Found Object

Henry Ossawa Tanner, Bust of Benjamin Tanner, (1894).

Is this a sculpture of Lester Freamon? Like Lester, it's in Baytown.

Found Object

Norman Lewis, Untitled (Alabama), (1967).

P E A C E

We Look Down

The route to the unnaground is sacred. A book of prayer, like Nik Cohn's Tricksta, can teach us a part of the way.

Tricksta is a book that plays out loose threads of undisentangled, troubling fabric of writing about the panhiphop tradition. He's walking up and down the twelve steps bookwide like they were piano keys and he was Fats Domino, coming back as himself after he can no longer tell up from down. As scholar junky emeritus, or as a character in his own after the fact cash in version of Spike Lee's requiem, it is his willingness to describe the crossroads as the up and down, as well as east and west, and his own play it out as a failed Lazarus that makes the book as lively as it is.

We pour a little liquor on the ground for him and load a couple of bullets in the clip.

• "Hyena Stomp," Jelly Roll Morton. Massively sacred 2n that we'll be seeing again and again on the pages of this commonplace.
• "Rum and Coke," Professor Longhair. The Dr. walks w/ his chicken in his hand. Chea.

Tricksta is not a map of New Orleans. But it is a full clip pointed at the unnaground. No map to the unnaground is complete. And of course they don't have a way in or out.

P E A C E

We Look Up...

Or you can look in the alley, where the Papa Shady pizza workers deliver what you want, not what you think. But of the two glances, this glances right. So we put a bullet in for to commemorate.

• "Lucky Old Sun," Ray Charles. From the hymnody. We always sing, "Amen."

P E A C E

Unbootlegged Sunday Night Pleasure

The shadows wane. The Dawn comes to New York./And I go darkly-rebel to my work.

-- Claude McKay

In the Summer Groove

I'm so cocky with it got my iced out clubs like rocky hit
Got your girl on my swagg she lovin them jerkin songs
Like the new ipod just touch it and turn her on
And when the bass start beatin and the waist I'm beatin

We picked this thread up on the car radio some weeks ago. When we heard it, we remembered 50 summers all at once. Could hear some future Nelson George all writing about coulottes and espadrilles 20 years from now, and saying there hasn't been abything this good, this free ever since.

We certainly are not 'bout keeping up -- too old and too much work to do. But this is all over the versionalism tip we put to the paper so many months ago. Chaboy JHawk is the hero in this story, even if the New Boyz and Pink Dollaz steal it, straight up.

All you can do after all these summers is confessing and witnessing. Here's a clip for you:

• A primer in the LAWeekly. We got many props for the brovah Jeff Weiss, especially because he talked to the kids. He's in the clubs asking, "Can I get a witness?" And he does his best work when he lets the kids call out the anti-gangsta for the mixed up fashion statement that it is.
• Our role model, Noz, has been threading this story for months now. And he's always good for a basket of cookies.
  
• "Never Hungry," Pink Dollaz. The best independent woman track since the first FannyPack biskit was pressed into the free market in '02. This sh*t is as straight up as the raunchiest bouce, pure to the groove.
• "P*ssy Killer," Yg. Eat that chicken.

We gonna keep loving this groove.

P E A C E

Versionology: What We're Saying

Last week we cleaned out the closets @ chaboy Slizzard's house. He's always had our respect. Like his colleague Noz, he's a listener w/ an eye for place. 'Specially the place called bounce.

So I started to spin what he left for us, and found the beauty of versionology all over again. There is this promise of keep coming back in the versionist's best work. It's like how Art Tatum comes back, again and again, each time 'nothering the thing.

Today it's simple stuff from the place called bounce. The version is "Triggerman," but somehow every time we come back, it's been 'nothered again into something else. So we'a load a clip:

• "Drag Rap," The Show Boys.
• "Monkey on tha D$ck," Magnolia Shorty.
• "Drop & Gimme 50," 10th Ward Buck
  

We'll keep coming back. There's plenty in these closets. When we're there, we're also gonna mark up Nik Cohn's slab on the same project. We'll bring you a magnolia every time.