j3 PRESENTS:

THE ROOT DOWN-ED. WE'VE MOVED.

2010-05-12T20:52:00.000-07:00

#24: "TAKE IT PERSONAL"

2010-04-06T04:22:00.000-07:00

Gang Starr
"Take It Personal"
Daily Operation
1992

By 1992, Gang Starr was still a duo on the come-up. With two albums under their belt, they still had yet to reach true greatness but it would be the first single off their third record that would catapult them into the conversations with Eric B. and Rakim, EPMD, Rob Base and DJ EZ Rock (you awake?). "Take It Personal," originally a B-side to "2 Deep" in Europe, was a clear standout on Operation--impressive given an album that featured "BYS," "Ex Girl to the Next Girl" and "I'm the Man."

Led by the single greatest breakbeat in the history of hip hop (Skull Snaps "It's a New Day") and seasoned with simplistic bloops, bleeps and a three-tone piano loop, DJ Premier's innate abilities just ooze off the record. And it wouldn't had been enough for Premier to simply loop the Skull Snaps. He added a four rapid-fire bass kicks at the beginning of the sequence, threw a snare crash on top of the top of the loop and then fortified it with this incredible trunk-rattling low-end that did nothing but induce endless headnodding (original drum break). Those minute modifications for maximum return are what made Primo one of the greatest. He knew that every break wasn't perfect, but also realized that they were a few appropriate improvements from greatness. What he did with the original break is like whipping cream. It starts out liquidous and then, through constant agitation, it thickens. Skull Snaps never sounded this good.

And, for what a Guru verse is (an emotionless, monotone snore), his verses on "Take It Personal" actually fit. He spits a verse of regret at his former lover who broke his heart, then challenges every young rappers and lastly sprays haters with a short scathing (by Guru terms) third verse. Then, the track fades before he can do any damage. And, as much as I hate on Guru, what they accomplish on "Personal" is the perfect Gang Starr track. It's like a moment in time that is undeniably dope and worthy of #24 on this list.

#26: "INCARCERATED SCARFACES" / #25 "LIQUID SWORDS"

2010-03-26T20:18:00.000-07:00

Man, you're getting a mad bonus tonight. Normally, I don't write much on Fridays. Of late, I haven't been writing much at all. But tonight, we're gonna blow the dust off of this thing. We need to get back to business. Don't call it a comeback....

We need to revisit the greatest 33 hip hop recordings of all time.

It would make sense that we'd do a two-fer tonight given the fact that numbers 26 and 25 are both Wu-fam and were both released in one of the last great years of the Wu...1995.

We'll start with "Incarcerated Scarfaces" by Raekwon.

Make no mistake, as an album, Raekwon's Only Built 4 Cuban Linx is as legit and definitive albums to ever come from the Wu stables. Top-to-bottom, Cuban Linx is an insane and dashing account of Shaolin's street life. "Knuckleheadz" and "Criminology" build a dog-eat-dog landscape and, musically, it ventered where few Wu recordings had to this date in 1995. It was gloss. It was hustle. It put money to the operation and turned that fat into muscle. If Meth was the drug element, GZA and RZA provided the martial arts and Eastern philosophy element, Raekwon, then, was the criminal element. His songs were paintings of sometimes a brutal and harsh existence where status is hard to earn, everything can be bought and nothing is free.

I received a copy of it on CD as a last second birthday present. Upon first listen, it sliced and diced like previous Wu releases, but offered a fantastically varied lyrical construction. Less were the cryptic prose. They were replaced with unfiltered reality. Black and white. Blood red and green cash money. It was more Kool G Rap than any other Wu production and "Incarcerated Scarfaces" was the standout.

With a Detroit Emerald hi-hat as the backbone, RZA's sparse yet effective beat provides the perfect effect for Rae's pitbull delivery. Rae's blazing verses on "Scarfaces" are probably his most scathing and ferocious verses ever put down. His high point didn't last long, but it lasted long enough to give us this street rap masterpiece. Raekwon would rarely match the prose exhibited on "Scarfaces." It was a defining moment in his life as a solo artist that would never be fully reached again.

Not to be outdone, though, is "Liquid Swords" by the GZA.

"Liquid Swords" fully exposed Wu's fu-fascination. Moving from the grime and gloss of "Scarfaces" to a more menacing, dark and theatrical plane, RZA takes as swipe at two bars of Willie Mitchell's "Groovin'", loops it and "Liquid Swords" was born. And while RZA's production seemed infinitely effortless during this period (1993-1995), so too was the ease in which GZA would construct his lyrical assault. "Liquid Swords", lyrically, is much like an emcee delivering a serious of roundhouses and leg sweeps. GZA's prowess as an emcee is first and finally realized as he's given full verses to expand on his styles greater than on his first solo outing (released on Cold Chillin' before the days of the Wu) and Enter the 36 Chambers. His delivery is poised, unphased, focused.

My minimum table stacks verse on a gamble. Energy felt once the cards are dealt with the impact of roundhouse kicks from black belts that attack the mic-phones like cyclones or typhoon. I represent from midnight to high noon.

With GZA's ferocious mic handling and RZA's sinister production, "Liquid Swords" is the essential representation of Wu's finest output.

Now, for the lowdown, we're gonna start blowing through this list because it's possible that in the coming weeks, The Root Down will be going through some transformation or even elimination and regeneration. This blog as you know it might be disappearing and reappearing as something else. Clock's ticking. I got 24 more songs before we unveil the GREATEST SONG IN HIP HOP HISTORY.

Ya'll be good to your neighbor.

OBSERVATIONS FROM SXSW

2010-03-24T03:53:00.000-07:00

It's no longer about the independent artist. It's about Motorhead, Muse and the Black Keys and the independent artists fending for themselves.

Austin's much bigger than people give it credit for being when you're on foot.

Apparently, it's okay for a shuttle driver to halt his shift with patrons in his shuttle to get Burger King and not use the drive-thru but rather leave his van in the parking lot running.

Hype can sell anything to itself. Even truly atrocious music.

I can stay up til 3AM listening to music, but only once a decade.

Barbecue. Oh, how I love thee.

Those Darlins are incredible, but be prepared for Gallegher-like projectiles if you're sitting on the front row. Sometimes that projectile is love.

The festival itself is like walking through the internet without a pop-up blocker.

I'd say that, in Texas, no steak is worth $40, however, I found one worth $38. And asparagus is dang tasty.

People still dance like idiots. Some of them are actors named Bill Murray.

People still don't bathe. Seriously, if you can afford a wristband to this festival, how can you not afford running water and a bar of soap?

I can sunburn in Texas. It hadn't happened in probably 15 years, but it did this last weekend.

Absolutely no one cares about UT basketball.

J-Bird, nice guy.

People Under the Stairs are as good live as everyone says they are. Thes One is a beast. A tad corny, but all hip hop is a tad corny these days.

I am no longer the only one that likes Stones Throw. Five years ago, that crowd would've been half the size. Good to see what they do live, though.

Moshing has certainly improved from when I was a kid. They do cartwheels now.

Waterloo is way too proud of their vinyl.

Dr. Dog is dope. Thanks, Dale and Sarah.

Kia's are maybe a better car than I gave them credit for being. Still, though, they're a Kia.

Cab rides to Dale's house cost $42.50 from I-35 and 183. Thanks for spotting me, Webbs.

I don't know their new stuff from their old stuff. You're talking to the wrong guy.

People drink entirely too much Red Bull.

Austin is a difficult city to run in. But fun.

Five days is way too long to be away from my pregnant and lovely wife.

When the industry should be at its sharpest, it dulls out and drinks until it passes out. Only the diligent, the persistant and the hungry will survive, the rest will wake up two decades from now musing on about how they "remember selling cassettes and LPs."

And, just so you know, when you wanna play me new music, don't say that you're looking for "digital to take the lead on this record" when, collectively, you're only talking to about .05% of the digital market.

And, also just so you know, digital music will not save your job. It will chop off all of the industry's access weight and fat with the accuracy of a hatchet.

Maybe I should've drank entirely too much Red Bull.

I guess people from Texas just don't know who Rap-a-Lot was. Suppose I haven't done my job.

The Root Down needs a showcase.

Mole (as in mol-e'), when done right, is straight gangsta.

When you see TV comedians on the street, they actually appear quite haunting. They look mean as all hell. Todd Barry and Doug Benson being two prime examples.

Austinites don't know how to deal with real weather.

30 minutes is the perfect length for a set. If you don't have a 30-minute version of your set, than you're not a real performer.

General Electrics are dope. Too bad only about 20 people left Austin realizing this.

The bums in Austin are actually quite nice. Largely. Few exceptions.

Never seen so many $3000 guitars under one roof. When they're all $3000, what makes them so special?

I don't wanna join Greenpeace, dude. I made a horrible mistake stopping for a second to listen to you. I should've faked a conversation on my cell. That usually works. But I don't wanna join Greenpeace. It's not that I don't believe in the ocean, but I live so far in-land, I'm not sure that I'm your target. I don't even live remotely close (I'm talking about 45 minutes) to a single body of water of any significance. Go hound someone else.

Hip hop sucks in 2010.

SXSW makes the keyboard look really fun to play!

Parking is hell in Austin and, for some reason, I feel that's truly the way they want it.

Trade shows suck. What an archaic concept.

I'm paranoid of crowds, but what sweet sound they make in unison. The low murmur of a crowd is like a symphony to my ears.

Shelby Lynne is one sexy woman. I mean that with great respect to my lovely wife. I think she would've agreed. She talks like a sailor though and gargles Lone Star.

The Lions rock my face off. Even though they weren't at their very best. They killed it.

Hate Blackberries. By the time I need one, I hope they're no more.

Not sure there's anything greater to a thirsty patron than $3 Heineken tallboys.

Dude, $10 a CD is not a "super super sweet deal," but $2.50 is maybe a little too sweet.

People still celebrate St. Patrick's Day. Who woulda known? Perhaps everyone forgot though that it's a holy day.

Sometimes it's just better to hold your pee until you get back to the hotel.

I don't know another Motorhead song besides "Ace of Spades."

Maybe that Greenpeace fella should target SXSW for all of the trees they killed for their Directory of Events. That thing is a phone book that's 35-40% advertisements for all their corporate sponsors.

People will stand in line for six hours to see the Black Keys. Namely Sarah and Dale. But, then again, they got to sit right next to them on stage. Because that's how they do it.

Next year, shave a day off.

PUSHIN' WEIGHT

2010-03-07T05:35:00.000-08:00

About to turn over my Larry Bird-thday (big ol' #33). Kinda a weird feeling. Not sure yet what it feels like. I'll get back to you on Monday. Told my grandmother about my upcoming birthday and she asked how old I was going to be and then said, "My gosh. That'd make your brother 35." Like how until my grandmother said that, I always saw being the youngest as a bad thing. All the sudden, I realized at least I'm not my brother's age. Sorry, bro.

I'm quickly coming to the realization that my life is going to drastically change this year. I'm gonna be a different man this time next year. When you have a young'n on the way, that anxiety is a kinda mix between game day being down three games to none in a seven game series and Christmas morning. Last night, I had dinner with my lovely wife and we just relaxed and talked. You forget sometimes that it's two of you going through it because the experience is so dynamically different for the carrier (her) and non-carrier (me). It's weird. My lovely wife's a champ. B'lee dat. She's doing good.

Settling in on two names. Ellison for a girl. Kyler for a boy. As beautiful as Ellison is for a girl, it's not in the name book that has 60,000 names. Guess that kinda means that we picked a truly original name. It seems like those books have everything. You could name your kid "Superturd" and it's in there. It means "brave" and "brown." My lovely wife was concerned about the kid growing up (if it's a girl named Ellison) and always asking what they're name meant and being that it's not in the book, we'd have to break it to her that her name doesn't have a meaning. I say that's garbage because I swear that if there's no meaning for a name, they just say it means "great leader" or "one of great beauty." Yeah, okay. We'll just tell her "Ellison" means "ballbuster" because we think it sounds like a politician's name. The first female president.

My lovely wife prefers I don't use the word "female" because it sounds like I've spent time in prison.

I've found myself concerned about what kinda music you raise your child on. Guess I'll answer that when I get there. Right behind how you change a diaper without dry heaving and how you navigate a screaming episode in public places. Ah, this is gonna be killer. Might need to create a "baby-proof" playlist which includes clean hip hop, African funk, James Brown and Charles Mingus.

I'm cancelling my gym membership. I hate that place. I was thinking the only reason I would keep the membership is to use the racquetball courts, but they're always overrun with sweaty old men running into walls. The weight area is like a prison yard. The treadmills feel like they're one loose screw from falling apart underneath you. And the whole place smells like sock. Even with the westerly wind that smells like a cow's butthole, I'd still take the outdoors over that place anyday.

Getting ready for South By Southwest (SXSW for the inclined or just "South By" to the really cool kids). I only remember going to SXSW about six years ago. I was a new music buyer. Thought I knew everything in the world. It was back when you went down there as a vacation from your day job. Now, we're going down there and landing meetings. Talk shop. Drum up some business somehow. Kinda wondering why retailers haven't been doing this for years. The industry convention is a joke, an embarrassment. No one wants to go. Those that do just bitch and complain and never arrive at solutions, leading to their own quick extinction. Hoping to see the Duke and Sarahsmile while I'm down there. Some serious showcases also. Duck Down's 15th Anniversary show, Rhymesayers, Stones Throw (head explodes). Mad decent.

I'm giving up on new music. There's no good music. But I got a set of these Fela reissues from Tara. They're serious. Serious. I'm glad I got rid of about 60% of my music. I haven't missed a single album yet. Weird how that is. Here, for nearly 10 years, I'm practically hoarding music and then with my back against the wall, a baby on the way and a collection that would make most people's head explode, my tolerance peaked. There was no sense in it anymore. Do I wish I got more than I did for it? Sure. After you took out the promos, I could only sell a few hundred. Wish I got about $10,000 for this stuff, but reality is that I needed it to be about $350. I needed it to be so little so I could realize that the crap I hold on to often only has value to me and not necessarily to anyone else. It's just the way it is.

Sure was nice being the hook up for a small group of music lovers.

Went for a run yesterday with Gary and Mason. First time out with Gary. He picked me up and then picked up Mason. Felt like I was probably the most experienced distance runner out of us as we made the drive out to Gary's in-laws property. It's an area just north of town called Bishop Hills. Now, Bishop Hills is a little secluded community of large ranch houses, big yards, winding streets with some moderately sized hills. Certainly nothing that I was too concerned about. I've done hills.

We get out there to his in-laws place and it's a bonofied ranch. There ain't no streets. Dirt roads, homie. Not to show any unnecessary worry, I just kinda went along with it. I wanted to do dirt roads anyway as I transition into the last two months of my Warrior Dash training. I figured it was one of those situations that certainly wasn't life or death and any potential consequence couldn't possibly be so dire that I should speak up in protest. Just roll with it. When Gary hoped out of the car, he's decked out in running gear, tosses me a GPS watch so we can track our distance and pace. Sweet. Dude came prepared.

I'm a gear guy. I respond to gear. If people got gear, it says something to me about their level of aptitude. When we're out at the softball fields, I respond differently to the guy who walks up with the batbag that you wear like a backpack and the bats stick out the top like two swords that can draw at any moment to slay a dragon than the guy who shows up in cut-off jean shorts dragging an aluminum bat with athletic tape wrapped around the handle and a nylon hat that reads "I Love Iowa!" When I saw Gary, he was that cat with the dual-bat backpack, the nice cleats, wristbands that came all the way up his forearm and the face of a killer. He was ready to do this.

Just roll with it. I keep telling myself.

He starts us walking down this hill wandering past small yucca plants, some mesquite trees. It's that harsh canyon land of the north panhandle. Not really farmable. It's a harsh land. Littered with rocks, gravel, horse turds. Gary says, "We'll just take this path up the way here," and begins pointing over the ridge and I'm sitting here looking for the "path" he's referring to. I don't even see the path. This is gonna be fun.

Before I could raise my hand like the dumb kid in class, we were off. Gary damn near disappears. This cat's hauling ass. I fire up to keep up with him. I immediately go into laborious breathing. This is hard. Gary breaks off at one point to go lock the gate we came through and he still catches up with us down the trail. This dude is a machine.

At one point, I check the watch and it reveals that we're pulling about 7:15-7:30 miles. Now, I'm topping out at 8:05. I'm actually keeping up with him on these trails...probably just because he's letting me. He's bouncing up and down these rocky paths with the agility of a col' panther. I'm working with the agility of a large gorilla with a gimp foot. My lungs are on fire. I feel like my assessment of this not being a life-or-death situation was probably wrong. I could die out here.

I don't even know where Mason is. I'm wondering if he's alive. His breathing was over my shoulder at one point and I could sense it getting further and further away. We come around the rim of this canyon and Gary pulls up to wait for us. It was the one mile mark. Gary plots out the rest of our route from the top of the canyon. I'm thinking this guy's insane.

Before you know it, the three of us are dashing down into the canyon. On a decline, Gary fires up to about 5:00 mile pace. That's blinding speed. And he's doing this as he's jumping off of rocks, dodging thorny plants, horse crap, avoiding animal holes. The faster I run, the less visible the path is because my point of view is rattling so bad. It's like I can't hold my head still long enough to see what's in front of me. I'm almost running blind just to keep up.

We do another mile or so and Gary pulls up to wait for all of us to catch up. We start talking the run to this point and I tell him that it's so very different than what I was used to from training for the maraton and he asks me what marathon I ran. I tell him White Rock in Dallas and turns out that he ran it too this last December.

Also come to find out that he did it an hour and a half faster than me. That's fast.

Also come to find out that he's done White Rock about three times.

And he's done another marathon and many half marathons.

And he's actually done a few triathalons. Which he actually prefers to just running marathons.

That would probably explain why he looks like he's chisled from stone and has the land speed of a cheetah on methamphetamines. Yeah, most experienced distance runner out of us? Yeah right. That'd be Gary.

Our last leg, ended with Gary sprinting up the rim of the canyon as Mason and I watched along from within the canyon. Gary gets to the top and I'm recalling Rocky dashing up the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. He gets to the top, puts his hands on his hips and overlooks the land like the master of his domain. Mason and I, now like his two apprentices languidly follow up in his shadow.

Saw a porcupine though. That was cool.

Yeah, I've got some training to do. Feeling the pain this morning. Gary's a freaking machine. I ain't scared. I'm doing that trail. I got my work cut out for me. I'm definitely out of my league, though.

Trails like that trim years off your age. Guess that's what I'm shooting for.

j3 AND THE JUDICIAL SYSTEM

2010-03-02T04:04:00.000-08:00

Had the distinct pleasure of following up my nice long ski trip with a Monday in jury duty. Now, let's get something really straight here. I like jury duty. And, no, I don't just like it because I get out of work. I like it because it's deeply interesting to me. At face value, it appears to be a complete waste of time, but here's your chance to experience the way the process works...for better or for worse. You could have a cat that killed his wife with his bare hands sitting there in the courtroom staring each one of the panelist down as the attorney drills. I don't know about you, but that opportunity alone never presents itself to me. Not that I like hanging out with guys that killed their wife with their bare hands, but it's pretty cool a couple of times. The process of jury selection is pretty awesome too. The two lawyers go through a process known as voir dire which if you say it in West Texas, it kinda sounds like you're trying to order the duck. It essentially means that the two lawyers go through a process of elimination rather than selection. Whoever's left, is the jury. Of course, you don't want the morons in West Texas to know about the elimination vs. selection process because they'll just eliminate themselves. You know, the "I hate black people" guys or the "I was beat by my husband for twenty years" lady. Whether it's true or not, we'll never know. Guess they want to make sure they make it back to the house for the Showcase Showdown.

But why pass up the opportunity to see the system in action? To me, going all the way down there and then doing everything you can to get out of it is like going to the zoo, but passing on the lion cage. Or like going to a strip club, but just checking out the gift shop. Not that I know what that's all about. The county doesn't have enough cops to go out on roundups of all the cats that didn't show up for jury duty. You really don't have to go if you don't want to.

Nevertheless, here I sit in the jury room and I start thinking that there's really four types of potential jurors in Potter County. I tried to name a fifth and I'm pretty confident it's only four.

THE ONES THAT DON'T WANT TO BE THERE
Pretty self-explanatory. They'll do anything they can to get out of it. They'll even admit to being a bigot, a racist, a short-minded moron, an alcoholic, a wifebeater, a caregiver (not that there's any correllation there), an uneducated, uncultured and uninspired nincompoop. It usually happens when you get into the courtroom. The hands start popping up. Yesterday, a physician said that given the nature of the case (aggravated assault--which the lawyer kept referring to as "agg assault"--I thought that was pretty ill, but it's not like "aggravated" is really that long of a word), he doesn't think that he could be a fair juror in the case because serious injuries to ones body makes him really upset. What? The judge asked that he be removed. I imagined them taking him out back and threatening to wail on him with a metal pipe. There was just something about the way the judge said, "You're excused from the courtroom, sir." It was kinda mafioso and suggested it wasn't the end of that cats jury duty. But serious? I'm a physician and injuries to the body upset me? Dude, how do you make it through a day?

It's important to know that once you make into the courtroom, only if you're in the first two rows do you really stand a chance at getting selected for a jury. It's called the "strike zone." Most of the questions are directed at those couple of rows. If you're on the back row like I was today, it's a 99.9% chance that you'll eventually get dismissed. At this point, I've forfeited the thought that I was going to serve so I was just counting down the minutes trying to have fun with the experience while I was there.

The lady right next to me raised her hand and began sobbing (whether genuinely or not, the jury's still out) and said that she was once beaten and doesn't think that she could be fair and impartial in the case. "Ma'am, I appreciate your candor," said the lawyer. Seems I never hear the word "candor" except in a courtroom during the jury selection process. What the lawyer should've said, "Ma'am, I appreciate your candor and reliving that horrible experience that obviously traumatized you for years. I must add, though, that despite your public admittance to this terrible event that happened to you, I wasn't likely to ever pick you for a jury anyway so it really wasn't necessary. As I said before, I'm probably going to pick all of my jurors from the front two rows and given your location on the back row, you'll likely be dismissed anyway so I would just keep my mouth shut and avoid yourself the public embarrassment and emotional toil." She was dismissed though. Probably more on the performance than anything else.

Another man was dismissed because he was once shot in the arm by his best friend in a disagreement. His story was he apparently was so traumatized by that event that he couldn't set it aside and be objective should he be selected for jury. What in the hell? Not only is that like a public admittance that you failed to graduate from high school and you live in a trailer park, but it's also letting everyone in the room know that your brain is sorely underdeveloped and not only can you not work with simple concepts like logic and circumstance, but you have no notion of forgiveness and salvation. You're a moron. Go home and watch the Speed Channel.

If you really don't want to be there, I'll say it again: DON'T SHOW UP. They won't arrest you. They don't have enough cops here to care about you dodging jury duty. Plus, it's not like it's the first time you've dodged the cops so don't act like you just have to do the right thing. Stop taking up places for those that really want to be on a jury. It's a free drinking day for you. You can have that coveted 10:00AM beer that you never get to enjoy anymore and then tell your friends some lie the next day about how you served on a jury and convicted a hardcore murderer to death. And, yep, it only took one afternoon.

THE ONES THAT WANT TO BE THERE
Admittedly, it's probably the smallest percentage, but it wouldn't be the first time I fall in the smallest group. You don't really want it to go for more than a day beause the pay really sucks, but you still hope that you can at least experience the raw emotions of a man sitting in front of you either convicted or cleared of "agg" assault. I mean, this is punishable by up to 20 years in prison. I don't know many people who have 20 years on this earth to spare. I gotta think that good or bad, that was something worth witnessing. Plus, I just wanna know what happened. I'm always that cat that's watching COPS and am bummed out when the cops get there two minutes too late. I wanna know what went down. In fact, I wanna see it. In slo-mo.

THE ONES THAT WANT TO BE THERE BUT ACT LIKE THEY DON'T
This one's a weird one. They so badly want to get picked but all the while act like they're too cool for school. It typically comes off as this "I'm too busy to spend a day here" kinda act yet they showed up which either means they fear a witch hunt if they don't or they so badly wish they get picked. It's like, to them, there's something wrong with wanting to serve. Like it's not the cool thing to do and they've spent their whole life trying to be that cool. It starts in the jury room. When asked to raise their right hand, they look around to see if anyone's looking, reluctantly with a smirk they raise their right hand, take the oath and then slump down in their chair looking over their shoulder acting like they can't wait to bolt. Then, when they pulled into a panel and are seated in the front two rows getting drilled by the attorney, they can't sit still as they wiggle around in excitement.

To spot them, you have to show incredible patience and have to be a seasoned people watcher. They're very sly. They don't always appear as obvious as the first two.

It's particularly funny watching older folk do it. When they're in the courtroom, they act so bored and underwhelmed yet when they hit recess in the hallway, they can't shut up as they shuffle around from congregated potential jurors to congregated potential jurors approximating his chance at being selected saying things like, "Man, I hope they don't take me" when in reality, that's precisely what he wants. He wants that validation. That selection. It makes him feel important. Included. To this man, I say, "It's alright to want to be on a jury. It's hella-dope. Don't feel bad. Don't feel stupid. It's what our country is all about."

IMBECILES WHO DON'T HAVE A CLUE WHAT'S GOING ON
This is the remaining 85% of the people there. They don't know whether the summon was an arrest warrant, a parking ticket or an eviction notice. If they're lucky enough to actually figure it out, they show up and the party starts there. They just kinda follow everyone else. If everyone sits there waiting, they sit there waiting. If someone gets up to get some coffee, they help themselves. They sometimes might even pick up a magazine knowing they can't make sense of the words on the page. The hilarity really begins when they get invited into the jury room for selection/elimination.

Give them a chance to open their mouths and dudes just can't possibly help themselves.

There's a fool-proof way of identifying these morons. It's when we're ordering the duck...voir dire. I'll give you an example from Monday.

ATTORNEY: Today's case is about aggravated assault. Mr. XXX XXXXXX has been charged with aggravated assault with intent of serious bodily injury to Ms. XXXX XXXXXX. Yes, sir?

MORON #1: I don't think a man should ever hit a woman. Period. No exception.

ATTORNEY: Sir, I certainly appreciate your opinion. Do you think that your strong opinion might hinder your ability to objectively reach a ruling in these matters should you serve on the jury?

MORON #1: Well, no, I'm jussayin. I don't think it's right, but I can put it behind me.

Say it with me now:

THEN SHUT THE HELL UP.

Another one:

ATTORNEY: Would any of you have a problem with relying on only one witness in this case if that one witness is a Amarillo police officer?

MORON #2: Hey, sir, one of my best friends growing up is a cop.

ATTORNEY: Okay, is that going to affect your decision in these matters should you--

MORON #2: Whaddya mean? I don't gather.

ATTORNEY: Well, sir, if you were selected to serve in the jury trying this case, could you put your relationship with an Amarillo police officer aside?

MORON #2: Wha?

ATTORNEY: Does your friendship with the Amarillo police officer affect your feelings on this case or would you be able to put that aside and approach this case objectively.

MORON #2: Oh yeah, man. Sure I can put it aside. It wouldn't affect anything.

Again, say it with me:

THEN SHUT THE HELL UP!

I'm just trying to get out of here as soon as possible. It seemed like everytime a hand popped up like a prairie dog, the world came to a screeching halt. I don't care if you think it's wrong for a man to hit a woman, if you like cops, if you hate cops, if you smoke weed, if you once got a ticket for speeding even though you were going five miles-per-hour under the speed limit, if you got shot in the arm, if you once lived in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico. Shut up! Stop talking. Stop raising your hand. Everytime you speak, I lose brain cells. By the time I left there, I could barely find my way home. If he dude farted, he wouldn't be able to stop himself from claiming it. If you ever wonder what slows down the judicial process, it's the process and the fact that the process includes more idiots than the customer service line at Wal-Mart. It's remarkably...uh...remarkable. Imagine you're falsely accused of some horrendous crime. Like they just got it wrong and you're sitting across from twelve of this dimwitted dog turds and they're either going to acquit you of all charges or lock you away for forty years. Do you feel comfortable that the system is working? Do you trust these people to set you free? What does it mean if your tried by your peers? Do you really trust your peers? Would you rather anyone but your peers try you? Who are your peers? I don't know if I'd feel completely normal with twelve of anyone in this town deciding my fate.

It's a bizarre system we tolerate. Fun to take in once every year. They can keep calling me. I'll keep going. It's my civil service. I can't help myself in that way.

Speaking of the system, this Guilty Simpson record is so damn ill. It's the Madlib mix of his new material in the first of twelve installments of the Madlib Medicine Show. Buy it, homie. It won't disappoint. Dare I say I like it better than the proper Guilty Simpson album. Slammin' stuff.

FOR YOUR LISTENING DISPLEASURE: THE BLACK MOON MIX RE-UPPED

2010-02-22T04:02:00.000-08:00

Per request of an unnamed Root Down reader, here it is. Just click on the image.

Sorry, I've been such an absentee blogger lately. We'll say I'm in the field working on a story. Went to see Texas Tech ultimately lose to the Longhorns down in Lubbock this weekend. Good game, but Tech ended up losing by a mere four points. You gotta play all 40 minutes.

Met our new doc. His name is Miles Davis. Odd thing is that he's not black and he doesn't even like jazz. Guess it's not really him. Actually, it's Lon Miles Davis, but he the "Lon" is silent. Good guy. Got a sonogram done. The nameless he/she baby looks kinda like a gummy bear. Best news is everything appears fine at this stage. Second best news is there's only one of 'em.

So, on top of everything else, I'm trying to wrap up this zombie mix, shirts should be delivered today to me so I'll be mailing them out soon, gotta review with the board up at work on Thursday morning, going skiing right after that in Taos where they have close to 80 inches of glorious snow, training seminar the week after skiing, heading to SXSW in mid-March, need to get started in painting my office for a genderless baby, listen to Wu-Tang and decide whether or not another mix is worth it, continue training for the Warrior Dash (which is almost sold out for the second day now--insane), do the Warrior Dash, continuing selling my CDs to raise money for a new computer, ugh. It never really stops. Before you know it, Sox will be starting up against the Yankees on opening day. Results may vary.

Yes, I've been watching the Olympics. My new favorite event is skeleton, I believe. What an insane sport. I used to think bobsledding was, by far, the most freakishly insane sport. Then it was luge. Then it was going headfirst to almost 90 MPH with your chin about three inches from the ice. Yeah, that's ill.

No time to chat, kid. Gotta go make the donuts. Be safe.

MORNING MUSINGS

2010-02-13T06:27:00.000-08:00

(sits down with third cup of coffee, slightly lightened with a tablespoon of soy milk)

Saw Zombieland last night. Yeah, about time. The opportunity never really came around after I failed to catch it in the theater. It was badass. Everything I was hoping for. Thanks to Tim E. for the lender. My lovely wife even watched all of it which is commendable. Never thought that was going to happen after the blood in the opening credits alone. Of course, she was sunk in the first sequence in which narrator says, "That's me and this is Garland, Texas. It might look like a zombies have demolished it, but that's just Garland."

She said, "I like this movie already."

From there on, it was just a matter of enduring all of the gory and bloody creative killings of zombies. Some of them were brutal, but you can certainly see the appeal from a zombie lover like myself. Good flick. Worth the wait.

Still in the process of going through my CDs. I'd say that I'm probably somewhere between 75-83% complete. It's been an difficult process. I'm nearing about 1,000 CDs gone and think I can probably lose somewhere around 500 more. That'd take me from about 3,700 to 2,200. A lean 2,200. That might be a little high still. It honestly feels like I'm giving everything away. Once I decide that I want to set it aside and confirm that I want to give it away or sell it, it's difficult to even listen to it. I'm sitting here looking at a Nicole Willis and the Investigators CD thinking that I need to listen to it and make sure I don't want to keep it, but the energy it would take to even make that decision is too expensive to me at this point. I just want to see it go away. It's the same thing that happens on "Hoarders." They get to a point where submission to the process is easier than fighting it and they start throwing away their prized thimble collection and teacups they've been holding onto for three decades. I'm kinda at that point. I've been deligently pulling anything into iTunes that seems meritable, but even that seems hardly worth it.

The feeling of giving it away is incredible. The other day, I set the entire remastered set of Creedence Clearwater Revival on someone's desk and they approached me later and told me how much it meant to them because they love CCR (and, well, I don't). Felt like Christmas morning. The trick is making sure that they make it into the right hands, but eventually, you just gotta start tossing them like throwing stars. I can't obsess too long on making sure that I give the right CDs to the right person. I'll never get it done.

It's amazing how short my loyalty is, though, once I get started.

And it's not like I gotta short fuse, but ultimately, I'm getting rid of CDs to provide for some storage space so that I can clear some furniture out of my current Boom Boom Room so that we can turn it into a nursery for a little baby because, well, my lovely wife is pregnant.

Yep, you heard it here first. Well, unless I told you already. The office space as it's currently known will be dissolved into the guest room (vinyl goes in with the guests...I'll do inventory after every visit). My clothes go in the guest room. The desk, the chair just go. The computer is simply too big for any other space in the house so I'm raising some cash to replace it with a laptop so I can, essentially, make any space an office. The tower's in excellent shape and has never given me any trouble. It's got 250GB of storage and, I think 6GB of RAM. It's a Dell. If anyone's interested, holla. I'll be selling it. Would like to do it locally, but not tied to the idea.

The CD project has been telling, too, of what kinda dad I want to be. Man, some of the questionable CDs of my collection (or, rather, CDs of questionable taste) become quite obvious when you're browsing for CDs to get rid of. I really had very little standards of taste and decency for a while there. Some of them would be like stashing a gun or a collection of porno mags in the house. Like I'd never feel safe with them around. Problem is that most of the guys that I'd like to give them to have also disappeared from my life. Well, that's not really a problem, I suppose. I wanna be a good father. To start, I better get to cleaning up my act a bit.

Getting rid of all of this CD weight (and book and DVD weight too) has really been a liberating experience...as tasking as it is. I even put a autographed copy of Snoop's last record into the giveaway pile. It's like the golden ticket. Someone will find it. Unless they see it, question it's authenticity and then throw it away. Trust me, I saw him sign it. It's real.

Some days I hope that this means I can finally get a minivan because I so badly want one. That's probably far in the future if at all. We're only expecting one at this point.

Warrior Dash training is on like Donkey Kong. Got a little behind last week with all of the audible sensory and the three-day belly ache that followed Sunday's Super Bowl. Man, you put a package of Girl Scout Thin Mints in front of me, they're as good as gone. Throw in a couple of bowls of frito pie (one in the fourth quarter which was the one that inevitably did me in) and you pretty much wipe out the first half of your week. Now that my stomach, intestines and bowels are back to normal, so follows the training.

Had a nice jog with Mason the other night. Somehow thought that dressing in all black for a night jog was a good idea. The weather's starting to warm up nicely, but looks like we're about to get another blast this weekend.

To my fellow warriors, keep that training up. You don't grind, you don't shine. Looks like the second day of Warrior Dash Texas is selling out wave by wave. Those dudes are making cheddah hand over fist. Shirts will be ready soon. Hopefully by the end of the month.

Holla atcha boy.

SHEDDING THRICE MY WEIGHT IN PLASTICS

2010-02-03T04:12:00.000-08:00

On A&E, they call this "hoarding" and they have an hour-long show dedicated to it. So it might be a little unfair and inaccurate to call what I do "collecting." I'm a hoarder of music. I've been this way for about ten years now. To me, music in it's physical form are like artifacts that will be invaluable in mere decades from now and, for that reason, it's important for me to stow them away in every nook and corner of my house so that I can one day expose them to the world and say, "Look at my freaking collection. Isn't it awesome?"

Reality is that I have CDs in my collection which aren't even opened. I have CDs that people have professed to be one of the greatest recordings of the last fifteen years that are unopened and sitting in my shed next to the fertilizer. I have three copies of records and it wasn't unintentional. I have close to 4000 CDs in my collection and I only listen to about, uh, 20 CDs within the year. If you're doing the math. That's about a 200-year supply. If I'm unlucky enough to live that long, I might listen to all of them if we still have CD players that long. By then, music will be implanted into our head.

I've been privileged to work in an industry where music is free and in ample portions. If you want something, you can likely get it. That was always a dangerous arrangement for me. When I first started working in it, I kept every CD I could get my grimy hands on. I figured even if I didn't listen to it myself, I would give away to someone who would appreciate it. And I did it. Often. I would give 30-count boxes of CDs to friends, relatives, my lovely wife. I'd give boxes of CDs to my neighbor. I figured it was a perk to the business so I would exploit it for all it was worth. I was taking home CDs by the handfuls every day. And one point, I hit an overflow and couldn't keep them all under one roof so they started to flow from closets and in plain view to the garage, to the shed. Anywhere I could get cubic inches, I would take it.

Now it's hit a point of intolerance. It's out of control. It's doing no one no good and in the middle of it is me. I started it and now I'm going to end it. I haven't listened to the new Doom record. I haven't listened to the new Felt record. I used to run home and listen to a new Doom record for two weeks straight and I haven't even touched the new one yet. It's sick. There's all of this music that I can share with others, sell online and I'm doing nothing but waiting for my chance to unveil it only to be told, "Dude, you should've sold this a long time ago."

Here's how it starts.

Step 1:

Crack open a box of CDs and take out any CD that visibly hasn't been opened yet or is a CD that you know you haven't listened to in ages. It might also be an artist or genre in which you used to argue until you were blue in the face about how great they were/it was, but no one believed you. They might not have believed you because it might have actually been garbage. Hear for yourself. Place all of these CDs in one massive bin (I filled up a massive washtub in the shed in mere seconds). Ratio of tossed CDs to keeped...approximately 2:5

Step 2:

Everyday, go out to the shed and take a handful/armful of CDs from this washtub inside, in your car or to work. You're going to be in a constant state of auditioning. This isn't about listening to what you want to listen to, it's listening to what you need to listen to. It's your habit, now deal with it. You don't have to listen to all of them. For example, I know I just bought the remastered Abbey Road. I came across another copy of Abbey. The original CD pressing. I don't need it. It goes onto the third step. This has been pretty telling of how much garbage I've been holding onto. Most things, I press play and listen for about five seconds and I'm ejecting and putting in another. It's not that they're necessarily that bad, they're just not what I'm listening to anymore. I'd rather put them in the hands of people who might really enjoy listening to them instead of sitting on top of piles of them like the mean kid in pre-school. There are other things that I see and think, do I really want my kid coming to me one day asking who "Necro" is? So, here I sit and listen. I'm listening to about thirty CDs a day at this point. My ratio of keepers to losers: 1:12.

Step 3:

I put the losers into three stacks. There's the promos. These are things I can't sell because, well, it'd be unethical and in violation of rules and provisions of my work. There's some good stuff in there. This will be stuff that I will find homes for. Friends with taste in music wanted to take some of these CDs off of my hands. The second of the stacks is the stuff that I can sell for a premium on either Ebay or Amazon. Found a few CDs that are showing a used selling price for up to $20. These are the goldmines in my collection. This is where I make money. I'm not promising to make a ton, but it's at least turning space in my shed into cold hard cash. The last of the three stacks is the stuff that I can just go up the road to my local Hastings and sell to them. I'll probably make only about $.70 a unit when all is said and done because, let's be real here, this ain't a stack of Metallica or Pink Floyd. It's stuff they intend on selling for about $3.99.

Step 4:

Stop the bleeding. This is something I've really been doing over the last two years or so. I just haven't been bringing as many home. There's no zeal anymore in getting CDs at work and bringing them home, stacking them in a corner and listening to them only if get to them. We're flipping the script here. It's the new j3...j4 if you will. No more hoarding music. Give it away. Be picky. Only keep the very best. You're not a fan of Elvis. Creedence Clearwater Revival. You know people who are. Share with them. You have no interest on being on the leading edge of every new buzz band or up-and-coming hip hop artist. You like being a source of musical knowledge, but don't need to bury yourself in plastic to achieve that. People deserve to hear your collection.

Don't you like how these conversations happen in the first-person like I've already processed these affirmations? You're right. I do tell myself these things. I have to. It makes sense of the process.

That's it for now. I gotta get back to listening. At the ratio above, I'm looking at quickly shedding about a quarter of my collection...over 1000 CDs. I've got some work to do.

WARRIOR TRAINING HAS BEGUN...13 WEEKS BEFORE PILLAGIN'

2010-01-31T14:22:00.000-08:00

Ready to break out of this house and put a hurtin' on a neighborhood street. Been cooped up since Wednesday night with a couple of unsuccessful ventures into public. If I wasn't getting my own Honda Civic stuck in ice and snow, I was helping someone else out. Last night it hit a climax with my lovely wife and I stuck trying to exit a parking lot in ice, snow, slush and about ten inches of ice cold oily street water. And only one of us drove stick. The other had to push. Luckily some cat hopped in out of nowhere and lifted the car like Hercules and sent us on our way. No more car until Monday morning. I walked to church this morning. Walked to Starbucks. I'm walking everywhere. It's good for the spirit anyway. Feet are cold, but who cares. I figure anything to toughen me up for my upcoming training is good. This next week, my 13-week training begins...rain, sleet, blood, ice, gravel, frogs, locusts, fire, snow or barbed wire. Nothing's gonna stop me.

Missed our chance to register, but based on the intimidation left by the logo, they added a day to the Texas event so Team Root Down is still rolling strong. I even teased the logo a little more to give it a little more Maiden on the font. I was going to have the letters bleeding, but figured that might be a little much. Maybe for the next softball jersey.

My goals for the next 13 weeks are set. All of them leading to the ultimate goal of finishing the Warrior Dash in 45 minutes. Don't know if that's good or horrible. I have no measure. That's just the time I set for it. If that gets me first place, then I'll take it. If that's dead last. So be it.

This week I start with a 13-mile week. Three 3-mile runs and one four mile run on Saturday. I must maintain no faster than an 11-minute mile. That's our starting point. The ultimate goal is to be able to run three miles in 25 minutes. That's 8:20 miles. Every week, we'll increase speed expectation with a gradual increase in weekly mileage. Unlike marathon training though, the most we'll do in one week is 17 miles. Those 17 miles will be done at a 8:40 pace while leaping Hyundais and swinging our 40-pound swords as we go. That's the toughest week. Mileage tapers off but speed increases from there for the last two weeks.

Diet will be monitored, but not strictly. I've developed enough good habits over the last year that I'm not worried about that. All in all, it'll be close to 200 miles in 13 weeks. Add into it two gym days a week working on four things: arms, legs, core and flexibility. I don't know any personal trainers and hate gyms, so that oughta be fun. Gotta do it though. The goal is not to buff up. I don't want muscle mass. I want my body to be that of a lean and mean warrior.

Anyone wanna join in? Get at me now. Shirt order is going in soon. $13 a pop. Shipping charges may apply. I've got the training schedule drawn out. Anyone interested in seeing it, hit up my inbox. Until then, let the games begin.

COPYRIGHT CRIMINALS, PT. 1

2010-01-31T04:53:00.000-08:00

Hawdcore recommendation to all readers. Missed it when this aired on PBS and, to most people, it's easy to miss things airing on PBS. For that reason, I'm giving it a throw-up on the Root Down for all you heads that didn't catch it the first go-round. Nevermind the kinda cheesy intro. This film is really well put together. It's short too, but not short enough to throw up in just one fail swoop. It's broken down into nice 9 to 10-minute chunks.

A very nice piece to put into cultural context some of my ranting and praises of records like Paul's Boutique, Three Feet High and Rising and Fear of a Black Planet.

Makes me wanna get to work on my next mix, but got some bigger biz to tend to. In the meantime, enjoy Copyright Criminals.

Interesting story about Tom Silverman from Tommy Boy (who's featured in the film). Dude was at the helm of some of the greatest hip hop ever made. I got tons of respect for that dude. I was at an industry event wearing my Geto Boys shirt that's fashioned after the old Tommy Boy logo (with Scarface, Willie D and little Bushwick rocking it) around the lobby.

I'm heading up to my room and the elevator doors open in front of me and, in front of me is none other than Tom Silverman and I'm five feet in front of him with my Geto Boys shirt. I recognize him like immediately. Never seen him before and here's the man standing right in front of me...the man who gave the world De La Soul, Stetsasonic, Digital Underground, Naughty By Nature, House of Pain and countless others. He's standing right in front of me and I'm rocking a ripoff of his label's logo with nothing to block it. He looks at my shirt in bewilderment. Looks up at me and I'm standing there with this dumbass look on my face. I begin moving quickly past him to hop on the elevator as he begins to point at my shirt and say, "Hey!" Dodged a bullet there.

I've seen him since at the same industry event. Never wearing my Geto Boys shirt again.

FOUR THINGS WORKING WITH THE MUSIC INDUSTRY TAUGHT ME IN 2009

2010-01-30T04:41:00.000-08:00

THE INDUSTRY WILL NOT WIN AGAINST FRUGALITY
I'm not blaming the industry for Napster, but let's be real, here: Napster is the product of a society that had lost its tolerance. It started with a punk that didn't see that music was worth paying for and then, like wildfire, he surrounded himself with an army of millions that agreed. Myself included. And this was long before economy would be reduced to unrelenting famine. This was 1999. What it taught everyone but the music industry was that there were some fundamental issues that had never been discussed before. It's not an issue of who owns music, but rather what's it worth? The answer for many was it's worthless. And furthermore, I'll be happy to risk prosecution to prove it. It doesn't really matter whether or not the industry agrees, that's the perception and the only ones that can change this perception is the source.

And the industry didn't.

Instead, they tried to suffocate, smoke out and/or break down the doors and arrest these perps to protect their assets like the freaking Wild West. Instead of listening to focus groups and putting their commentary into actionable defenses, they instead went on the offense and attempted to prosecute, embarrass and publicly assassinate those who had robbed from them. You'd think that an industry that had as much power, money and interest would find a better way to sort through their problems. Instead though, they took the approach of a angry bull. Careless. Reckless. And unsuccessful.

With no "plan B."

You can't say they didn't have fair warning. Here we are, a decade later, and the same holds true. Except now, we're involved in two wars, the housing market has hit rock bottom (and continues to fall, incredibly), the economy has completely gone to hell, unemployment has soared to levels unimaginable and here, the stupid and hapless music industry, is still trying to sling CDs for $16.99.

The very definition of idiocy.

This ain't paper towels or diapers. This is a compact disc. It's a medium that is archaic and, as we've found, replaceable. We found that out ten years back when people were exchanging this new format called an MP3 for free on peer-to-peer applications.

Some companies have found a way to offer retailers cheaper goods and have reaped the benefits. Others still think that somewhere, somehow, someone is still going to pay $16.99 for the Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Eagles, Pink Floyd. Now, I haven't been to every corner of the globe, but I can guarantee you this. If they're out there, there ain't many of them and to find them, you're going to burn all of your pending profits...as few as there might be. If I can buy Zoso for $8.99 digitally (almost half the price of a compact disc), where's the value in that old, tired piece of plastic? If I only want "Stairway," I'd be better off just shilling out $1.29 instead of paying $16.99 for the entire record.

You can't reverse the trend. You can't convince a population that has already severed their tie to the physical good that, overnight, it's now worth $16.99 again. They've abandoned that idea. Gone. There's no wisdom in thinking that's going to happen. And if your model doesn't offer profitable margins at selling the same CD to retailers for $6.00 so they can retail them at $8.99 everyday, then you need to recreate your model because that's the reality.

The music industry will not be win against frugality. Movie industry found that out. The game industry is finding that out. Music industry has had a 10-year head start and still hasn't figured that out. It's almost like they're waiting for it to turn around.

They blame everything from artist contracts to manufacturing costs as to why they can't offer a cheaper good. I'll put this as simply as I can: at the current model, there soon will be NO PROFITS because no one will spend more than $8.99 for a CD. Tell Jimmy Page he'll have to tour until he's 95 because he ain't gonna make no more cheddah off of his the actual sell of his recordings. That or he's gonna have to sell a helluva lot of Swan Song t-shirts at Target. Will I ever see Physical Graffiti for $12.99? Who knows?

Will this generations greed mean that, forty years from now, no one will even know what in hell Led Zeppelin is and why is Floyd pink? If we can't sell the music, will anyone care?

Will anyone miss it?

Cheaper products can jump sales. The music industry will have to adjust their model to make it profitable. Right now, it's retail that's taking the hit for them.

THERE'S MORE EMPHASIS ON THE PROFITABLE PACKAGING THAN ON THE PRODUCT
Over the past decade, the industry has tried nearly every idea on how to retain their profits through crafty packaging and re-packaging. Problem is, they actual product has suffered. The value proposition has been compromised. Let's say, for example, a CD sells to retailers for $12.05 and yields the distributor/label $4.05 of profit (meaning that the good costs them $8.00 to manufacture, royalties paid, etc).

Let's say we cut out the liner notes and, instead, just put a four-panel sleeve in there and save us $.75 per unit. Then, we found a way to cut back on packaging by employing a light-weight cardboard sleeve. That saves us an additional $.50 per unit. Let's say we shave off about four songs off of the album. That's less royalties we'd have to pay the artist. Let's say that's saves us another $.50 in royalties we'd have to pay (that's a damn good contract--this is purely for example). Music industry would increase their profits by $1.75 per record because, now, that same piece that they intend to sell to retailers will cost them $6.25 to make. Still will be sold to retailers for $12.05 and then retailers will be expected to sell this "lite" good for the same price as "premium" goods.

Fail.

Then, the industry instead decides to attempt to split the difference by selling it for $11.00. They still increased their profits by $.75 when all is said and done and they feel satisfied that they offered a cheaper good to retail. Problem is, if retail was selling the full-priced premium good (full packaging and all) for $15.99 (and not selling many, mind you), that was a profit of $3.94. Because the "lite" packaging was, well, less value, they had to pull their price down $2.00 to move any significant amount of them into the hands of the skeptical and frugal end consumer. So, now, at a selling price of $13.99 on a $12.05 good reduces the profits to $1.94. Now, if the retailer can sell twice as much at two bucks less, than they're making $3.88 where before they were making $3.94. $.06 less, but it's keeping the category alive. Not likely anyone's doubling units, though, off of a more flimsy package. In fact, they'd be lucky to sell 30% more. Knowing this, the distributor says they'll cut the price because they realize that the package is "lite." The price is now $11.00. Retail's saving a $1.05 from the $12.05 cost previously because of the distributors crafty repackaging. Remember, though, I'm only going to increase sales by 30% tops at $13.99. I was making $3.94 a sale at $15.99. Making only $1.94 when I reduced it to $13.99, but my units increased by 30% so I'm really making $2.52 off of the increased sales from moving it to $13.99. Even by the reduction of the cost of goods to $11.00, I'm only making $3.88. I'm no closer than I was before by selling them at $15.99. It's a superficial cost change that, in the end, hits the consumer because they have a substandard good because distributors are attempting to increase profits by decreasing the end value of the product. Without a consumer to buy it, there's ZERO profits. The last person I'd want to piss off is the consumer. Secondly is the retailer who is the vehicle of delivery to that consumer. Without both, the future is beyond bleak. It's non-existent.

The music industry has tried everything to increase their profits instead of finally lowering their profit expectations and increasing their units shipped (like the 30% increase we were quoting before). The trick is to make less per unit, but ship more units...therein increasing your overall profitability.

For retailers, because they only make tops $3.94 off of the sale of a product that costs them $12.05 and, secondly, because people are desperate for both CASH and CHEAPER PRODUCTS, the used CD game has been one with a much brighter future. Retailer spends $2.00 to get the same unit out of the hands of the consumer and then turns around and sells it for $7.99. Cheaper than $15.99, y'betcha. Even cheaper than buying it on iTunes and nothing to show for it except a charge on your debit account and a little half-inch image of the cover art. And, for the retailer, they increased their profits from $3.94 to $5.99 (over 50% more). For distributors, they hate the used CD game because they know they'll lose with their $12.05 product. If you're looking for Zoso and there's a $15.99 new copy sitting right next to a $7.99 used copy, which are you buying? No question, anymore.

I feel for the music industry. They're in a tight place. The only solution at this point for increasing sales is not shaving back on the value of their product, but offering a satisfactory good and cutting their own profits to do so. Every industry is going into survival mode at this point as we enter another year of the worst recession most of us will ever see. If there's any industry that is not exempt, it'd would be an industry that has been down double digits year-on-year for the last seven years...the music industry. They could be the heroes if they really wanted to be.

PEOPLE WILL BUY CDS FOR THE RIGHT PRICE
When it's the right price, people will buy almost anything. That's an interesting proposition for an industry that can't turn around their own decline with the help of a thousand focus groups, armies of attorneys and strategists. I was selling some piece of crap Ted Nugent live record hand over fist, week-on-week. Not because it was a good record, but because it was $3.99. You would've thought it was the single greatest record ever made.

I've been critical of rap labels for not following suit and, because of this, many of those old recordings didn't make the leap from the 80s and 90s to the 00s. I mean, you mention 3rd Bass' The Cactus Album or We Can't Be Stopped by the Geto Boys to anyone and only real heads (like myself, haha) will say, "Yep, dope record." No cats have ever heard of that record because very few rap labels are willing to accept that those old records ain't worth the sticker price anymore. I guarantee you if some cat could by the first three Public Enemy records for $5.99 everyday, you'd be seeing high double-digit increases. Those records are still $9.99 everyday. In some markets, even more. The Cactus Album should only be $3.99. Not because it's not a good record. But because it is a good record and people should hear it. Some records are just not worth a dime more like that Nugent live record. But some are well worth it. The $3.99 bin can't just be full of lumps of coal. There gotta be some gems in there somewhere. No one wants to be that gem. They just hand off their garbage to retailers for the $3.99 bin.

Here's what the structure should look like. I'll use Zeppelin again for my example.

$12.99: Physical Graffiti, Song Remains the Same (because they're both 2CDs)
$9.99: Zeppelin I - IV
$8.99: Houses of the Holy
$5.99: Coda, Presence
$3.99: In Through the Out Door

Let's do the same for Pink Floyd.

$12.99: The Wall
$9.99: Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here, Ummagumma
$8.99: Meddle, Animals, Momentary Lapse of Reason, Division Bell
$5.99: Obscured by Clouds, Saucerful of Secrets, Piper at the Gates of Dawn, Atom Heart Mother
$3.99: The Final Cut, Soundtrack from "More"

Same for Public Enemy.

$8.99: Greatest Hits
$5.99: Fear of a Black Planet, It Takes a Nation of Millions, Yo! Bum Rush the Show, Apocalyspse 91
$3.99: Muse Sick-n-Hour Mess Age, He Got Game, There's a Poison Goin' On

How about the Rolling Stones.

$9.99: Exile on Main Street, Let It Bleed, Sticky Fingers
$8.99: Goat Heads Soup, It's Only Rock and Roll, Their Satanic Majesties Request
$5.99: Some Girls, Tattoo You, Aftermath, Steel Wheels
$3.99: Voodoo Brew, Bridges to Babylon

Beatles anyone?

$13.99: White Album
$9.99: Abbey Road, Sgt. Peppers, Revolver, Let It Be
$8.99: Magical Mystery Tour, Yellow Submarine, Help!
$5.99: With the Beatles, Please Please Me, Beatles for Sale, Hard Day's Night
$3.99: (NONE)

I want so desperately for the music to stay alive, but it ain't gonna happen through $.99 downloads and ringtones. That's close enough to free. Once it gets down to that level, people aren't going to want to pay anything anymore. The music industry has to find the middle ground between FREE and an ABSOLUTE RIPOFF.

NOT EVERYONE IS LADY GAGA
Just before anyone makes another reference to Lady Gaga's success as encouragement for an industry with very little bright spot. Not everyone is Lady Gaga. In the same way that not everyone was Norah Jones. Even Norah Jones hasn't been Norah Jones of late. Don't act like this is a turnaround. It ain't. There's still life in the physical CD but it 95% of it hinges on price. The other 5% is quality of the product. Stop trying to make it better and just make it cheaper. It's that simple.

If I may loosely quote our CEO from a meeting in front of industry executives, "Even a drowning man will eventually start kicking."

THE ROOT DOWN PROUDLY PRESENTS: THE BEATLEMANIADDENDUM

2010-01-28T06:26:00.000-08:00

The Fifth Dimension "Ticket to Ride" (1967)
Marshall Williams "Norwegian Wood" (1968)
Les DeMerle "A Day in the Life" (1968)
Los Fernandos "Yellow Submarine" (1971)
Ike and Tina Turner "Come Together" (1970)
Orchestra Harlow "Everybody's Got Something to Hide Except for Me and My Monkey" (1969)
Beastie Boys "I'm Down" (1986)
The Vontastics "Day Tripper" (1966)
Ramsey Lewis "Julia" (1968)
Sarah Vaughan "I Want You (She's So Heavy)" (1977)
The Churchills "She's a Woman" (1970)
War "A Day in the Life" (1976)
Tomorrow "Strawberry Fields Forever" (1976)
Nina Simone "Here Comes the Sun" (1971)
The Soulful Strings "Within You, Without You" (1967)
Edwin Starr "My Sweet Lord" (1971)
Chet Baker and Bud Shank "Hello Goodbye" (1967)
The Bar-Kays "Hey Jude" (1969)

Because there's no end to dope Beatles covers, I thought that The Root Down Presents Beatlemania deserved an second swing. So here it is: The Beatlemaniaddendum with over an hour of extras that didn't make it into the first go-round complete with a commerative White Album treatment. Appropriate that I'd lean toward the White Album cover treatment being that the Yellow is experiencing a proper white out as I type this. It's a Thursday off with a decent chance of a Friday off as well. Nothing provides for better creative exertion than blizzard conditions.

The Beatlemaniaddendum is what I could sweep up off the cutting room floor from the first installment that was salvagable material. There are even some new gems that I never knew existed. There's some repeat offenders...the Soulful Strings, Bud Shank, Ramsey Lewis, Nina Simone and there's even some more mainstream covers that possibly you've heard before. If not, well, I'm honored to bring it to you. They were just too ill to pass up twice.

You know, I kinda feel like a tool. I'm like the lowest of the low. I'm making mixes of people who ripped off other people's music. But there's not really another group that you could do this with. That's what's fascinating about the Beatles. It seems like everyone's done a Beatles cover. It's like a freaking rite of passage for a musician, group or band. The more obscure the better. Searched high and low for some lowlife covering "Why Can't We Do It in the Road?" but was unsuccessful. Found about everything else. Classical renditions, dub treatments, the freakin' Beasties, blues players, Chet Baker. They've been covered in France, Thailand, Mexico, Cuba, Canada, Russia, Japan...here, there and anywhere. But why the shortage of decent "Happiness is a Warm Gun" covers? Hmm.

As a kid born after the Beatles were well over, it's hard to really sense their cultural and musical impact except through the endless renditions of their output. Sure, I have the records and I can listen to the Beatles anytime I want, but there's something more deeply intriguing about hearing someone else do the Beatles. To me, it's one mark of what kind of musician you are. Not necessarily how good of a musician you are, but what kind. I know the originals. Can hit the key without a cue. When you hear someone take a familiar melody into a completely different zone, it's a new creation. A standalone composition. That's why I don't like any of the newer covers because dudes are just scared to rock it anymore. I've heard too many atrociously boring and underwhelming covers in my research. There's armies of cats who just love the Beatles too much to do anything different to the song than to play it the way it was put to record. Even the Beatles themselves didn't like their music that much. Destroy it. That's what I say. If I can only vaguely recognize the melody, I'd have more respect for you as a musician. People treat music with so much reverence. Who cares? Not like Ringo's going to show up at your front step with a machete to collect your forearms. Beethoven's ninth is only played one way at one tempo. You didn't play it if it was performed with any variance to the way it was written. But this ain't Beethoven.

Enough of my typing like I feel it's necessary to preface a mix like it's all-important and musically significant. It's a mix of other people's music. I'm just putting it together and uploading it for you so you don't have to go through the work. And now, without any further adieu, I proudly present to you:

THE BEATLEMANIAddendum

Click the above link to download.

For those who might have missed the first edition, click here. If the link download link doesn't work, email administrators (me) and I'll re-up it.

#27: "DON'T BELIEVE THE HYPE"

2010-01-20T04:06:00.001-08:00

PUBLIC ENEMY
"DON'T BELIEVE THE HYPE"
It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back
1988

The second single off of PE's breakthrough album It Takes a Nation, "Don't Believe the Hype" is only the first of five PE songs to hit The Root Down Top 33. "Don't Believe the Hype" is a collosal composition with it's Syd Nathan Pinckney's paint-stripping sax scream, the classic drum break from "Synthetic Substitution," layered over it is Chuck's scatching prose and Flav's boyish antics. Along with the first single released from Nation, "Rebel Without a Pause," it ushered in the new PE sound.

A stark difference from their first album, these two singles bordered on irritation. They were unapologetically confrontative. Chaotic. Dischordant. And unlike "Rebel," which prominently featured Chuck and Terminator caught in typical posturing, "Don't Believe the Hype" was an attack with purpose and precision. Chuck was taking aim at the media and it was a direct hit. Responding to early clashes with the media (whether real or ficticious), Chuck arms himself with three of the most furious verses ever put to record climaxing with the third verse in which Chuck simply goes off.

Whether it's defending himself against allegations or simply lashing out at the "radio suckas" that had long since held an avoidance to hip hop and, even further, PE's harsh realities and instead fed pop fantasies to the masses, Chuck's third verse is a fiery and absolute punishing series of blows.

Leader of the new school, uncool,
Never played the fool, just made the rules.
Remember there's a need to get alarmed,
Again I said I was a timebomb.
In the daytime, the radio's scared of me,
Cause I'm mad, plus I'm the enemy.
They can't come on and play me in primetime,
Cause I know the time, plus I'm gettin' mine.
I get on the mix late in the night,
They know I've living right, so here go the mike, sike!
Before I let it go, don't rush my show.
You try to reach and grab and get elbowed.
Word to herb, yo if you can't swing this,
Learn the words, you might sing this.
Just a little bit of the taste of the bass for you,
As you get up and dance at the LQ.
When some deny it, defy if I swing bolos,
Then they clear the lane I go solo.
The meaning of all of that,
Some media is the whack.
As you believe it's true, it blows me through the root.
Suckas, liars, get me a shovel.
Some writers I know are damn devils.
For them, I say "don't believe the hype."
(Yo, Chuck they must be on a pipe, right?)
Their pens and pads I'll snatch,
Cause I've had it.
I'm not an addict fiendin' for static.
I'll see their tape recorder and I'll grab it.
(No, you can't have it back, silly rabbit.)

Chuck's intent is evident. To liberate the listeners from the falsity of the media giant. To be so freaking gullible and think for yourself. You got eyes to see with, ears to hear with, a brain to think with. Don't believe the hype.

That's all good, you know..."message" and all, but honestly, "Don't Believe the Hype" just makes me wanna dance my col' ass off. It's a difficult balance for such heady messages to also cut the rug. This was rarely achieved in hip hop, but if there was anyone that could do it, it was PE. "Don't Believe the Hype" blends this wylin' sweaty house party bounce along with a hot and nasty pimp strut. This thing col' rocks the party.

I'm going skiing. You're not.

TEAM ROOT DOWN: THE WARRIOR DASH

2010-01-19T05:25:00.001-08:00

I proudly present the Team Root Down flag for the Warrior Dash on May 1st.

Col' pillagin', son.

Shirt prices, sizes and availability coming soon. More we make the cheaper they are.

MAD TIME FOR A RECAP

2010-01-14T03:39:00.000-08:00

Walruses can play woodwinds now. News to me too.

Got up at 3:45, finally crawled outta bed at 4:25. Love getting up early. There's just some soothing about catching the world before it gets wound up in its typical hustle. Love going on Facebook and seeing that the last post was at midnight-thirty and I'm the first post of the day.

Sugarless January is proving to be nothing short of torture. I can't stand it. I'm close to just breaking down and eating peanut butter. Last year, it was ketchup. This year, it's peanut butter. Some days at lunch, I want sugar so bad my ears start ringing. I guess that's what I get for training at the same time. My appetite is sometimes ravenous and I really don't like having restrictions when I'm starving. Amazing, though, how little doesn't have some sort of corn syrup or sugar in it. The only thing I'm permitted to have is fruit sugars or honey. Somedays, before heading back to work after lunch, I take the honey container and squirt a whole mouthful onto my tongue and just enjoy it the whole way back to work. Yep. That's hard up.

Training has begun for the Warrior Dash. Looks like we're getting a little team together. Of course, once we get out there, it's every man for himself. This ain't a "team" like Celebrity Fit Club. Nah, I ain't helping you through the cargo net. You're on your own, son. Word is, let's see, we got Mason, Pauli, Zack, Bro Bro, Bryan, possibly Matt, Mike the Mailman, Denis and, uh, maybe Kools? That's a pretty good pack. I might even be missing a couple. Wish I could get Dale to jump in, but not sure about that.

Did my fastest three-miler the other day where we completed (Kools and I) just over 27 minutes. Did the last half-mile at about a 8:15 pace. That's freaking fast. Almost killed me. Gonna have to work on a bit of speed if I wanna complete that Warrior Dash in a satisfactory time. I wasn't a marathoner and I did that. I'm not a sprinter. Planning on doing that too.

2010 has started out with a bang. Reading a massive Mingus biography complete with four appendices regarding his recordings, sessions, composition structure. Pretty heavy reading. After that, I have lined up a few books that I've started but haven't finished.

"Can't Stop, Won't Stop" (which despite the title, I've managed to about five times)
"Why White Kids Love Hip Hop"
"Where You're At"
"Bomb the Suburbs"

Who knows. Maybe I won't stop there, but let's not get ahead of ourselves. I don't really like reading. It feels much like being in school again. Of course, sometimes I fantasize that I'm in school again. You know, all scholarly and smart. Also, this year, I'm embarking on a journey through the history of the Western genre. I started with High Plains Drifter which is a remarkable film in which many lessons could be learned. Like, when you ride into town, murder three men and commit rape in broad daylight in the first half-hour, they might make you sheriff. It's like Eastwood was reading the screenplay and thought, "Rape and murder? Sure, I'll direct it, star in it and produce it." Something about as I grow older, my movie viewing is becoming a little more refined. I'll always love zombie flicks, Deniro, documentaries. But I just needed a change. Westerns are a perfect fit. I like the space. The pace. The simple plots. And the fact that the best movies of the genre end up in a wild shootout which tallies up more carnage than most full-length Seagal movies in just under five minutes. Started "The Assassination of Jesse James" and also got about ten DVDs dropped on me by my co-workers. A ton of Eastwood, Wayne and few others. Good recommendations though. That's what's nice about working around movie buffs. Jacko and Clint, you know your stuff too. Don't worry.

2010 minus 20 years would equal 1990 which is the year I'll be delving into this year in my study of classic hip hop. From what I remember, 1990 and 1991 were huge. Should be fun. There's just so many recordings from those two years. So many that I've yet to hear in full.

Ate/drank/whatever my first smoothie a few weeks ago. Not half bad. Tasted mad sweet when you haven't had sugar for a couple of weeks. It had mango, acai juice, soy milk, bananas and blueberries. Haven't stopped been able to curb the bowel movements since.

Working on a few mixes at this point. In the hopper, I have the Beatlemaniaddendum which is the continuation of the first Beatle covers mix. It just didn't seem right stopping where I did where there so many dope omissions. What's crazy about the Beatles and as much as I listen to these covers and search for them endlessly online is that there's just so many. You really get a feel for their impact when you listen to the sources of some of these covers. There's reggae covers, salsa covers, metal covers, rap covers, tons of jazz covers, blues covers...there's even an exhaustion of electronic remixes. Search for Rolling Stone covers and there's barely a twenty-fifth of what's out there on the Beatles. I've come to believe that it's the fact that the Beatles were so damn melodic. Their compositions were crazy from a melodic perspective. And it doesn't matter whether you're singing it or playing it on an organ or stripping paint off the walls with "Eleanor Rigby" on a trumpet, the melodies are timeless. Stones and Zeppelin had some great songs. Some fantastic albums. But dudes didn't write hymns like the Beatles did. Melodically, their compositions were much less varied.

Anyhow, there's the Beatlemaniaddendum, This One's For My DJ (which collects the best of pre-1992 DJ cuts), The Zombie Mix which has been temporarily suspended for a search for more material and, eventually, the Buhloone Mindstate Mix. Can't stop, won't stop.

Looks like I'll be heading to SXSW this year. Primarily on business.

Two ski trips before now and then. One in two weeks up to San Luis, CO to hit Wolf Creek and Taos on the way back and, then, about a month later, doing it all over again. Dopeness. Twice in one season? Incredible. Watching those snow reports daily at this point. Life's not worth wasting on bad snow.

Got one of those gift debit cards for Christmas and decided I was going to go online and search for a pair of Waffles because mine are just worn too thin and stink like the matted dingleberries of a yak. After searching deep and wide, I discovered that the hipster crowd found my Waffles and have caused a steep hike the asking price of a pair what was one of my favorite shoes in a long while. I scored not one or two but three pairs of Waffles at, believe it or not, Ross for Less. I scored a red pair and two black pairs all for only $19.99 each. Now, I get criticized sometimes by my lovely wife for owning too many pairs of one shoe, but here's a perfect example of why I do so. Here's the pair that I bought three of for only $19.99.

$19.99

A decent shoe. Sturdy. No frills. It's a Waffle. Good shoe. Nice template for some creative colorways. I have an affinity for shoes of this nature. The New Balance 574 is the same way. A steady template, timeless look and modest. And modestly priced as well. Especially when you can find them at Hoodville. Well, in my latest search, I found that Nike has redesigned the shoe for the loafer crowd, gave them that "vintage wear" and jacked the price up like you're buying something off a museum wall.

$117.99

I'm no sucka. So I went for the Saucony Jazz. Blue and black. They're super nice and probably offer about twice the comfort. And I only paid $32.99 for them. My new Waffle is the Jazz. The pair I've owned now for two years is probably one of the most comfortable shoe that I own next to the assorted pairs of 574s and they're definitely the lightest. Shoes like the Jazz and the Waffle which is basically nylon, minimal leather and rubber should only retail at $35.00 tops. You can't even really run in these things. They're a casual sneaker. I didn't spend $100 for the shoe I ran White Rock in. Shame.

I'm gonna be Uncle Jeff. Again. Peyton David Wyrick is swimming in a belly right now. Praying for his safety and good health. He'll arrive sometime in June. Awesome blessing.

Cereal time, kiddos. Keep on rockin' it.

THE THIRTY GREATEST HIP HOP RECORDINGS FROM 1989

2010-01-05T04:30:00.000-08:00

As an awkward twelve year old in Lubbock, Texas, 1989 was the first of many defining years for me. Musically, I clutched to my cassette of He's the DJ, I'm the Rapper, Raising Hell, Guns N Roses' Lies and Living Colour's Vivid on the strength of "Cult of Personality." MTV was still the only window that I had to the really cool music. And, with few exceptions, rap was still outlawed on the radio. Still too young to really attach myself personally to hip hop, I was largely still "just looking" in the world of music. I would sample here and there, but not one single album defined me. Not one artist was my favorite.

That was until I met Queens' finest...LL Cool J.

His delivery was chill. Low. Almost a whisper. He was cool'd out. Not like Eazy E or Rev Run. He had the posture of a hoodlum, but the strut of a ladies man. He didn't resort to the jokery or gimmicks of Fresh Prince. LL was the kinda rapper you wanted to be in real life. The video was "Goin' Back to Cali."

As I watched the video, LL's style, demeanor and delivery had me hypnotized. I had finally found that cat that rolled together what I liked about hip hop. I liked the cool confidence of rappers. I wasn't really into gangsta ish. I didn't know much about crime, shooting up buildings, killing cops and robbing banks. I knew absolutely nothing about drugs or women so much of the music that I was exposed to was much like listening to a foreign language. You can start piecing some of it together, but it still makes very little sense.

LL, however, delivered his lines with deliberate articulation in this bored and underwhelmed monotone. He didn't yell (anymore) or rap too fast. It was almost conversational and I heard every single word of that three and a half minute performance.

Her bikini: small. Heels: tall. She said...she like...the ocean.

He was like hip hop's Joe Camel. He was a character that was perfectly crafted to lure me in. His Kangol represented the street fashion I aspired to rock. His pimp-strut was the very posture of cool. The gold watch that dangled from his wrist was the easy money I wanted in on. And everywhere this dude went, there were hot white women girating. Hot damn. I found my first hero.

Finding LL in Lubbock felt like I had finally uncovered something that I could call my own. I knew nothing of his earlier career. I thought this cat was brand new. How would I have possibly known about Radio or Bigger and Deffer?

I barely had an allowance at this point. I could only afford one cassette probably every two months. The second I could afford the $11.99 price of a cassette, I walked into the Hastings on 19th street, went to the "L" section, picked up the only copy of Walking With a Panther, confirmed the song was on there and dropped my hard-earned cash (yeah, right) on the counter. Hip hop was mine.

Footnote: This was before the ruling which required the parental advisory sticker to be adhered to explicit recordings so, while explicit, there was nothing on the package to indicate to me, my parents or to store personnel that they were selling a 12-year old an explicit rap record.

It would be just the beginning for me. And while it was the year that I began to explore my life as a hip hop head, it was equally defining for hip hop itself. With '88, hip hop was vaulted to the forefront of the music landscape. While it's pioneers continued to fade into the backdrop, the new class was promising. The game was no longer restricted to the upper-East coast and LA. Philly was taking strength (again), Dallas, Houston, Miami and even Seattle. Communities no longer looked to the mecca to produce the next big thing, they were doing it themselves. This was driven by hip hop taking a greater stake in popular media. People wanted to hear it. People needed to hear it. And while radio was slower to the game as, still in most markets, there was no format solely dedicated to hip hop, MTV's "Yo!" debuted in 1989 providing a full-color, audio/video platform for artists to promote themselves and their records. For me, "Yo!" would have a bigger impact than anything radio would feed me. All the names had faces on "Yo!" They were no longer just voices in a box or on a small strip of magnetic tape. These dudes aboslutely jumped off the TV screen!

1989 would also mark the first of many mammoth controversies that hip hop would have to fend off when Miami's 2 Live Crew started bubbling under. Their shows were making waves for their shameless and unapologetic display of sexual cinematics and their recordings were likened to the most vile and obscene pornography. So much so that the American Family Association redefined "obscene" and set to shut down the Crew. What they did is, though, is took a relatively regional act and rocketed them to two-times Platinum status as retailers were yanking it from the shelves. Imagine if it had proper distribution and representation at retail during those court proceedings. Nasty would've sold 10 million. Like with NWA a year earlier, it once again proved that America couldn't stop what it itself had created. Hip hop was the voice of the populous and Nasty proved that there was little even the courts could do to shut down a train with the momentum of hip hop. The movement had already begun and there was little anyone could do to slow it down.

1989 also showed that hip hop had a charitable side with the release of two singles: "Self-Destruction" and "We're All in the Same Gang." The message-heavy singles were hoped to help curb gang violence nationwide as "black-on-black crime" became the buzzword. I had a cassette single of "We're All in the Same Gang." I remember someone spilled soda on it at church camp. Gimme my street cred.

It was also the year that MC Hammer blew up with "U Can't Touch This." How could I almost forget. Dude sold 10 million records in 1989. However, don't worry, he's not on this list.

And 1989 would be the first year that the Grammy Association would recognize a "Best Rap Song," DJ Jazzy Jeff and Fresh Prince's "Parents Just Don't Understand." However, the Grammy Association couldn't find it in their heart to make history on television as the award was not publicized. The result was a public boycott of the event by hip hop's heavyweights. It was a shaky start to what is still a fractured relationship between hip hop and the so-called "authority."

1989! The number. Another summer. You wanted it. You got it. It's been 20 years in the making. Aged like a fine wine. The recordings herein represent the very finest in the genre. It is for that reason that we purposefully omitted Please Hammer Don't Hurt 'Em. C'mon, son. This is The Root Down. We have standards that we have to live up to. We did, however, include Tone Loc and Young MC because, well, let's be real here: they were dope as hell. Debate as you will but only amongst yourselves. The Root Down will not entertain such frivolous arguments.

30
Cool C

I Gotta Habit

Atlantic

Philly represent. Cool C, member of the short-lived Hilltop Hustler Records crew, dropped this gem following up his 1987 diss, "Juice Crew This." Led by the single, "Glamorous Life," Habit is cut from the same cloth as many of the 1989 records. It's one part party record ("Get Loose On") and one part street-talk ("Down to the Grissle") where the emcee prefers to explore the benefits of being both Fresh Prince and Ice Cube. Does it work? Rarely. In fact, here on Habit, the transition is clumsy, but the product altogether is meritable. Ironic of his beef prior Juice Crew beef that Cool C's delivery is almost directly derived from MC Shan's whine, but irregardless, Cool C carries his own on Habit. Twenty years don't show well on Habit as it sounds crazy aged, but even still for what it is, Habit is still one of the finer Philly hip hop recordings ever.

Mikey D and the LA Posse

Better Late Than Never
Sleeping Bag

A little unfair to reserve a place for Mikey D and the LA Posse because the record you see actually never came out in 1989. Mikey D, up to and through 1989, was a label-hopping fool recording only a handful of singles here and there, but never granted a proper full-length. Thank God for cats who know when records deserve their due because in 2006, the aptly-titled Better Late Than Never would be released to the masses. With legendary Paul C at the helm, Qwest as DJ and Mikey D handling the majority of the emcee duties, the output heard here is a ferocious assembly of b-boy breaks and partyrockers. Kid, they just don't make them like they used to. Every song is a bona fide banger that toprocks like Crazy Legs and kisses itself like James Brown. Later in 1989, Paul C be tragically shot and killed the same year in Queens. A few years later, Mikey D would go on to replace Large Pro in Main Source for their second record. However, as a group, we'll never know what Mikey D and the LA Posse's legacy could've been, but one could only imagine had this record received a proper release back in their heyday.

Kwame

The Boy Genius

Atlantic

When 16 year-old Kwame signed to Atlantic Records and released his debut, the game was still really a man's game. With few exceptions, hip hop was reserved for those with cred, experience and a genuine narrative. Kwame's debut (while laughable if you're looking for true "genius") is an otherwise remarkable recording that proves age truly means nothing in this game if you deliver it with the gruff of a twenty-something and fortify your package with the best JB breaks that major label money can buy. Kwame's Kool Aid party lyrics are not going to put anyone on their ass, but his artful mimicry is accomplished. As I listened to this record for the first time in almost a decade, I'm amazed by how, now twenty years later, it's still charming and listenable. I suppose that's enough to land you the 28-spot in 1989.

Three Times Dope

Original Stylin'

Arista

It's quite possible that, had Three Times Dope blown up two years earlier, they might be reverred as one of the finest trios in the game. Technically a late-1988 release, the sun was already setting for the three-piece b-boy format. The market was beginning to shift toward the innovators, the street rappers and "dancability" and party-oriented hip hop had begun to lose its space in the game. Three Times Dope was ill, though. Their recordings, starting with Stylin', is texturally more achieved than most of its predecessors and its combinations of the true essence of b-boy recordings (Sly and Family Stone, James Brown or Melvin Bliss, a bassline, verse-break-verse-break-break-shoutout-break-fade) indicate that Three Times Dope knew exactly what they were doing, but got up too late. Had the same record released earlier in 1987, it might've found itself in the top ten, but the landscape was quickly shifting away from groups like Three Times Dope. That said, they'd go onto release one more full length a year later, but it would fall well short of their debut. For what it is, Three Times Dope was ill. Just a little late to the party.

Biz Markie

The Biz Never Sleeps

Cold Chillin'

It'd be impossible to sit here and try to convince anyone that Biz's sophomore record is any better than the two singles that were released off of it. Biz as a recording artist will always be defined by one song. It's unfortunate, but what's fantastically fortunate is that he has a single that defined his career. Most dudes work their lives to have that one hit. That being said, I don't know if anyone would've guessed that Biz would be that cat and "Just a Friend" would be that hit. But it was. The rest of the record is really just filler for "Just a Friend" and "Spring Again" (the undeniable upbeat party hit). I mean, there's the Biz dance track "Mudd Foot" in which Biz tries to teach America his dance. There's the col' lampin' "Check It Out" which is a perfect trunk-rattler. There's the anthemic beatbox track, "Me Versus Me." "I Hear Music" is as accomplished a song as you'll hear from Biz as he actually applies himself as an emcee and not just as Pee Wee Herman gimmick. But you don't wanna hear it. Never Sleeps is "Just a Friend." And, for that, Biz owns this spot on the list. Again, you can't blame the guy for having a hit. At least it's a dope hit that he can be proud of decades later unlike MC Hammer and Vanilla.

King Sun

Profile

After two years on the grind, Jersey's own King Sun dropped this gem thanks to Profile Records which was peaking after, as a label, the exploded following the slew of Run DMC they shifted early in the 80s. King Sun never blew the doors down creatively or lyrically, but he excelled in the gift of imitation. He's in the class of emcees who fell from the Rakim-Daddy Kane tree of tenor emcees who blended the streetwise verse with this coolness and sensitivity of a hip hop debonair. The majority of it, unfortunately, would just be an impersonation as it's easy to separate him lyrically from the Rakims and stylishly from the Kanes. He's neither nor, but what he is is a decently gifted emcee who took what he was given and turned out a solid record with XL.

The New Style

Independent Leaders

MCA

Coming from Nowhere, New Jersey, the New Style disappeared as quickly as they arrived in 1989, but what they left behind was this hard-hitting, neck-breaking b-boy blitzkrieg. Starting with 130 BPM "Scuffin' Those Knees", the speedfreaky "Can't Win for Losing" and then climaxing with the colossal "Bring the Rock," Independent Leaders is a varied listen highlighting the machine-gun delivery of unknown rhymespitters Anthony Criss and Vinnie Brown. Production, solid. Emceeing, brilliant. Altogether as enjoyable of a debut as you would find back in 1989. But then, poof, the New Style expired and disappeared. But two years later, they'd re-emmerge under a new name, even newer style and, this time, they'd land a radio h-bomb with "O.P.P." as Naughty By Nature.

Black Rock & Ron

Stop the World

RCA

Two emcees and one DJ from Hollis Queens. You can't blame them for trying. I mean, it worked before. Two rough emcees strutting in front of a DJ in their matching jumpsuits. While they might have been more than half a decade late, Stop the World, their only full length output, still packs a wallop. Featuring production from the aforementioned Paul C, Stop the World is a blazing album that provides an encyclopedic perspective on the hip hop game. There's a few miscues, but if you're only given one chance to shine, get your licks in. Even the corniest tracks lyrically are still musically accomplished which is the redeeming element of records like Stop the World. If 1989 proved anything, it was that you didn't have to be the world's greatest emcee as long as the production was stacked. Unfortunately for Black Rock & Ron, there would only prove to be room for one great trio from Hollis and they vanished from the game. Member Lord Black was murdered only a few years later. It's amazing how many hip hop artists you don't know were killed. Murder is to hip hop artists in the 80s and 90s as heroin and cocaine was to jazz artists in the 60s.

MC Lyte

Eyes on This

East West

MC Lyte knew all eyes were on her in 1989 as she attempted to follow up her slammin' debut, Lyte as a Rock. What she proved on Eyes on This was not only was she no fluke, but that she'd improve from the first record returning as a lean and mean prizefighter. While her first record was predominantly filler but featured the hits, "10% Dis" and "Paper Thin," Eyes on This was a fully-developed longform masterpiece. It didn't rely as heavily on one or two tracks, but rather rocked with continuity. Standouts "Cha Cha Cha" and "Cappucino" would propell Lyte to supastar status, but even deep album tracks like "Rhyme Hangover" and "Please Understand" would showcase Lyte's effortless rhyming ability. Eyes on This is ill, kid.

Willie D

Controversy

Rap-a-Lot

Willie D was an angry man in 1989. Rising out of Houston's 5th Ward with nothing to lose and a 1000-pound chip on his shoulder, Willie's debut is as scathing and seering rap record as anything released in years prior. Willie doesn't just rap, dude yells and Controversy is his manifesto as it helps shape the new gangsta rap record which not only exploits the hustle, but also injects sociopolitical themes into the record. From taking aim at the Ku Klux Klan to politicians, radio stations to the Grammy committee, Willie D comes out swinging with relentlessly explicit verse and he chokes, punches, bruises and maims anything in his way. Rap-a-Lot had much bigger plans, however, for Willie with the release of Controversy as it would pair him up with future Geto Boy brethren Scarface and Bushwick Bill on the lead song "Do It Like a G.O" (which would be better known as a Geto Boy track, not a Willie D track). Controversy is how gangsta rap records were meant to be made. B'lee dat.

Low Profile

We're in This Together

Priority

In the tall shadows of NWA, the West Coast became a hotbed for solid hip hop in the late-80s and early 90s. Consisting of one emcee (WC) and one DJ (Aladdin), Low Profile represented the symmetric beauty of the hip hop duo. Like Eric B and Rakim, Kool G Rap and Polo, Jazzy Jeff and Fresh Prince before them, the emcee/DJ format provided an opportunity for equal showcasing of the duo's individual talents. We're in This Together is no exception. WC, a newcomer and transplant to LA from Texas, flexes his lyrical fortitude and arsenal of battle rhymes. But what the record does for DJ Aladdin is places him among the top DJs on the west side of the Rockies as he spares no opporunity to show off his scratching abilities--an element that, on record, was still largely absent from Left Coast rap recordings. Dude was just sick. Together still remains one the finest representations of LA hip hop even two decades later.

Young MC

Stone Cold Rhymin'

Delicious Vinyl

What Young MC but no MC Hammer? Absolutely. Young MC was fresh. Even though he hailed from Queens, but was really born in the UK, it's alright...it worked for Slick Rick. Delicious Vinyl, which still only claimed Def Jef as the biggest name in their stable, was blowing up in 1989 with the success of another debut rapper lower on this list. Young MC's "Bust a Move," though a colossal radio hit, wouldn't be Delicious Vinyl's most successful single. As good as their luck had become with landing radio hits, their albums proved to be no fluke. Stone Cold Rhymin' is still one of the great Root Down "bargain bin classics" as, penny-for-penny, pound-for-pound provides some of the greater lyrical achievements and production of 1989 with the contributions from Matt Dike, Michael Ross and still relatively unknown production duo, the Dust Brothers (who would also have a huge year). And Young MC was no one-trick cronnie. Deeper album tracks like "Non-Stop" (which features a great Wes Montgomery sample), "Fastest Rhyme," "Know How," and "Got More Rhymes" solidify an album led by "Bust a Move" and "Principal's Office." Young MC wouldn't have more hits in him, unfortunately, try as he may, but it doesn't rob him of the accomplishment that is Stone Cold Rhymin'. Recognize, son.

2 Live Crew

As Nasty as They Wanna Be

Luke

Before Nasty, 2 Live Crew was going nowhere like most Miami hip hop. Well, third time would, again, prove charming behind Miami's signature 808 bass, more anatomy jokes than an Andrew Dice Clay set and just enough controversy to catapult the foursome to international notoriety (and into every strip club in America). In fact, there's no way this album would've sold what it did without the help of the Supreme Court...2 Live Crew's best A&R. There's no better proof that, in the hip hop game, bad rap is the best press. Because of the highest court in the land, radio knew what song to play and the end consumer knew the name of the record and what it looked like when they went into stores. And when retailers started pulling it from stores, the hunt was on. Everyone wanted this record. Truth be known, the explicit nature of the record is quite overstated. If you took out three songs and a few isolated verses, it's likely you wouldn't even know you were listening to what is still considered the most explicit album ever recorded. And even "Me So Horny" is pale in comparison to records that get hourly radio rotation twenty years later. The history of censorship is one that comes with some laughable permissions. The truth of the record itself is that it's more a comedy record than a rap record. When the Crew isn't rapping about women's bodies and their own midsection, it's probably the most uncomfortable and forced thing you'll ever hear on a rap record. However, when they're allowed to explore every exploit and talk like a varsity team on the way home from victory, they're like the greatest rappers ever to walk the earth. Musically, though, this record is a paramount release for Miami, a market never taken seriously on the main stage. It introduced what would become the region's greatest contribution to the rap game: 808 bass drum kicks. Those irritating minutes at the stop light would never be the same.

Nice & Smooth

Sleeping Bag

Greg Nice and Smooth B were an unlikely hits in 1989. Not only were they putting the modern emcee into a state of perpetual reversion, their corny smugness was almost nauseating. The amazing aspect of Nice & Smooth, though, is that their corniness was so exhaustive and outdated by the time they arrived that it almost turned dope. Greg Nice was anything but "nice" on the mic and Smooth B reminded you of that cat at the party that thought he was twenty-times the ladies man he really was and would always leave in a grey Mercury Topaz. But, there's no frontin' on their debut. It is as hot as all hell. It's so freaking stupid that it becomes the most infinitely ill party record there ever was. Rare a recording that achieves such a status. Each song is undeniably danceable and wreaks of polyester Hammer pants. Smooth B just wants to get the ladies in the hot tub and Greg Nice cornballs every line like the mastery of "I'm Mr. Smurf and you're Smurfette" and "So I can get mellow, lay back and let my girl play cello. Hello! I hate Jello." Dude just didn't give a good damn what he was saying. But make no mistake, before there was "Rump Shaker," there was Nice & Smooth and their self-titled debut has all the breaks: "Synthetic Substitution," "Impeach the President" and "Hihache" with the bass turned up to trunk-demolishing levels. This is one fun-ass record. Makes me wanna throw a sweaty house party just to blast this record at deafening volumes. Shame on you for sleeping all these years.

Tuff Crew

Back to Wreck Shop

Warlock

Just a year after dropping their debut, the gem Danger Zone, the Tuff Crew proved they had more tricks to spare with Back to Wreck Shop. The hip hop equivalent of getting your po' ass jumped into a gang of b-boys, Wreck Shop is a tireless and seamless assembly of the hardest breaks and some of the most insane cutting ever put to record. The Tuff Crew was truly one of the finest hip hop groups whereas none of the members could've made it on their own (with maybe DJ Too Tuff as the exception), but in their brief existence they accomplished some of the finest hip hop recordings that we'd ever know. In a year where breaking would continue to diminish to near-extinction, Wreck Shop doesn't surrender to the surging popularity of house influence or the funk-infused gangsta records of the late-80s. It's a poignant reminder of what was lost musically when dance crews disappeared at the dawning of a new age.

The D.O.C.

No One Can Do It Better

Ruthless

Long before Dr. Dre was introducing Snoop, Eminem or the Game to the world, he was putting on a little-known rapper from Dallas named the D.O.C. Originally put up on Straight Outta Compton and later Eazy Duz It, it would be a model that would later launch some of the biggest names in hip hop. For the D.O.C., however, the outcome would not be the same. No One Can Do It Better is a mindblowing recording which highlights D.O.C.'s prowess as an emcee...a quality that was becoming largely associated with East Coast recordings while West Coast recordings dwelled more heavily on gangsta imagery and relied less on emcee skill. For that reason, Better sounds so much less like a Dr. Dre production and more like the offspring of a Def Jam or Tommy Boy. Regardless though, Dre is in prime form as he hints at his affinity for the recordings of Isaac Hayes, Parliament and Funkadelic. In fact, it would be one of the earliest recordings in which Parliament and Funkadelic would be featured so prominently. Dre was honning in on that definitive West Coast sound which would explode in the aftermath of The Chronic here on Better. Only a year later, the D.O.C. would be involved in an traffic accident which would crush his larynx and his career would take a dramatic turn. He would never fully recognize the fame of his fellow Dre proteges that would come later. But Better is a beastly offering which comes at the helm of one of the most significant movements in West Coast music: G-funk.

Stezo

Crazy Noise

Fresh

If I had to take one rapping dancer from 1989 and put him in my arsenal, no doubt it'd be Stezo. While MC Hammer was conquering the airwaves with his readymade tyrannosauraus radio hits, Stezo was redefining his path from backup dancer to EPMD to frontman. Luckily for him, there'd be only room for one goofy rapper in shiny genie pants because, had Stezo blown up like Hammer, I don't know if this record would've aged as well. Crazy Noise is a brilliant and beautiful dance record which knows precisely what to do and how to do it. And, unlike Hammer, Stezo's sensibility as an emcee (or, at least, an aspiring emcee) gives the record the noticeable personality missing from popular recordings. Stezo was definitely invested even though it sounded like he was basically biting EPMD's style. And this record just drips with dance tracks. From "Bring the Horns" to "Girl Trouble," from "Getting Paid" to "It's My Turn" (which notably features the first ever use of the drum break from Skull Snaps' "It's a New Day"), Crazy Noise is pouring over with 1989 freshness. Only in the late 80s could a cat rock an outfit like that and still be taken seriously on record.

Divine Styler

Word Power
Epic

Word Power is the outsider on the list of great 1989 hip hop. It's that record that everyone liked, but no one heard. Released on Epic, Styler's debut was a dope little piece of weirdness. It's a record that could've annihilated almost any album out there with Styler's progressive rap style (see "Tongue of Labyrinth" and "Koxistin U4ria") and the sonically funky production provided by Bilal Bashir. Styler takes it to school as he serenades about black history, some scientific shit, universal mathematics and a bunch of other academia over "Superfly" instrumentals. Had it not come out the same year as Done By the Forces of Nature and Three Feet High and Rising, Styler might have had a chance, but sadly, he was overlooked and discarded getting bounced from Epic and hitting every branch on the way down from lending his prose to House of Pain's third record and finally ending up on the independent circuit and showing up on Quannum's trailblazing Spectrum project. But that'd be way in the future. Word Power is still a worthy release and superdope listen. Recognize.

Tone Loc

Loc'ed After Dark

Delicious Vinyl

I don't give give two shits what you think about Tone Loc, Loc'ed After Dark was ill. I didn't even know how slamming this record was until I listened to it back in college about ten years ago. Blew my mind. While the focus of the record rests on the strength of the two singles that would launch Tone into stratosphere ("Wild Thing" and "Funky Cold Medina"), the album is strengthened on the filler tracks which, honestly, it would've been easy to just make Loc'ed After Dark a 12" because no one gave a good damn about the deep album tracks that, in the end, nestled it in at #12 on this list. Tracks like "On Fire," the title track "Loc'ed After Dark," "Cheeba Cheeba" and, my personal favorite "Cuttin' Rhythms" (which samples ESG, Barry White, dream weaver Gary Wright and Paul McCartney all in five minutes) solidify what would otherwise be another record of mainstream drivel. You can thank the Dust Brothers for that along with Matt Dike and Mike Ross (the production team also responsible for Young MC's debut...also on Delicious Vinyl). Proof that solid production can make even the weakest rapper sound like at least MC Shan. No offense, Shan.

Kool G Rap & DJ Polo

Road to Riches

Cold Chillin'

1989 was the year of incredible debuts. In fact, 20 of the records on this list are full length debuts. Almost none as poignant and important Road to Riches. Not only does Riches feature the marvelling emceeing of a young Kool G Rap who was still sharpening his Schoolly D-style with his ambitious street raps and DJ Polo's insane scratching abilities (gotta love the obligatory DJ cut, "Cold Cuts"), but it brings to the forefront a talented producer with a then-short but impressive resume...Marley Marl. It's hard to put in perspective in 2010 the impact of these three on one record simply because it's a stretch to find the greatest DJ, the illest rapper and the dopest producer all on one record. The closest we have today would be Eminem and Dr. Dre on one record, but that was years ago and there was no DJ rounding out the trifecta. Riches is a staple in any collection. From the legendary title track to "Trilogy of Terror," "Poison" to the bongo-infused "Men at Work," there's plenty to love with Riches. It's one of the definitive Golden Era recordings.

Big Daddy Kane

It's a Big Daddy Thing

Cold Chillin'

A year after dropping his debut record [presumptuously] titled Long Live the Kane, it would only make sense that his follow-up record take the egotism and his self-posturing to the next level. It's a Big Daddy Thing would do just that. Big Daddy Thing is a lick-lippin', honeydippin', mic-wreckin', champagne-poppin', headnoddin' anthology that pays homage to one of two things: slaying emcees or chasing tail. The album is like Kane's little black book as he lays down a how-to for picking up honeys on "Smooth Operator" or "To Be Your Man." Of course, it's offset by the irreverant and less tactful "Pimpin' Ain't Easy." Complicated is a record that can find a place for all three. But when it comes to emceeing, there'd be few better than the Kane who verses on "Mortal Combat," "Another Victory" and "Young, Gifted and Black." It might not be the prettiest, most consistant of packages, it'd prove to be Kane's most successful record and solidify his place as one of the greatest ever to touch the mic.

Boogie Down Productions

Ghetto Music:

The Blueprint of Hip Hop

Jive

Boogie Down Productions was hardcore prolific in the late 80s releasing four definably different records in four years--the third of them being Ghetto Music. When BDP's DJ Scott La Rock was murdered after the release of the classic Criminal Minded, KRS took the wheel of all operations including production which led BDP's sound down completely different avenues. A stark departure from the first two recordings, we find KRS venturing outward from standard boom-bap to dancehall reggae as the standard drum breaks are stripped and replaced with a hard low-end dub rhythms. What it accomplishes is a cohesively sonic blending of the rhythms of Kingston and the furious, politically-charged lyricism of KRS. His verses are one-part history lesson, one-part revolt and one-part party-your-ass-off all delivered with 100 years of anger. Classics like "You Must Learn," "Jack of Spades" and "Who Protects Us From You?" all reside on what is possibly KRS's most furious recording. Sometimes, yelling doesn't get the message across. Sometimes, you have to hit them over the head. Ghetto Music does just that.

Public Enemy

"Fight the Power"

Tamla

Few songs in hip hop's history are proudly proclaimed as anthems. Some songs are "popular," sure. Others are "groundbreaking" or "trailblazing." But how many are anthems? The moment Radio Raheem walked into Sal's wearing his Africa medallion and slammed his boom box down on the counter blasting "Fight the Power," no one would hear the song the same way again. And when Sal's took up arms with his baseball bat and destroyed the "jungle music," it was like the day the music died. "Fight the Power" became the pulse of a revolution. It came to represent anyone's "fight" and the "power" was anything that stood in your way of getting what you needed, wanted or deserved. I remember watching the video for the song before I ever saw or knew of Do the Right Thing and from the very beginning when Flav is dancing in front of large billboard with Malcolm X and the PE logo, I was hypnotized. The S1W's walking through the crowd with their black and red berets and Chuck in his black leather jacket, black denim and AIr Jordans pumping his clinched fist while Flav leads the crowd in a chant of "Don't believe the hype!" I would never be the same. It stands as one of the greatest single songs ever recorded in hip hop's history. What they did with one song, legions of artists spend a lifetime trying to achieve. Hip hop turned a corner that day. Public Enemy were thrown right into the middle of the fight and they'd no longer just be that little group of revolutionaries from Long Island.

Geto Boys

Grip It! On that Other Level

Rap-a-Lot

When Houston's Ghetto Boys released Making Trouble in 1988, the results were, luckily, forgettable. Rap-a-Lot acted quickly and replaced Prince and Sire with Scarface and labelmate Willie D. Immediately, the group was changed and they'd never look back. They dropped the mobster suits that graced the cover of Trouble and rocked plain tees, black denim, gold chains and white Nikes. And their verses were dramatically transformed from crimelord fantasties to the realness of street life. They shamelessly invited you into the Fifth Ward to experience the brutality and desperation of the impoverished life of the Houston ghetto. It's drenched in obscenities, accentuated with murder and rage and sprinkled with enough sexual imagery to make even 2 Live Crew blush. It took the Straight Outta Compton model of honesty and unfiltered and unglossed reality of the ghetto life to even stranger and more horrific levels. Grip It! makes Compton look like Disneyland. Willie D, who was coming off the success of Controversy, had the vocal explosiveness of Chuck D. Scarface is a crazed and maniacal force on each track as he takes lead and flexes his lyrical abilities at every opportunity. The result is that he'd go from relatively unknown Houston rapper to legend almost overnight. And, while it would be easy to reduce Bushwick's role to that of a Flava Flav offering comedic relief, Bushwick's legit and his freaky prose only amplifies the effectiveness of Grip It! What the album accomplished for Houston and, hell, Texas rap is immeasurable. It would be the first rap record out of Texas to garner national attention and would be the flag waved by inner-city Houston. And the Geto Boys were the delegates for the Fifth Ward. They were the voice for the forgotten and anonymous crime-ruled streets of the seediest corners of H-Town. Represent.

EPMD

Unfinished Business

Fresh

EPMD already had one classic record under the belt with Strictly Business when they released Unfinished Business and just as the name suggests, they didn't stop there. For what it Strictly represented on a popular level, Unfinished felt like a more substantial readymade popular hit as Erick and Parrish are lyrically improved from their earlier recording and the album has at least three obvious standouts as singles (even though, officially, only one single would be released). "So What Cha Sayin'" is the perfect hip hop single. Timed at just under five minutes, "Sayin'" showcases Erick and Parrish at their best over possibly the greatest single beat ever put to wax driven by a fragment of a guitar from BT Express' "If It Don't Turn You On." Another standout, "Get the Bozack," features a signature back-and-forth between the deliberately lazy Erick one-liners and the more urgent and aggressive Parrish posturing. Unfinished is an incredible recording that proves "if it ain't broke" better than almost any sophomore effort.

LL Cool J

Walking With a Panther

Def Jam

Criticized for trading in his "L-L-Cool-J is hawd as hell!" style for a slower and lower delivery and cooler demeanor, Walking With a Panther certainly had its haters. The flamboyance is still there. The Kangol. But now, instead of being eleven or twelve songs like his first records, Panther stretched out LL to 18 songs...probably pushing it for a rap record and the cohesiveness of the album would suffer, however, when he's on point, there's no denying that LL hadn't lost a step. For all of his experimentation and varied styles displayed on Panther, at the heart of it is a monster of a record anchored by the lead singles "Goin' Back to Cali," "I'm the Type of Guy," "Jingling Baby," and "Big Ole Butt" (which all feature a drastically slicker vocal style). The difference is in the filler which is leagues ahead of the filler on this first two records. Tracks like "Nitro" and "Fast Peg" recall that ol' Cool J sound while "Def Jam in the Motherland" and "Droppin' 'Em" exhibit the new cross-trained sound perfectly. It happens every year in hip hop. Someone sticks their neck out for the commercial hit and pisses off their jaded and hateful core fanbase, but garner the adoration of an entire nation. LL had to do it. Panther was the necessary evil to making sure that he was around for the long haul. It's like hip hop's Dylan going electric. And, for all of its criticisms, Panther is a ferocious album that is just six songs too long. Stop hating and just carve them out when you put Panther on your iPod, moron.

Jungle Brothers

Done By the Forces of Nature

Warner Bros

When I think of early records that quietly but definitely alter the path of hip hop, Forces of Nature is without doubt, one of probably five. While it's lyrical content was probably too heady and Afrocentric for mainstream audiences, what it accomplishes with illustrating what hip hop can be musically cannot be overstated. To this point, hip hop needed to either dance, party, revolt or gangbang. Hip hop artists still had yet to define the new direction for the artform where it didn't have to force itself to a mold or desperately stretch itself out for radio play. What Jungle Brothers did with their first record, Straight Out the Jungle and this, their sophomore record, was helped to create the new hip hop album. It's a landmark recording in its full development of record. It's naturally kaleidoscopic framework pulls together the best of funk, the best of R&B, the best of world rhythms and the best of hip hop's short past. And while "mainstream" was coming to mean clean and "independent" was coming to mean explicit or raw, here's a record that's truly independent at the heart of it that doesn't overwhelm the listener with alienating lyrics of violence, sexuality or perversion. It's honest to itself and was released on Warner Bros helping prove that hip hop artists don't have to compromise their style or perspective to play the major label game--that you can release truly imaginative and brilliant hip hop and have total control of the process and get that nice distribution. At the end of their run, no other recordings would match the impact of the first two and while you'd be lucky if 1 of 10 hip hop heads even know of the Jungle Brothers, their legacy is embedded in grooves of these two records, but most notably the Forces of Nature where the Brothers made the major leap and went fo' delf.

3rd Bass
The Cactus Album

Def Jam

Hard to believe that I sit here, twenty years later, listening to 3rd Bass and hear it with the same beauty as when it first hit my ears. It's the kinda record that doesn't rely on a gimmick or a dance. It didn't need a monstrous radio hit. It wasn't cleverly A&R'd and shopped as the "new white hype." The Cactus Album simply rocked heads. Like crazy it did. And still does. What's remarkable about the Cactus here's Def Jam dropping hits like crazy and here comes 3rd Bass outta Queens and Long Island and, from the get-go, it's plays like record not built for longevity. But by the time the second side comes around, it becomes abundantly clear that this thing is a monster. Side A is mostly rookie jokery. "The Gas Face," where Serch and Pete basically diss everyone from Hammer to personnel at the label is one of the few highlights on the first side (also features a young MF Doom as KMD's Zev Luv X) along with a not-so clever innuendo in "Oval Office." But when you flip it over and are rocked to your knees by the six-minute plus "Wordz of Wisdom." Pete Nice takes the lyrical helm and absolutely carries his own weight. While Serch is like hip hop's Fred Astaire with his exaggerated showmanship, his high-top fade, the tap dance. Pete Nice is more Humphrey Bogart, delivering his rhymes from a chair, walking with a cane, his pitch is low, too cool for school. His Hollywood-like persona oozes out on record and is the perfect match to Serch's teenage excitability. But the unsung hero of the record is producer and DJ Richie Rich who, on 11 of the album's album's 13 songs (which are partnered with eight sketches), creates the most perfect, headnodding hip hop. To this point largely unproven and unheard of, Rich's production on the Cactus represents some of 1989's greatest production and has stood the test of time in a game that makes it hellaciously difficult to make that claim. Guest producers Prince Paul and Public Enemy's Bomb Squad also appear on the Cactus, the dark horse of 1989.

02
De La Soul
3 Feet High and Rising
Tommy Boy

The two records that top 1989 are almost interchangable depending on what week you catch me. In many ways, they're almost the same record, but alas, The Root Down has to take one over the other because you force me to write this way. There's no tie in baseball (although Selig thinks so). Long Island's finest, De La Soul, redefinied hip hop in 1989 and beyond with their bona fide classic, 3 Feet High and Rising. Besides there not being any model for a hip hop recording of this style (except for maybe the Jungle Brothers' Forces of Nature), there seemingly was no market for a group of self-proclaimed "hippies" performing hip hop. It was a record that almost had too much going on for it to be enjoyable (or listenable, for that matter). Rappers named Trugoy, Posdonous and Maseo were far from household names and their prose was sometimes frantic, other times broken, but it was always unconventional and, to the listener who was used to being able to rhyme along with their favorite rappers as they cruised from intersection to intersection, it provided a challenge. What the hell were these dudes talking about? Potholes in the lawn? Plug one, two and three? Jenifa? De La Soul created this almost-Wonderland-like soundscape where lyrics only led to more mystery and inside jokes created on whim were like cryptic messages intended to confuse. And the smokescreen was Prince Paul's marvelous and, often times, beautiful production. His kitchen-sink approach was a departure from his accomplishments at Stetsasonic. De La Soul's creative approach matched perfectly with a producer of Paul's ambitions where he could flex creatively to almost boundless levels. Take "The Magic Number" for instance. Anchored by the child-like refrain of Bob Dorough's "Three is the Magic Number," Paul then adds drums from Led Zeppelin's "The Crunge," James Brown's "Funky Drummer," and quick samples of Johnny Cash, Eddie Murphy, Syl Johnson, Double Dee and Steinski, the Fatback Band and even 2 Live Crew. That's only in one song. Barely three minutes. Everything was game to Prince Paul and, not to discount De La as emcees, but it's the production that made this record. You can't put any other producer in the role of making this record. We wouldn't be talking about here twenty years later. The album boasted almost an unheralded seven singles with four of them charting proving that the mix had popular appeal. That this goofy, anti-gangsta, neon-green and pink hip hop record could actually drive people to the dance at the clubs, but also satisfy the more distinguished hip hop listener. It was immediately lauded by critics as a landmark recording in musical history. It was the record that the Village Voice would proclaim as the "Sgt. Pepper of hip hop." To that point in 1989, such claims hadn't really been made. No one was comparing hip hop recordings to Beatles records and critics weren't seeing their impact as larger than hip hop as a whole. 3 Feet destroyed that wall. Hip hop records were now being discussed by smug critics who were used to writing about rock acts. It bridged the gap between hip hop and those high-brow features in music mags and newspaper who dedicated columns to the new Pixies record, Coltrane reissues or another tired Springsteen interview. Hip hop finally had a classic.

And then there was...

Beastie Boys

Paul's Boutique

Capitol

Why is Paul’s Boutique the best hip hop recording of 1989? I suppose for many reasons, but probably none greater than this.

Because it shouldn’t have been and I’m a fan of the underdog.

Let’s build a little context here. When we last saw the Beastie Boys, it was three years earlier as the beer-guzzling Jewish kids from the City who abandoned their punk roots and, essentially, snuck into the party through the back door, landed a spot on Def Jam and enjoyed short-lived popularity as those guys making party records for frat boys and white trash who enjoyed the rock sentiment of Licensed to Ill. They took a style that had already been rocked by Run DMC and repackaged it and sold it to a broader and paler audience. Hip hop had its Elvis…three of ‘em.

Licensed to Ill was a readymade party record. And, for what talent the Beasties were lacking, they accommodated by just doing everything bigger. The drums weighed a ton, the rock riffs were deafening and the managed to scream almost every verse on the record. As little as they had to work with, they more than made up for it with charisma and annoying boyish energy. From “Girls” to “Slow Ride,” “Brass Monkey” to the anthem “Fight For Your Right to Party,” Licensed to Ill defined the Beasties and still does today to many listeners. The failure in Licensed is that it wasn’t built for the long haul and as soon as the radio play ended and the opening slots on stadium tours dried up, the Beasties were discarded and given the dreaded “one-hit wonder” attachment. They disappeared and, largely, no one really cared. At the end of 1986, no one took them very seriously anyway. They were the flavor of the month. The pop machine had claimed another career.

With nothing to fall back on, the Beasties boldly jumped Def Jam, the most popular label hip hop had ever known and relocated on Capitol Records, who was somewhere between Crowded House singles and working the next Megadeth and Tina Turner records. They hadn’t yet successfully broken into hip hop. It really could’ve been any label, but it just happened to be Capitol. The benefit to the move was that allowed for the Beasties to sever their ties with Rick Rubin whose production influence dominated the first record. Moving to Capitol would allow them musically explore the next step in their career—what was left of it. They also geographically relocated to L.A. and bunkered up to work on their next album. They recruited two unknown DJs to head-up the production by the name of the Dust Brothers. Recorded in just over a year, Paul’s Boutique was set to release early in the summer of 1989. The Beasties were in it one for all and all for one. Refreshed and reborn.

It’s ominous sleeve which was a street shot of the clothing store in the Lower East Side by which it shared its name echoed the mystery and intrigue of Zeppelin’s Zoso. The inside bore no pictures of the Beasties except an unrecognizable image of the three underwater. Nowhere were their names printed. Only lyrics and unexplained images of different fish. You wouldn’t know you were holding a Beasties record had it not said it on the spine. For a group that hadn’t been heard of for three years, they certainly weren’t trying to spark any familiarity.

They abandoned the entire package of Licensed to Ill. And when the needle hit the wax, it was apparent it wasn’t the same Beasties that had left the scene. And this clearly wasn’t Licensed to Ill Part. II. If Licensed was sponsored by Budweiser, Paul’s Boutique was sponsored by your local coke dealer. They traded in their ripped denim for polyester pants and pimp suits. Their delivery was more polished. Still loud, but more varied. Gone were the first-person perspectives of grabbing asses and chugging Ol’ E. They were replaced by third person accounts of drifters like the Egg Man, Johnny Ryall and Shadrach. “Time to Get Ill” was now the violent Taxi Driver-like fantasy of “Looking Down the Barrel of a Gun”—which remains one of the hands-down greatest Beastie tracks ever. In fact, much of the record is a deliberate aversion to radio as the lyrics are inaccessible and unintelligible, the songs had no catchy hooks and some songs were just too damn long.

The samples laid the groundwork for the record. Rubin’s sparse production was replaced by a galaxy of drumbreaks, grunts, Tijuana horns, bongos and more funk than any one listener could handle. It included everything from the Beatles, Black Oak Arkansas and James Brown to Donny Hathaway, Sly and Family Stone and Pink Floyd. In fact, most sources quote around 110 individual samples that make up Paul’s Boutique. In fact, at some points in the album, you have three different drum breaks working simultaneously under the vocals. The complexities of the album set it far apart from any other album of its kind.

But, as history would prove, the greatest recordings are not always the most popular. Just a few months into the album and without another single to give radio (except for “Hey Ladies”), Capitol abandoned the project. Paul’s Boutique was just going to have to sell itself.

Ten years later, the album went double platinum. Twenty years later, the same album that Capitol bailed on was getting the 180-gram vinyl treatment and was remastered digitally. There are very few records from 1980s hip hop that are almost unanimously regarded as truly great musical achievements. Paul’s Boutique is one of them.

MIKE LEACH IN THE TIME IT TAKES ME TO DRINK ONE CUP OF COFFEE

2010-01-01T07:15:00.000-08:00

Outraged barely measures half of what I'm feeling with the firing of Mike Leach. It's a perfect example of administration thinking with their pocketbook and not their longer-term future. And, if they were truly the mush between their ears, they would've considered the millions in revenue that the program had grown to generate under the years that Leach was there.

(sip)

Not even a season removed from adding additional seating and beginning construction on luxury boxes on the dreaded east side of the stadium, they're going to break the program down and start from the ground up. There are certain things, I suppose, that will always get in the way of progress and ego is one of them. And, to be fair, it's as much Mike Leach's ego as it is Gerald Myers'. What happened would've happened probably in the next two years or so if it didn't happen now because of how volitle that relationship was.

(sip)

Myers was pissed from the second they re-upped his contract because it got so ugly and, in the end, he had the upper hand. Not many people, however, siding with him in this one...except for ESPN who has failed to remain objective, embarrassingly enough, and has stuck by their own through the entire thing without one person uttering support for the other side. Some guy last night suggested that Leach was "radioactive" and that no program would want him until he clears his name because he'd be more a liability than an asset. Seriously, bro. You don't think he's already received calls from probably ten top universities with offers?

(sip)

That being said, my alma mater is now coachless. I mean, they're not without coach, but they're without Coach. There's a difference. You'll hear a few players in support of his firing, but I think that's more the media seeking players to voice the other side and they're making it sound like it's overwhelming for the firing. I don't think most players, no matter how controversial the coach, how fiery, how passionate, how confused would not take the side of a coach when he's had a proven track record of winning. How many people has Nick Saban popped on the head, pushed in the chest, yelled in the face of as one of the winningest coaches in football? Countless. Anyone complaining? While it's a vocal minority at Tech that support his firing, the microphone of the media makes it sounds like an army of thousands. Can't think that players with a couple years left at Tech are excited at the prospect of losing their coach that's led them to ten straight winning seasons and ten straight bowls and with no prospect in sight.

(sip)

I got three teams and their in this order: Boston Red Sox, Texas Tech Red Raiders and the Boston Celtics. As, not only a fan, but a graduate of Texas Tech, I don't really have any other options. I gotta stick by them. It's like fighting parents. You wish it could've worked out, but alas, it didn't. I liked Grady Little and the Sox fired him when he didn't pull Pedro out. They replaced him with Terry Francona and they've won two championships since. Do I think they're gonna replace his success in one season? No. Five? Maybe. The games won't be the same for a while, but my challenge to all Tech fans and graduates is to rally around this program. If you hung all of your support on Leach, I wouldn't consider you much of a fan. College football is that way. Players come and go in only three or four years. The best can't wait to go pro. Coaches have more longevity, but not by much. College football programs have gone through much worse. This isn't the end of anything. Love the program. Support the program. Pick up your gear from off the floor. Go to the games. These kids deserve the support. Now, we've got the Alamo Bowl to win.

(sip)

I do think, though, we keep the pirate motif alive.

2010 TO-DO LIST

2009-12-24T15:24:00.000-08:00

Start a family. Visit a chiropractor. Recycle. No added salt to anything for three months straight. Help out with five local missions or outreaches. Become fully knowledgeable on the entire career of John Coltrane. Know when to stop.Eliminate all credit card debt. Run the Warrior Dash in 45 minutes. Get my 10-footer back. Kools said he's a formidable opponent. Become fully knowledgeable in the recordings and biography of Charles Mingus.

Enjoy as much 1990 hip hop as possible and DON'T listen to Fear of a Black Planet (the greatest hip hop record ever made) until March 20th. Join a Sunday school class. Two cups of coffee daily. No more. Become an unapologetic and absolute 1990 hip hop snob. Begin riding a bike, seriously. Begin planning 10th anniversary. Cook ribs and use only dry rub. Finish with homemade sauce. Ween off of pale ales and into hefeweizens. Work on four mixes: Beatlemaniaddendum, Music to Flee a Zombie Invasion By, Boom Bap Origins and Gangsta Boogie Remastered. Another full month of no sugar. January is the obvious month. Run 10 miles a week. Buy a pair of dress shoes that cost more than $30. Watch one western a month and only two featuring John Wayne.

Take off another full week for vacation aiming to hit up Colorado and Idaho. Ski Waterfall at Wolf Creek. Turn Tucker and Jackson into the meanest walking dogs. No barking. One soda a month. Must be 20 ounces or less. No ice. Donate to net five less pairs of sneakers. Get a joke printed in Readers' Digest. Go to a concert. Go to a nice restaurant and order fish without even blinking. And not shrimp. Go to Juarez and build another house. Scope out another marathon...but don't start training for one. Read three books. Do the Polar Bear Plunge in Couer d Alene, ID on New Years, 2011.

Put your money where your mouth is and eat Krispy Kreme donuts exclusively realizing that the Yellow doesn't have a Krispy Kreme. Racquetball twice a week with my lovely wife. Own a suit you feel comfortable in. And look damn good in. Smile more and be mindful of how others view you. Not just how you view yourself. Write something worthy of getting printed in a periodical. Listen to more Dylan. See a tornado. Take Boggs out to an empty parking lot covered in snow and do two donuts. He's had a hard year and deserves it. Here's to 2010. Finally, a year twice divisible by itself. It's been 201 years since the last one. Stay up, 2009. It's been glorious.

PERSONAL YEAR-END INVENTORY

2009-12-23T02:51:00.000-08:00

Woke up at 2:50AM thinking about my 2009 personal checklist (some people call them "resolutions" although I think you're doomed to fail them if you call them "resolutions"). I was going through a few items in my head and then my head began to dwell on it. Now, I'm sitting behind a dark cup of coffee checking my effectiveness in completing the list. Let's start at the top.

Begin eating mushrooms.

I began eating mushrooms right out of the gate this year. No, not the funky kind that make you dance like a tool. It began when Dustin stuffed some with a meat sauce and topped them with some mozzarella. Nice introduction. Now, I'm conversational with mushrooms which is a great accomplishment from avoiding them for 31 years. They're quite good. Ate an entire pizza stacked with them. That was probably the climax of my mushroom consumption to this point. Why mushrooms? Because I never had any good reason for avoiding them in the first place. Always want to consider myself to be a fairly well-rounded, cross-trained eater. Also took up bananas which I haven't touched in about 25 years. Successful.

Successfully silk screen a shirt.

Fail. Didn't even attempt it. I outsourced, however, my RUN ROC shirt to a printer in Austin instead of giving these local ripoff artists any more of my hard-earned cash. The shirts came out nice and broham didn't take any artistic licensing with my shirt. He did it just as it was designed. Which, if I may not-so humbly add, is why they came out so nicely.

Influence popular opinion regarding the current donut situation in the Yellow.

Fail. This one kinda goes hand-in-hand with the above item. I was going to silk screen the following shirt and hand out 50 of them to key members of the community.

The thought that was that we could rally against the evil donut-hawker that is Donut Stop and eventually take a stab of their profits by saying what so many people want to, but don't. They have misrepresented the doughnut to the Yellow for too long. What they make is a tasteless, cardboard bread roll which is barely touched with a glaze or icing. The result is probably the poorest representation of a doughnut this state has ever seen and now they've monopolized the market. People think that they ran off Krispy Kreme with quality and the truth is (and I mean truth) that they suffocated Krispy Kreme's off-site business locally and, because the franchiser wasn't smart enough, the ultimately closed their doors. It's not a matter of taste, it's a matter of politics. So, Yellow, if you like your sad little cardboard communist doughnut, knock yourself out. I'm demanding Krispy Kreme. That's why, in the rare instance I eat a doughnut, it's in Lubbock (a real city) and it's a Krispy Kreme (a real doughnut), you suckas. Tell me that ain't the illest shirt. No one locally would print it though. Pretty sure of that. I'd have to do it myself.

Run 5 miles in succession twice a week by end of the year.

Well, I'm not running 10 miles a week right now. But I did run about 500 miles this year including a marathon. I'm checking this one off. Still think I'll carry it over to 2010 as part of my training for the Warrior Dash. Need to be able to do 5 miles in 45 minutes. Successful.

Lose 20 pounds.

Not sure about whether or not this happened, but would say it's likely. I've since changed my view on weight. It's all a relative concept. How about just "get in shape"? Pounds will be shed to a healthy weight if you just get in shape. The new mantra is "personal health isn't measure in numbers, it's measured in miles." Success.

Give away 400 CDs.

Negative on this one. I think I may have given away a humble 50 CDs. This one's much harder than I ever thought. It's music. I did, however, reduce the number of visible CDs in the house to under 200. That's quite a mark for a collection that tops about 3,500 CDs (all quality). The fact that you're only seeing about 5% of it is quite an accomplishment. I think my lovely wife appreciates it. She thinks that CDs are kinda ugly to look at. I would agree. My problem is that I think vinyl's much prettier. Fail.

Successfully silk screen a painting of James Brown.

Fail. Still got plans for this one. I wanna create a silk screen so that I can just have a print that I take a canvas, throw a JB on it, sell it for $50, rinse and repeat. To be more specific, I want it to be about 3' x 5'. Sizable. It's the only way to properly represent the man, the legend.

Do a blog entry each day of June--30 posts total within the month.

Fail. That was before I started training for a marathon. I don't know what good come out of this, seriously. No telling how lame it would get by about, uh, June 7th. I'd be talking about the ring in my toilet, more things that annoys me about neighbors and back spasms. Lame. Won't carry over this one.

Submit to a calendar company, a fully developed idea for The Root Down desk calendar.

Still like this one, but didn't get it accomplished. After a year of thinking about it, we'd have to go back to the drawing board on this idea. People don't use desk calendar's like they used to. Everything's electronic these days. Schedules are on the computer. Birthday reminders are sent through email or Facebook. Blackberries and iPhones might've replaced the desk calendar. Desk calendars are dead. You heard it hear first. That's why you read The Root Down. Fail.

Learn to shuffle cards.

Learned, but can't do it well. It's much like watching a caveman try to light a fire with two pebbles. I'm still more likely to just pass the deck to my lovely wife to shuffle rather than do it myself. I attract too much ridicule and laughter when I try. Of course, I'm thick skinned. Good when trying something new.

Complete six mixes within the year (to include The Gangsta Boogie, The Buhloone Mindstate Breakdown, The Tax-Exempt Federal Income Tax Mix, The Christmas Sweater Mix Vol. 2 and my lovely wife's request for a mix about women).

Uh, finished the Tax Mix. The Paul's Boutique Mix. The Col' New Yorkin' Mix. The Marathon Mix. The Intergalactic Mix. The Beatles Mix. The Black Moon Mix. The Wu Mix. Man, that's eight mixes and hadn't worked on one since June, really. Except for the Marathon Mix. Got some plans for the new year, but as time provides. I'm calling this one complete because while I didn't get to the Buhloone mix, the re-up of the Gangsta Mix or a second volume of the Christmas Sweater, I did eight instead of six. Done.

Wear a full-grown moustache for a week.

Did it for a half-day. I couldn't keep a straight face all day. It was extremely distractive. Fail.

Become more knowledgeable in Blues and the key components and players.

Fail. I don't think I'll ever be a huge fan of the Blues. I tried this for about two months. Because I'm not a huge fan, I decided to immerse myself thinking that I would come out a big fan and, if not a fan, at least knowledgeable. Blues is pretty boring really. The players and the stories are pretty fantastic, but just really didn't find it worth investigating any more. Let's shelve this one until I'm about sixty and have nothing better to do.

Follow up on the whereabouts of Roderick and Sean.

Found Sean. Missed his 40th birthday. Just found Roderick on Facebook. Dropped a "friend" to make room for him in the instance he accepts. Success.

Read a book. Serious. Just one.

Success. Read a book entitled Columbine about the massacre at Columbine. Very good read. Still not a reader, but can at least say cool things like, "So I was reading a book the other day and it dawned on me..." or "Yeah, I'm reading this interesting book..." or "I enjoy Saturday mornings with a good book and a cup of coffee." Figure that swings me into a few new social circles. None of those are true statements though. Replace "reading" with "listening to" and "book" with "album." I've already got another book lined up. I think I'm on page twelve.

Find out what happened to my 10-foot jump shot.

Fail. Probably would've happened had I not marathoned. I'll get back to the court in time. Need a new ball. Someone to ball with. Someone short so that I can bust the ol' McHale turnaround on them with optimum result. Great activity along with raquetball. Now that I got my cardio back, I could probably play for hours.

Pass on all fantasy sports. Most specifically Fantasy Baseball. It's not worth the time.

Check. This was quite rewarding. Just col' turkey. There was little temptation at all. I don't find anything fantastic at all about them except the incredible waste of time and money. I guess it's because I'm not that good. It's back to focusing on one team and that's the Sawx. I don't care about some loser pitcher from the Dodgers and how he did last night. I'm a Sox fan firstly. A fan of the game secondly. A Yankee hater lastly.

Begin working on family cookbook. Again.

Fail. I owe my family on this one. I lost all of the data when my laptop died a four years back. Ugh.

Begin playing harmonica.

Began playing. Never got very good, but that leaves plenty of room for improvement. Had a historical jam session between beers and games of dominos in Taos with good friend Dale.

Less coffee in 2009.

Less? Maybe not so much. I'm down to three cups a day. That's down from five to six. Still not really an acceptable level of coffee. If I could get my lovely wife to drink one, I could probably cut back to two a day. That's just one refill, the way I look at it. Establishing positive sleep patterns probably would help in this and vice versa. Staying active and fit would help with establishing positive sleep patterns. Here, I haven't worked out in more than a week and I'm up at 3:00AM for the second time since the marathon.

Cut back soda consumption to one reasonably sized soda a month.

Done. Haven't missed it much. Enjoy it when I have it, but don't need another. Body feels great. More water. Tons more water.

Make my own sauerkraut by rotting cabbage buried under the ground.

Eh. No. This was a stretch goal. Made some damn-good sauerkraut for Thanksgiving, though. But cheated because it came out of a jar.

Eat the sauerkraut.

Fail. I ate me some sauerkraut, but not kraut out of the backyard.

Take two one-week vacations. Possibly one to Idaho and then to the northeast catching a Sox game and visiting New York.

Half-check. Took one full-week vacation to a Sox game and to New York. That was huge. Huge taking that time off and even bigger going up to New York, Maine and Boston. Still gotta finish up my New York posts. Got some good photos and stories yet to come. For me, that trip was probably the best thing to happen to me in years. So relaxing to be with my lovely wife in upstate Maine with nowhere to go, nothing to do. Wish I could go back and stay. New York was hella-ill. Gotta get up to Idaho. My Aunt Pam insists at this point. It used to be politely suggested. Now it's, "Get your ass up to Idaho." That should be a shirt.

Become salty in discussions about 1989 hip hop.

Done. The Top 30 Hip Hop Recordings of 1989 is right around the corner. It should be a rewarding read.

Have a garage sale and use the proceeds to buy a ping pong table to then put in that empty garage.

Had a garage sale. Absolutely hated it. Proceeds went back into the bank. Probably a better use of that money. Guess you could say that, instead of buying more crap, we paid our way to Juarez so we could build a house for a family that desperately needed a solid roof over their head. We're gonna call it complete.

Go an entire month without sugar or sweets.

Check. That was the first complete. Did that in January. Might try it again. It's like a post-Christmas detox and gives you a nice jump on the year.

Use swimming as a primary form of exercise at the gym.

Fail. This year might be the year for swimming as I have already teased at the thought of a triathlon. That requires getting back on a bike for some serious road miles. And more training. Maybe I should just start swimming. See if I can still do it.

2010 list soon to come. I need another nightless sleep, er, sleepless night before I can get to that. Pillow, I miss you. I love you. Where are you?

TOENAILS ARE OVERRATED: RUNDAY

2009-12-14T18:49:00.000-08:00

THE RIGHT KNEE

The right knee never really stopped hurting since my longest run at 19.4. I knew that if there was any likelihood of a pre-existing injury that was going to make my Runday absolutely hell, it was going to be either my right knee or my left IT-band. Look it up. It wasn't an excrutiating pain. It could be medicated with a few ibuprofen, but when you're pacing, ibuprofen wears off quickly. I knew that, in the chance that it was going to flare up, I was just going to have to deal with it.

The night before, myself, my lovely wife, Kool Aid, Jacko, Steev and Liz went out for the customary pasta dinner the night before. It would be my first pre-marathon pasta throw-down. I had chicken parmasean. It was excellent. We kept the mood light. Talked memories. Family. Even talked shop and any pre-marathon plans or strategies. Truth be known, I had one strategy and that was to finish. Everything else was really just a detail meant to be forgotten.

That day, Kool Aid and I (also known as Team Root Down) went down to the expo to pick up our runners packet and to check out the competition. I liken this experience to that scene in Karate Kid when Daniel goes to his first big tourney and they're asking him what dojo he's with and he doesn't know what the hell is going on and he's just scoping the competition, biting on his nails nervously. I looked around and everyone appeared to be about my height and about a buck-fiddy. They all looked tan, shaven, fit, happy. Looked like they've been doing it for years. I found my bib number.

6324.

I was pleased. It was divisible by three. Three was the magic number. Always was.

I approached a table for a free shirt. Apparently the bib was a dead giveaway to the volunteer. She yells out, "First-timer!" and a host of volunteers begin cheering. I had arrived.

They wished me luck. I walked away from the table probably more intimidated than I had approached it with. I continued to walk confusedly around the expo as everyone was hocking products from shoes to water filtration devices, from home alarm systems to humanitarian causes. Exhausted, I just wanted to get lost. Kool Aid and I found a pisser and then left. We did the afternoon separately. He went to watch a rugby match. I sat around and visited with in-laws. Sitting upright made my sciatic nerve flare so I leaned back as much as I could wherever I could. Oh, did some record shopping. Looked for some Eric Dolphy. Found nothing worth owning.

Did dinner. Went back to the Hilton where I tried to relax and sleep. I just remember beating my lovely wife back to the room as she was hitting a couple of errands on the way back from dinner. I feel asleep and she came in and kissed me and I drifted off again.

About 3:30, sleeping became futile. My body was awake. My body was urging me to get ready. I had to tell myself to relax. Close your eyes. You've gotta run 26.2 miles in about five hours. You're gonna need everything you got. About thirty minutes passed and I drifted back off. But, like Christmas morning, I was awake in another hour. Five o'clock. A familiar hour for me. I went back to sleep for thirty minutes and then I was up for good.

Runday had arrived.

It was a foggy morning. I took a shower. Ate two bagels. Two bananas. Four ibuprofen. About a pint of Gatorade. Final preparations.

Went through some final prayers before trusting directly into the madness. Recalled my goal of finishing between 4:48 and 5:00 (those be hours, homie). Said, for my last time, my affirmation:

I am a marathoner. I can run on any day, at any time, in any weather. While my body wasn't born to do this, I can train my body to do anything and nothing can hold me back. With God on my side and hell on my heels, I'm going to run my happy ass 26.2 miles.

That day had arrived. T-minus two hours.

My ride arrived at 0645 in the circle drive of the Hilton. I stood outside for a few moments and breathed the morning air. It was cool and a little thick. Perfect. The forecast had the race ending at an unseasonal 70 degrees. Not-so perfect.

When we arrived down at American Airlines Center, it was pandamonium. Kool Aid and I looked for our "corral"--the wave in which we would begin. Being that we were 11-minute milers, we would start with people of the same speed to ensure there was no trampling. After locating our corral, we headed inside to hit the bathrooms. Fundamental.

I'll put it this way: all the urinals were available. The line was for the "sitting" commodes. We stood in line.

After heading outside, I saw fella runner Sarah who was hitting the half. Wished her luck. Small-talked. Tried to get my gameface on without getting too primed. Advice was to start slow, don't get wrapped up in the hype. Pace yourself. If you rush out of the gate, you're gonna wish you had it later.

(just put in an Art Blakey record I got in Dallas...lovely)

I spent about three minutes wondering what I was going to do with my iPod. Funny the details you don't think about until you're standing at the starting line. I was concerned about wearing it on my arm for five hours. I opted to put it in my Camelbak pocket. Time counted down. I heard Aerosmith's "Sweet Emotion" and some cheering. I checked out at that point. All of the noises became fuzzy. I put on my headphones and listened to the official Team Root Down mix. I did it with one earphone off, though, to hear the crowd. It was loud. Cacophony. Megaphones. Confetti.

Before you knew it, we had begun and this five-hour dance with D-Town had begun.

We meandered around downtown and two miles passed quickly. Just do that 13 times and this was history. Right knee soreness began almost immediately. I thought, "I knew you were going to be here. Welcome. Take off your jacket. Stay a while. Let me show you to the bar. Have a drink."

THE LEFT CALF

We made our way through Turtle Creek. My left knee worries subsided as I just came to the realization that it wasn't going to hurt any less so I might as well just accept the pain and live with it.

Check.

Then it appeared in the left calf. This was all very familiar to me. I pushed forward without worrying too much. I knew that if my heart and my lungs could do it, I could push myself through the muscle pains. As they say, "Pain is temporary. Pride is forever." I said my affirmation again and then just decided to enjoy it from there on.

Running in the crowd proved to be challenging. It was like a big game of leapfrog as everyone pushed for position. Kool Aid and I were in no big hurry, but knew that we didn't want to surrender too much at the beginning. The crowds were troublesome. We tried to initiate a pace and it would be broken up by a turn, aid station, someone goofing around.

Focus.

At about the third mile, the pace set in and the marathon had really started to expose itself. The crowd was dispersing. Spacing. Breathing room. I remember seeing my dad somewhere around mile five or six. He was standing there smiling proudly. I took off one earphone. Yelled, "How's it going?" Continued onward across Central.

The neighborhoods were especially pleasant. I always liked the neighborhoods in our training. Relaxing. They were lined with families coming out to feed us. Give us water. Some offered beer. Bloody Mary. Bagels. Most just sat and applauded as the crowds passed their lawns. They'd wave. Tell us to "go" or "run" or "do it." I'd just read their lips as I we traversed through the neighborhood. I'd smile.

Then, I came across some familiar faces. That of my lovely wife and my sister-in-law. It was "GO JEFF" or "OGFJ" as they took creative license with the signs. My brother held up a sign that said, "So easy even a caveman can do it," and a few other sentiments. Nice to have a cheering section.

Just about eight miles in, I did an inventory on my body. Everything was holding up alright. Right knee was still in pain. Left calf pain had begun to lessen as it spread throughout my left leg. Otherwise, everything felt alright. We were nearing the lake. I could feel it as we descended through the neighborhoods. I remembered that we dove down into White Rock so as we took downhill after downhill, I knew it was close. When the halfers broke off somewhere around the seventh mile, it got about five degrees cooler. We lost more than half of the runners. This was the group of the longhaulers. The marathoners.

THE LEFT ILLIOTIBIAL BAND

As the lake exposed itself, I was reminded of it's massive size. Essentially, mile nine through nineteen took place at this monstrous lake. White Rock (which my lovely wife has affectionately come to call "Dead Body Lake" because of all the murders that have gone unsolved in its depths) was covered in a dense fog. Probably better. You couldn't see how much of a huge-ass body of water this thing was. It just kinda looked like a calendar. Something from a LL Bean catalog. Coltrane came on the headphones. I took deep breaths. Enjoyed the scenary. The Coltrane.

Saw my mother-in-law in there.

As we rounded the lake, I saw Cory, Brian and my lovely wife. As Kool Aid stopped to take a piss, I headed forward and slowed down (didn't stop) for one short kiss from my lovely wife. I think I might've hit her cheek. Don't know what she hit. Maybe I just dragged my left sideburn across her face. This is what it looked like.

That kiss lasted about three more miles before we hit what is commonly referred to as "the wall." The "wall," in runners terms, is when your glycogen that has been stored is completely depleted and where most runners are reduced to their slowest speed. White Rock's wall exist at the 18th mile where it begins to make a 100-foot ascension over the course of a two mile drag. The apex of this is just after the Hooters aid station (which Kool Aid took full advantage of) and you enter what was known as Dolly Parton's Hills. As you turn the corner, you see nothing but marathoners walking uphill. Not Kool Aid and I. We pressed on. The runners on the right and us on the left. Just like a small car passing big rigs on a hillside. I asked Kool Aid if he wanted to walk (almost secretly hoping he would say "yes"). He answered, "No. I can't stop now. But don't push me either."

I kept the pace. As much as I wanted to walk, I just kept going. That climb through the neighborhood was just as I had anticipated. Which is why the mix goes over to NWA and Ice Cube for mile 19 and 20. Once we reached the top and made our way over to Swiss Ave, I spotted my brother in the distance. He dashed through the crowd and shouldered up against me and we jogged about fifty yards together. He told me that we had made it through the worst and we were on our way downhill.

Todd on the left. Kool Aid, in his excitable state, mentioned with some explicitaves, that his plan was to finish strong and give it all we had left in us as we finished line. I laughed it off thinking, "I just wanna finish at this point." Saw more family as I entered the beautiful Swiss Ave. We made our descension into downtown. I told myself that I had done six mile runs countless times. This was the easy part. It didn't get easier.

THE WHOLE LEFT LEG AND RIGHT ANKLE

In fact, the sun came out and, almost immediately, my blood temperature skyrocketed. All day, we had enjoyed the cool breeze off the lake, the soothing mist in the air that coated our skin. Now, with the sun out, there was nothing to protect us. We were at her mercy. The mist evaporated. The cool breeze disappeared. I looked for shade on the trail. Never had I run so long and so late in the day. December felt like August. I looked around though and people still had jackets and earmuffs on. To the spectators, it was still relatively cool. In fact, all the way into downtown, I could still see my breath.

Unsure of my pace and only certain of my pain, I pressed on with Kool Aid right beside me. The buildings of downtown exposed themselves above the huge oak trees. We were nearing the end.

And it couldn't come fast enough.

We rounded Central Expressway and went underneath it and the shade almost pulled me to a stop. I wanted to enjoy the shade. I didn't mind walking just for a few steps just to get a little shade in. Cool off. But we didn't. We kept jogging. As we made our way back through downtown, my body began to relieve itself (no, not that way). My muscles began to relax. I could feel my joints, my feet, my legs, my arms exhaling. I thought, "Wait, not yet!" We still had a mile and a half to go.

When we turned the corner and saw the finish line, I just put my head down and headed forward. I felt Kool Aid pushing a little from the excitement. I wasn't concerned about how my ending appeared. I had just gone through the most excrutiating and brutal physical confrontation of my life. I just wanted it to be over. Sooner the better, yes, but I didn't to stumble like that that cat who busts face while getting his diploma. Take it cool. Don't walk, but don't go so fast the only way you'll stop is with your chin.

My whole left leg was throbbing at this point and my right ankle...ah, a familiar foe. When I first started running it was my right ankle that gave me such hell. In fact, it was my right ankle that my lovely wife told me to get checked out before I actually ran a marathon. I guess we both forgot about it until Runday. That bastard came back. It was like a rodent gnawing at your foot. I didn't feel so bad I was going to stop, but it didn't feel that good. Amazing how it disappeared on the third week of training but then just came back on the last few miles to remind me, "Yeah, bro. Should've had them look at me like your lovely wife advised."

The crowds cheered as we shot toward the finish line. I watched the clock ticking from afar. The crowd cheered as I had both earphones off at this point so I could enjoy the moment.

We finished. The exact time was yet to be determined. Some guy called me "Chops" as I made my way to the finish line. That meant more to me than anyone calling me by the name that was on my bib. "Jeffrey." I remember waving to that dude over my head to salute his salutation of my ferocious sideburns.

As we finished, the medal hit my neck, the heat sheet hit my shoulders and I was pushed aside for a picture all in one continuous motion. I found my lovely wife and kissed her through the chainlinked fence. I met with family after that. Had a granola bar, a banana, two beers.

My muscles were going crazy. It was like I was getting a charlie horse every step I took. They were on absolute overdrive. My back tightened up almost immediately. My feet felt like they had exploded. Not like a flat tire, but more like the tire blew up. When I sat down in my father's car, my right calf charlied up and I looked at it in a flexed position. It was as hard as a can of green beans and I couldn't unflex it. Freakiest thing.

We did lunch with family. It was awesome. After that, I went back to the hotel and watched television. Slept for a few hours. Woke up at about 10. Fell back asleep at 11. Can barely walk today. The car ride home was torture.

I sit here thinking back to when I first had an innocent conversation with Sam Prose at a retirement party for my father. Sam Prose mentored my brother in his first marathon. He told me that the human body is not meant to run 26 miles. I would agree. But it's amazing what you can do when you're fueled by stubborn will and the fire of God. I think about my worst runs and how I could've easily just packed up and moved on like I had a million times before. For every cool thing I'm fortunate to finish, there's a thousand that I gave up on. But not this one. For six months, I put myself through absolute hell until my body accepted it. Three miles felt like one. Eight miles felt like three. 18 felt like ten.

26 felt like 50.

There's no overstating finishing a marathon. As much as my body hurts, I'd live with it for months to do what we did. I almost don't wanna go to bed because I know I'm going to have that electric pain up my leg as I walk down the hall, but that pain is your body proclaiming "I'm alive!" I think I'm about lose a toenail, but can't reach down to check it out.

Would I recommend marathoning? Absolutely. I feel like I'm 25 again and have a new appreciation for each day. When you're pushed to the limit, you have a slightly new perspective on what surrounds you. It's a solo sport. Sometimes it's completely without reward. Sometimes you feel stupid. You feel like a nincompoop chasing some moronic romantic notion that only exists in Nike commercials. But, in the process, those moments that you feel small and insignificant in God's great kingdom are irreplaceable. Some days you feel small and insignificant. Other days you feel powerful and unstoppable. Either way, you feel humbled.

Maybe I have a affinity to solo sports. It's the same gravitation that you feel when standing on a mountain overlooking the beautiful snowcapped peaks of regions nearby. It's when you're alone and pushing yourself to the brink that you learn the most of yourself. Competitive sports are only possible when there's an opposing force to drive you. Something particularly sweet when that opposing force is yourself.

Contemplating the next event. Rory said during breakfast today that he was considering doing a marathon. I told him to not even lead on lightly because I'll do it again in a second.

Here are the stats. My goal for Kool Aid and I was between 4:48 and 5:00. We finished at 4:58. Our rank at 10K was #4008. Our rank at halfway was #3815. Our time at halfway was 2:27:32. At the 20.1 mile mark, my rank was #3570. My rank at the 24-mile mark was #3442. I finished at #3434. From the 20-mile mark to the end, we passed 166 runners and were passed by only twelve. Probably 90% of those passed we did on that hellish hill at mile 19.

Our first half was at 2:27:32 and our second half was at 2:30:28. We didn't give up pace hardly at all. The perfect tortoise pace. I ran non-stop and Kool Aid did except for one bathroom break. Probably wasn't the smartest thing for me to do given that my body was screaming for a break and I didn't listen to it. But then again, maybe marathoning isn't the smartest thing in the first place.

Thanks to my lovely wife for being patient and supportive. God. My family. Bananas. Sly and Family Stone. Sleep. Ibuprofen. Nike. Vaseline. Gatorade.

What next?

Sleep.

YOU AIN'T MY FRIEND, SON: THE ART OF UN-FRIENDING

2009-12-06T06:54:00.000-08:00

(dusts off Midnight Marauders over a cup of coffee)

As some of you might know, the other day I decided that I was going to start purging my "friends" list on Facebook simply because I didn't see much sense in never really having more than about 15 friends in real life but having over 200 online. Plus, I'm a tightwad by nature and I feel that having more than 200 friends online is like overspending my attention. For that reason, I made some cuts to get me back at 200. And, honestly, it wasn't really that hard. As I viewed my friend-scape, it appeared to me that I let a few too many in the sidedoor in the early going as I was trying to increase my stock value. I see some of my friends have nearly a thousand friends on Facebook and I can't make any sense of letting that many people see all that throw up about yourself on a daily basis. I feel that when I get above 200, it's like there's a leak somewhere or a crack where my privacy is quickly leaking outward. So, in an attempt to keep it local and make sure my "circle of friends" isn't the size of Asia, I decided to make some cuts. I need a Dream Team of Friends. There's a standard that needs to be upheld. Quality not quantity. I mean, I like to think that I'm a pretty good friend to people online. I like to be insightful. Intriguing. Challenging yet polite, respectful. I'm not lazy. I work hard at what I post. I don't assume greatness as a friend. I work for it. Sometimes I achieve it. Sometimes not. Some of my "friends" are the worst ever.

Quality over quantity. I have to envision and enforce a commitment to excellence.

So, after lunch with my "friend" (in real life too) Denis, I started thinking about about making the cuts. I needed some sort of Guide to Unfriending...some criteria. Because as easy as it is to make someone your friend, firing them is a little dicier. When, how or where do you determine that a friend of yours isn't cutting it anymore? Well, while there's still no science to it, there certainly is an ART TO UNFRIENDING. Here's the lowdown.

I've never been the popular cat. Mostly on my own account. I lean to the road less traveled. I like my quiet time. I like quiet evenings at home with my lovely wife and two dogs. I hate crowds. I stick to a mission that sometimes means I'm out less to please others. I don't like being a jerk, but I don't mind being one in an attempt to achieve something I see as valuable. I believe in goodwill. I believe in helping others. I believe a higher cause. But, friends, well, that's something I've never been too good at. Keeping friends, however, I've had some good luck with. I think I've always had a threshold for friendships. It was about twelve to fifteen. After that, I just really didn't see much point. I wasn't going to extend myself to a level I couldn't maintain. If I called you a friend, I meant it. Some came and went over the years. But it my closest friends, I've had for almost my whole life. Danny...since third grade. Dale...since pre-school. Chris and Steve...my whole life. There are others. Some come and go. But it's like I went out and gathered as many friends as I could at a young age and just kinda "topped out." You'll notice one thing about me and it's that I don't have a lotta "new friends." Try as a may, they just don't stick like my first friends.

With that being said, it wouldn't make much sense that my online friends would be growing exponentially day-on-day. The payroll got too high. I can't afford these relationships. It's tasking on me in time, attention and ultimately energy.

I devised a method to cutting based on the following criteria in this order. As I cut below the 200-friend level, I can then add as I see fit. Right now, I have no room for anymore friends because I'm sitting precisely at 200. If I see someone that I really want to be friends with, I'll make a cut and I'll start with number one here.

1
INACTIVITY
This ain't no peepshow, son. You gotta dance too. And it's probably less the people that don't post as much as it is the people that don't even have a profile picture. Like they got on there one night, decided to join Facebook, you were among the twenty names they first searched for some reason and they haven't logged on since. You're out, kid. I'm not gonna be your one night stand. And, you ain't gonna have everyday access to me if you don't budge a little and give me something to look at too. And, no, just clicking the "like" button every so often does not qualify as "recent activity."

2
OVERACTIVITY
Let's be real, here. It's abuse when you post about everything that happens in your life. I want insight. I want commentary. I want opinion. I want perspective. People that get up on there and post "good morning!" or "good night!" are a waste of my index finger's strength to scroll past you. One day, I'm gonna develop carpal tunnel and it's gonna be because I had three friends who simply couldn't resist posting something everytime they farted or laughed. Just save it. I want complete sentences and thoughts. Get up on there and say, "It's a good morning because I pulled someone out of a burning car and then high-fived a cop" or "after wrestling a bear to the ground and then getting him to join me for a game of Yahtzee, all I gotta say is good night."

Additionally, when you post over five times a day, it's time to get up and leave your computer, go outside and take a walk. Yes, that coming from the author of the Root Down who has devoted months of his life to this thing since starting over four years ago. There's nothing that important in your life that it warrants five posts in one day. That includes the "ha," the "ROFL," the "totally!", the "I still love you!", and the "call me!" Just stop posting. Message them so the rest of us don't have to see it.

If you had a baby, just put in one post, "went to the hospital today after my water broke and had a baby."

I don't need:

"water broke"
"on the way to the hospital"
"waiting in room for doctor"
"I love my husband. he's the best!"
"baby's on it's way."
"it's closer!"
"baby's here!"
"we'll call him 'corbin'"

Not that I don't care about your baby, but, c'mon, I got 200 friends. Spend your comments wisely. One update will do and then put some pictures up later. There's also the folks that update their status after every home run, controversial call or just every quarter, period or inning of a sporting event. I understand your watching it. I don't need the play-by-play. Just post once at the beginning or the end of it. That'll suffice.

3
THE OPEN-ENDED COMMENT
To me, it's one of the most aggravating behaviors on Facebook. You'll know it when you see it. Or, at least, I hope you know it when you see it. It's so annoying. I'll give you an example. Someone posts:

"Today's the day!"

Why is today the day? Is it too hard to expand on that by adding a "because" to it? I don't play this game, at all. In fact, I've been known to call people out on it. I ain't no sucka. I don't respond to these types of posts. In fact, I'm hoping no one else does until that one moron gets on there and will, inevitably, post "What's happening today? Tell me!" Happens everytime. I'll give you another example.

..."is sad because someone really close to me hurt me."

Okay, firstly, get over it. Posting about it on Facebook ain't gonna make it any better. Especially if you don't give us any more information. I ain't gonna help you. You're on your own, kid. Secondly, this is behavior that kids in elementary school normally display. The kid who sits in the corner and pouts until people notice and then he's fine for the rest of the day. That's what we're dealing with here. Saw one of my friends post the other day:

..."has the worst friends ever!"

I don't care. Unless you have the nerve to expand on that and let your friends know what they did to you (on Facebook, which is really pretty passive aggressive, don't you think?), I really could care less. Another example:

..."I'm so blessed and I love my life!"

Okay, I understand that. But tell me why. Otherwise, I'm gonna call foul on you. And, just so you know, if it's a status update, it should be "is so blessed and loves his/her life." There's a format here. Then there's this one:

..."argh!"

I wish Facebook had an application that would dummysmack cats for trying to post this stuff. Like it would say something like "not valid status update" or "no one needs friends like you" or "no one cares, get a life." I don't need the unabridged version, but the Readers' Digest version, but dude, don't give me headlines. Life is challenging enough that I don't wanna have to play Sherlock with everyone of my "friends" who decides that, instead of working and typing complete thoughts, they're gonna put leading comments in their status updates. This ain't no scavenger hunt, bro.

4
JOIN MY CAUSE
Look, solely joining a cause on Facebook has yet to achieve anything. I mean, it's a network of people who believe in a certain cause, but I've yet to see it do anything except work as another social bucket. For that reason, I don't join causes. I just do stuff. And encourage others to do the same. I'm annoyed by people who are so passionate about a cause, but it's just ends up being another email in the inbox. I won't join your cause. Tell me you're building a house, I'm in. Tell me you're going to feed the hungry, I'm there. Tell me that you want me to join your cause to "feed the hungry." I need a place and time. Otherwise, save it. In fact, if you don't save it. I'll help you and just unfriend you. When charity becomes a button on Facebook, is it really charity? It's not that I haven't been affected by cancer or experienced the impact of poverty so be careful about throwing the "insensitive" card. It's action I'm looking for. Not social networking.

5
YOU JUST EARNED A BILLY CLUB
Given my stance on "join my cause," it goes without saying that I'm annoyed by Mafia Wars and FarmVille. I don't want a flower that I can't put in the garden. I don't want three heads of fake cattle. I don't want a cinammon roll that I can't eat. Don't give me a high-five, a jack-o-latern, a wreath, a teddy bear. I blocked those applications a long time ago and I've even dropped friends because of them. I liken those to forwarded emails. I delete upon receipt. Call me. Inbox me. Come to my house. But the box of chocolates that I can't eat is simply stupid so spare yourself the trouble.

It's Monday. Runday is in t-minus six days. Holla atcha boy.

TEAM ROOT DOWN PRESENTS: THE WHO STOLE THE SOLE? MIX

2009-12-01T19:04:00.000-08:00

Click the image above to download and get listening, fool. What awaits you is one of the illest kitchen-sink mix you've ever heard. Specifically sequenced for the 11-minute mile runner at the White Rock Marathon in Dallas, this mix will go uphill with you, downhill with you. When the going gets tough, enter Ice Cube. When you're chilling in the neighborhood just southwest of the Lake, enjoy a chunk of Coltrane and Ellington. As you make your final push for the finish line, Public Enemy's Fear of the Black Planet is played in its entirety--no breaks, no omissions--to help you see your way to glory.

This thing is a beast so if you elect to download it, be prepared. It's 80 songs and close to 5 hours of seamless dopeness. It times in at 4:48:18--just 30 seconds short of an 11-minute mile pace for 26.22 miles.

Even if you ain't running the Rock, it'd be good listening for an afternoon at work.

1 Dynasty "Adventures in the Land of Music"

2 Dr. Buzzard's Original Savannah Band "Cherchez La Femme"

3 KC and the Sunshine Band "I Get Lifted"

4 The Emotions "Blind Alley"

5 Nice and Smooth "No Delayin'"

6 De La Soul "Oodles of O's"

7 Black Moon "Who Got Da Props?"
8 Run DMC "Peter Piper"

9 The Love Unlimited Orchestra "I Wanna Stay"

10 Rufus Thomas "Do the Funky Chicken"

11 The JBs "Monorail"

12 Labi Siffre "I Got the Blues"

13 The BarKays "Holy Ghost"

14 Banbarra "Shack Up"

15 T-Connection "Groove to Get Down"

16 (some really ill piece I found...don't know who or what)

17 JC Davis "A New Day"

18 Hell Razah, Talib Kweli and DOOM! "Project Jazz"

19 Jonathan Toth (with DOOM!) "Ghostwhirl"

20 Jeru the Damaja "Y'Playin' Y'self"

21 De La Soul "Area"

22 De La Soul "Afro Connections at a Hi-5"

23 New Birth "Honey Bee"

24 Wu Tang "Clan in Da Front"

25 Black Ivory "I Keep Asking You Questions"

26 Raekwon "Criminology"

27 The Sweet Inspirations "Why Marry?"

28 Ghostface Killah "Box in Hand"

29 Method Man "M.E.T.H.O.D. Man"

30 James Brown "It's a New Day"

31 Sly and Family Stone "The Underdog"

32 Sly and Family Stone "Stand!"

33 The Tempations "Psychedelic Shack"

34 Badder Than Evil "Hot Wheels"

35 John Coltrane "My Favorite Things"

36 Duke Ellington "Caravan"

37 Charles Mingus "Hog Callin' Blues"

38 John Coltrane "Blue Train"

39 Beastie Boys "Looking Down the Barrel of a Gun"

40 Run DMC "Beats to the Rhyme"

41 Gangstarr "Speak Y'Clout"

42 A Tribe Called Quest "Check the Rhime"

43 Public Enemy "Don't Believe the Hype"

44 Last Emperor "Rap Tyranny"

45 Jay-Z "Reservoir Dogs"

46 Murs "24 Hrs with a G"

47 The Winstons "Amen, Brother"

48 Eric B and Rakim "Paid in Full (C'mon, dude, f'real? Of course, the 7-minute mix)"

49 Eric B and Rakim "Lyrics of Fury"

50 Black Sheep "The Choice is Yours"

51 Main Source "Fakin' the Funk"

52 Beastie Boys "So Whatcha Want?"

53 Brand Nubian "Punks Jump Up to Beat Down"

54 Eric B and Rakim "Juice (Know the Ledge)"

55 Rashaan Roland Kirk "Stompin' Grounds"

56 John Coltrane "Giant Steps"

57 NWA "100 Miles and Runnin'"

58 NWA "Express Yourself"

59 Ice Cube "Doin' Dumb Shit"

60 Ice Cube "When Will They Shoot?"

61 Public Enemy "Contract on the Love World Jam"

62 Public Enemy "Brothers Gonna Work It Out"

63 Public Enemy "911 is a Joke"

64 Public Enemy "Incident at 66.6 FM"

65 Public Enemy "Welcome to the Terrordome"

66 Public Enemy "Meet the G That Killed Me"

67 Public Enemy "Pollywanacracka"

68 Public Enemy "Anti-Nigger Machine"

69 Public Enemy "Burn Hollywood Burn"

70 Public Enemy "Power to the People"

71 Public Enemy "Who Stole the Soul"

72 Public Enemy "Fear of a Black Planet"

73 Public Enemy "Revolutionary Generation"

74 Public Enemy "Can't Do Nuttin' for Ya Man"

75 Public Enemy "Reggie Jax"

76 Public Enemy "Leave This Off Your Effin' Charts"

77 Public Enemy "B-Side Wins Again"

78 Public Enemy "War at 33 1/3"

79 Public Enemy "Final Countdown..."

80 Public Enemy "Fight the Power"

That's today's lesson. Keep on rockin' it, kid.

THE ROOT DOWN'S SIX WORST DEVELOPMENTS IN HIP HOP'S HISTORY

2009-11-24T04:33:00.000-08:00

Here at The Root Down, as many of you know, we're a hip hop friendly environ in which discussions or simple declarations are often made about it's greatness or failures. We critique, we praise, we question and we clarify. Because we proclaim to be friendly to hip hop, much in the way that sometimes being a "true friend" or a friend of notable awareness and honesty might require someone to confront a friend in their asinine behavior or otherwise erred perspectives, we too feel like we were granted the license to do the same to hip hop. Maybe only because of our investment in it as consumers, but nonetheless, even if not performers...we all critics, homie.

This is not to be an argument of who's realer or who's the realest. This is not to pin underground against mainstream. East against west. This is just a brainstorm I had when jogging the other night and thinking (as my brain was light on oxygen, admittedly) what were the splits, the events or the eras in hip hop that did more harm than good in the long run? Where did hip hop go wrong and play itself? What created this creative sinkhole that dominates the game right now? We have to be able to trace it back to something right? Man, I love italics.

This ain't in chronological order. In fact, it's in absolutely no logical order at all. Chrono or otherwise. I'm a big fan of hip hop history, though. If I could somehow draw it out on paper, I would. Maybe I will one day. I've had interest in dropping everything and becoming a film maker and doing a huge 20-part series on hip hop from the beginning to the end like Ken Burns. That'll be after I do this marathon. It's true, though. Like in religion or politics. You can look back in the church and it branches, breaks off and creates new denominations as a result of a disagreement, a fundamental argument, how worship is conducted, etc. Hip hop kinda did that as well. There's all these splits, sub-genres, movements, regional sounds and trends, but let's be real, it's all just hip hop. Politics are politics. Beliefs differ, but there's consistent underlying themes that perpetuate it from generation to generation. But for hip hop (and all popular music, jazz, blues, reggae, country, punk, etc) it was in this constant mutative state for about 20 years until it basically mutated to nothing. What are we left with today? I would contend that 90% of the hip hop out there now (as opposed to about 40% about ten years ago) is like the waste product of a pop factory that is simply broken. It's uninspired. It's dry and, unfortunately for its listeners, it's barely waned in popularity. It still remains as the most vital cultural impact of the last 30 years even though it's last ten years has been riddled and marked by a definitively miserable output.

You can debate that last point all you want. You ain't gonna change my mind.

CONSCIOUS HIP HOP

Ah, my very favorite of the ambiguous and sometimes completely undefinable sub-genres to come out of the late 90s. Let's be real, though, there's always been acts that many would attempt to classify as "conscious" hip hop from the very beginning. It's been how hip hop has tried to correct itself by saying there's an alternative to, basically, everything else and that is this weird and peculiar presumption of "consciousness." Identifiable by cats who carry themselves as educated, esteemed and enlightened as if there's a jet stream of consciousness that they coasted in on that's going to settle hip hop's score and bring thought and context to what is otherwise an unconscious state. It was really heightened by the surge of Christian hip hop acts that were reversing many of hip hop's sins of the past with clean, scripture-based prose that essentially washed the blood off of hip hop's hands in the eyes of the popular media. It gave families a safe alternative to the edgier acts on the market. While this rise in Christian hip hop was happening, Common Sense dropped the "Sense" but actually upped his consciousness from his earlier recordings. Rappers started donning sweater vests and collared shirts. They dropped the thuggery for a new costume that was visibly more affluent. Lyrically, they shed their references to all things "street" unless they were talking about the traps of the streetlife and how to avoid them. I mean, let's keep it positive. Kids are listening.

C'mon. Be real now. What this unfortunate fabrication would suggest is that hip hop, up to this point, was not conscious. That 2Pac and Biggie were just thuggery and not capable of speaking on a conscious level. It's like Tipper Gore got her way. Like government-approved hip hop. That's not to say these self-proclaimed "conscious rappers" were not indeed talented and genuine in what they were doing and rapping about, but making the distinction that this was conscious would suggest that everything else was less or not at all. My suggestion would be that all hip hop is in one way or another conscious not just that which is defined as conscious. NWA was pretty conscious. Public Enemy was definitely conscious. So was Mos Def. So was Ice Cube. De La. Geto Boys. Yes, 2Pac. You bet. These small and insignificant splits in the genre are really no splits at all because they all reconnect to the main highway just over the hill. It just gives a fan a piece to grab onto during a transitional period in their life. Whether it was created by a bank of writers, Tipper Gore, All Music, the fans or the artists themselves, such splits in hip hop are futile. They're truly silly. And, in most cases, they're created by those who have the least invested in it. In protest, I always wanted to listen to the most unconscious hip hop...reckless, irresponsible, socially damaging, violent, obscene and altogether wretched hip hop with no regret. I turned out alright.

SCREWED AND CHOPPED
There's possibly nothing that more perfectly exemplifies the idiocy and ignorance of modern hip hop better than the "chopped and screwed" trend of the early 90s. In short, a DJ from Houston discovered a new and less-innovative remix method in which you slow down the rap recording to approximately 70 BPM and then "chop" up the recording by skipping and cutting the record in single-second increments which effectively made bad records even worse (editorial influence). DJ Screw contended that by slowing it down, it helped a listener ease into a more mellow state and then could more easily soak in the lyrics now being delivered at a punishingly slow and low tone. It was something that not only did I really fail to see the genius in it, I found it straight up comical. It sounded like something was terribly wrong with the record player (again, more editorial influence). Click here to get an idea. The DJ was named DJ Screw and, after making this "discovery," referred to the tapes as "screwed and chopped." Before long, it took massive hold over the southern sound and dudes were "screwing and chopping" up rap recordings from Houston to Memphis. It was said that the best way to enjoy these recordings was to listen to them while drinking "syrup" (also known as "drank" or "sizzurp"). And to take excessiveness and irresponsibility to new levels, DJ Screw, the genre's founder died of a lethal dose of "syrup" which was a potent combination of alcohol and cough syrup. The irony is almost too much to bear. That'd be like Charlton Heston getting fatally shot in some horrible hunting accident.

Now, I'm from Texas and I was selling records in East Texas when "screwed and chopped" (see also "slowed and throwed") was hitting its regional highmark. Nationally, it was still waiting to peak (and it never really did). Every stoplight, every fast food drive-thru, every basketball court, every mall parking lot...it was everywhere. How it caught on I'll never know. You ask others from deeper in the state and they'd say, "How could it not?" It has since died down in popularity and is likely to completely phase out in the next couple of years, but let's be real, it'll be back.

So why, you ask, would something so popular be considered amongst the worst developments in hip hop's history (according to The Root Down, of course)?

Firstly, in my humblest opinion, something that takes very little talent to create should have never left a city block, much less half of the nation. These crazes happen all the time. It's like the autotune in popular R&B music. Singers no longer need talent to carry a note. Autotune will do it for you. To call DJ Screw a "deejay" is a little far-stretched. Wouldn't you say? That practically makes me a DJ. I mean, I can put on a record. I can slow it down. I can chop it in Audacity. Hell, in two years, they'll probably have an iPhone app so you can screw and chop anything. By the simplest of means and least effort possible, cats thought, all of the sudden, that DJ's came out of a box like some Alphonso Ribero b-boy kit. It cheapened the game. It stunk up the DJ's claim. DJ's used to be all hip hop had. Rappers were just mouthy fools that would tell people to get off their asses and dance. But the DJs were the force. DJ Screw slowing down records so you can listen to them and enjoy them while drinking cough syrup? Why don't you just go by your birth name, bro. You ain't no DJ.

Sometimes the dumbest things actually stick. And when they do, everyone wants to do it. It's like that party that everyone within a five-mile radius goes to. And once they're there, you have to basically run out of beer or have the cops come in and break it up. That was screwed and chopped. We let too many morons into the game because someone left the back gate open. They came and drank all of our beer. Or sizzurp, if you prefer.

Secondly, I'm a little pissed that Houston's legacy is more screwed and chopped and not Geto Boys. Not Def IV. Rap-a-Lot. I was talking to someone a few weeks ago and they thought that the Geto Boys were from Los Angeles! I hated to react the way I did, but I bounced back, "Bro, Geto Boys are not only from Houston, they are Houston." I guess we all go through this as aging heads though. That argument of who was first. Who was better. The thought that the Geto Boys' lock on Houston has been erased by DJ Screw and Michael Watts is a depressing one. Signed "Sincerely, Crotchety Old Hip Hop Head"

I need to start a Hip Hop Preservation Society. Every art form and musical genre seems to have one.

NO LIMIT RECORDS (1997-1999)

Hip hop was on a pretty good roll going into 1997. 1996 brought us classics like Reasonable Doubt, Ironman, Stakes is High, ATLiens. But as the sun began to set on the "Golden Age," Jiggy was coming in. Collossal rap radio took form on hits like "The Crossroads," "Mo Money, Mo Problems," and Freak Nasty's "Da Dip." 1997 was the year of two labels. Bad Boy Records which brought us Ma$e, Puffy and, of course, Notorious' Life After Death in the same month he died. And No Limit Records which actually had been around since 1993. Master P and his camp were like a freaking record plant. They would record, produce, gloss and release records at a rate that would make the major labels' jaws drop. And they were rolling in it. I remember working in music retail these years and it seemed like anything these cats put out just flew off the shelves. And, lucky for us, they put out tonnage. Unfortunately for hip hop, though, they put out tonnage.

All they needed was a hit to keep the cash flow up and they got it with "Make 'Em Say Uhhh!'" which came out in 1997 sending Master P's Ghetto D soaring. Once that cash started making its way back to the label, there was no stopping them. And if there's any label that perfectly hit on the "strike while the iron's hot" approach, it was No Limit. They weren't interested in longevity. It was strictly an I-gotta-get-mine operation.

This label (an indie, mind you) released an astounding 46 full length records. Master P, the label's founder released a solo record in each of these years along with running the label all while retiring and coming back from retirement. Problem with No Limit, though, was we're not necessarily talking about a Def Jam or Tommy Boy here. These guys weren't really that talented. So, in essence, you had a dominant label with very little talent at all split amongst it's stable of artists putting out more records than any one record store clerk could keep track of. And when the toilet backed up, shit went everywhere. They flooded the market and ruined it for everyone else.

These were formidable years for hip hop. You had the game shifting back to this capitalistic, short-term model where artist development was secondary to the quick buck. The game's veterans were going into other business ventures. And we left the control the Master P's of the world and they quickly took that crappy old mixer and beat machine and converted it to cold hard cash. Do I solely blame Master P for hip hop's demise? No. Absolutely not. Not solely. But for the volume of releases that this dude put out in the marketplace and not really a single classic record among them, it makes me truly ponder on what hip hop would've been like had he not shifted 30 million units of sub-par hip hop into the marketplace in three years. He owned the sound of 1997-1999. That's three years or 10% of hip hop's existence. You don't think that's not enough to change the taste of hip hop heads for years after? I don't know think we've yet recovered from those years. I liken this period to the steroids era of baseball. If you're wanting to put butts in the stadiums, hopping up hitters to crank 480-foot home runs every night is one way to do it. Not sure if the overall contribution to the game is healthy, but you can make some serious cash along the way. Another New Orleans label by the name of Cash Money Records rose to popularity at the same time on the strength of Juvenile's "Back That Azz Up" and, much like the No Limit model, they were quick to react putting out Hot Boys, Big Tymers, BG, another Juvenile record and Lil Wayne's first solo over the next three years. Ain't nobody in the game bigger than Lil Wayne and it's almost 2010. You have 1997 to thank.

*Big Bear neither a No Limit or Cash Money artist--just a notable Pen and Pixel gem.

THE BACKPACKER

It always seems to be the cats that are out to save the game that end up doing the most damage. The intentions of the "backpacker," I believe, were always good, but it always backfired and hip hop suffered because of it. The term "backpacker" is said to have a few different origins. Likely, though, it's origin was from graffiti writers who would tote paint, tapes, tips, a bag of weed, and whatever else around town as they'd be tagging different structures or trains. You were a self-reliant warrior going into battlegrounds and train yards to hone your craft. In the mid-to-late 90s, however, the backpack was part of a wardrobe, an accessory that was less functional and more an identifiable element of a "freedom fighter" for hip hop...the backpacker. What they wore or what they were called is really less important, it's what they stood for.

The backpacker, often times a late-adopting caucasian, felt that, firstly, garb and sneakers would give them an edge into the hip hop community and they would "dress the role" firstly and then modify their tastes and musical preferences to fit the mold of a hip hop fan with, of course, an "underground" hip hop lean. Their pants were baggy, usually rocked skate shoes or Adidas shell-toes with the loose laces and they had their backpacks doubled up on both shoulders and always rocked a lid to the side. What they were always carrying around in their backpacks, I'll never know. The backpack became this symbol, almost, of something that was part of their artillery. Like they were always ready for anything. I saw a dude at show, one time, hop out of his car and put on his backpack. Whatta nincompoop. That was like driving the skatepark.

There were two main arguments of the backpacker and they couldn't just help but get into it wherever they went. It was their never-wavering mission.

First, there's the "underground" vs. "mainstream" distinction that they always were preaching on to ensure that everyone knew how to identify all. And, in short, "underground" was the dopest hip hop out and "mainstream" represented the major label machine that was incapable of making good hip hop because it was played out on the radio and supported by BET and MTV. It was a position that was riddled with fallacies because any underground artist that wasn't trying to make it to a major label is either stupid or a liar. The upstreaming of an act from the minors to the majors is really all that independent artists want unless, of course, they can maintain their artistic vision and make dough at the same time. Those labels and/or artists represent the lucky miniority of the independent game. They have no interest in going to the major label. The argument that underground hip hop is inheritantly better because it's undiscovered is laughable. I would contend that underground hip hop has never really been any better than the "mainstream," there's only been more of it. 80% of the game is not on an independent label and out of that 80%, probably only 15% of it is close to meritable musically and artistically. The remaining 20% of the recordings come from the majors and only about 30% of it is close to meritable by the same definition. For the sake of my argument and nothing else, let's assume these numbers to be sound. Out of the 80 records that came from independent labels, 12 of them would represent some of the finest hip hop out that year. Out of the 20 records from the major labels, six of them would hit the same mark of artistic achievement. By the numbers, it would appears that independent hip hop doubled up the major labels, however, it took them 80 albums to do it. They're mainstream nemesis was batting .300--much better than the .150 of the independent labels. But it would appear to the backpacker, that the majority of the good records came from the independent sector. Incorrect, the overwhelming majority of the bad records came from the independent sector...68 to 14 to be exact.

You couldn't convince these kids, though. Their tendency to enter arguments with unrivaled bias was expected. Mos Def was their king. Jermaine Dupri was the enemy. Jay-Z had some respect, but only for his early recordings. Once a dude sold a million records, it took you off the cool list. When Eminem came out, it really rattled the backpacker's argument because here was a cat with legitimate talent, but he was building his success on mega-producer Dr. Dre and super-major Interscope. In response, they hailed white emcees Slug and Eyedea from Rhymesayers camp as their response to Em's successes. We've got talented white emcees too. Slug's actually only part caucasian. His father was part Native American, part African American, but visibly he appears white. White enough to a backpacker. Such arguments are silly, I know, but these come from actual run-ins I've had over the years. Wonder what those same cats are saying now as they're taking a smoke break from dropping frozen french fries into a hot friolator at Sonic when the talk about Mos Def and Talib Kweli who, both individually, got upstreamed to major labels. Jean Grae's been dying to get picked up. Warner Bros blew that chance. She's blowing up the blogs now saying that the independent game just doesn't make ends meet. It's like backpackers almsot want their heroes to suffer, live poor lives as independent artists. It's like some sort of weird martyrdom. So there's the "underground vs. mainstream" battle and then there's the even more dreaded "hip hop vs. rap" argument.

In short, the two names became almost commentary on the quality of the music. Hip hop had the "emcee" and rap had "rappers." Rappers were less introspective. They talked about guns, women, cars. Rappers were incapable of being political or sparking social change. They were just thugs with mics. Emcees, however, were truly more invested in the game. They were lyrically gifted. They possessed an uncanny ability to "battle" or "freestyle." Rappers didn't even write their own material so they'd never be able to "battle." It is by that distinction that would set Eminem apart--an emcee in the mainstream game. A rare breed, indeed. The sounds of rap music would make a backpacker's ears bleed. The harsh sounds of a rapper stinking up the mic, talking about weed, drive-bys, the ghetto. The only exception was that you could get grandfathered in. Ice Cube was safe. Although, his current recordings would be measured on the same level. His first four records were safe, though. The backpackers thinking was anything old could be good. Anything new, had to come from this pocket of independent labels or else it was considered to be below the level of listenability. They had a preference for the Golden Era. Tribe Called Quest, De La Soul, all Native Tongues, EPMD, etc. 2Pac wasn't assumed though. He was a little too thug for most backpackers. Eazy E, maybe.

The grand fallacy in this thinking is that, inevitably, it only prides itself on the past and doesn't embrace current artists. It's hung on nostalgia and anything from a certain era is automatic. Anything past a certain era is suspect. I don't mind the notion that anything from, say, 1992 or 1993 was dope because, largely, it was. Things were good back then. But to suggest it's impossible for good hip hop to come out in 2009 or 2010 is a little lame. In my most restrospective moments, I've said things like this. I guess to know a backpacker's thinking is to kinda be one yourself. But I denounce their presumptions. They write the rules and hold everyone to them. There's no fairness in their thinking. They can argue against everything. Like James Brown said, "Your talking loud, but ain't saying nothing." It's argument for argument's sake. The noise that these fools created over about a five to seven year period in their circles, their forums, their threads on their websites just played the whole game out with their fingerpointing, their accusations and their crucifixions. It's because of these dudes that I kinda fell out of love with hip hop. Every show I went to was littered with them. Every independent record store I went to was infested by these chumps. I felt like to like hip hop, I was somehow one in the same with them. They wrote too many rules. They preached this elitist bullshit which was coded with something so cryptic that no one could make sense of it. And they held everyone to it. And, worst of all, they preyed on the weakest of hip hop's fans so their army grew to a size which was unstoppable and it just kids who thought they knew, but in the end had very little clue. Hell, most of them weren't even born when Raising Hell came out. What do you really know, son?

INSANE CLOWN POSSE/PSYCHOPATHIC
It's like Krush Groove meets the trailer park meets thousands of soda-guzzling carnies meets Hot Topic meets the WWE meets every junior high school's remedial math class meets the Kiss Army meets the Wal-Mart pregnancy test aisle meets the Wal-Mart break room meets the Wal-Mart smoker's lounge meets the tractor pull meets the meth lab meets the Cheetos aisle at Wal-Mart meets the furthest place from a treadmill meets every failed gimmick to sell a hip hop record meets every knuckle-dragging primate who thought he/she knew what hip hop was the first time he/she heard The Slim Shady LP.

The biggest problem is that they sell like crazy.

Not that I'm fair of judging off looks alone, but damn, now I know why they wear facepaint. Don't know I would've picked the Insane Clown Posse to outlast most of the other groups from the early 90s. It's definitely a statement on the brain cell count of their average fan that this same gimmick wouldn't get old after 17 years. That's a freaking lifetime. I'm thinking back to 17 years ago. I was 15 years old. I thought I'd marry my first girlfriend, play in the NBA (even though I hadn't notched one minute on the A-team) and enjoy my offseason in my cabin up near Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Well, I'm 32 and none of panned out for me. And I didn't just realize that wasn't going to happen yesterday. I realized that about, uh, 16 years ago. The typical ICP fan (and yes, I intend on generalizing), still lives like they're in high school (or junior high if they're now in college). They're consumption of recreational drugs, video games, caffeine and ICP's music has stunted not only their behavioral development but also their potential as contributing members of society.

Yes, that's a mattress and a garage door. These are your juggalos--the affectionate name given to ICP fans and faithful followers. As much as I hate elitist pricks that make rules and say things like "they suck" or "that ain't hip hop."

They suck and that ain't hip hop.

THE LIVE INSTRUMENTATION PHENOMENON

Back in 1991, MTV "Unplugged" hosted their first ever rap-only "unplugged" performance featuring among others De La Soul, Tribe and Mr. Deodarant Balls--LL Cool J. If you remember the performance, you know what I'm talking about. Featuring a supposed "electric unplugged" performance of "Mama Said Knock You Out" by LL, we all knew it was only a matter of time before live instruments replaced the drum machine or more sample-based hip hop. Samples were expensive. Drum machines sometimes were quite dry and lacked any heart. Live instruments had the ability to bring soul back to the music. To give the music another dimension not yet realized. Plus, it would make dreadlocked morons dance like hippie chicks.

What bringing in live instrumentation into the game, hip hop began to cross over to cats who had always denounced hip hop because it lacked any significant musical accomplishment. It didn't require it's participants to do anything other than rap and, we all know, that takes no talent at all. It also relieved the stigma that rappers and, moreover, the DJs/producers were thieves of previously recorded music. By performing live the breaks instead of sampling them, it gave credibility to the music because, let's be real, if you're performing it live, it's not really stealing. Right?

What really happened with live hip hop is that it opened it up to a larger audience that really had no appreciation for hip hop's core. And it always seemed to be bigger in the Mountain states: Colorado, Washington, Idaho, Montana. One could only guess it's because of the large contingency of jam band fans in the mountains. In Houston, hip hop's best enjoyed in their car, rocking the trunk and absolutely annihilating the eardrums in every car at the intersection. Once you dip into the mountains, it's like hip hop's best enjoyed on bongos and an acoustic guitar.

It's not unusual to find that these peripheral fans of hip hop truly enjoy the live performance, but find very little takeaway from the actual recordings of those performances. As great as that night's performance was, that elation only lasts as long as their buzz. When they wake up in the morning, they take off their hip hop hat and are back to their lives. Ask one of these cats about Kool G. Rap. The Beatnuts. They wouldn't have a clue what you were talking about. Go save a whale, duke.

The whole live hip hop game is played. It's tired. It's not this new revolution that's going to save hip hop. Simply because the excitement is only in the performance. The recordings don't translate. And it's the recordings that will act as hip hop's archive for future generations. The immediacy of live hip hop quickly expires. It's like milk in that way. KMD's Mr. Hood is like raw honey...it never spoils. Live hip hop is too gimmicky. It relies on too many conditions to be consumed. And I don't care how good your drummer is, they can't replace Clyde Stubblefield on vinyl so don't go into no "Funky Drummer" because I don't wanna hear it. Give me the original.

Look at the best in the genre: The Roots. These dudes have been doing it for years and there's certainly something to be said for being first. However, every record they release, they sell less and less, but they have no problem selling out shows wherever they go. Less "fans" and concert goers are concerned about their records. They just wanna see them jam live which they've proven reliable for. Here you have one of the most talented crews in the game whose albums are actually getting better, it seems, with every release, but no one would know because no one buys them. They'd be the best selling crew out they had the same ratio of record-buyer to concert-goer as, say, Insane Clown Posse.

Recognize, son.

Sincerely,

The Root Down.

THE SECOND AND LAST OF THE LONG RUNS

2009-11-22T10:00:00.001-08:00

Almost 400 miles later, my longest run behind me, I await and finish out my training heading up to Runday Sunday in Dallas, December 13th. Only fitting that I return to the town that raised me and do the "award tour" of Lubbock. It started early on Saturday morning. The goal was to finish it in three hours and 35 minutes. Accomplishable. By doing so, I would have just enough time to shower and then make it to our seats at the Jones for OU versus Tech.

I'd go to 98th Street all the way to 4th Street. Close to entire latitude of the city. I started at 4:55AM by stretching, eating my two bagels, one banana, ibuprofen, water. I had some technical difficulties with my iPod but substituted the 80G in the Nano's place. I made it to my starting point by 6AM and began my run by heading south. It was freezing and I had not planned on such a low for the morning. It was 27 degrees and I had my running shorts and my Lions t-shirt. Nothing else. It was so cold that I got hypothermia on the third mile stretch between Slide and Frankford. I was jogging and trembling at the same time. I couldn't wait for the sun to rise. It was so cold that water was not exiting my body. A problem because my fluids were to replenish me in the places I needed it. It just went straight into my bladder and stayed there. So I ducked into a yard on the way down Frankford to empty my bladder.

Almost got run over on Frankford by a driver that threw his brights on me, failed to yield to me and stayed in my lane and honked at me as he passed by. Yeah, I gave him the one-finger salute as I pressed onward.

Passed our old house on Frankford and continued down toward what is now Marsha Sharp Freeway. It was passable at Chicago which is what I originally planned, but then remembered my dear friend Ty who was killed at the intersection of Chicago and, what was then, Brownfield Highway. Thought better of it and changed my route slightly. Passed Danny's house. Passed Danny's parent's house. My old junior high as I made my way toward my old neighborhood. Passed Agape Methodist where I was a member of Troop 543, the meanest Scout troop in history. The corner of their lot where I first played tee-ball. Past 13th and Vicksburg where Aaron and George were killed when we young. Past another one of my childhood houses right across from my first elementary school...Rush Elementary. Headed down Toledo past Dale's childhood home. Went by my 7th Street home and hugged family at the corner. Proceeded up Salem to my grandparents street where my Gommy handed me an apple the size of a softball. It was the juiciest apple I ever had. I continued to 19th and Quaker where I turned it toward Covenant Lakeside where I'd circle the park. Fatigue was setting in. Family kept making drive-bys as I pressed onward. Good to have them along the way.

My hip was giving me serious problems. And my left hamstring. I continued back across Quaker to head toward my high school. Passed Coronado and headed south on Utica toward 50th Street. Passed Westmont Christian where I went to church after my parents divorced. Continued to Dupree Park where my mother lived nearby just after my parents divorced. Headed over on 58th Street to Memphis. Up Memphis to 66th Street and then around the park where my lovely wife and I once pondered on what was going to happen to our relationship when she moved to Tyler, TX. Her apartment was right there. I stayed in one just up Quaker.

Ended at the EZ Mart on Quaker just south of the loop. It took me three hours and 35 minutes. Not a minute more. Not a minute less. When I arrived back at my mother's place, my lovely wife was frying up my favorite...bacon. With eggs topped with salsa. I ate the eggs, the bacon, two Krispy Kreme chocolate cake donuts, two glasses of chocolate milk, one glass of orange juice and about 30 ounces of Gatorade.

So now, I finish out my training by scaling down my runs. I'll fill in the time with working on my hip and hammie. Maybe a little swimming. Keep my diet in check.

It's been a long run to this point. Don't want to screw up now. Stay healthy. Plenty of vitamin C. Water. Don't get sick. I gotta get Kool Aid back out on the trail. Dude's been ill for the last two weeks or so.

Lovely wife celebrates a birthday on Tuesday. Not telling you which one, but I'll give you this clue: Larry Legend. Fams coming in on Wednesday for Thanksgiving in Amarillo. Fried cajun turkey, sauerkraut and chocolate bourbon pecan pie on the menu amongst other things. Gonna be some purdy good eatin'.

Ya'll rest up and enjoy your week and Thanksgiving.

THE FIRST 18-MILER, ER, UH...19.4-MILER

2009-11-15T04:39:00.000-08:00

Been a bit, Root Downers...regrettably. Have had a busy couple of weeks. Always do this time of year. Nothing different there. Of course, you put "training for a marathon" into anything and it eats up whatever else you were planning on doing. If you're not running, you're recovering. Like this morning behind a nice mug of coffee listening to LL Cool J's Walking With a Panther recounting yesterday's first 18-miler.

This is it. I got two 36-mile weeks consisting of two 5-milers, one 8-miler and then one long run at 18 miles. That's a big week. I'll do this twice and then we wind down going into the marathon. Even with the marathon on the final week, I'll only run 34 miles that week so this makes the longest distance weeks in the training. I've had some killer runs this week. There was the five on Monday where Kool Aid and I tore through the neighborhood like killers on the loose. We started out at "prowler" and ended at "predator." We were trucking that night. Then, my eight on Tuesday was my historic "Prefontaine on Fire" sprint where I clocked eight miles in eighty minutes. A personal best for that distance. The 18 I was set to do yesterday came at an optimum point in my training. Of course, as luck would have it, Kool Aid's gotta temperature so I was going to have to leg this one on my own. I drew out my route which would take me from essentially center city all the way out to the northwestern edge of town. Preferably at sunrise. There's something great about hitting the path before everyone else. Get to the earth before every moron in hurry tramples it to death. There's just something about it that's intoxicating. At that hour, the city is not only silent, it's paralyzed. Nothing's going. It's just you in God's great landscape splitting the air and breaking the serenity with your soft footsteps and light pants of breath. Here's the path.I woke up feeling great. A little tired, but whaddya expect for a Saturday morning at 4:45. I stretched, lubed up, munched some ibuprofen, a banana, a bagel. I stepped out into the morning air and it was thick with this wondrous fog. I couldn't even see the end of the driveway. It was cold and a wind was hurriedly pushing the fog down the street. Perfect.

Pressed play on the iPod and started out. The pace was good. Breathing was quickly locked into tempo. Hydration was optimum. I carried with me enough food to fuel me out and back. Two bags of jelly beans, two goos and a banana. As I made my way out on 9th all the way to the edge of town, the sun began to slowly rise lighting the landscape around me. The heavy blanket of fog surrounded me. It was so thick at one point that I wouldn't have known I was even going up hill until I saw headlights that appeared to be coming down from the sky in front of me.

It was the greatest setting for a solo run. Just me, a few rabbits, a herd of cattle and a punishing northern wind. When I turned north into the wind, it almost reduced me to a walk. And, just at that moment when I was rocked backwards, the intro to LL Cool J's "Goin' Back to Cali" broke the silence. I took a deep breath, put my head down as the wind drenched my beard with morning dew and tore northward. Thanks, LL.

Geez, you'd think this cat was never a rapper with Google image search. I had to hit up five different pages before I could find a picture of him not in a beautiful suit on the red carpet smiling like a nincompoop. Here we are. Here's the LL I was running with.

You know, LL's pretty played. Dude's from Queens. Don't you root for the Mets if you're from Queens? Everytime I see that dude, he's rocking a Yankee lid. Guess Mets are old school. That was back in 1986 with the World Championship team with Darryl Strawberry, Doc Gooden, Keith Hernandez, Gary Carter. That was a long time ago. Yankees have won five championships since then. LL probably doesn't even watch baseball. He probably just has problems matching his outfit to the orange on the Mets hat.

Why is it that anytime there's a special on Led Zeppelin on television, the Wilson sisters of Heart are flown in as the Zeppelin experts. I swear, I turned on Biography this morning and, in the first five minutes of the Led Zeppelin Biography, there's Ann and Nancy in their gypsy garb talking about Zeppelin in their whispy fascinated tone. Seriously, don't you have a state fair you should be playing at? Go away. I hate Heart with a passion. Chicks were Zeppelin biters. Go listen to "Barracuda" and tell me it ain't a direct bite of "The Immigrant Song."

But I digress.

When I made out to Soncy and Tascosa Road, it was time to turn it back to the city. Public Enemy's "Fight the Power" blasted into my brain as I jogged onward. With the wind now shifting to my left shoulder, I powered forward actually gaining speed as I climbed back into the city. The inclines and declines on this path were remarkable. Easily more challenging than anything I'll see in Dallas. I think the most brutal portion of White Rock is a 1.3% grade for about two and a half miles--18 to 20.5 and then it goes downhill for the rest. I was doing 2.5% grade for a half mile at a time.

As I came into town, I arranged to have my lovely wife follow me for mile 13 to the end at 18. She met up with me in West Hills with dogs in tow, threw the hazards on and crept behind me offering encouragement along the way. As we made way back into our neighborhood, I was approaching 16 miles. Only two more to go. So I took a route that I knew would measure up to two miles and I would end just down the road from the house. I sprinted the last block to make sure I didn't end in a crawl. End strong.

I doubled over at the end. My legs immediately tightened up. It only took about two minutes for the muscles to shrink and shrivel. I stretched as quickly as I could to avoid cramping. Walked back to the house and perched myself on a stool in the kitchen and chomped a sandwich, a glass of milk. Hopped up and it was too late. My muscles already tightened up. I could barely walk. I went into the living room and laid out. The pain lasted for about fifteen minutes. Took a shower. Some ibuprofen. Walked it out. Felt a little better.

My ending time was 3:35. Pretty long for 18 miles. Not yet convinced that my ending time was close to 12 minutes per mile, I decided to go out and drive the entire thing and confirm the distance. Turns out that my distance was 19.4 miles--overshot my goal by 1.4 miles taking my average per mile down to 11:05. Overall, that's a great time for the hills I ran, the wind that I was jogging headfirst into and the hour at which I started.

I ate a burrito from Sharkeys after that, laid down on the couch and immediately passed out. When I awoke, I was hungry again. I stood up from the couch and my right leg almost gave out from under me. My knee, thigh and hamstring were on fire. I sat back down. Now's when you let your body heal. Nothing strenuous. Take it easy. That's the rule on Sundays.

Last night, we had some friends over for dinner...birthday dinner for the wives. I ate a ton of food. I was so hungry. Bruschetta, a NY strip, shrimp, zucchini, spinach ravioli, chocolate cake and ice cream. I had a couple of beers over the evening and by about 10:30, I could barely keep my eyes open. I went to bed on by back, with my legs outstreched and my hands on my belly. At 5:00 this morning, I awoke in the same picture....the pillow still folded behind my head and the blankets over me not even slightly disturbed. I laid in one position for five hours. Something my body never does.

Snapped to my feet at 6:00. Leg feeling better. Had two bowel movements already this morning. Hungry again. These 36-mile weeks have my body going crazy.

Doing it all over again this week. Marathon's under a month away. This morning's a perfect morning for Sly's There's a Riot Goin' On.

Keep up, kiddo.

COL' NEW YORKIN': DAY ONE

2009-11-05T19:23:00.000-08:00

Tuesday morning, the fourth official day of the j3 Family Runaway 2009. We awoke early needing to catch a 8-ish train from Boston's South Station to Penn Station in Manhattan. Big day for a Dallas girl and a high plains drifter like myself. This was the city. Not only that, it was our first time on a train that went faster than highway traffic and didn't just go around the amusement park all day. In fact, I spent most of the morning worrying about whether or not I would be spotted as that cat that's never been on a commuter train. It was really just a practice in imitation. I just followed what everyone else was doing. Plains, trains and automobiles, homie. Hell, we'd even sneak a ferry in there for good measure. When they approached the train, so did we. When they boarded, so did we. When they sat down and put their tickets up above their seat, so did we. And when people decided to knock out and take a nap, so did I.

The train was perfect for sitting back and listening to Mingus which is what I did as I drifted in and out of sleep. We were on the shady side of the car so it was perfect napping although it was difficult to not want to take it all in as Massachusetts and then Connecticut sped by. I'd be watching businessmen poised in their seats playing on their laptops and thinking, "Man, this makes my four-minute commute look straight-up heavenly." To think of doing it even twice a week is almost too much to stand. By foot, I'm only 25 minutes away. These dudes are crossing three states for work. Say what you will of the Panhandle and the Yellow, you can't front on a four-minute commute. For lunch everyday, I'm sitting in front of my television in my house for 45 minutes of Dan Patrick, a nice salad and a handful of peanuts. Would New Englanders/New Yorkers consider that a significant upward step in the "quality of life" scale? Not sure, Connecticut looks really nice as it flies past your huge eight-foot Amtrak window. Sure has something on West Texas there. Or was it Rhode Island?

At one point, I switched over to Steely Dan which went quite well with the ride into the City. Pretzel Logic to be precise. Some parts of the rail were a blinding and confusing series of tunnels, canals, ravines, bridges and otherwise unsightly areas. Worth sleeping through, really. But it was interesting because you knew you were nearing the big city by the quality of the tags. As you crept in on the city mile-by-mile, it became more intense, more inescapable and more vividly overwhelming. I didn't get much because, well, it was moving by so quickly.

Before we knew it, almost every crevace, nook and corner of everything in sight had been tagged. Nothing was off limits. These dudes would tag your grandma if she was within a block of the train. No where was out of reach.
This led to the cyclical argument that my lovely wife and I always tend to get into. What's graffiti worth? Who benefits? Truth be known, she hates almost everything it stands for. That's alright. I hate about half of what it stands for. The other half, I fully embrace. At one point, she just stopped talking and, instead, any time we passed a tag (which was every ten seconds really), she'd just look at me, pinch her lips together and then just shake her head at me. Like I was the one that did it. I've always loved graffiti. I don't love vandalism though. To qualify graffiti as vandalism before even considering to be art firstly is a tragic mistake. In my humblest opinion, some graffiti is undoubtedly art and then some is just vandalism. It's now a matter of where you did it, it's how you did it. If someone keyed my car, that's vandalism. If someone took white spray paint and wrote the word "chump" on my car, that's vandalism (and incorrect). If some cat bombed my car with a bumper-to-bumper burner with three-color faded fill-ins and shadows. I'd still say that my car was vandalized because, by definition, it was. However, it's art first and foremost. When you're sitting on train watching the countryside fly by at 60 MPH and no idea how close you are to your destination, the only indication that you're getting close is the underpasses start to become these flashes of kaleidoscopic colors. You can't read what any of it says because it's moving by so fast, but it's walls absolutely covered from the inch closest to the ground to 20 feet up the wall. It's like the city speaking for itself.

We ran into some nasty delays on the way in because there were trains backed up on the track. After about forty minutes, though, we were moving again and the city began to reveal itself to us as we snaked through the outskirts of Queens on our quest for Manhattan. I fired off pictures panickly as I saw more and more of Manhattan. I was fixated. Sometimes not blinking. From this distance, Manhattan looked small. I was pointing out landmarks that I recognized frantically.

This was likely the last good view of the city that we had before entering the final stretch of track into Penn Station. We'd disappear into a series of subway tunnels taking us under the city, under the river. Before any of us could blink, we were there.

We grabbed our bags and, again, just imitated what everyone else was doing. "Just do what they do. Go where they go." We needed to get a cab to our hotel. And MetroCards. First, we make our way up to the street. The City's not very friendly to luggage. Made me want to retire to a backpack fast. I've got my crazy-pimp suitcase with three wheels trying to navigate it through the crowds, halls and staircases. There's just no easy way around it.

Once we came up street level, my jaw dropped--momentarily, of course. You gotta keep moving. It's quite a sight for a cat from Lubbock, Texas where municipal codes prevent businesses from erecting signs taller than their building and billboards are strictly governed to protect "the flat" of Lubbock. When you see Manhattan and you stand in the middle of it, the City not only feels like it goes on forever laterally, it also feels like it goes on forever vertically. It's hard to not become slightly suffocated at first sight. I'll admit it. It was awesome.

We quickly waved down a cab which was much easier than I was anticipating. Hopped in and began heading uptown to our place which was just a stone's throw from Broadway/Times Square.

More on the cabbies later, but I gotta tell you, it's like a headrush sitting in one of those things flying through traffic. Amazing how traffic works in a city like New York. It's almost like objects floating in a rushing river except nothing ever touches. The traffic has a behavior all of its own. It's instinctual. It's anticipative. It knows every next move. And almost 70% of the vehicles are cabs. They absolutely rule the streets.

I was looking for the Cash Cab because, as it would turn out, we would need the cash desperately. More on that later as well.

After arriving at our hotel, we found that, as luck would have it, our room wasn't ready, but it was cookie hour and I learned in my travels, if anyone offers you a free cookie, take it. We chilled in the lobby, made phone calls, dropped off our luggage with the concierge to lighten our load and then, my lovely wife reminded me to tip. It's at least a buck a bag anytime someone touches your bag. Lesson learned. Only I'm touching my bags from here on in. The city's an expensive place to live because everyone expects a tip, it seems. And I'm a cheapass. So you can see where this is heading.

I just put on Jeru the Damaja's Wrath of the Math. An old dusty vinyl copy that I haven't played in ages. That good ol' Brooklyn illness.

We headed down to the subway to grab the train out Brooklyn for dinner and sights. We're attempting to buy a MetroCard and the damned machine is saying that my debit, which is all I carry, is invalid. In fact, so is my lovely wife's. So not only do we find in Boston that you can't rent much on a debit and credit's king, now our lowly debit card isn't even working. So I fork out another $50 or so for two MetroCards. I inventory our cash flow--good enough for dinner and dessert, but not much else. Maybe the machine just wasn't reading our cards right. I mean, for one, it might make sense, but both cards not reading was a little unsettling. Anyhow, boundlessly, we boarded a train bound for Brooklyn.

Once arriving, we took a short walk through the neighborhood and ended up at the highly recommended (thanks, George) Grimaldi's Pizzeria.

Once again, we're seated next to people we don't know. Like at the same table. Takes a little getting used to. Good thing about NYC though, is that there are so many different languages, they're more likely to not even know what you're saying and, if they do, changes are they don't care enough to listen. It was pretty amazing, though, that the majority of people we ran into spoke something other than English. You were almost expectant that someone wouldn't speak English. It was almost everything but. English is still the most prominently spoken language in New York, say, 60%, but the other 40% is split amongst a hundred different languages. I'm from Texas. It's predominantly English and Spanish. That's about it. And that's about a 85/15 split.

Nonetheless, my lovely wife was looking, well, lovely. I was too hungry to think about much else than a nice warm pie and a tall Brooklyn Lager which I hadn't had since the Sox whooped the Yanks back in 2004 and an unfortunately Yankee fan lost a little bet to yours truly.That pizza was the real deal. Makes me kinda jealous of New Yorkers. I mean, being from Texas, we don't really have anything super cool to claim as definitively Texan. I mean, barbecue? Is that definitively Texan? Cowboys? Hmm. Okay. Anything else? Country music? I mean, Nashville's the capital. You can get damned good barbecue in Memphis--probably better than Texas barbecue. When you're sitting under the Brooklyn Bridge chomping on a big ass piece of pizza with a nice tall beer, you feel pretty special.

We exited out into Brooklyn and walked around a bit before ending back up at the Bridge for some ice cream and enjoy the sunset as well as the beautiful view of Manhattan as the night draped the city in darkness. From this vantage point, you feel pretty small as the skyscrapers of Manhattan tower into the sky.

Likewise, Lady Liberty looked tiny just sitting in the harbor. She was absolutely dwarfed by everything else around her. You grow up thinking she's the size of fifty Godzillas and then you realize that's she's not even the size of one. That little excursion was on the second day.
Also feeling pretty small in Brooklyn was probably the only other Texan under the Brooklyn Bridge at that same moment: Country recording artist Jack Ingram. He was there attempting to break a world record for the most consecutive radio interviews. I don't think there was a previous record though. If there was, no one was talking about how much that was. Jack was just shooting for 24 hours. Does that mean that the previous record was 23? Who would stop anything at 23 hours with 24 is just such a nice round number? It's such a cool number. Divisible by two, three, four, six, eight, twelve. Twenty-three? Lame. So I don't think there's anyway that there was a previous record. So Jack set up camp under the Bridge and people were just calling in and asking him questions. What's funny is that if he did this in, say, College Station, Texas, he'd be surrounded by drunk and hollering college kids until the last minute. Here, though, in New York City, no one cared. There was a lingering manager, publicist, label rep. I met him a long time ago and I was thinking of reintroducing myself until he mentioned you pick up his new record at Wal-Mart or Amazon. Thanks for nothing, Jackass. Hope you sell two units. And both to your parents.

We walked back to the start of the Bridge near sundown so that we could begin our walk back to Manhattan as the City was lighting up.

I love Brooklyn. It was much more my steez. Manhattan's cool, but Brooklyn was just the right pace. Just the right people. Just the right view. Just the right attitude. And, man, there's some crazy music that came from Brooklyn. You'll just have to peep that NYC MetroCard Mix that I threw up a while back. As we walked on the Bridge, the City offered its money shot.

The Brooklyn Bridge, while enjoyable, was a panicky and frantic affair as cyclist and joggers ruled it's wooden footbridge. I almost watched a child get obliterated by a cyclist who was about to take flight he was moving so fast. Guess there's very little slow in an urban environment of such a size. There's no loafing lane. It's go fast or go away.

We did find time to snap a few shots as we handed off the camera to a German couple. Or was it French? Slovakian? Who knows.

Shirt courtesy of Daunda. Thanks Wil. End day one.

A DAY IN THE LIFE: OCTOBER 31, 2009

2009-11-02T04:11:00.000-08:00

Photoblah-g from Halloween, 2009.

Started it off at 500 with a banana, a bagel, four Advils and two glasses of water. It's standard for a +10-mile run.

At 600, I sat down in front of the TV set in the living room and enjoyed a Biography on Stephen King (I guess that Halloween is the connection here) while I stretched. Interesting that he was about to throw Carrie away until his wife found the unfinished manuscript in the trash and demanded that he re-write it. Gotta love lovely wives.

By 630, Kool Aid and I were on the road and running. I love running in the morning. It's so peaceful. You can basically run in the middle of the road without worrying about getting mowed over. Especially on a Saturday morning. I enjoyed TV on the Radio for the earlier part of the run, White Stripes for the later part. 16 miles total. Hammy still giving me issues. Left IT band tightened up around the ninth mile. Here's a pic from Kool's neighborhood. That's an oncoming car. One of a few very few we encountered at that hour.

By 800, we were on the backside of the Tascosa Country Club making our way to West Hills. This was about on the eighth mile.

Mile 12 at 900. I was attempting to take a pic of me blowing a snot rocket. No dice.
Flew by the store at 1000 to get cash, some syrup and sausage for breakfast. My lovely wife offered to make waffles and sausage. I had two waffles, a fist of sausage, some milk, gatorade and a couple of Advils. And at 1000, I got kisses from Tucker who was happy to see his Pa.

At 1100, I was still drinking my coffee. Planning a trip to Lubbock. Yes, I stole this mug from Daybreak about 14 years ago. Still use it.

1200 I was packing my bags for the Hub City. Lot on my plate for the day.

At 1300, I was passing beautiful Happy, Texas. I love the panhandle. I love how flat it is. It's good for clearing the mind of all the garbage and noise. Just point the front bumper south, hit the gas and enjoy the view. I brought a box of CDs to audition on the road. I hadn't done that in quite some time. Just left the iPod in the Yellow.

1400: discovered a gem in the stack. A compilation from BK One courtesy of Rhymesayers. I haven't heard good hip hop in probably three years. This was a welcome listen. I jammed it all the way into Lubbock. Also notable from the stack was this Shades of Brown record. Dopeness. 1500: Ice cream at my grandparents' place. Gommy insisted, I obliged. We watched Tech struggle with Kansas. Our quarterbacks suck. Either way, though, they're my team. Can't change that.

1600: helping my father get hooked up with Facebook in his office upstairs. This is overlooking the park out back.
1700: my nephew showed up dressed as Shrek. My niece was dressed as a princess. I jacked his mask and played Shrek.

1800: Tech decided they wanted to win on Saturday and turned it up in the fourth quarter breaking a 21-21 tie and winning 42-21. It was enough of a bore to knock out Austin the cocker spaniel. I was at my mother's place talking to Sharon and enjoying a little relaxation. Mom was playing Catholic mass.

1900: dinner with my Mom at Rosa's. I had the burrito plate. My mother made a comment about how no one else in our family eats raw onions like I do. They should.
2000: I have no picture for 2000 hours because I was attempting to take a shot of Krispy Kreme at night going about 40 MPH past the store front. The result was a blurry picture of a Wal-Mart. Just worth noting that I was that close to a Krispy Kreme and resisted stopping and locking myself in the bathroom with a dozen of devil's food donuts. Instead, I proceeded to the local stores to do a couple of compliance checks and then stopped in at United to buy my first six pack within Lubbock city limits. I chose Harpoon. This was at 2100. Harpoon is so good. One of the many great things that come from Vermont.
At 2200, I arrived at Danny's house. Dude went off on decorations for his Halloween party/fiancee's birthday. Nothing sets it off like the bloody shower curtain, though. I'm a fan of the classics. Psycho specifically. And duke had more smoke machines than a Ted Nugent concert.
By 2300, the party had jumped off. I was enjoying my Harpoons talking to the many interestingly dressed folk. Kinda felt like the party pooper for not dressing up, but I never do. I have a hard enough time being myself that being someone else is just too much of a challenge to have fun doing it. Ran into Leangelo...the man of many trades. Tonight, he was a German countryman. It would figure that he would opt for the only costume that is accessorized by a 80-ounce beer stein.2400...midnight. When the real freaks come out. I always feel bad for girls who feel forced to dress like prostitutes for Halloween. I mean, it's really a shame that girls feel pressured into wearing close to nothing like Halloween is some sort of stripper contest. Even more bizarre, though, is when men feel like they need to dress like prostitutes. Like this cat. Kudos for the most awesomely weird costume I've ever seen a dude his age wearing.
And just take my word for it...yes, he was wearing the shorts too. Just another day in the life of yours truly.

#28: "RAP TYRANNY"

2009-10-27T04:38:00.000-07:00

LAST EMPEROR
"RAP TYRANNY"
ECHO LEADER 12"
1999

First time I heard Last Emp, believe it or not, was on Lubbock radio...the late KTXT to be exact. It was about 10:45 on a Thursday night and I just finished playing a softball game and was making my way home. Thursday night was hip hop night on KTXT and Wil was telling me that I needed to tune in. So, on my drive home, I turned it over to KTXT and the very first thing I heard was "Rap Tyranny" splitting the silence. In many ways, from the very first line, it split much of the monotony I had been dealing with. Back in 1999, Rawkus was reaching veteran status and, although we didn't yet know it, was soon to dim. Everyone was stretching to achieve that realness, that cred. Everyone wanted to be around at the beginning. Everyone wanted to be down with the surging independent scene and it was a rat race for heads to pronounce themselves to be more underground than the next. In many ways, I was the same way.

But "Rap Tyranny" obliterated all of that. It was perfection in a hip hop track and from the first time I heard it, I was reminded that one's perception of me meant much less than just listening to what I liked. And liking what I like. I didn't need anyone's validation by saying, "Yes, you're correct. That's good." I know what I like and I know what I don't like. I don't need a magazine to tell me what's good. I don't need MTV. I don't need writers. I don't need that mixtape friend. I don't need radio. I don't need iTunes. I don't need Hip Hop Connection. It just took a chance moment on a KTXT broadcast and I said, "Yep, that's it."

"Rap Tyranny" is a ferocious sub-three minute party jam that shakes its ass harder than almost anything out there. Two verses and one chorus is all it takes for Philly's finest, Last Emperor, to slay heads.

"Subjects and predicates / Proper mic etiquette / All beef, I'm deadin' it / Hip-Hop confederate Face me, you better get / High priest and Jesuits / Against the Emp your attempts will seem effortless / I make the girls wanna kick their heels up / Klingon warships throw their shields up / Rippin' the reels up Wounds never heal up / Mad Soul controls the razor-sharp steel cuts."

Add to it the Commodores' "Assembly Line" break and what you have is an resurrective and downright anthemic b-boy classic. While Last Emp would fade in the post-2000 hip hop landscape, "Rap Tyranny" is as sturdy as hip hop songs come and will, undoubtedly, withstand the test of time. And this thing was a freaking b-side! They just don't make 'em like they used to...back in 1999. Oh, those were the days.

And as good as "Rap Tyranny" is, it's still only #28 on this list. Just wait, kiddies.

BACK TO THE WAY THINGS OUGHTA BE

2009-10-18T05:04:00.000-07:00

With the early and fitting exit of the Red Sox from the 2009 postseason, it really dawned on me that all of this Red Sox-this, Red Sox-that bandwagoning from the last seven or so years has finally corrected itself. The Sox just didn't have it this year. Hurt by underperformance of key players, poor free agent acquisitions and riddled by key injuries all year, the Sox were only in a position to surprise, but not win it all. As they began the year full-throttle, the Yanks struggled, but we knew that with all that money invested, in time that team would perform. Their second half would be unstoppable. The happy moronic A-Rod would return with his arms wide open like some messianic Scott Stapp characterture. His goofy equine-like gallop, Miami-Beach highlights and doh-faced interviews. Ah, heeeeeee's baaaaaaaaaack.

Back is the Derek Jeter fist. I mean, nothing says Yankee victory like the trademark iron fist. Little Boy Wonder even set the all-time Yankee hit record solidifying his position as a "true Yankee." Whatta laughable notion. He's not a "true Yankee." He'll never be a "true Yankee." You can't be a "true Yankee" without winning a championship. Whatever. Guess Don Mattingly will never be a "true Yankee." Anyhow, probably no questioning Derek's greatness when he was collecting championships like postage stamps back at the end of last century. There in their third longest drought without a championship in the history of the Yankees. What if they don't win this year? How long can Yankee fans live without a championship before they start jumping off the Brooklyn Bridge? 12 years? Less?

Thank goodness they're back, though. I'm tired of all this Red Sox hate. They love you one year, they hate you the next. I would just prefer indifference. Back when the fans adored them and no one else cared. No one else cared because everyone was too busy loving or hating the Yankees. This year kinda reset the AL East. The Orioles were back to the basement. The Jays were the potential upset north of the Border. The Rays were good, but not good enough. The Sox chased first all year and swiped the Wild Card and the Yankees ran away with the division and are likely to take it all. Probably without losing a single game.

Then there's Joe Girardi who goes from babbling new guy to quiet and confident mob boss putting hits on squealers. He's like Torre's mini-me. Sitting there with his arms crossed, subtly singling runners, looking just below the brim of his cap. He's like a character actor who just does it by imitation. And, really, is coaching a team that has more all stars than entire divisions combined truly that difficult? Don't you just kinda sit around and think, "Damn, this job is pretty easy." Anyhow, good job Joe Torre, er, Girardi. The only hard part of your job is wiping ol' man Georgie's backend after his monthly bowel movement. Okay, sorry, that was below the belt. Literally.

Then, there's this guy. Like the guy who showed up at the party at the very last second and didn't bring any beer but just drank everyone elses. I mean, in the true spirit of excess, adding Marky Mark and the Money Bunch to a line up that already included A-Roid, Gehrig Jr., Captain Clean Shaven and Godzilla seemed a little unnecessary, but remember, it's just about getting what the rest of the division (i.e. the Red Sox) can't.

Not that the Sox didn't want him. I mean, who wouldn't want this guy.

Then there's Nick Swisher. The fun-loving nucleus who sticks his tongue out and toggles between either a "hang ten" or devil horns. Keep it loose, have fun. Act like a moron. Work on a few new handshakes. High five the crowd. Work that "he loves the game" schtick. It worked in 2004.

Uh, whatever.
Yeah, then there's "act like you've been there before" Justin Chamberlain. He's a starter, he's a reliever, he's a starter, he's a reliever. Who cares. He's neither. He strikes out five and then blows a lead. He's the guy who pumps his fists like he's never struck out a .300 hitter before and has all those reel-ready huffs and puffs, poses and finger points to the heavens like he just wants his spot in the Sportscenter intro or SI cover. Someone give this dude his own sneaker and give him what he wants. Any tool who tells a cop after getting thrown into the back of a squad car for suspicion of DWI, "You know I play for the Yankees, right?" loves his place in this world a little too much.

And then there's Sabathia and Burnett. How do you fortify a pitching staff? Well, not only do you go out and get the most expensive pitcher on the market that no one can afford, you snag two of the most expensive pitchers on the market that no one can afford. Sabathia plays with such a fake zeal and wonderment like, really dude, did you expect anything less to happen? Stop screaming when you get out of a pinch and don't worry, you're gonna win a championship. Trust me. If you need any reassurance, just go into the locker room and read the names on top of the lockers and stop all your fist pumping and crazy mound antics. You've reached the promised land. Congrats. It's much easier here than it was in Cleveland. Just throw it on cruise and take a nap. Your ring will arrive in April.

Thank you, Yankees. For finally stepping up your game and rising back to the top of the East. Now the Sox can return quietly to number two and stop playing this spend-your-way-to-the-top game of Monopoly. For the Sox, the future's in the farm system. Make the right purchases. Win the easy ones and half of the hard ones and pitching, pitching, pitching. Just nice that we once again wear our hat with pride in the organization and not have to deal with the lame "Sox suck" comments around every corner. The Yankees now can own that hate again.

In the meantime, the Red Raiders once again rolled into Lincoln, Nebraska and rocked the Huskers who were #15 in the nation, 31-10. Longhorns squeaked out a win against the Bradford-less Sooners. Oh well. Guess Oklahoma really is good for nothing. Oh yeah, the Cowboys of Stillwater gotta good team. Should be the next biggie to fall when they face the Raiders in Stillwater in a few weeks. Might have tickets to the Raiders and Sooners in Lubbock. Would love to see the Raiders toss Bradford on that shoulder again. Have a speedy recovery, Sammy, we need you to play in Lubbock.

WHEW...SO WHERE WAS I?

2009-10-15T19:47:00.000-07:00

Oh yeah, I was training for a marathon. Still doing that. Knocked out my 12-miler at 5:00 on a Wednesday morning. I say things like that, sometimes, just to exert some sense of superiority. Truth is that I'm not really any better than you. I just enjoy doing stupid things to my body. We're gonna start calling this TEAM BEARD because I have the most righteous Forrest Gump face apron right now.

(pause for gulp off a Santa Fe Pale Ale...goodness)

Plan is to knock it back once more this weekend and then let it shag all the way until race day and shave the night before. It's col' nasty right now.

Training is going well. Well, it's going better. Tuesday night, after returning from Juarez, I took to a six miler and ended up straining my foot. It hurt so bad, I had to stop and rub the foot. It felt like someone drove a nail through the top of my foot. We legged out the rest of it, but only ended up totalling four miles. It was a horrible attempt. This was near a week after my last run. My mind was eager, but my body was unwilling.

Tonight went much better. It was a reassuring run, to say the least. The foot ached a little, but recovered by the second mile. By mile three, my foot pains were a thing of the past. Kool Aid made the run. It's been too long since we've had a good run together. Looks like most of our scheduling problems are starting to iron themselves out. We'll do 14 on Saturday morning. For those scoring at home, that's a half marathon. Jury's still out on the new shoes. First run out in them, I had foot pains. Not a good start to our relationship. Still have probably 60-75 miles in my Lunarlite trainers.

Ran to White Stripes tonight. Rare that I don't run to hip hop. White Stripes hit the spot.

I ain't no friend hoarder on Facebook. I really only let the best in.

Still don't like Dodge Neons and, yes, hip hop is dying. I don't even connect with the music anymore. Either I'm getting old or the music just sucks. I was at Enterprise renting a car the other day and this girl was all meanmugging and working her best ruffneck look. Her phone rang. It was some rump-shakin' mess that you hear on the radio. She showed the girl at the desk her identification and she was 16 years old. Girl was born in 1993. Girl wasn't even born until the end of the Golden Age. By the time she could even understand the music and it's context, Big Daddy Kane was getting lifetime achievement awards by the armful and Grand Puba was slinging another solo record on Koch. Girl's whole style is the art of imitation. She doesn't even know what she's reppin'. Like Jeru said...she play'd herself.

Left the country and the Red Sox were in the playoffs. Came back and they were out. That was quick enough. At least I didn't have to suffer through it. Knew that it would be a string of miracles if the Sox were to make a serious run at the title. I mean, really, I don't think anyone's making it past the Yankees. They went out and bought the talent. I might disagree with it, but seems to be working for them. Here's to the Angels. They got their work cut out for them.

Listening to Gang Starr's Daily Operation. It always tends to put me in a nostalgic mood.

So, I went to Juarez to build a house. Went with 10 others from my church including my lovely wife. Truly a hardhitting experience. Our Missions Committee gets hit alot with comments like "we have enough people at need right here in Texas, why must you go all the way to Mexico?" Trust me, after seeing it firsthand, it's tenfold once you cross the border. And, as my brother said, "God didn't create borders. We did." Juarez needs some serious help.

Time has cured many of my right wing tendencies, but I grew up in the panhandle of Texas. You're brought up going fo 'self. Helping out Mexico? Really? C'mon. We got our own problems. And most of our problems are because of them. Just keep them out. That's the Texas way. Build a huge ass fence by a river and just dare them to cross.

Here's a few facts. In Juarez, guns are illegal. With guns being illegal, where do you think they're getting them? Bingo. Estados Unidos. In fact, they make really good trade bait for drogas. Yep. Cocaine. Heroin. Marijuana. It's Mexico's biggest export and we're their biggest client. We're locked into a long-term relationship with Mexico where one societal ill feeds another. We allow them quicker kills and, well, their love is mutual. They ship a million more drug habits into the States a week. Do the knowledge, kid.

Also, in Mexico, public education runs out at the young age of 12. Then you gotta pay for it. So what happens when you're a young tike in a family of seven and your parents make only $110 combined weekly? Think you're going to get secondary education? Nah. You learn how to say your ABCs, subtraction and how to wipe your butt and then you're sent to fend for yourself. That's a sixth grade education. How much did you know when you left sixth grade? Maybe you knew the rules to kick ball. That was probably about it.

And, while the druglords are no longer ruling the streets, it's federales...about ten deep in the back of a Humvee with AK47s slung over their shoulder...and they look no older than 18 most of them. The border crossing was an absolute bummer. They made us unload our entire trailer and open up everything so they could see all of our possessions. It took about an hour thirty to make into the country. Then, you drive around Juarez and you think this is what you're protecting?

Really, Juarez is about as harsh of elements as you'll find. Not only is the poverty widespread and clearly indiscriminate, it's much worse than the States. Our poverty line is still supported by a number of government programs. In fact, the poverty line still affords minimal urban living--walls, air conditioning, a furnace, hot water. That "poverty" in Juarez is like middle class.

We helped a family of seven. Two adults raising five kids...two of which were dumped on them by the mother's sister as she fled town. She's raising them in a house no bigger than a single-stall garage made out of pallets, corrugated cardboard and computer boxes. You could see sunlight through the walls, the floor was dirt and it was built, basically, amidst a junkyard. Rabid dogs ruled the land. That and the relentless sunlight. The weather was cooler, but one could only imagine what the summers are like in that desert land. With only an annual rainfall of nine inches and wind like you can't imagine.

I met a young kid named Francisco. The lone boy in the bunch. He was a spirited kid, but obviously lacking options and experience. He'd mount a horse, beat the crap out of it, the chase a dog or a chicken. He was just rotting away on this land. It's a harsh reality. I can't even imagine waking up every morning to it. No mobility. No job. No change. No connection to the outside world. I brought with me a futbol americana (the more oval-shaped football), but he wasn't so interested. He wanted to play futbol. The round kind. I gave it my best. You could tell he was so eager for stimulation. Made me think about how sometimes I yearn to not have stimulation. I like just doing nothing...well, doing nothing but running. But that's how I get away now. I run from stimulation. Here this kid's out there with me kicking a futbol back and forth like he's been waiting years for someone to come and do this with him.

We built the house quickly. We actual slowed down to make it last and to spend more time with the family. It was all adults because no one wants to send their kids to Juarez anymore. Better for productivity, though. Learned how to make stucco. Not sure what kinda market there is, but think that if the music industry implodes and everything's free, I can always stucco houses.

Met some nice folks for Casas por Cristo. Good organization. Good folks. Whaddup, Brandon. Whaddup, El Tigre.

On the third day, the mother made us "pork." Turns out it was really goat. It was goodness, though. Spicier than the nutsack on a habenero, but it was good.

We left for the border on Monday morning. Never been so happy to be in El Paso. Amazing that, just a half mile north, it's a third world country. It's like night and day. Not only do mission trips to Juarez benefit the participant on a spiritual level, but there's a number of social and political questions that rise to the surface from such a trip. Is our neighbor Juarez also our enemy? Do we help our enemy or just let them suffer on their own just next door? I wonder if the crime rate in El Paso would be where it was if that was, say, Vancouver on the other side. Funny how we waited close to an hour and a half going into Mexico as they checked everything we were bringing in yet to the north, you can barely break speed crossing the Canadian border.

Juarez needs help. That's all I'll say. Don't know who reading this will take action, but guess there's no harm in just saying it.

Jackson hurt his back left leg. Not sure doing what. I think he was trying to dunk on an 8-foot rim and had adviced him that he wasn't gonna land it. Anyhow, confining a beagle to a "crate-like" atmosphere is proving to be challenging. Not because he's trying to escape, but he just tries to sadden you into action.

Tucker, however, is just a bundle of joy. Really because he's too stupid to know any better. That's why I like him.

I sold that Juarez experience really short. Mainly because I'm tired and need to go to bed. I hate going so long without posting, but broham's busy living. Hope you are too. My nephew Parker's celebrating his big number two next weekend. He's the bestest. And he's a big 2Pac fan. In fact, dude's more than a fan.

Friday, homie. Tomorrow, I'll run 14 miles and then pack back some serious Sharkey's burritos, then a nap, then some Texas Tech football as they'll knock off the Nebraska Cornhuskers.

I miss all of you.

TEAM ROOT DOWN MARATHONING

2009-09-29T04:23:00.000-07:00

Col' rocked eleven miles yesterday. I guess, in journalism, once you exceed the number "ten" in a sequence, you are to transition to numerical representation of numbers. I ran 11 miles yesterday. 11 miles will get you comfortably from American Airlines Center in downtown Dallas up to White Rock Lake. This week, I'll run 12. It was a challenge yesterday. Had to run without Kool Aid. Woke up at 5:30 and went through my typical pre-run preparation and stretching. The book had spoken of developing a self-affirmation of sorts that you're to say to yourself the second you get out of bed all the way up to your run and during your run. More on that later. But I had that going through my head during the hour leading up to it. Tried not to get too hyped up though. As they advise, you don't wanna get too up for a run or your pace is ruined and you'll wear out faster.

So many rules and every runner is different.

My pregames are pretty much like this. Contacts in. Banana. Bagel. Maybe another banana. Four ibuprofen. Two glasses of water. Stretch. Stretch back. Stretch legs. Stretch legs. Stretch legs. Stretch arms. Stretch neck. Stretch back. Stretch legs again. Put on underwear. Put on shorts. Watch TV. Relax. Self affirm. Get iPod ready. Fill up Camelbak with Gatorade/water mixture. Pack supplement gel. Pack phone. Vaseline inner thighs. Vaseline nipples. Put on shirt. Tuck in the back. Put on hat. Go out front. Stretch back and arms again. Self affirm. Stretch calves. Stretch Achilles. Shake out arms and legs. Check time. Start music. Put in headphones. Commence jog.

It's done much in the same way that a warrior prepares for battle. I quietly move from room to room breathing deeply. Now become methodical. Ritualistic. Of course, in my days, from about 6AM to 7:30 is always ritualistic. If it wasn't, I'd probably say, "What in the hell am I doing up at this hour?" And go back to bed.

Suppose you get used to it.

You have many friends in marathoning. Besides my partner who is constantly there to push me and to push. It's a symbiotic relationship. Important for a runner. Doing the run yesterday was easy after I accepted on the third mile that he ain't there and I'm just going to have to deal with it.

Other important friends are your gear. Essential in a Root Down Run is the iPod. Until a few years ago, runners didn't have many options as far as portable music except the Discman or the Walkman. Both of which were incredibly bulky and limited as far as duration of play.

The iPod Shuffle however has a good four hours of play and such a very small fame that pressing play and throwing it in the small pocket of your Camelbak is fairly easy. Also, given that you can't search for songs, it takes out the temptation to thumb through which REO Speedwagon song you want to hear next. Press play and take what it gives you. That's what the Shuffle was designed for. Also, the Shuffle is quite durable and shielded from the elements like sweat, Gatorade, stompings or dog bite. Practically indestructable. My music of choice yesterday was some old DJ Shadow radio mixes. I prefer 30-45 minute mixes for continuous musical enjoyment. I don't like the song-shuffling format. Too chaotic. I'm a long-play homie.

Also, you can't do anything more than four miles without significant hydration. In the summer, you can't do more than two. That's where the Camelbak comes in. For about thirty bones, you can sport one of these beautiful packs.

In many ways, it's kinda the fannypack of the runner's world, but because we're not camels and we need constant water, the Camelbak is a necessary piece of gear. Not only is it great for hydration, it's gotta small pocket that can carry a phone, a Shuffle and one of those nasty-ass Carb packets. Also, for your upper body, while it's not that heavy at all, it does act as resistance in your run and can strengthen shoulders over the course of a two-hour run. Don't be a moron like me and bite through the valve when you first get it. I've been dealing with a constant leak and, after my ten-miler, that leak led to wetness all over the right side of my shirt and resulted in a small case of runner's nipple where a wet garment rubbing on a sensitive area just takes layers of skin right off. Yeah, bloody nipple. Read the instructions if you wanna keep your nipples. Nothing gangsta about losing nipples on a long run.

If you're running when the sun's out, you're gonna need a hat. If you're gonna run in any temperature higher than 60 degrees, it's gonna need to breathe. I started out with my Fog Hat. It worked for shielding my balding head and huge forehead from the sun, but that's really about it.

This thing was hotter than hell and was like wearing some sort of Medieval sweating torture device. When I'd take it off, it was like someone was wrenching a sweat towel over me. I needed something different. That's when I transitioned into the less fashionable, but more functional Under Armour runner's cap. Made of a mesh, those manure-fused West Texas winds go right through my headgear however my hairless top is well-protected from the sun.

They're kinda expensive. I'd prefer they put at least a double-T on there so I could represent something other than Under Armour. Looking for a different one with less logoing on it. I don't belong to anyone. Team Root Down, baby.

Other friends of Team Root Down are less gear and more related to diet/nutrition or medical preventatives. The most important of these include the banana. As much as I've hated these for, uh, the last twenty five years, I've finally trained my body to receive them again. I needed to. The banana is a high potassium food that's fantastic before and after runs because the potassium relieves cramping and aches in the body during a run and shortly after.

I munch one a day even if it's not a run day. Also, from the fruit family, I religiously much also an apple and an orange a day. Apples are good in carbs and oranges are my cold and flu preventative. It's worked the last three winters. Another important element to Team Root Down Marathoning is ibuprofen. Other than being coated in that vomitous Longhorn-orange, these puppies are great for also relieving aches during the run. I pop four of them before heading out on the long runs and three before the medium runs. And, mostly, before bedtime, I'll take a few more because it helps me sleep well--mostly aiding with backaches.
Keep them around. I like to muscle through just about everything, but sometimes it's necessary to take a pill here or there.

On the earlier runs, because I hated the sensation of Vaseline on my body, I was using baby powder to aid in the dryness of those sensitive bathing suit areas. Yeah, you know what I'm talking about.
It worked well on the short runs, but as we went moved into six miles and up, it was no match for the incredible accumulation of sweat so I moved up to Vaseline that, not only can effectively fix squeaky doors, it can also make sure that there's no chaffing and blistering in your hot spots. Not only that, it doesn't powder up right smack in the middle of your shorts when you're running. I wear black shorts so when that white powder hits the front of them, it looks like you peed cocaine. Not a good look.

Ah, Vaseline. Proper administration of those retro-petro can prevent a number of things--most importantly of those is the debilitating chaffing that can lay you up for multiple runs depending on the severity. Not only that, it makes you walk like a duck or a penguin. Being that I'm already naturally awkward, having to explain an otherwise unexplainable waddle is not something I'd particularly like to do. Vaseline up. Hit the nipples. You don't wanna end up being some weird nipple-less alien creature who eats poodles. Vaseline is your friend. Holla.

In my reading, there's much talk about the mental aspect of running. I think too of the spiritual aspect of running. There's a lot at work when you're forcing your body to accept, now, two consecutive hours of exertion. It's mental, spiritual and definitely physical. If one's not working, there's an imbalance and it could be detrimental.

Firstly, you're trying to maintain your pace, your rhythm, your step. You're trying not to think. Trying not to get too hyped up.

Breathe. Keep your head level. Stay on your heels. Keep breathing. Why is my belly cramping. Keep breathing. In and out. In and out. Stay loose. Stay on your heels. Head up. Back straight. Don't lean forward. When you lean forward, you're running on your toes. Stay back. Upright. Arms at your side angled down and don't clinch those fists, dude. Your shoulders will start hurting. Head level. Breathe, homie. Keep breathing. Look both ways. Proceed. Why does my ankle hurt? Don't think about the ankle. Belly cramp is still there. Breathe it away. Stay loose. In and out. In. Out. In. Out. Great, a dog with no leash. Look both ways. Wonder what our pace is.

As you proceed into the run, many of these instructions habitualize and are no longer thought. They're just done.

Breathe. Back straight. Head level. Stay on your heels.

The pains go away. The cramping reduces. Traffic is traffic. You look for it, but you're not terribly alarmed by it. Dogs? Hell, you don't notice them until they're running right next to you like one did to me the other day. I didn't even notice that I was listening to a radio interview the other day on my iPod for close to ten minutes because I was zoning and my body had relaxed into a pace and a comfortable position. The pace becomes less an issue than just making it. When you don't think of pace, I've found, you actually hit your best pace. You force it once you start to think of it.

Breathe. Back straight. Head level. Stay on your heels.

The other day, I did ten miles at a 10:19 pace. Yesterday, I did 11 miles at a 10:48 pace. More hills mainly. I think my true pace is somewhere in the middle, but am not going to obsess about it.

There's also the emphasis put on visualization in the book. That a simple loop that you can play back in your head might make all the difference in the world. They say it can be a "greatest hits" loop of a sampling from each of your best runs. Like what the weather was like, what it felt like, where you were, who you were running with. The smells, the sights. Or maybe a visualization of what it will be like finishing the marathon. Who will be there to greet you. What you'll say to them. What they'll say to you. How good you'll feel. I got the visualization of ending the race and hugging my lovely wife. That's a great one. Not quite as good, but more entertaining is the visualization that I'm running away from an army of zombies. I know, it sounds stupid, but when you're crawling up that hill, I like to visualize that there's about fifty zombies behind me ready to tear my arms off.

It's actually how I arrived at my next music project: "Music to Flee a Zombie Invasion By." I see it as a two-hour dash from thousands of zombies. Not the Night of the Living Dead variety, but the Dawn of the Dead remake variety where all of them run and hurdle like Carl Lewis. Just wait. This is gonna be ill.

Oh yeah. The affirmation. It's a little Stuart Smalley, but I get it. I'm following the book's instructions. I don't know any better. So it goes like this:

I'm a marathoner. I'll run on any day at any time in any weather. I don't ache. I don't tire. I don't get frustrated. While I wasn't born to do this, I can train my body to do anything and nothing can hold me back. With God on my side and hell on my heels, I'm running my happy-ass 26.22 miles in December.

Rinse and repeat. Rinse and repeat. Going to Juarez this week to build a home. Pretty sure I won't be running down there. Will need to find a way to knock out a 12-miler this week. Shirts should be in this week. Demand seems to be extended past supplies. The early responders to my solicitations will get their shirts. First come first serve. I'll be reaching out for addresses once I get them back from the Austin area.

New shoes come in this week too. Word 'em up.

GAME DAY IN BOSTON

2009-09-26T03:14:00.000-07:00

Back to the vacation because, if you'll recall, we ended in Maine and that was only the first full day of our seven day vacation. Woke up on Monday morning to a nice overcast, but not enough to dissuade me from taking my measley three-mile jog as required. I took a route through the Back Bay that led me across the Charles River over to MIT and back. Now, I'm fairly certain that NYC never sleeps, but Boston does. At the hour I was up that morning, it was a dormant and peaceful city. I even beat birds out of bed. It was a rare feeling of serenity (note the first use of the word serenity on The Root Down). I was jogging in my clunky old New Balances as I deliberately only packed one pair of shoes to cut down on luggage. The 574's were not the perfect choice, but they're a nice cross-functional shoe. Heavy on jogs, though.
It was the day after a loss to the Yankees. In fact, the Spanks took two of the three games while in town. A huge setback for the Sox who desperately needed slow down the second half tear the Yankees were enjoying. Giving up two of three at home...probably not gonna do it. Of course, when anyone from the Central Division comes to town, there's a feeling of optimism and resilience because, well, we're gonna whoop their ass. Nothing says rebound like the Chicago White Sox and their batting practice-quality starting pitching. Good thing we didn't have to face Buerhle in this series. We spent the better part of the day just walking the streets of Boston. We went through the Back Bay near the commons. Checked out some of the old beautiful churches. I hit a few stores...namely City Sports...and looked at some running shoes. Talked to some statues.

At lunch, we took the train to Harvard and visited Bartley's Burger Cottage just across the street from campus. It was cramped for space, but well worth it. Some kid kept looking over his mother's shoulder and throwing fries at me...some with ketchup. My lovely wife, probably the pickiest of eaters, was in trouble. Think she jumped out and got a burger with cheese and lettuce and maybe bacon. I can't recall.
As for myself? Easy. The American Idol which had bacon, cheese, grilled mushrooms, grilled onions. Yep. Mushrooms. Finally have trained my taste to accept mushrooms.

Something very weird in the city. I'm from places with parking lots. Restaurants with tons of space, big booths, large bathrooms with stalls you can do cartwheels in. Texas has tons of real estate. In some eateries in the Northeast, you don't get your own table. You sit on a long bench next to someone you don't know. It's like a cafeteria. It was a little bizarre at first because, well, I grew up in a place where you got your own table. A little privacy. Here, there's a kid next to you throwing crap at you. Strange. I could get used to it, but it was a little strange.

Boston is largely considered one of the most academic cities in America. It has Harvard, MIT, Boston College, Boston University, Berklee School of Music, Tufts University, Boston Conservatory, UMass, New England Conservatory of Music, Art Institute of Boston, Massachusetts College of Art, Emerson College, Suffolk University, Northeastern University, Newbury College, Cambridge College and a host of others. Just worth noting.

After lunch, we headed downtown to check out Mike's Pastry for a cannoli which my wife described something like a donut or some sort of fried bread that's stuffed with a filling of a sweetened cream cheese variety er something. Whatever. Let's do it. Then we'd go check out the North End. Mother Nature had other plans. The second we started devouring our cannolis, it began to pour. Great...on game day. No reason to worry, except that I purchased these tickets in February, have had them secretly tucked away in a book on a shelf somewhere in our house. I picked a date on the calendar some seven months prior of a game we were to attend, got the best tickets for that game which, at least on the seating chart, appeared to be decent tickets and now it's raining. Not only is it raining, it's coming down "hah-dah" than many of the locals have seen in recently. Awesome.
Not to be deterred, my lovely wife made the most out of it by enjoying a nice beverage--some interesting orange drink...a carbonated drink...that she drank with a straw out of a can. It wasn't Crush though. Something Italian.
The cannolis were pretty good. I opted for chocolate. I kinda reminded me of the chocolate pies I used to enjoy as a young boy. You know, the kind you could get at 7-11. They were wrapped in some sort of waxy paper and it was just like biting into a chocolate pudding pie. Kinda cold. Had to do it though. It was then I started thinking that next year, one of my New Years' resolutions would be to never turn down eating a new food for a year. Not that I would never turn down food and balloon to a whopping 300 pounds. No, I would never say no to a food I've never had before.

While we were in the area, we decided to hit up the North End to catch some hot bocci action at the bocci courts on the waterfront. Unfortunately, Mother Nature beat us there.

Guess what we play in our turd-infested backyard is not really "bocci." That's the West Texas-backyard version. It's typically played on a fine gravel court. Not grass. Not sure if I could make the adjustment to gravel. I rely on the grass and turds to slow my balls down. Er. Uh.

A check of the watch suggested it was time to head back to the Back Bay as batting practice and pre-game festivities were underway. We headed back to our swanky hotel and I threw on my traditional game garb--my red Youkilis shirt--and we headed down to Yawkey Way.

I love it down there. For a guy from Texas, the experience of Yawkey Way is unmatched. In Texas, we tailgate which largely works for football, but not really for a paced and sometimes excrutiatingly slow game like baseball. This is like one big tailgate. Even sweaty Jim Rice showed.
You know, for a Hall of Famer, dude's got an unusual glisten. Someone throw Jimmy a towel. We made our way down into the park. We follow the signs on the concourse and I was partly using my internal navigational skills. I knew we were close to home plate. We dodged through crowds on our way to our ramp. As we walked up the ramp, we were greeted by the ominous frame of the Green Monster. The Fenway experience is a claustrophobic one. With it's Green Monster, tightly seating and humble street-level disposition still makes it one of the few stadiums that doesn't share any of the characteristics of the supersized turf shopping malls that now dominate the landscape. Like Wrigley, I'm sure, the first time you see the field is when it hits you how completely badass some of these old stadiums are. It's unapologetically uncomfortable, cramped, dirty and has no parking but it's Fenway. You just deal with it. This is what I saw when we came up the ramp. There's nothing like it. The smell of freshly cut grass, hot dog water, beer, a cheap musk on the dude next to you, thirty years of gum under the paralyzing seat you now squeezed your ass into. We find an usher to help us with our seat. He glances at our tickets and then says in an obvious tone, "You're right here," and points to two seat not but an arm's length away. Sure enough, we were right there.
Early bird gets those Stephen King seats. These were Ben Affleck in the Good Will Hunting-days seats. You gotta get up early to get these seats, kid. It ain't about cheddah, homie. It's about a good alarm clock. I got in my seat, my lovely wife went to get some beers (she offered, really) and I readied my lineups and freshened up on my scoring to make sure I could hang during the game.

Tonight we'd be taking in Buchholz vs. Contreras of the Chicago White Sox. Nothing gets a winning streak started like bringing AL Central teams to Fenway. Although Buchholz would get shelled early, the Sawx hung on in a wild one, winning 12-8. Plenty of offense and that keeps the lovely wife happy. The ladies don't like pitching matchups. They like homeruns. I love the game. What can I say?

We went deep in the bullpen bringing Saito, Ramirez, Okajima (who had his own cheering section), Bard (who fired about six pitches at 100 mph) and Papelbon who I think my lovely wife fell in love with from this vantage point. Dude, how hard up are you to make a poster for a middle relief pitcher? This hawd.

Wait. Did you catch the gasface?

Nice.

A few beers, a Lowell homerun and three hits from Pedroia later, we were leaving with a win. This is always a welcome sight in Fenway.

Fast forward to tonight, we're getting our ass-ends handed to us by the Blue Jays as we trying to painstakenly reduce our magic number for the wild card from two to zero. After getting swept by the Yankees over the weekend and then having to watch them yesterday clinch the division in front of us, you'd think that we'd have enough fire in us to punch our tickets to the playoffs. This team acts like they don't want it. Better find some sort of inspiration because likely we'll be playing the Angels first round. That won't be pretty.

The next morning, we headed to South Station to catch a southbound Amtrak train to Manhattan. Plains, trains and automobiles, kid. And a ferry too. More on that later.

Listening to Showbiz and AG. And you're not. That's when y'lost.

HOW TO DIFFERENTIATE FAN FROM GRADUATE

2009-09-18T02:25:00.001-07:00

Living in the Panhandle where, let's face it, football is king and no one likes the local teams, it's important to be armed with the ability to differentiate between purely a fan and then those who actually graduated from their institution of higher learning of choice. In Texas, the University of Texas is often the default choice for collegiate sports. I mean, dudes that didn't even graduate from high school are throwing horns like wassup now and, as many of you have heard me complain about before, you can't just pick a college to root for. There's two ways to become a fan of a specific college or university. You can root for a college/university if you attend, have attended or work for that institution of higher learning. You can also root for a university if you are from the same municipality that shares the university. Now, while I went to Texas Tech, if I did not, I could still be a fan because I was born and raised in Lubbock. However, I cannot root for, say, SMU. I am only permitted to root for Texas Tech or LCU (Lubbock Christian). Now, if I'm from Lubbock but had attended, say, Arizona State, I could root for three teams: ASU, TTU and LCU, but only those three. If your city or town does not have a college or has a college with no sports, you can root for the closest college geographically. And moving to a town does not necessarily qualify you for fandom. That's where it gets especially fuzzy so we'll leave that for another lesson.

If you were born and raised in the Yellow but did not attend college, since AC does not have a sports program, you are permitted to root for only West Texas A&M in Canyon. Yeah, sure, it seems cruel, but someone's gotta root for Division II schools. They'd probably have a helluva football program by now if everyone in the Yellow backed them and came out to the games, contributed to the booster programs. You wanna root for University of Texas, you should've studied in high school. The man in the above, yes, with the beads and sombrero, likely did not graduate from University of Texas. In fact, his obsession with the school is likely to be so intense that he might often forget that it is, after all, a school firstly and a great football program secondly. The fandom reaches almost feverish levels. The combination of that man's stupid hat, Mardi Gras beads (no telling how he got those...likely he was dumb enough to buy them and you hope he did and didn't lose any clothing to get them), his knockoff Oakleys and that corny goatee, suggests that he didn't take a single year of college.

There's a number of consumer products targeted at those experience frenzied fandom (and not all too coincidentally those who also shop at Home Depot and watch Nascar). We'll just use University of Texas again as an example for no particular reason. Now, we know this to be a hammer, but for the diehard fan (not graduate, mind you), you can have it drenched in your favorite university's colors and logoing. Not saying that if you graduated from University of Texas, you're not likely to use one of these, but I'll say this: if your a University of Texas football fan in the Panhandle, you're probably more likely to have one of these in your toolbox. Or on your mantle.
If you have anything that inflates in your home that has University of Texas logoing, I would say it's especially likely that you're just a fan. It's one of those frivolent purchases that most graduates wouldn't spend their money on. Either because it's a moronic investment of cash and/or their busy paying off student loans.
Also in the department where you'd find inflatable items or Nerf are the foamy fingers. I've never noticed a college graduate using these at games. Scan the student section at any televised football game and look for the foamy finger. These are the types of purchases that not only scream high school dropout, but they also denote individuals who have drinking problems. Such binging leads to purchasing foamy fingers and then passing out. They can also lead to playing carney games when the fair comes to town. Hell, such binging leads to going to the fair. Also, notice the goatee. I see a theme.
The below are the cars of individuals with some decent expendable income, but not a lot of brains unfortunately. What drives someone to such levels of idiocy, I'm unsure.
Seriously. I mean, really...seriously? While we're on automobiles, anyone that subscribes to the catty and childish inverting of a rivals decal is certainly not a graduate. See also PEEING CALVIN DECALS. See also BACK WINDOW ALL-OVER DECALS.My Texas Tech Red Raiders go up against #2 UT this weekend in Austin. I don't think we have a trailer's chance in a windstorm, but gotta watch anyway. It really is much like going up against a tornado, you protect yourself, don't do anything stupid, minimize injuries and pray for the best. It's possible we could win this, but I'm not going to even try and calculate those odds. UT's just as solid as they were last year, we're less our star quarterback and wide receiver and we're in Austin this time. Worst of all, UT's got revenge on their mind.

Holla.

WENT TO THE DENTIST, LEARNED ABOUT 70+ RACE HATE

2009-09-17T04:19:00.000-07:00

I'll be honest...it's been, probably 15 years since I've had my teeth cleaned. I mean, I brush, but not the kind where they use a pick to scrape your teeth and gums until you bleed so much that you're swallowing gulps of your own blood and, as a result, you go home and puke because of the blood in your belly. Haven't had that kinda cleaning in a while. Of course, my hygienist says that if I got my teeth cleaned more often, I probably wouldn't have that happen. Guess, then, it truly is the cleaning that only happens once every 15 years.

Regardless.

I walk in for my appointment, sign in, grab a newspaper and have a seat. I was reading the sports section. Something about Texas Tech. I hear two women talking just across from me. Probably about ten feet away. On the wall, they sit with about five or so chairs between them. One woman is clearly older than 70. A little feeble. Hunched over in her chair. She had one of those sweet grandma voices. My grandmothers are much older and, for the record, carry themselves much better--good genes. The other is a woman that's probably about mid-40s. In their exchange as I was walking in, the younger of the two women has told the other that she busses kids for a living. It leads into one of those weird elderly monologues which constantly just boarders on bitchery. Just complaining.

"This country has just gone downhill," comments the older woman. "It's just not the way it used to be. Life was so simple." She continues to talk about computers like they're an epidemic, how rowdy kids are these days and how you can't trust anyone. I check out temporarily and go back to reading. Just an old woman complaining about something. "That older generation is dying off. People like me."

Just moments later, I perk my ears up to hear here remarking something relating to "they're just so uncontrollable" and "always seem to be up to no good." I just hold the paper in front of my face and direct my ears to their conversation. She lowers her voice as if she senses me listening in. "I imagine they're just a wild on the bus."

The busdriver replies, "Well, it doesn't matter what color they are, all kids are pretty wild these days."

The older woman stands up and moves to the seat next to the busdriver. "I tell you, though, you know why they're so wild, it's because they came from Africa."

Serious. I'm not kidding.

She continues, "Of course, I remember back when it was much different for them. People used to call them (she then buries her voice) 'niggers' you know."

I sat motionless, startled.

She continues, "I always hated that word and never called them that. Except when I thought they deserved it. You know, like when they were acting like one."

Awesome stuff.

At that point, I was about to stand up, walk over to her and kick her chair or something. I didn't look at the busdriver, but she made no reply. I imagine she was a struck as I was. About three seconds later, a woman appeared to the left of me ready to take me back to the row of dentistry chairs in the back. I stood up, glared at her and cleared my throat in her direction and proceeded back into the office.

I guess when she talks about the simpler times, she's referring to when people were shameless bigots and they sprayed black kids with high-powered hoses. When presidents were white men. You know, when blacks had to use different water fountains. We forgive old people too often when they spew obvious and unmistakable hate. I think, as the younger generation, part of our social maturation means correcting the err of the older generations. You can't just say, "Okay, starting now no more bigotry." If you tolerate the hate of the older generation, you've made no progress. I'm guilty of it too. Trust me. In fact, I should've stopped this woman and said, "Stop talking, ma'am. You're about to make a really big mistake." I didn't. I just sat there purely as a witness to her racehate.

Gotta love West Texas. But let's be real. It's not just West Texas. It's not just at the dentist office. It's not just old people. And it's not just blacks and Latinos. Hate and intolerance is so thick in this country. Lucky for me, I rarely have collisions with it because the people I associate with primarily know my sensitivity to bigotry and hate. Secondly, I don't roll in public that often. I have my safe zones, but I don't particularly like being around people. For the longest time out of high school, I was a sponge for experience. I put myself in situations that made me uncomfortable so I could learn, grow. Maybe defend my point, but it grew old and exhaustive. You just can't change the world. Now I anonymously jab from The Root Down and expect to change the world through a blog that has no readership except for my closest friends and family.

Man, this coffee is dark this morning. Second morning in a row. Good thing, though. I'm so tired.

Rangers were shut out last night...again at home versus the A's. Gotta win the easy ones if you're going to make the playoffs. Sawx won again last night in the ninth innings versus the Angels. The wild card lead climbs to 6.5 games. Yankees won in the ninth as well last night. We're still 6.5 behind in the division.

I love you for who you are. Keep on rockin, son. It's Thursday.

THE ROOT DOWN PRESENTS: THE NYC METROCARD MIX

2009-09-15T22:26:00.000-07:00

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD VIA ZSHARE

Just watching the highlights from last night's games. Looks like Boston can't lose and the Rangers just kinda took care of themselves losing the last two to the A's in Arlington. It's not a done deal yet, but it ain't really much of a race either with a 5.5 game lead.

Man, that coffee's dark this morning. Holy cow. I can see my fingernails growing.

Ya'll kiddies are in for a treat. If you're just happenin' in, today's your lucky day, homie. Because this morning, I present THE ROOT DOWN NYC METROCARD MIX. The concept is pretty easy: create a mix that represents various subway stops around the city by select either songs about NYC and/or songs by NYC musicians from that area. There are a few exceptions.

Our subterraneous trip through the city begins in Flushing-Queens with the Last Poets' fitting tribute to the city, "New York, New York." While there, we roll near LL's "Farmer's Boulevard" and Kool G Rap's "Rikers Island" where NYC's hardest reside. Organized Konfusion sends us off on our way to Queensbridge where we enjoy Nas's (obvious) NYC anthem, "NY State of Mind" and MC Shan's equally anthemic "The Bridge." We cross over into the Bronx where not only do we hear KRS One, but Ace effin' Frehley, yes, a Bronx native. Then, into Harlem and, yes, we'll enjoy two different "Harlem River Drives." One by Eddie Palmieri and the other, the more popular of the two, Bobby Humphrey on Blue Note. Bronx and Harlem are just hawd. As little as I spent in the City (and, really, I think four days is a short stay for only one city and that's NYC), we didn't get a chance to head north of Central Park so, essentially, Bronx and Harlem are sadly loosely represented by maybe some obvious picks, but you can't tell me that you were expecting Harlem's own Zhiggie. Son, you lost. Once you cross 110th Street, you're moving downtown. Manhattan, Theater District, Lower East Side, Soho, Washington Square...here's where things tend to get a little hairy. So many styles, so many artists (or so many "artists"), so many freaks. Manhattan's a bustling, non-stop madhouse. It's streets are a series of veins and arteries that pump life in and out of the boroughs. You'll enjoy the beauty of summer in Central Park and autumn in Washington Square. You'll even get your freak on as you meet some of Manhattan's finest druggies, prostitutes and transvestites...a notable one named "Holly."

Get serenaded by a bum who calls himself "Ol' Dirty Bastard" doing Sugarhill Gang. Definitively New York. One exception to the qualifying elements of the mix is my new favorite saxophonist Albert Ayler. He's not from lower Manhattan. He's not even from NYC. But at the young age of 34, he boarded the Liberty Ferry which services the Statue of Liberty and as it departed from Battery Park, he jumped into the cold November waters to his death. His fiery "New Generation" and his blazing vocal approach will absolutely melt your face off. Considered to be one of his most horrid performances, I find it remarkable. Don't listen to jazz critics, like hip hop purists, they're always pissed off and everything sucks unless it's Louis Armstrong or Kind of Blue. Manhattan's completed by another notable death in the same waters and that is monologuist Spalding Gray who, also, jumped from a ferry departing from the tip of Manhattan--the Staten Island Ferry. His "Dear NYC" is a post-9/11 letter to the city...written only months before his suicide. We couldn't get to Staten Island because it's not serviced by subway so, sorry, no Wu. You can download my Wu mix from last year.

Hip hop might've been born in South Bronx or even Queensbridge, but it grew up in Brooklyn. Some of the finest hip hop from the 80s and early 90s came of the street corners of Brooklyn. The music of Brooklyn is so very rich, the culture can only be cut with a chainsaw. Like elsewhere in the City, there seems to be a song about every freaking street corner. You'll hit Brighton Beach with native Herbie Mann, Flatbush, Long Island and then head back into Queens completing the loop through the city finishing with Hollis-Queens' favorite sons, Run DMC.

Thanks to George who provided some of the backbone of the mix. He'll contend there's too much hip hop and not enough spoken word. Maybe he's right. It's hard, though, to pull through NYC, the birthplace of hip hop and not have a mix that's dominant in hip hop. Plus, that's my lean. I'm a hip hop head. I got a few suggestions during and some after I had completed it of songs that needed to be included. If I included them all, this puppy would've been five hours long. It's impossible. When you're trying to perfectly represent a music mecca like NYC, you're going to have to cut corners. And that, my friend, is why we took the subway. Even though it's not prettiest or safest way through the city, it's one of the fastest and cheapest. Just get your MetroCard and it'll take you damn near anywhere. It'll take you from almost Connecticut all the way down to Coney Island. For the traveling head on a budget, this is the mix for you. Because as little as you paid for that MetroCard, it's gets you everywhere and this resulting mix is one of duration and mass. Timing in at just over two hours and forty-six minutes, it's the very longest that I've ever completed. A mammoth mix of exactly 50 songs, it'll take a while to download so be patient, but I guarantee that it'll be worth the trip.

Here's that tracklist. Don't forget your cover art, it'll stand as a nice visual for your trip through the city with all of key stops called out. Click this right here or the link below the cover art at the top.

Stand clear of the closing doors, please.

Tracklist:

THE LAST POETS "NEW YORK, NEW YORK"
LL COOL J "FARMERS BLVD (OUR ANTHEM)"
YELLOWMAN "NEW YORK, NEW YORK"
KOOL G RAP "RIKERS ISLAND"
ORGANIZED KONFUSION "ROUGH SIDE OF TOWN"
NAS "NY STATE OF MIND"
SUPER KIDS "GO QUEENSBRIDGE"
MC SHAN "THE BRIDGE"
CROSS BRONX EXPRESSWAY "CROSS BRONX EXPRESSWAY"
KING SUN "COL' NEW YORKIN'"
TALL DARK AND HANDSOME "THE BRONX IS BACK"
COLD CRUSH BROTHERS "THE BRONX"
KRS ONE "SOUTH BRONX"
ACE FREHLEY "NEW YORK GROOVE"
LORD TARIQ & PETER GUNZ "DÉJÀ VU (UPTOWN, BABY)"
CANNOBALL ADDERLEY "THE SIDEWALKS OF NEW YORK"
ZHIGGIE "TOSS IT UP"
EDDIE PALMIERI "HARLEM RIVER DRIVE"
BOBBY HUMPHREY "HARLEM RIVER DRIVE"
KOOL G RAP "STREETS OF NEW YORK"
JAMES BROWN "DOWN AND OUT IN NYC"
BOBBY WOMACK "ACROSS 110TH STREET"
TES "NEW NEW YORK"
SONNY ROLLINS "MANNHATTAN"
DEF JEF "DOWNTOWN"
BLACK STAR "RESPIRATION (REMIX)"
HORACE SILVER "SUMMER IN CENTRAL PARK"
MATABARUKA "JOHNNY DRUGHEAD"
MILES DAVIS "NEW YORK GIRL"
LOU REED "WALK ON THE WILDSIDE"
DAVE BRUBECK "AUTUMN IN WASHINGTON SQUARE"
THE FUGS "SLUM GODDESS FROM THE LOWER EAST SIDE"
ALBERT AYLER "NEW GENERATION"
BEASTIE BOYS "HELLO, BROOKLYN!"
CROOKLYN DODGERS "RETURN OF THE CROOKLYN DODGERS"
JERU THE DAMAJA "BROOKLYN TOOK IT"
DIGABLE PLANETS "PACIFICS"
QUINCY JONES "SUMMER IN THE CITY"
JAY-Z/NOTORIOUS B.I.G. "BROOKLYN'S FINEST"
HERBIE MANN "PUSH, PUSH"
ROY AYERS "WE LIVE IN BROOKLYN, BABY"
EAST FLATBUSH PROJECT "TRIED BY 12"
SPECIAL ED "THE BUSH"
JVC FORCE "STRONG ISLAND"
LAFAYETTE AFRO ROCK BAND "HIHACHE"
DE LA SOUL "WONCE AGAIN LONG ISLAND"
EPMD "BOON DOX"
A TRIBE CALLED QUEST "STEVE BIKO (STIR IT UP)"
3RD BASS "BROOKLYN QUEENS"
RUN DMC "PETER PIPER"

TEAM ROOT DOWN MEETS THE WOMAN LYING IN KOOL AID'S YARD

2009-09-13T04:43:00.000-07:00

Wake up, much like I've been doing every Saturday lately...about 6 o'clock...scarf an apple, a banana, a bowl of cereal and two mugs of coffee. Took two ibuprofen and stretched my body out for about thirty minutes. Was feeling good and needed to because today we'd be doing a new high: seven miles. Drove the route with my lovely wife the night before and just driving it made me tired. I passed out face down at about 10:15. Early for a Friday night. Early for any night, my lovely wife mentioned. Yeah, what can I say, I'm an awesome date.

I'm driving over to Kool Aid's place as that's where we agreed to start at straight-up 8. When I turn the corner, there's a fairly large woman laying in his sideyard with her hands clutching to her head and face. She's on her side, but is making the swaying movements with her shoulders and legs. I pull into the driveway and hop out quickly approaching her because, well, I'm a Boy Scout. I know how to handle mentally ill women laying in residential areas. Totally. There's a merit badge for it. First, I examine the area for any contraband, blood, medication, needles. I look closely to make sure he's not packing heat or bearing a knife that could be turned on me. I look for blood on her. No evidence of anything. I then crouch down next to her and begin speaking to her.

"Ma'am, are you in pain? Do you need help?"

I put my hand on her shoulder and see if I can stir her a little. She makes no noise, but only slight motions. There's the faint sound of some moaning and sniffling. Her body is cold, but she's not shivering. Very still. Otherwise very quiet.

"I'm going to call for help. Stay still." I stand up and look further down the block. There's a woman about six houses down in the street speaking to a man in a pickup looking down in my direction. I hold my hands out to signal to her. She begins to walk my direction hurredly.

She rushes up to me and begins whispering. "We've already called the cops. I don't know what's going on. We just saw her as we turned the corner and she was stumbling around so we called an ambulance. You think she's on drugs or something?"

"If not, she should be. When did you call her in?"

"Seven forty-five. Fifteen minutes ago."

I tell her I'm going to call again. I don't have any problem calling again to tell them to hurry. Especially when the lady is dangerously close to I-27's access road and interstate. I kept envisioning her rising to her feet and then sprinting onto the interstate. I go into Kool's house and say, "There's a lady laying in your yard. Let me borrow your phone." Kool Aid, looking at me stunned, hands over his cell phone. I fire another call into 911.

We go outside and stand over her with the other couple like wildlife dying from a gun wound. Kool Aid offers up a towel and we just sort of toss it over her. She kicks it off. I mention to Kools that she's starting to take on the manneurisms of WWE's Mankind.

She's just laying there clinging to her head. I was thinking she got popped in the head or something. Upon closer inspection, I notice that she's absolutely filthy. Her bare feet are covered in dirt and grime. She has something scribbled on her arm. Her cold skin is purplish in spots. I hear sirens nearing. Moments later, the first respondants arrive--a fire truck. AFD's finest hop out and approach her cautiously--even though a little more abruptly than I first did. They start trying to pull her arms away from her face. She tightens up and starts to shake away from them. Starting to become obvious that she doesn't want help.

"If you don't cooperate with us, we're going to call the police. Oh, nevermind, here they are."

About three squad cars arrive. The fire department describe their account. APD walks up to her and begin yelling at her. They start trying to diffuse her by grabbing her feet and her hands. She quickly pulls her foot back, raises it in the air and takes a swooping chop at one the policeman's gnads. I think she might've caught part of it because he became really agitated at this point. The struggle continues. I'm starting to wish that I had a video camera on me. It's beginning to turn into a COPS episode. By the way, I never mentioned that COPS is taping in the Yellow. Dope stuff. I'm thinking about following APD around to see if I can get on national television. Like walk by on a sidewalk as a guy's getting a sobriety test or something.

Swept the police blotter this morning. Don't have any more info the woman. Pretty decent start to the morning. I did however, find on the blotter my traffic accident from Thursday in which, while stationary in traffic, a punk teenager's Bigfoot pick up rolled back into the hood of my Civic and the trailer hitch basically put a whooping on my car. Check this out.
I was civil. Didn't whoop his ass or anything. Pretty aggravated. I just want State Farm to tell me my car's going to last 200,000 miles and they're going to fix it to the condition to make this possible. I mean, it was on pace to do so until youngblood's "transmission slipped" and put his truck on my hood. This is what we call a "bad touch."

Anyhow, they put Womankind on a gurney and took her away in an ambulance. Kools and I decided to depart on our jog--now 17 minutes late. Those minutes are precious when you're talking about morning traffic on our seven-mile route.

Incredible jog. The ibuprofen might have been the difference. The pace was good. Hit some hills. My legs got slightly cramped on about the fifth mile, but managed to jog it out. Uneventful until we got bumrushed by some animal that was part squirrel, part wolf. This thing came flying out from the side of a house. Both Kools and I were zoning and not really watching the peripherals until this object begins dashing towards us. Kools thought it was a squirrel, I thought it was a gorilla. After a few moments to think about it, I believe it was a dog. I caught a close glimpse of it and it looked like this.

The Yellow's official bird is a wandering dog. That's how many there are. I hate pet owners in this city. It appears to be just too difficult to keep a dog in your possession at all times--whether on a leash or behind a fence. I think that a city's population of wandering dogs is a direct reflection on the graduation rate of the city. That and the number of Nascar bumper stickers. Might be a correlation there.

This week, Kools and I will attempt, wait, not attempt...do eight miles. I'm taking orders on Team Root Down shirts. These are going to be the absolute illest shirts you've ever seen.

Keep your dog on a leash or behind a fence or they might catch a bad one on the chin. You don't want that.

WORKING ON AN NYC MIX

2009-09-02T04:45:00.000-07:00

I've hinted about it a couple of times to a few people, but the city got me inspired to head up a mix. The concept, essentially is to start in Flushing and then travel through the City in geographical order. We'll start in Flushing/Queens, Rikers Island and then cross over into the Bronx, Harlem, Central Park, Manhattan, Staten Island, Brooklyn, Flatbush, Long Island, Coney Island.

The mix will feature everyone from Ornette Coleman to Lou Reed, JVC Force to the Fugs. I've consulted with a few New Yorkers (primarily George the Guru) on inclusions and he certainly filled in the holes (including the aforementioned Fugs' "Slum Goddess from the Lower East Side"). Found James Brown's "Down and Out in New York City" this morning. You're not ready for this one. Of course, good for you, neither am I. Busy week. This morning I got a root canal in, uh, thirty minutes, then work until eight tonight. Jog four miles after that. Tomorrow, I got two Roundhouse games after work. Friday, mow the lawn and in-laws are coming in. I'll get to it sometime.

Stay up, killa.