Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Cuidado

My mind...My thoughts travel fast...They move as if they're late to a terminal and have to board PRONTO! I make decisions because they feel good. I live in the moment. I'm easy to please...I'm slow to anger...just...slow in general.

I realize that I don't think about things until after the fact...

(AHEM...Mister Greene, may we blow up that village with all those innocent families?)

Yeah, sure go ahead...BLOW 'EM UUUUUUUUUUP!!!

8 days later...

Wait, I can't BELIEVE they just decided to blow up that village...
(Sends blower-uppers an angry email...)

By the time my emotions kick in, the email is LATE and my emotions are almost exorbitant.

I wish I was good at being the bigger person. My flesh is like a teething toddler...I need to soothe these gums...these cutting teeth are almost unbearable. But instead of waiting for the pain to subside...I just kick and scream...and sometimes I don't even get the teething ring.

I've played that pitiful game of, "No one understands me..." and believe me, sometimes I don't want people to understand me... It's dark in here.

I wanna know how to love harder. There is one person...I wish, (talking directly to that person) I wish I could love you harder. I wish you'd see past the "Jirod is just being a diva" facade and see that I really try with you. I wish you would see my strengths. I wish you could see my knowledge. Acknowledge my knowledge. Hell, ask me a question. Dig deeper. Maybe you do love me, you just show it differently, huh?

My life can be whatever I want it to be, because my Creator gave me a freedom to chose from gifts that no ordinary man should have, but I'm blessed, so He has given to me to share with others.

I'm all over the place with this one.

To my few subscribers... I love you...everyone I know, and who knows me...I love you. I'm just jotting down my thoughts.


J

Tuesday, December 15, 2009

Now I Lay Me Down..

Stripped of my clothes, and free from any obligations other than a meeting between my head and my fluffy pillow. My body's movement are slower...as I plunge into a state of rest where I'm as close to death as I've ever been. What keeps these labored breaths from expiring. What keeps this admittedly broken heart beating...What keeps it from seceding from it's sole purpose? My eyelids close over two white and dark brown orbs that view both darkness and light...My dark coal eyelashes fold into each other like a villain would interlock his fingers at the deliciously breaking news that his goons had just successfully completed a high profile heist...(My imagination...)

Well, this is it. Here I go. I have no idea if I'll wake up from this. I've never known. But when I was younger, I don't think I ever really care. I took it for granted because I knew that Mama would always wake me up with her little song...or her loud accusing voice... Mama is four hours away, and I haven't risen to a song in quite some time now.

I've come to understand that there is God who loves me. One who still cradles me in His arms, although I don't exactly know why...

Though I may rise at the appointed hour...Some things have died.

Dead are the worries that plagued my thoughts before I slumbered.
Dead are the missed opportunities to reach out to a brother/sister.
Dead are my regrets of things I said to people...things I've kept from people.


Beautiful One...Give me one more day.

Wednesday, December 9, 2009

On Nicki Minaj and Modern Music: My HONEST Opinion

To kick it off with a bit of class...(ahem):

"I just had an epiphany, "I need to go to Tiffany's."
Fendi on my slippers, and my [explicative] always slippery."
- Nicki Minaj (Five Star _ _ _ _ _ (Chick))

I will admit, this female phenom...I dig. Sure, in her music, she's vulgar, with a twist of raunch, (what most people would call 'raw'), and she describes her sexual episodes through verse in ways that make "TRINA" look like Taylor Swift. (Love em all, I'm just sayin)

My spiritual beliefs, or rather MY will to follow them, warns me NOT to listen to this type of music, or rather, ALWAYS find the "Edited Version". Now, I'm not going to be a dum dum and say, "It's only the beat I hear..." Because that's ALWAYS been a lie...If you've said that at ANY point in your life...You just might be a liar...and if you say that it's true...You just might be a PATHOLOGICAL liar...'mjussayin...

But, Miss Minaj...It's her enunciation. I could really care less about her slippery-ahem-ness... She's got this fire in her presentation over the microphone that makes me repeat/replay/gobackto her part in "Five Star Chick". When I first heard her, I said to myself, "If Lil' Wayne were a woman...a PRETTY woman, this is what he might sound like..." I'm sure she's her own artist...But, that's just what I hear.

I'm attracted to color and character in a person's voice. Ashamedly, I admit to you this: Even though I do not go out seeking Lil' Wayne's hottest new song...If I'm in the car with someone who's listening to him, I love sitting back and listening. NOT really to the words, (seriously, I ain't lying: see above), but to the way he says things. It's very menacing...very taunting...very "My Mama, your mama lives across the street"...Not girly, but just unapologetic...outrageous, knowingly rude and crude. His tone...that is. Of course the actual lyrics are, but I'm more interested in the color of his voice...The texture. The dynamics...

All of which, Nicki Minaj has conjured into her own signature sound. Try if you might, and maybe you could educate me, but there aren't very many, if any female rappers out right now who even come close to her talent, her raw ability to put stuff together, or her venom. And, boy does she HAVE venom.

She has venom...and haters abound. As do most fresh artists choosing to do something different...To step out of the box...

It's not good to be a new artist in Young America sometimes...because people are going to say, "Ah, he/she just trying to be like [insert comparable artist's name here]. He/she is weird. Why he/dress like/talk like/look like/stand like/ eat, breathe, crap, dance, walk, squat, chew like that?

I've also had a revelation about new music...if that's indeed what it is...While talking to a buddy of mine; Jamal. I thought about new music and how older veterans don't really embrace it because it lacks substance, or it's not real. Then I reminded myself that this is 2009 and, although the talent should NEVER wane, issues and subjects are not the same. This is no excuse for the lack of talent or substance that sometimes falls upon my ears...my arrogant, discriminate ears...but yeah. So this is what I said:

"I play devil's advocate with myself. Some people are going to get it how they live. And talking about what they own, or how material things make them feel is all they know, and they're happy, making "legitimate" income, I can't hate on them. I can only hope that MY craft will be enough to sustain me and that It'll remind my supporters of old times or the "good times", and that they'll see that I'm doing this for THEM... Everything else, is strictly a form of expression, whether I dig it or I don't."

So we say that everyone is entitled to an opinion...However, not everyone has the ability to lay it down in a studio... Think about it. This is creative expression. If you could, if you had the opportunity to go into a studio or even just record your thoughts or your ideas about something that makes you feel good or bad...or just makes you feel; how many people would be diggin your stuff...

Would folks be like, "Girl, you gotta cop Lil' Booty's new album/mixtape."?

In the grand scheme of things...There will never be another Marvin Gaye/Tupac/Queen Latifah/Biggie/Ella/Billie/Otis/Freddy (Mercury)/Elton/Prince/Michael...or even more recent...another Common/Mosdef/Whitney... But why should there ever be?

We are all about CHANGE right? or maybe...atleast when we're happy we are.

Everyone wants to act like they're old and cultured and seasoned (LAWRY'S)...and such...with the rocking chair, and the knitted multicolored quilt in their lap...and say, "Music AIN'T what it used to be..."

Ok...people...Think about this...Soulja Boy Tellem's "She Got a Donk"...the content has been frowned upon...but what about "Doin Da Butt" by Experience Unlimited...To be bougie...(Bourgeois).


Much Love and Respect.

Jirod

Friday, December 4, 2009

So Sushi Me...

Sitting at DK Sushi after work. Mmmm... Eating sushi solo, makes me feel very independent. Believe me, that feeling is a rare one as of late. I'm sitting here, and as I wait for my Agadashi Tofu and a Mikey Roll, I think about the events that occured around me today.

A young couple came into the store today. They walked around the store for atleast an hour with two baskets FULL of what looked like supplies for a new abode. Mind you, my super sensitive "y'all just babies" detection devise notified me that these two were no older than nineteen. My initial thought was, "Lawd help the children". But I watched the young man's tenderness toward his lovely better half and I began to feel nothing but love and respect for the both of them. They came to check out and with so much stuff in their baskets, I began to ask questions. It became clear to me that these two didn't have a car to carry their goods home, and I began to get a little angry as I connected that with their youth and how they should've obtained many of the seemingly useless items for their appartment as time progressed. They just HAD to have everything now, or atleast that's the story I tell myself. They'd told me that there were people who were supposed to accompany them to and from the store, but the parties backed out for whatever reason. So it was just him and his girlfriend; Bonnie & Clyde: against the world. They would have to make a seemingly impossible trip back to their apartment on foot with $200 worth of groceries. A lady behind them said, "y'all can't walk that far... The bags are too heavy..."

Then I remembered yesterday and how I ran he store all by myself and a vendor told me that I wouldn't be able to do it. I told myself, "Unless he knows something I don't know... I got this...and I did. It was tough, but it worked out.

You could see the love and care and the concern in the eyes of these two young lovers.

I told myself, I want that. Not necessarily the affection, but the devotion and the determination to do whatever it is that needs to be done in order to survive/maintain.

I told them that they could do it, and to be safe, and they walked out of the store with ALL of their supplies...no problem!!

When somebody tells me that my dreams are impossible, or the goals I've set out to accomplish are unattainable, I'll remember the couple.

Cherish it all,

Jirod

- When every song you sing is out of tune...sing louder.

Tuesday, December 1, 2009

Of Greater Stuff- My music fix

I live...
For this moment right here. I'm full off of grilled tilapia and I'm riding to Cheapo Discs with my bestfriend Ross. Impulse. But this trip just added a few extra days to my lifespan.

Away from the doldrums. Driving down the streets in Austin. The street lights bathe my bare shoulders, as they scan us through the windshield of the car. Why the heck do I have on a tank top and it's cold?

Because I want to feel this moment. We're bound by music; Ross and I.

In agreement, we venture out into the night to quench our thirst for new, ecomical sources of this nectar that has us hooked.

It's a hit that I'd take in public. It's a line that I'd so unashamedly do in front of my family, it's a substance that I'd take intravenously in plain sight: music. MUSIC...yes... MUSIC.
It's a drug that I'm addicted to. Scew it... I gotta have it.
It doesn't lie to me, it won't leave me. It doesn't care that I've been with others...

{Music Purchase Interlude}

Ahhh... Listen to this mixture of random, yet purposefully pleasing purchases:

-Sarah Vaughn
-Billie Holliday
-Count Basie
-Miles Davis
-Chris Joss (we'll see)
-Philip Glass

Yes...and?

I was really looking for some J-Pop... Of course they had it, but I was looking for another reason NOT to swipe my card again. I almost bought more, but I said "Jirod, pace yourself, Christmas is coming up..." I wanted some Leadbelly, some Sinatra, and some Miles Davis. I also wanted to purchase Shereen's new album. I was turned on to her by a very dear friend of mine, Mohammed, in Doha, Qatar when I visited a few years back.

I must say, if I had the cojones, I'd be a lot like Screamin' Jay Hawkins. He had an outrageous voice, and quite frankly my dears, he didn't give a flip. Look him up. (I Put A Spell On You)

This is where I wanna be... In this room with years and years of music. From Tchiakovsky to T-Pain... It's all here. Away from my dull job, away from the demands of vanity (ha), away from... Cheesily...it all.

I pretend these faces emblazoned upon the covers of these discs; I pretend they are my peers. They look at me with eyes saying, "What the hell are you waiting for? We're waiting."

I sigh, smile a boyish smile... And pick which ones I wanna take home with me.

[Sidenote: Beyonce's "Resentment" feels good to me all week]

Also: [SideEYED Note: This blog was created by ME. I write whatever I want to write, but if I ever offend you, you can come to me and we can talk about. Adults run the world, children throw fits. I like adults.]

Tactfully Yours,
Jirod