And he can't do this and he don't do that.

I respect this man. Not so much as a rapper. But definitely behind the boards. Also, he's always seemed a bit unhinged and I hear he's into guns. Plus, look how nice those Jordans are.

This song here is just about one year old. It got some rotation in the fall, mostly at parties with lots of drunk girls. It came so quickly on the heels of Lollipop and had no better lyrics that I largely dismissed the track. But coming back to it now, I have found appreciation. Namely, that's a damn good sample of a song right there. You have taken the basic elements of Lollipop and reworked them into an entirely different sound. Also, I have no idea what kind of bass he's using here, but that shit knocks down walls. daviddaviddaviddaviddaviddavidbanner.

You can watch the video on YouTube, but I can't seem to embed it in this country. I can, however, give you the instrumental, just in case you need to get some sick flow off your chest this morning.

R.I.P.

Shocking, to be sure.

At the risk of sounding terrible, I'm going to go on record as saying that it's a good thing he passed. Let's face it, the man's life was pretty much locked in downward spiral mode. Now we can remember him as he was, instead of as decrepit.

I Need You

Ok. I'm just going to come out and say it again for everyone who didn't hear me last time. Obie Trice is the best rapper alive. To me, he takes all the best aspects of Biggie, Jay, and Wayne and adds something great of his own on top of that. Excellent use of alliteration, wordplay, and clustered rhymes make his verses some of the most interesting in the game. Plus, he's as real as they come and currently has a bullet in his brain. You want to tell him he's not the best?

He's looking for recognition in this latest drop. Talking about the complexities of taking his label private, Obie calls on his fans and internet supporters to spread the word about his greatness. Just doing my part.

Obie Trice - I Need You (Freestyle)

Victory Consistently

Wayne's rock music is an odd thing. It doesn't really appeal to me. Some songs are kind of catchy, but I it isn't a genre I would find myself listening to very often. That said, I can see huge potential for this sound on teenybopping little white kids. This is important for two reasons: 1) these are pretty much the only people who control whether CDs go multi-platinum anymore because their parents buy them as presents. 2) wayne's rock would be a "pop" music with more musical drive and talent behind it than your Jonas Bros or Miley Cyrus holla at mes.

But I really came here today to share this track with you:

Lil Wayne - No Quitter, Go Getter

It is not a rock song.

The fact that Wayne is still capable of dropping flows like these makes the world a better place. Now, I am not the type of person who transcribes lyrics, but after listening to this song a few times, I just had to see the words in front of me. Verse one is here for the sake of brevity, but the whole track operates at this level.

i’m goin for the goal.

my heart is in control.

my mind is on succeed.

and i am in the lead.

don’t buy into the schemes,

the science or stratege.

just giant n.u.t.’s

bring triumph and belief.

i’m reliant, or redeem,

never tired or fatigued,

never defiant to my team,

never lyin on da thing,

until i’m lyin on da thing

hooked to wires and things.

imma die as a king.

if i don’t do it now,

i’m gonna try it again,

and when i do accomplish it,

i’m gonna try it again.

i’m a riot—insane.

i’m a lion, my mane

hangs

down to my strings,

and they’re tied to the game.

i stay dry when it rains.

i’m tired of the fame.

got everything to gain,

and i’m proud of the pain,

the bride in the plain,

the wise and the strange.

denied by the same.

besides, we’re the same.

who’s guiding the train?

who’s flying the plane?

who’s driving the lane?

who dies when it bang?

who fires when it bang?

who lies in the aim?

two lives in the drain.

who cries when he sang?

you hide, but you can’t.

you high, but you ain’t.

i advise you to think.

you’ll find what you can’t.

revive what you taint.

survive what you bring.

supersize what you shrank,

the fries and the drank.

admired as a saint,

defined by my rank,

combined with my strength,

my time and my length.

imma iron out the kinks.

yes i’m on a rink,

and in the eye of a wink,

imma retire in a bank.

The song is also dedicated to Michael Phelps, which is great stuff, because I approve wholeheartedly of all of Phelps' post-Olympic recreational activities. Did you know he's writing a children's book?

It's A Fiasco

So Lupe seems to finally be doing what I always hoped he would--switch up his delivery a little. I always believed that the West Side native had the imagery and lyrical talent to do big things, and his overall musical sound and beat selection were on point. It was just that he kinda sounded the same on most of his songs. He sounded too much like he was reading. Yeah, he's fast, but it wasn't really an interesting fast--more of a drone. This 1st drop from his next full-length, though, this is the business. Plus he's dressing like a full-blown hipster now, which is an infinitely better look than his previous coach potato vibe.

Lupe Fiasco - Shining Down (Feat. Matthew Santos) - (No more link, folks. Lupe wants people to drop .99 on this one.)

No comment on the autotune. Or Matthew Santos, for that matter.

This song just came on in my itunes after. Considering the Young Jeezy post below, I thought I'd add it. This verse really illustrates Jeezy's improvement. Young Buck's is my favorite, though.

Also, Real Things

Apparently Twitter is good for something. Powerful stuff.

While it may not mean much, the protesters in Iran have my deepest sympathy and admiration.

On Hostile Assumptions

Not to callously take advantage of current events, but the current kerfuffle over Letterman's Palin joke precisely proves my point about hostile audiences. Letterman made a joke about Palin's daughter being knocked-up by A-Rod, without specifying which daughter. Palin's response refers to "sexually-perverted comments made by a 62-year-old male celebrity aimed at a 14-year-old girl."

This is only a reasonable response if one begins from the assumption "Dave Letterman is a pedophile," or at the very least "Dave Letterman is an enemy seeking to cause me harm." This sort of cultural paranoia is, I repeat and repeat, poisonous to real communication.

In short, hostility is not an appropriate response to ambiguity.

Letterman's apology is actually quite well-done, since he apologizes for poor execution of the joke rather than any real hostility (presumably there is none). When one is in entertainment, and speaking publicly, one takes on a responsibility to be understood, so this is fair. Of course, with a truly hostile audience, it's impossible to fulfill this responsibility. As such, Letterman's apology makes the charitable assumption that Palin's response was derived from confusion rather than malice.

So yeah, in these terms, Letterman has the moral high ground here.

Alcoholism + Productivity

Er, so to speak. Over the course of the weekend, I put together the ingredients to make a 1-gallon batch of mead, based on these directions. This was somewhat harder than I anticipated. I went to four grocery stores in my neighborhood, and all had approximately the same set of baking supplies -- and no yeast. Bit of an obstacle. Today I took the subway down to Columbus Circle to find the Whole Foods, the closest thing to a real grocery store.

This is one of the maddening things about New York -- upper Manhattan anyway. The population density means it can support an immense number of businesses, but due to the limitations on space, each one of them is laughably small. Instead of the wide selection you see at a standard Chicago or (God help you) suburban supermarket, you get several copies of the same limited selection. Most businesses have an incentive to set themselves apart (restaurants, for example), but grocery stores don't seem to have that pressure on them.

Anyway, I went to the spacious, gleaming Whole Foods and contemplated the splendid nonsense of capitalism:
-On entry, I was nearly annihilated by the vast selection of smelly cheeses available from the deli. Potent indeed.
-There is less price variation between different qualities of food than there is between different qualities of cookware ($16 seems like a lot for a colander, even if it is square).
-Beer selection was good, more expensive than supermarket-price, but cheaper than bodega-price. Yuengling was an unexpected steal at $6 per 6-pack.

In the end, I walked out with both yeast and beer (Yuengling of course). Mead-making is successful so far: the yeast seems to have taken hold. This gives me three of four months to come up with terrible Viking-themed ideas for what to do with it. Skål!

Younger Than Ever

I know Maciej has already expressed his love for Jeezy's The Recession album that came out at the end of 2008. He said that the trap star seemed to be improving lyrically. I agreed with that assessment, and I'm happy to say that things just keep getting better. This latest mixtape is pure fire all the way through. In fact, I think the title track might be the best verse Jeezy's ever laid.

My only complaint is with the mixing. There was a no DJ version of this floating around with significantly better sound quality and none of those annoying drops. I'm guessing DJ Folk got it pulled. But DJs should really get the point by now. Fans want the music, not your annoying voice shouting catch-phrases at twice the volume of the actual track. I know you want your name out there, but if you're really looking for respect: 1) don't sacrifice sound quality for your own jabbering. 2) make your drops sound good. And really, excessive rewinding does not demonstrate your mixing skill. It just makes me not listen to that track again. Anyway.

Download Mixtape | Provided by DatPiff.com

Gangsta Gibbs

So I've gotten behind on some things I've wanted to post because apparently blogger didn't make it through the Great China Firewall. Back in Macau, though. Glad to see Pat held things down with baby seal jokes.

This tape right here, though. This should be your soundtrack for the summer. Light the sticky and bump it in the whip on a sunny day.

Gary's best kept secret.

Download Mixtape | Provided by DatPiff.com

Proposal on Conservativism

As I understand, there are two major narratives which seem to mar conservative thinking in the present.

1) Individual vs. Government power: the individual should be preferred to the state, but the conservative narrative ignores the difference between the actual, human individual (the citizen) and the abstract, corporate "individual". Government is not the only method of concentrating power.

2) Cultural Unity vs. The Other: as I said previously, a narrow cultural identity is poisonous in a democracy. As far as conservatives recognize this, they seem intent on destroying other cultural identities through legislation. Again, this is counterproductive. If two cultures are really incapable of compromise, democracy is impossible and civil war must result. If some democratic compromise is possible, then the cultures share key values and it behooves us to recognize this.

On Authorship

Any high school English student will try to tell you what the author meant.
Any college English student can tell you that this doesn't really matter.
Any author will tell you this is the most terrifying thing about writing.

(Use of the style of aphorism borrowed from Nietzsche by way of my brother.)

Humanism and Anti-Humanism

A problem I've been working on:

As a humanist, I believe in the brotherhood of humanity. That is, the shared identity of being human is primary, and I have no intrinsic quarrel with any other person. But the humanist must be ready to deal with the anti-humanist, generally the chauvinist (who believes in the irrational superiority of his own group).

Now, irrationality does not suggest inferiority. Cultural identity is axiomatic to the chauvinist, just as human identity is to the humanist (I've been very concerned about cultural identities lately, for this reason). But at the most extreme, the chauvinist is prepared to treat the humanist as an enemy based on what the humanist takes to be a trivial detail. What is the appropriate response?

Ethically, the humanist is obliged to be reasonable for as long as possible; these things are rarely cut and dried, and many things that can be seen as conflict are merely failures to communicate. Again, in the most extreme case, rationality no longer plays a role -- we've entered into a sort of Hobbesian state of war between human and human. This may be obvious upon consideration, but peace and rationality rely on mutual consent -- there is no such thing as a unilateral peace.

At this breakdown, there are two choices. One gives primacy to self-defense; once the state of war is entered, one may take any action necessary to defend oneself or others from harm (harm to others must be considered harm to the humanist). This gives rise to the notion that the good are obliged to be dangerous.

The other option is pacifism, which rejects the state of war even at this point. And who is to say this is incorrect? I have mentioned the power of non-violence in discovering the humanity of the oppressor (the anti-humanist is still human at all times). A purely pacifist approach may be going even further, though.

Does the pacifist err in refusing to separate the just cause from the unjust? Or does he achieve something greater, by means of a leap of faith? I don't know that it can be determined. In practicality, one rarely deals with this momentous choice. Still, I think it is informative in how one identifies and deals with opposition of all stripes.

Some Jokes About Jokes

Okay, so I've got this joke, and I think it's great, but I can't tell it to people. They just stare at me, most of them. It kills with the right crowd, though. Problem is, the right crowd is computational linguists. Still, humble as I am, I may have written the world's best Noam Chomsky joke. So let's talk about jokes.

Now, we're all familiar, I hope, with this old chestnut:

Two guys walk into a bar. One of them ducks.

At root, it's just a pun on the two meanings of bar. But it's also a joke about jokes, because it wouldn't be funny except for a heaping pile of even older chestnuts in which, you know, two guys walk into a bar. In a strange sort of parallelism, there's also a joke about a duck who walks into a bar. That one's not important, though.

My favorite joke is the one that starts like this:

A baby seal walks into a club...

Actually, it ends like that, too. You don't know awkward until you're standing in front of your co-workers at the holiday party, and the head of the company you just joined says, "Well, go on." That's the risk you run when all your jokes play on what the audience expects from a joke. That aside, it's a great joke: I've never seen another that combines brevity, meta-humor, and brutality towards adorable animals in quite the same way.

Now for Noam Chomsky. He's got this sentence about grammar:

Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.

Got that? Well, don't worry; it's meant to be a demonstration of how a sentence can be grammatically sound, but not have any semantic meaning. The parts of speech are correct, but green things can't be colorless, ideas don't have color nor do they sleep, and if they did they couldn't sleep furiously. Granted, if you work hard enough with figurative meanings, you can come up with something (there have been competitions), but let's just say it's meaningless.

And here's where I work my "magic":

Colorless green ideas sleep furiously. One of them ducks.

I'm telling you, it kills with linguists... Hopefully that was funny, because now I'm going to explain it. As we all know, any joke properly explained ceases to be funny. So this is your last chance. Note that both the "joke" and "non-joke" versions are equally meaningless in an objective sense, but somehow one of them is a joke, and the other isn't. The first version is a bit of nonsense, while the second is two bits of nonsense grafted together, creating a joke, which you might say is just a different kind of nonsense. Of course, the crucial thing is that the audience knows the contexts of both halves of the joke, and the way that those clash creates the humor. You can analyze this joke on as many layers as you want, and I think that's funny too, given that the original statement is from someone looking into the minute details of how language works... I like this joke more than is strictly healthy, I think.

So I'll leave you with one more joke (not mine) that might be about linguistics. It's kind of hard to say:

How do you tell the difference between a duck?
One of its legs are both the same.