Xpert whiteboYZ video countdown #002

As I stroll through the valley of bereft with the shadow of the fake lord of capital twinkle dancing through red, green, blue, and yellow lights upon my face, in this time of tithing 10% of our income to the church for useless trinkets of our deception, I am inclined to keep this video show rolling, even though maybe no one will ever see it, nor get it. We live inside the interwebs where everything is now and nothing is remembered, and to be a “blogger” means to use twitter/ tumblr/ posterous/ digg/ youtube/ facebook/ etal to push the idea of you being A Thing into the brains of as many unsuspecting passersby as possible. I am not of that school of thought, so I am doing what I do, as I would do it, sipping on me some chai tea with a bag of double caffeinated earl grey to get my blood stream properly caffeinated to not sleep because sleep is the cousin of death, on his mother’s side. Death’s pops is in jail, and always has been; that’s why death is so fucked up.
Anyhoo, I watched me this one Yelawolf video last week of him from last year, doing kickflips in a convenience store parking lot, and it showed the dichotomy of his whole box chevy/independent trucks lifestyle. Then I watched a video of him talking about Alabama and doing a photo shoot at his parents’ house, including having some dude bring his Chevelle SS for the photo shoot. That’s some shit I can relate to as Chevelle SSs are my power idol for the earth. I have three busted up broken ones stashed amidst five acres behind my mom’s house. The funny thing is Yelawolf is from Alabama but he seems so SS Va. to me it’s not funny. I think of my boy Tony T. who died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound years ago, back roads Cumberland County, long ass braids and flannel, big motherfucker anybody’d be afraid, and Yelawolf seems like shit that would make him happy as fuck (although to be honest, he’d probably just be listening to Waka Flocka). White trash is always so quick to be like, “HEY! I’M WHITE TRASH!” when it raps, it’s nice that Yelawolf just rolls with it.
So I was gonna do a white rapper thing for the theme of the video interweb show this week, but couldn’t even make an initial list in my brain of that many white rapper videos that wouldn’t annoy me.
But then I thought about all the dudes (including myself) who did dumb shit on skateboards and blew the fuck up in their own brains with the hip hop back in the late ‘80s onto the now, crossbreeding that hip hop culture with white trash culture and fertilizing it all with a healthy wheelbarrow full of Fuck It, and it made sense to just go with that tangent, because what the fuck else am I gonna do, you know? It makes sense to just go ahead and share that Yelawolf video right here probably, to get this started, so light your blunt and crack a double deuce or go get you a glass of 2% milk and some molasses cookies from the Mennonites, and dig into what I’m about to dig up for you to wander with…

Really, if you're gonna do a skate/rap video thing, it makes no sense to go anywhere but Lupe's "Kick, Push" which shows more love for skating than anything else ever has. But as I was poking around on the youtubes for a copy of it, there was not a single one of the actual video you could embed - just the actual Atlantic Records video, which did not allow embedding. What the fuck? Don't those jews know this is the internet? No wonder Lupe was like, "Fuck the record industry," because they don't even let his fucking video get shared, which is, according to traditional record company models, supposed to generate interest in the actual product. Whatever. I had people tell me, "Man, you're gonna love Food and Liquor," back when it came out, but I didn't at all. As time has passed, I think there was a touch of contrarianism in that, because he's got a handful of songs that I can dig on. And plus I have all daughters, oldest of which is almost 12, so her bumping "Kick, Push" is better than me catching her sexting some dude while hoochie mama wannabe club anthems bump in her ipod. Goddamn this goddamned world.
But nonetheless, fuck you Atlantic Records...

But there was a skateboarding rap group back in the day, long before Lupe hit the scene. I don't remember why I was so about it, but Rowdy Records (who I think is connected to one of those Atlanta black music record industry insider dudes) was a thing back in the day I bought a lot of, I think because that kid group called Illegal that Erick Sermon was producing for was on that label. But they had a group called Yall So Stupid come out that was the fucking shit. Highly slept on bullshit from back in the day, which of course sounds dated as fuck nowadays, because it's from back then not now. But it was some good shit. I had their full-length on tape, and remember very clearly a day where I was up all night doing acid and drinking Miller Genuine Draft at this dude's house, and it was early fall/late summer, so the sun was just coming up and I was on my shitty 10-speed at dude's house, crisp fresh air, city all quiet from the Friday night before, and I rode straight down Meadow into Randolph. This was before they even built that cop station there a couple blocks in, so it was still that weird mid-sized city gully where it looked like houses and apartment buildings and might could be okay but dudes were getting murdered and crack addicted all over. The one time I ever got carjacked was two blocks from where I speak of entering Randolph, and I had Yall So Stupid on volume 58 on my cassette walkman, which was what we called ipods back in the day, and it was fucking perfect. The entire city was asleep, laying there unsuspecting as my freshly recovered from hallucinogen eyes - all extra susceptible to light patterns and architectural quirks - scanned it all. I cruised all the way down to Texas Beach where they found that homeless dude's decapitated head on the walkway across the railroad tracks that one time, and on up and over to where you're forced to circle back up Lombardy because Oregon Hill and Randolph are segregated to this day, by development, so the blacks and the whites stay apart even though they are right there together. And then the uppitty whites gentrified Oregon Hill and stole its soul to have a boutique neighborhood to pretend had a gully vibe yet they could safely vote for Obama and drive Priuses.
As usual, I digress. But Yall So Stupid had a song called "Van Full of Pakistans" that was also the title of that totally awesome blast from the past audiocassette from my memory, some old school Atlanta rap from the early '90s, with a skater slant, a feel good vibe, goofy yet gully, kinda like The Pharcyde of the south, just not so goofy. I wonder if any of them are addicted to crack now? Do people still get addicted to crack even, or am I talking about shit from like 19 years ago and not even knowing it? People probably get addicted to shit I ain't even heard of nowadays...

For the nowadays though, if you say "pack" and "van" together though, it's probably gonna conjure up that song that created the internet fame monster known as Lil B. He is the perfect example of someone overloading the cyberwebz with all forms and sorts of self-hype, and it tricks all sorts of allegedly free-thinking individuals into being like, "Yeah man, Lil B is cool." I am inside the twitterfeeds (@rojonekku if you need me), and was following that bama, but had to stop because like that shit would fill up my feed with 7000 things that said @lilb and did absolutely nothing at all and actually made my internetting experience more painful. But he's getting the hype job, on the cover of The Fader magazine this month, and somehow someone somewhere thinks he's going to be able to turn a bunch of youtube hits and incessant twittery into people actually paying hard-earned credit card limits for some sort of musical offering. Digital smoke and mirrors, bros, digital smoke and mirrors. I hear every now and then a touch of something maybe in a Lil B song, maybe, but for the most part it's just some dumbass kid doing dumbass kid shit and thinking far too highly of how creative he is. Then again, the world's pretty stupid and dumbed down nowadays, so maybe he is that awesome and creative. Maybe you all are fucking idiots. Anyways, here's The Pack video "Vans" that created that retarded-looking tattooed monster...

I also was (and still am for them at least) following all those Odd Future OFTWGKA dudes as well, so my twitter feed was a nonsense battle between Tyler the Creator and Lil B a lot of times. Odd Future is also starting to get some internet buzz, and there's some awesomeness to them, although most of what I like is not what is normally internet geeked as their best shit. That "Drunk" song is fucking great, and Domo Genesis's Rolling Papers is tight. But the real deal for the Odd Future movement, in my humble expert whiteboy opinion, is Earl Sweatshirt. I do not know why he needs to be Free, or if he is being offered for Free, or what the deal is, but yes indeed Free Earl. I would suspect, knowing this country I live in and was lucky enough to be born in where I am free to bitch about how much it sucks all day everyday, that he is probably serving time for misdemeanor awesomeness, maybe even a felony count. These are strange and terrible times, ain't it?
Anyways, that Cocaine Blunts webpage thing did their yearly Ooh I Know All About The Rap Here's the Best Shit From 2010 Ain't I So Cool list, and it had an Earl song, which surprised me. Then I found out there was a video for it, which surprised me even more. I just got satellite internet in the past four months, so I was on internet welfare before that, and couldn't watch youtubes. Even now, with satellite, if I watch more than like half an hour, it maxes out my daily allowance, and I'm waiting for 19 minutes to check my gmail. But nonetheless I was stoked to see an Earl video, being he is some sort of mysterious jailbird at this point. (I hope his coming out of jail tape is called Freebird.) As the interweb hype machine continues to pretend that Lil B is not a half-retarded crackbaby black kid grown up without proper parenting but given too much technology, I hope that there is some sort of quiet opposite but equal groundswell of love for the Odd Future movement. Hell, I believe in the idea of the holographic universe (every possible option is taking place somewhere in the universe for every thing you could have done, everywhere, infinitely) so maybe we can get a goddamned time machine going and I can move to the universe where Odd Future is on the cover of magazines or maybe magazines don't exist and Odd Future is emblazoned on cave walls overlooking the pyramids of the damned, and Lil B is a eunuch singing for Mormons. Here is "Earl" by Earl...

Well since I mentioned The Pharcyde and crackheads, might as well throw up "What's Up Fatlip" because hopefully he is doing a bid in L.A. County Jail with Earl Sweatshirt, and making the musical connection that will reap aural benefits down the road. I saw a Blackalicious show one time and Fatlip was on the undercard, and he came out and did about four or five songs, including the hits of The Pharcyde. His hype man was doing that thing for "Passin' Me By" where he rapped the beginning of the line then held the mic out for the crowd, which was your average college town crowd meaning mostly white as fuck, and everybody was doing it, then he said, "she can be my broad and I can be her..." and held the mic out and everybody was uncomfortably quiet because they weren't gonna say "NIGGA!" like that. Shit was funny. Then Fatlip started to do some of his own songs, then had some sort of freakout on stage, and split. They hype man stood there watching him walk off, and was like, "Okay, I guess that's the show." And then Blackalicous came out and gave me a migraine by being all polysyllabic and intelligent while I was drinking. But here is Fatlip, as his fattest lippiest...

California seems a very tribal place, what with the gang influence, so I wonder if there's ever been SoCal/NorCal beefs between underground hipster rap crews, like at those types of new-fangled soul food places that serve barbecue tofu and play a lot of Fela Kuti. I guess they have been unified in the West being the Best, but still, I gotta figure at some point a fisticuffs must've broke out between like The Good Life Cafe crew from L.A. and Hieroglyphics from the Bay, like over the last cup of hibiscus tea or kombucha or something. I've been on a Hiero kick lately which oddly enough jumped off from a zip file I found on an old hard drive of Casual's youtube freestyles from the last couple of years, talking about crazy Egyptian Kimetics, and laying out the celestial sciences and shit like that, instilling in me a new attitude for growth and stability, which I fucking need. Everybody knows them some Del, and Souls of Mischief will always be famous for "93 'til Infinity" (which is still one of the best freestyle beats ever made on this earth... I could listen to that shit constantly, 22 hours a day, for four weeks straight so long as it was 6 days on 2 days off so I could mix in some bhangra on days off). But Casual got lost in the shuffle it seems. I had an old roommate who is rock-n-roll type who hated all the rappitty music I played. But I would catch him listening to my copy of Casual's first Fear Itself LP, taking bonghits before work sometimes. Off that album, this shit right here is the best - THE FUCKIN' BEST! - just because, back then my roommate was taxing mad relationshiply-established asses, so it was kinda his theme song...

But when I got that Fear Itself LP, there was a song that actually changed the way I thought about shit, the way I rapped (because I always been rapping, not very good but not very bad but most importantly not very marketable or at least not very connected), and that was "That Bullshit" which was just a less than 2 minute nonsense verse by Saafir, which is extra odd now because of the infamous freestyle battle at some radio station where Saafir, representing Hobo Junction, just straight up dispatched of Hiero, which I guess was the result of a beef that started with Casual's LP and Saafir's appearance. I don't know; you can go ask some rap nerd blog bitch ass about the specifics. All I know is Saafir's schizophrenic homeless man style was some next level shit that spoke to my disjointed word-cursed brain like nothing had before that. His solo tape that came out was less than stellar, but did feature an awesome song about shitty cars, and had one single called "Light Sleepers". I do not naturally know that Hiero and Hobo Junction and all were skateboarders, but I gotta think if they were hanging out around Berkeley and railroad yards doing graffiti and all, they at least got high with skaters. Certain sub-cultures naturally intersect. I'm sure there's a Venn diagram for that somewhere, but I'm not here to Venn diagram things, just share stupid videos to help you waste half an hour of your life, if you actually watch the videos. If you don't, well, fuck you. I guess if you're gonna fuck around with death's cousin on his mom's side, you might as well be a light sleeper...

Speaking of disjointed schizophrenic styles, that blend skating and music and California gang culture and really all the different tangents I talked about, all together, but before any of the other stuff happened, there is this classic, which I consider rap music because it's a type of rapping...

Don't think I rushed that selection together. I actually spent an hour metaphysically deducing what exact 10 videos to use while under the influence of wild lettuce tincture. It was imperative I include "Institutionalized" in this mix. I quit drinking alcohol, and also quit drinking sodas, so sometimes in my brain I am like, "all I wanted was a Pepsi" and I lololol to myself, out loud even, which is hella awkward when I'm looking for porn to rent in the tiny back room of the video store that rents porn and there's two other dudes in there. One of them usually doesn't speak English, but the other one is always made uneasy by my laughing. Actually there is a long list of strange occurrences that happen in that tiny room of porn to rent. Black guy talking loudly on his cellaphone about "Yeah, I'm on the way home now... I know... I'm on the way... For real, I'm serious," for like five minutes. Loud cellaphone conversations are annoying enough when happening in confined spaces near you, but when there's like 3000 porn movies surrounding you as well, it's even weirder. One time I was in there by myself and the door opens and some old white dude walks in, goes to the first rack with all oral sex themed videos, grabs the first one, says out loud looking my way, "On Your Knees Bitch Volume 2... that'll do it," and walked back out, the whole thing taking like fourteen seconds, entry to exit. The place is run by an older redneck woman now, and she always has some guy in Real Tree camo fleece jacket working the counter who smells like Winston cigarettes and looks like a Charles Bukowski story character but with about 15% West Virginia inside of him as well. They always forget to charge me late fines, or I talk my way out of it, or something. One time I wrote a check there for like $27, and it still hasn't cashed, like a year later. It's one of those things floating in the back of my brain that I know that crazy redneck lady is gonna cash at some point, and totally fuck up my bank shit.
Anyways, we started with the consensus greatest white rapper of 2010 in Yelawolf, so I figured it best to wrap up with the other great white rapper of 2010, who also bounces around the Bay, probably gets high with mad skaters, and fits seventeen of these different themes of today's countdown as well. In fact, he probably would've gotten to the tattoo shop a little quicker if he rode a skateboard in this video, and then he could've spent his last verse hanging out by some railroad tracks instead...

I think my fifth cup of Earl Grey is ready, so I'm gonna put a spoon and a half of sugar in it, plus some bonafide cream from a local dairy, maybe go watch a few minutes of Style Wars, and then go outside to bring in wood to load up the woodstove for the night, and then I'm gonna go for a long ass walk in the dark under the moon, ground white with snow, and think about doing drugs. I'll carry along my little tincture bottle of wild lettuce, and give myself a squirt every now and then. I'd like to get some actual poppy tincture going, go old school on motherfuckers, little amber glass bottle, squirting liquid opium in my cup of tea, wearing some sort of goddamned vintage hat, bare knuckle fighting motherfuckers underneath the bypass bridge, carving hobo symbols into guardrails with a Dremel. That's my world. It's an odd future for real where I come from. So fuck you internet, and good night.