Yep, Gambino Fucks up your Blog. Download the track via Pigeons and Planes.
Life is too short and I got no time for fussing and fighting, so take Abel’s retro-grade “Boogie Nights” at face-value cause Monday’s almost gone, and the week just got that much better.
White Lotus’ “Suicidal Thoughts” is what could have been if Biggie Smalls had met a young Mr. West. This track brings B.I.G. back in a way that touches that hip-hop soft spot in any music fan’s soul. I thought the song offered a sentimental approach to the week…so “Let’s have a toast for the jerkoffs/That’ll never take work off/Let’s have a toast for the”…Mondays.
Bringin’ it back Tuesday with some early 2000 CYNE (Cultivating Your New Experience). Nujabes laced this track with a real backwater beat (ya, it’s that dirty), while emcees Akin and Cise Star lay down some flows to match. The result is a flawless hip hop track that oozes more underground than Bebop & Rocksteady.
Check out CYNE here.
Due to the gracious passing of San Pedro & San Pablo, I have an extended weekend and, more importantly, a circumcised week. Although Saints P&P probably wouldn’t have condoned the latter, they might have gotten down with the luke-warm lullabies of The Weeknd’s “High For This”. Heavenly Divine, just what I need on day three of weekend serenity.
Download The Weeknd’s album, House of Balloons fo’ free.
Kendrick Lamar bubbling on an underwater beat with lyrics so nice that fellow “Vanity Slave” Kanye West might learn a few life lessons from this one. Gucci Mane adds little more than his name to this one, but the track’s still got some real nice Thursday swag.
I guess I really am a vanity slave,
I guess my ancestors turnin’ in they graves
Burnin money when I get it
Fuck a life savings
Overdraft bank statements,
Just to make a statement,
When I put this fashion on,
I’m a fashion junky
Pickin cotton in the country
I bought this out the country
Whips and chains,
Whips and change,
Jacob know my name.
Earmilk that bad-boy right now.
I recently arrived back to Santiago, Chile after two months of travel throughout South and Central America and I have to say that beyond taking in all the beautiful landscapes, exotic foods and drinks, postcard beaches, etc., I found myself observing the people much more than the places I passed. Here’s a piece I started on my way home…
As my month in Costa Rica comes to a close, I look back through some scribblings and realize now why I could never move to this beautiful yet devastatingly corrupted country. Corrupted, not in the political sense (though like all Latin American countries, I am sure that is true to a certain extent), but profoundly soiled by 21st century colonialism. Arriving to San Jose on January 7th after spending three weeks in Ecuador was like stumbling upon a strip-mall in the middle of Yosemite. Middle-class America felt no recession here: Taco Bells, Office Depots, Payless Shoes, McDonald’s, Denny’s, KFCs and the rest of the fast food oligarchy lined the one-level streets. Throughout the days I have spent in Costa Rica’s capital city, I have, more than once, literally forgotten that I’m in Latin America.
Outside the city limits, the omnipresent impotence of mediocre-America’s influence lessens in blatancy if not in concentration. Golden arches, Caucasian colonels, and discounted kicks of the city conspicuously transform into gated resorts, Hawaiian shirts (for fuck’s sake we are not in Hawaii!), and tourist traps. With no standing army, Costa Rica stands defenseless against the USA silverback invasion of retirees who spent their youth collecting Elvis stamps (that is, until they found out he did more barbiturates, sleeping pills, & painkillers than Milli Vanilli post 80s).
20/1/11
Volcano Poas
White-haired tourists flock here like zoo-bound silverbacks. They move from place to place, “Spain to Costa Rica” for example, riding out their last days of retirement-funded bliss before they kick the can. Two more cart-fulls of these gnarly looking gorillas just hobbled in; instead of enjoying the volcanic-produced lands that I came here for, I am plagued with worry:
Is this what we aspire to become? Have we been designated the less-than-glorious fate of working away the beauty of youth during our formidable years in order to become a retired mass of white hairs and Terminator shades?
Not this guy. I don’t just dip my pen in their cultural ink; I bleed in hues far beyond the spectrum of red, white and blue.
23/1/11
Stoned off of a haze of purple on a ferry headed to Paquera (we’ll head to Santa Teresa) from a small gulf town on Costa Rica’s Pacific side; instead of admiring the pristine waters, lush islands and robust skyline, I am fully engrossed in the juxtaposed frailty that I have become apart of. Overweight tourists abound like the “wood” benches that litter the AC common room below.
An older woman with dyed black hair stands, her Rockstar Energy Drink-assed pants beaming to see the light of day. An open lens rests on her pancaked backside blindly capturing the stern’s activity. On the wind of her words I catch “practical”; a word too often referred to in anticipation for the silverbacks upcoming travels. They assemble as a herd, speaking in Lonely Planet verse, lurching with sporadic energy that only retirement or a few keybumps of Bluelight (Viagra & coke) could inspire (…that would explain the frequent trips to “el baño”). Grinding dentures in search of a vagrant ear, they discuss their levels of practicality, each Hawaiian shirt outdoing his/her zip-off cargo-shorted counterpart.
“Practical” like those behemoth sunglasses that are so large they shade themselves.
“Practical” like those pocket-vests that only very serious fly-fishermen should use.
“Practical” like those perfectly round, perfectly khakied sun-hats.
“Practical” like those Ranger Rick explorer shirts (that conveniently button for if, in an emergency, they have to roll up their sleeves! and bronze those white arm hairs).
“Practical” like their tourist package.
I apologize if my condemnation of your grandparents (and mine) is unfair; I am just a cultural observer admiring the product freaks and geeks exported from the land of the free.
