Listening Party Intro

There's something about elegance that I don't like. It's too cheap, it's too easy and too fake. It's too easy to masquerade bullshit around like something desirable if it's dressed up fancy. I'm not saying that something can't be good if it's dressed up in a fancy package, but I am saying that too many times we think the package is the product, when the quality of the product exists entirely independent of the package.

I may be partial because of where I'm from. Some of the people I admire most come in simpler packages, dress in simple clothes and are a little rusty on their English grammar, but they are the most intelligent, down to earth, and charitable people I know. And that's why I love them--no guile, no pretense, and no self-inflated bullshit. Those are my roots.

In the end what's real is the core of things, not their packaging. Although, I fully believe that at times we have to dress nice and talk pretty for their pragmatic value, but let's not forget the difference between pragmatic value and intrinsic value. Because they aren't good in and of themselves and aren't indicative of reality. Let's not forget that they are only the spices to the main course. Unfortunately many people are so self-deceived they would eat a steady diet of garbage if it came dressed in their favorite spices. To quote the first song on the playlist tonight:

"---- your skin/
nobody needs it/
theres Bones, muscles and blood/
Whats realer than fat and tendons?/
Its raw/
no soft tissue to draw your eyes to it/
so far flesh aint the truest at all"

I may be breaking listening party convention tonight but I couldn't stand to not include the songs that I did. We will be listening to two different things tonight. One is a short e.p. (so as not to violate the idea of listening to a whole album start to finish) and a collection of songs from a genre that convey the very theme I've talked about tonight. If I have violated some listening party creed I will gladly take my stripes because I felt too strong about what I wanted to share to not do it.

Let me introduce the e.p.

It is lo-fi, raw, gritty and everything I've described. No fancy bells and whistles. Just human emotion and sentiments put into sound. When this artist first started he used a battery-powered keyboard and a four track recorder; and he was good at it. Since then he has updated to more modern technology but its appeal still remains. We will be listening to Casiotone for the Painfully Alone - Young Shields E.P.

The second mix comes from a genre that I've only recently learned to appreciate. To quote a book by Bakari Kitwana "[it] isn't entertainment alone; it's also a voice of the voiceless . . . since it's inception [it] has provided young blacks a public platform in a society that previously rendered them mute." (Kitwana, Bakari. (2006). Why White Kids Love Hip-Hop. Basic Books.)

I wanted to write about how I gained my appreciation for Hip-Hop but this essay would get too long. I will say that  it came when I was serving in the ghetto of south Goergia. In the ghetto I found everything I mentioned above and fully realized how good it was when contrasted with pretentious white privilege. Honesty, realness, inner-strength, and true faith in God. But I started to understand how sickening the stereotypes and the struggle that has been placed upon whole peoples because of their "packaging" when the contents were so much more rich, developed, honest, and pure-hearted.

The songs I chose are about struggle. The struggle that comes from those souls who are human and identical to our own but get placed in poverty and far different circumstances and who have incredibly different opportunities and odds. I can't stand when I hear rich western white kids criticize those in poverty or those who have the odds stacked against them when they were born with what they have. We can claim fuzzy feel-good slogans about The American Dream and it can be debated how much is at the fault of those who are in poverty and debate the realities of white privilege in America, but we are on dry ground, we were born there, and we don't know what it's like to struggle to keep our heads above water. So until our feet are wet and we take the silver spoons out of our mouths, I think we should shut the hell up instead of criticize. "Are we not all beggars?"

This collection of hip-hop songs is about the struggle to overcome impeding beliefs, sometimes generated by ourselves and sometimes others. Overcoming the odds when they're turned against us and learning to persevere and stand up for your own dignity when others try to dismiss you. It explores the moment when the underdog has come to the epiphany that he is every bit as capable and worthwhile as those who tell him he's not. That moment at which we realize, as Hip-Hop poet Saul Williams puts it, "I've divided me by one, I'm the answer to his riddle". (Saul Williams - Skin of a Drum)