master chef, lord of the kitchen cupboard

FROM August 11, 2005

Amount of time Chris R. and I spent parsing and/or tearing up at the thought of the "go crazy remix" by young jeezy, jay-z and fat joe aka the summer jam we've all been waiting for: entire train ride home

Jeezy's line, 'i'm so emotional i love my glock,' epic upholding of the thug-mug man-script, so fucking ARCHETYPAL, his technicolor gangster swing on blastro, and heartbreaking because of it. all in one tiny halfverse. jay-z talking about corpo creeps, how they are uncomfy with, but encouraging of, the words that make the dope boys go craaaaazy, and fat joe, what can i say? "they said my mind playin tricks on me/damnright/so i let out a half a clip on im." FAWK. it seems like new york all woke up at once this week. this is the fucking song. song, song i'm so in love w/you. summer melancholia and sweat, humidity, slow but not sluggish. it exists, it critiques itself, it seems resigned to doing both. totally fucking depressing.

I am about to make a transitional/weeklong move into a cabana in Hell's Kitchen with the ever-fabulous connie wohn--"one block from def jam" tho that was not initially a selling point. It is our "working vacation"; the carpet has teal seashells and it is decorated in 'bahamas casj,' and the sound system is, remarkably, bangin. I am also excited to talk Connie about all the stuff she hasn't heard, because Portland's hip-hop radio station, owned by Paul "portland trailblazers" Allen, does not play tracks until 9 months after the fact. Like, I think they just started playing "gasolina." No dis to portland, major dis to having an independently owned radio station--the ONLY exclusively hip-hop radio station, no less-- and not doing anything creative or interesting with it whatsoever, barring Kez's local/"underground" radio show, and anything I may have missed. But also--songs that sound really hot in NYC just don't sound the same in Portland. When I still lived there, caramanica or whoever would call me up all like, "ohhhh this is the hottest track" and I'd be like... uhhhh street heat whatever, I'm on leisure minutes. I'll check you at the goapele bbq, dog. i am just chilling with these tofu wieners. (p.s. if you are a manufacturer of TVP/seitan/wheat gluten products and you label yr shit tofu: for shame). environment, collective value systems and the rate at which time passes change entirely how you engage with music. this is something over which you have no control.

Speaking of which, I am way late to this, but here is a heartfelt "fuck the police and the grand jury ruling" on kendra james. r.i.p. police accountability is rough all over.

i saw travis at the MIA show in central park last sun and he said, "julianne, your blog is getting harder to read because of the no capitals and the manic scrawl," and i said, "Travis, it is stream of consciousness, and when you spend 14 hours per day writing complete and coherent sentences for an ostensibly general audience, the last thing you want to do is capitalize and punctuate and be lucid on your freeform sketchpad blog for ideation and wildstyle." (paraphrased)

This is now compounded by the fact that the right-shift on my laptop has busted thanks to a wayward drop of grapefruit seed oil that, miraculously, flew out of my water bottle and landed in the crevice between the computerdevice and the little white button. i need a laptop doktor.