Caqlilow

L-U-P The Man

I don’t work for Lupe I never met Lupe and I don’t know if I ever will. So before you haters start throwing salt I wanna make that clear. Me and Lupe have no relation. The closet I’ve been to dude was payin 20 bucks to see him perform at Circa after handing in my Organic Chem assignment some time ago. It feels so distant. Best 20 dollars I ever spent in my entire life!

Who am I? That shouldn’t concern you. I’m no record exec, no CEO, no Kevin Liles or even a KOCH exec. I’m a die hard fan. A Lupe fan. A hip-hop fan.

Lupe makes real music. Food and Liquor is arguably the greatest hip-hop debut since Get Rich or Die Tryin’ or Illmatic. The album is so good I can’t even put it into words. I didn’t even cop that since it leaked, but that doesn’t matter. The truth is I could cop later but I had to confirm my money was going somewhere good. That wouldn’t take a long time to confirm. The Cool? Even better. Now, LASERS which has been on hold for God knows how long till protests happen and Lyor Cohen comes out to play Lu’s first record for a crowd of die-hard fans. I couldn’t be there either. But I was there in spirit. Now, finally after much deliberation and dedication Lupe is finally releasing LASERS, something I signed a petition for after my dude Zack put me on it. He’s out in East Africa  working with some NGO but it came up on my facebook feed. I signed it without hesitation, this is Lupe we’re talking about. He makes some damn good music.

Kanye makes good music. The Clipse make good music. Drizzy makes good music. But  what the former don’t do is challenge authority the way Lu does. March 8th will redefine the music industry. It will be a day of triumph for the people a day that we stood up and said we want this and not that cuz we’re sick and tired of the same old BS being pushed by the same old men in diapers that signed Motley Crue. Honestly, the music industry is dying. Roc Nation is the only hope since Hov goes out on a limb to sign talent he thinks is dope not the Label. He gave The Roots full creative control, you know what that means? That means it makes the Def Jam payment plan a little more bearable.

If I could I would cop a million copies of LASERS and throw them out of helicopters to kids in Southside Chi and tell ABC news to stop showing Charlie Sheen buggin’ out and tell them them March 8th’s forceast: It’ll be rainin’ real talk and rebels on March 8th. I would do it just to show Atlantic I don’t care about what they care about I care about what I care about. Stop dictating music you bunch of Gaddafi’s listen to the people.

For all the radio stations out there reading this, play Lu’s records. Your straight loligaggin’ too.

In the words of Hov, I thought this was America people…

Now the only thing I gotta do is find a record store to cop this album.

Joking

There is truth in joking. Anyone here read Shakespeare? The beauty in joking is that it makes you laugh. Smiling is charity (sadaqah) in Islam. That makes it easy for the broke brothas to donate, makes the po’ feel rich ya dig? Everyone jokes. From Obama to that dude in the sleeping bag using the subway vents for heat on University Ave. to the people in the unemployment line in Mobile. The reality is you need balance.

There is such a thing as too much joking. The fact of the matter is you become like the boy who cried wolf. First couple times people think okay, this guy is jooooooooookes. Then it’s like okay, honestly, is it possible that you joke that much? Like is he hiding something behind that joke or is there some truth in it? Is he taking shots? The answer, yes. Yes, he is taking shots.

Why you ask? Precisely because you don’t know whether he is taking shots or not. That’s the great part. The great thing about joking is you never know when someone is not joking. It’s a Shakespearean device. Think court jesters. Court jesters are they purely for entertainment. All they do is entertain the King and Queen when they wanna be entertained. Which is why they can say whatever the heck they feel.

Nowadays, when you joke with people who are super stiff. They get apprehensive. They get suspicious, like your trying to take shots. Maybe you are. That’s great, cuz if you are taking shots then they’ll never know.

Smiling and joking are great for a number of reasons:

(1) People wonder why the hell your so happy all the time

(2) Its charity

(3) You heard a hilarious joke

(4) Its medicine

(5) It’s lightens up all you hard-asses out there

So Shakespeare’s a smart dude right. Invented like half the English language right? Like dude has bare sonnets and tingz right? Righ, righ, righ. But on the low dude is like a comedic genius. People don’t know. His comedies are so witty. They were like the 20th Century Fox Movies of today, only NewsCorp wasn’t controlling what you watch.

Anyways, you need to joke more. Not too much that people don’t know when to take you seriously, but enough to have a good day. Laugh you sticklers, life’s too short to be pissed 24/7.

I must cruel only to be kind

William Shakespeare

Responsibilty

The only thing that makes you responsible is giving birth. Like if you left 3 kids in the middle of Mogadishu and they call you joking about how they heard gunfire and they wanna see you soon. That’s real.

The rest, well, it just doesn’t matter. MSN, Facebook, Twitter. It’s all make-believe my dear readers. It’s simply an illusion. A way to make you believe you know people you don’t or in the case of horny males a pathetic way to holla at di gal dem. Seriously. This isn’t something I invented. In fact, Josh Spear discussed this long before twitter was toppling governments. At Google Zietgiest dude was like, yo, you bunch of old farts, listen up - facbeook is about one thing and one thing only - booty. I remember that clearly.

He also was on some guerilla marketing tactics, explaining threadless to the old farts, and just the nature of the interwebs.

Well, we all know one thing about old farts. They stink, more than new farts that’s for damn sure. But they wanna know what’s hot, what’s next so they can tap into it and then try to take creative control. You know, like stop you from dropping a controversial album like your name Wasalu Muhammad Jaco. Like you can’t criticize the Jewish monopoly on media. Like I give a damn.

I don’t care if your Jewish, Zoroastrian, Fundamentalist Christian, or Mormon. The only the thing I care about is respect. You gotta give it to get it. But if I so far as detect a hint of disrespect in the slightest the Mogadishu in me takes over. I can’t hold that back. I can be so niggerish it’ll make you stain your drawers.

The point here is simple. I shut down facebook because it was getting too artificial and private at the same time. People guarding their profile pictures and not posting funny things anymore like when it first started out. Nobody joking anymore, everyone so stiff and afraid. What is this? FB is like the new Big Brother and y’all are hostages?

When I spoke to an fb programmer at their presentation he was like “there’s nothing twitter can do that fb status updates can’t”. I was thinking, OK true. fb has its benefits in being able to organize events. But twitter. It’s on another level. It forces you to be concise and direct. 140 characters max. That’s insane. You can only literally say so much. It has the potential to be so provocative. Its insane. Its a miracle.

But let’s not forget fbs merits here. It’s good for voyeurism and organizing events. Put it this way. Most people from the 70s that are decent hard working people probably don’t have fb. People get fired from work for idiocy they do that’s caught on fb forcing the general masses to be sober all the time. Sobriety? I mean, all the time? C’mon b. Manz get faded here and there.

Donald Trump probably gets faded in his Penthouse office though he likes to act like he’s a cultured drinker, the type that only takes a few sips. Allah knows what you do behind closed doors famlay.

In any case, what twitter has done is forced people to choose between private and public life. You can privatize your tweets and be the biggest goofball on the planet and just tweet some ridiculous bs. Or you can publicize your tweets and tweet stuff like fucktyler of OFWGKTA. The thing you gotta ask yourself here is are you a celeb?

If you are, does it matter what you say? If so, then your account is probably verified meaning a lot of people care about you and your art, science, whatever. Care enough to draw inspiration from you. Which means you gotta be on your best behaviour all the time. And that means on twitter which is now the main way you interact with all your fans.

OFWGTKA fans are people who are sick and tired of cliche gabage they see errday on teevee. Lupe fans are disgruntled immigrants and stereotyped Muslim youth. Swizz Beatz fans are aspiring beatsmiths.

You gotta do you. You can’t be worried about what other people think. Life’s too short to be worried about hater’s opinions.

I’m about whatever man, fuck what they be talkin’ bout they opinion doesn’t count

- Drizzy