his team were staying consistent to their new and emerging music, (Real Rap, I call it.) but I still hadn't felt from him what I knew to be in my soul.  As a hip hop student, I was searching for more.  Then I caught wind of "Everyday" on DJBooth.net.  Now I got these in-house Logitech Speakers on Memphis  Hammer!

I soul had finally found the respect from a Native Memphis artist that it was seeking.  Skewby is growing and that's what the world needs from this caliber of artist and his thorough team.  Memphis has a new look.  A new feel and it certainly is what it's gonna be "More or Less".

Thoughts x The Blueprint for Negro Literature x Richard Wright

Lately, one of my favorite writers has been Richard Wright.  I really like him because I see a lot of myself in him.  Wright had no formal education growing up.  He simply chose what he would do and did it.  I remember one of the first books that I really got into! Black Boy it was!  My doctor, at the time, took it to have a hard writing surface and never gave it back.  I see now that I've yet to get over that tragedy and still haven't finished that book.  I suppose that I just want it to linger a little longer.  "Wright" now I am reading his essay, Blueprint for Negro Literature, due to the fact that I am really focusing on being a great writer.  I picked this essay to pivot off of because I am a Negro; therefore I write Negro Literature.  It just so happens that this Negro grew up differently and is not just confined to the Negro Culture.  But to keep it real, that is my starting point!  I feel like Wright's perspective in '37 is just as important now as it was then.  I ask myself, "Who my age is really writing for our people!  I mean, hip hop is doing us ok, but where is the literature that addresses real life issues.  There is not much that has changed even though we have a half-Negro president!  Simple issues that were made complex need to be re-simplified. Same ish! Different Toilet!  With this said, I've dropped a link and a few quotes on "perspective" from the Mississippi Native.  Food for Thought!  You do the dishes!


Love, Peace, Literature, Art and Soul.


Mr. Fox

"Perspective is that part of a poem, novel, or play which writers never put directly upon paper, but which is sensed in every line of the work. It is that fixed point in intellectual space where writers stand to view the struggles, hopes, and sufferings of their people."

"Perspective is the frame in which the picture is hung; it is the invisible brake or accelerator upon the tempo of a poem; it is that part of a novel that is remembered long after the story is forgotten."


Perspective for Negro writers will come when they have looked and brooded so hard and long upon the harsh lot of their race and compared it with the hopes and struggles of minority peoples everywhere that the cold facts have begun to tell them something.

Brooklyn Bound M Train x 7:27 PM

I coasted from the back of the last to the second from last car.
Passing Kathy and her Pink Audio Earmuffs.
Through steel doors handled by yanking steel handles.
Illegally acrossing the threshold.

The black man now sitting next to me peered at me.
Hands; fingers intertwined. 
Pinky ring shit upon right hand.
Trader Joe bag on lap.

He's suited in:  Grey sweat shirt. White IPod earplugs.

His eyes closed as not to be in this world,
Because in this world, earplug listening pleasure is measured against nada.

Across from us sits a big ass grown kid.
Yankee fitted. Burgundy Nintendo DS--at best;
His 300+ pounds nesteled into denim.
Brown Bag.  Nike ACG Winterboot Swag.

H'was (He was) once along.  One man maintaining two seats spaces.
Yet, at Essex, a couple boarded.
He, found a place for his lady to sit,
But not before glancing at me.

Either he wanted me to get up or to teach me something?
He only taught.

The couple conversed.  A Chuck Taylor of sorts.

Him standing.  Umbrella in back left pocket....
Brown leather jacked hanging on to his broad shoulders.
Leaning against the carts back doors.
Best foot forward.

She sits.
Face as if, it's anticipating his next collection of words....
She's clutching a Big Bean Cook Book.

Gladly this cook took a seat,
Because Lord knows her hands will manifest recipes from this,
Lap and warm-arm cradled Bean Bible.

Survival coudl be complimented by rice----nice.

Adjacent to them, on the left,
Two men text. 

One potbellied hippie....
Who sits quickly as the Marcy Avenue doors magnetize it's collecton of humans outwards....

Now....

He who was on the right of me is now on my left.
Dress shoes.  Brown coordinated pinstripe trousers.
His body language affected by train movements as well as congruent cellular doings.

(This is Lorimer)

8 exit...7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1........

One purnt orange jacket Hispanic is left to stand at the door's edge.
Living.
Black work pants and boots....
Black plastic bag for his lunch-not-finished.
Gifts from friends of Spanish lineage or whatever boat floats;
This is a mechanical river running thru it.

Flushing is where he is flushed out.
Into the bowels of the Bedford-Stuyvesant city streets.

(Myrtle Broadway is next)
The gentleman 4 people down and 1 bench across resembles Swizz Beats

Defeat has beaten his shoes, so his kick game isn't resembling the Swizz feet,
Fantastic like when Swizz met the "Right Keys".

I jumpshot out of the train doors........S.W.i.S   7:43

THE POETRY OF SOMALIA X NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC'S IMAGERY

Welcome to a place where pirates and terrorists rule.
A shattered and concealed place where it seems like war begins with no end.
Home of the Shabaab gun show offs. Grenade attacks.
Roadside bombs that might take a mother's arms off.

She may never cradle her young again.

Welcome to a place where speeding pick-ups hiccup over desolate street pathways;
Narrowly missing the African sun-kissed women.

Turmoil is their next door neighbor.
The two have become well acquainted.

Stability illudes them.

The likelihood of a stable government would exclude and confuse them.

Here, it seems, the governance is but an utterance by the Transistional Federal Goverment.

Welcome to Hell! 

"Where you are welcomed to sell and if them shells fall?" you'll have a hard time returning them.

You could only listen and commence learning,
How to decipher the difference between missle launches, bazooka blast and machine gun rounds.

Welcome to the.......

Mid-collapsed spiral stair cases.

Urine-infested and sea rot smelling rooms.

Hallowed.

As young men follow, the feeling of the leaved-quat stimulant.

Rolling ladu for hours under peaceful showers of light placed by the house's beacon lights.

Welcome to pain in the midst of beauty!  It is my duty to escort you throughly through this land you've forgotten.