DAMN

THE POPE IS 80 YEARS SCARY TODAY.
If my corporeal terror of God’s Rottweiler at all corresponded to an ephemeral fear of a vengeful new-testament God, I might invoke revelations about the fact that I cannot leave my damn house. Alas, I simply do not believe in Jesus like that. Damn the wind, the downpour for fucking up my deal anyway. But if my plans had panned out, I might’ve been later on this piece about France’s immigration policy. Marisa and I wrote a similarish piece for Spin about a year ago, just after the riots, and a lot of the French rappers we interviewed – mostly Muslim immigrants from Africa and the Middle East- have been expressing anti-Sarkozy sentiment for years and years and years. We spent real time at Clichy-sous-Bois – the place for mixtapes. Outside the marketplace, it was squalor and poverty and oppressive architecture. I’ve posted it before but still think this track and video from Tandem, a rap crew from the 93rd arrondissement (hence “93 Hardcore”) shows the situation as it is – cops and poverty and crazy unemployment. No guns, really, cause of French rules, so fist fights and dog fights. Not a woman in sight. Halal McDonalds. Lyrics are about the shithole, the maze.