Waking up yesterday my first thought was damn, Wizzy Moonchaser already did a whole 2-hour radio show. He finished before I even opened my eyes. Plus, they run The Morning Detour out of DG Kicks, which is so close to home. I started picturing how I’d be late living 2 minutes away.
I had a week where it feels like so very little got done. I did catch up on Wu Tang: An American Saga. Sometimes you are full systems go and make it happen. Sometimes you drop the ball on life for a few days.
Thankfully I’m snapping out of it. When I was younger, I could get into lethargy funks that lasted weeks. Pure waste of life vibes. Makes me appreciate the reasons I have to be accountable today.
Being sick sucks
I have been fighting off something all week. It has had me lacking focus and energy. These long afternoon naps have both been wonderful and have me thrown off entirely.
There is a constant sense of time passing as none of the work I wanted to do gets done. In a lot of ways that is the motif of this year, time is passing as I wonder what comes next.
It’s like I’m always trying to meet arbitrary deadlines to achieve this success I’ve been looking for. Then all of a sudden, a week goes by, and you just lie there like a sloth. Yes, I got some stuff done, but overall, I feel like the ball got dropped.
The best thing you can do when you are sick is rest. Yet I hate it. I just feel like I’m doing something wrong the entire time.
Facing the truth of a moment
I joined the board of directors to a not for profit. This is the first time I’ve taken on a real volunteer effort in my life. This felt like a great opportunity to gain new insight on dealing with the city and other organizations.
Now I have a 2-year commitment to help keep this organization thriving. On Thursday, we were introduced to the challenge ahead of us. Either we do the work and make it happen, or we let the thing die.
This is the case with every passion project. This time the stakes on the line that are way bigger than me. This is a real not for profit that people in my community invest their dollars and energy into being a part of.
Each year the activities this group throws impacts the lives of people positively. It’s kind of exciting to be in a position where our back is against the wall, and we must pull rabbits out of our hats. I bet this time next year I will know so much useful stuff that will help elevate the culture we are building.
Still there is this weight of facing the truth of a moment where it looks like mountains. Hard things are often worth doing, but they are hard. I am now going to build with a group of strangers to do something cool, this is living.
These are types of things I need to do to grow into the next phase of life.
Spitting Our PRPSCTVS to the world
I am super feeling this Our PRSPCTVS show. Flacko and I be on there talking about the news and commenting as we see fit. The best part is we can run this super raw and put it out fast, check out episode 5:
I think it’s cool to talk about our lives more. With so much of my content the subject matter is other people. I keep getting the feedback that it appears I really love writing this blog. I do, I finally have a platform to directly write about my life, with no regard.
Still, this comes with a lot of tasks. The more we do, the more behind the scenes stuff there is. Lately maintaining the willpower to grind out day after day has not been simple. Slowly I am coming back into form, but it is coming with impending deadlines and procrastination.
This is my confession to feeling lazy. No matter what I accomplish, any time I take a “break” where days go by without the grind, it is pure guilt.
It’s weird being a workaholic. It takes a lot for me to get into a mindset where I can enjoy things. Then it takes a lot to get me back into work mode. I wish I could switch it all quicker.
You never know who you are meeting in life
I went out to Cosmopolitan Bar on Friday night. I was invited by DJ Blackeye to come perform for his birthday party. Now I’ve known DJ Blackeye for a long long time, so I had to say yes.
DJ Blackeye is Widget & Jungle’s cousin. This is something I learned at Blue Dog last year when he walked into the spot one night. He let me know who he was related to, and it caught me way off guard.
Back in the day, I used to stay late in the office place. Part of it was social and part of it was I had access to a mic. I would do voiceover work for the company, and they let me record vocals for my music.
We used to literally use a carpet over our heads before the room was sound treated. I say we because one time Chris Chrome even came in for a song. You can hear it here:
Back then DJ Blackeye and I linked up as he did his day job grind, and I did my music. For a good 8 years I remember seeing this guy after work was done. We chopped it up and became cool over the years.
All things considered if I had been a dick, me heading to the bar yesterday never would have happened. You never know who will book you for a show or be related to OG Lasalle rappers.
Birthday bashes are not concerts
I knew this show was not going to be a concert. People need to pay attention to the branding of shows they agree to. Still, I was a bit caught off guard when I was told the showtime is 12:30 AM and that we would not be doing full songs.
There were a few DJs playing their music and doing their sets. Then we had a brief interruption for us to do our little performances and then we moved on. DJ Rookus held us down for the music. I was joined by Widget and Jungle.
Rookus wanted to know who was going first, and both Widget and Jungle looked at me like fuck outta here, him. I agreed, that made the most sense. They weren’t disrespectful, but like, it makes no sense for them to open for me.
I was grateful I took a 3-hour nap before heading to this. I was ready to go late, and I was ready to be accommodating. There was supposed to be another artist, but they acted like a baby lala in the group chat when the DJ had trouble receiving files.
The DJ got my files fine. Worst case you bring the USB. Anyway, even if that artist had all the right in the world to be mad, weird to do it in front of me.
The DJ controls the sound
They asked people to freestyle at one point, so I grabbed the mic and laid down some dope stuff. When I’m feeling myself, the free free game is nice. Then he just cut into Lose Weight.
I was deadass confused for a second. I thought we were just doing another beat. Only it was my beat. I had to stop the show for 2 minutes to get Aurora to film my set.
We blitzed through the songs, but it was fire. With no notice in the second verse of Lose Weight it just cut into the Therapy joint. I knew this was coming and it felt like we pulled it off cool.
Chris got to do his verse and then I signalled to cut to the next one. The last joint was the long EDM one SkinDeep sent me. I had a bit of trouble hearing the beat in the room but once I found the pocket, we rode that wave.
I enjoyed the vibe of this faster paced taste of song experience. I may do something like squeeze 12 songs into a 20-minute set in the future.
The other artists killed it
Widget came next in the performance lineup. He is a smooth performer. Unlike me who stood in the middle of the room, he got on the stage.
He laid down his songs and it was incredible to watch the master work. He ran through his set as I tried to focus post performance. Everything had happened so very fast, I was no longer sober.
The next thing I knew Jungle was on stage. Jungle brought an incredible energy. Widget felt like he would make the most sense in the middle as he had the calmest energy. Jungle ended the performances with a bang.
With a combination of style and delivery Jungle took control of the room. It’s amazing seeing these brothers synergize their vibes to create something fun and entertaining.
Snake of Regulators and J Jigga John Bus It also stepped on the stage as featured guests. Snake did what Snake does and gave a proper performance. I had never seen J Jigga John Bus It perform before, albeit we know each other, and it was a blessing.
I found out later they pulled out a tune from like 06 that J Jigga John Bus It performed like it was recorded recently.
Another good night
The Uber ride home was cheap given the bar is by Cote Vertu. I like that. We made more fans, we built up our brand more and this completed my last performance of the first year since COVID hibernation ended.
That’s right this run of performing started April 2nd last year, and here we are a year later still performing. I didn’t take a lot of pictures, oh well.
I had fun and as life goes on, I realize that these moments are the reward for all the effort we put in. I didn’t want to write this blog, but to achieve more moments, we must persevere and do our chores.
Finding beauty in the effort is what makes the process worth doing. Anyway, I must go to Laval today to go and show love to Kaybee Turkoleone. At least we know there are 4 or 5 strip clubs out there.
Live Long and Prosper Everyone
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