A Trilogy of Hip Hop Trilogies

Fantastic list, that, all fire 🔥

Now, if you wanna know my favorite hip hop records of all time:

RVLTN

• Chapter 1: The Divided States of AmeriKKKa
• Chapter 2: The Art of Resistance
• Chapter 3: The Price of Freedom

Bobby Sessions joins the giants of hip hop with this one.

Sad, Fat Luck

• Sad, Fat Luck
• Sans Soleil
• Bring Us the Head of Francisco False
  • Part 1: The Day You Realize That You Mean Nothing is Everything
  • Part 2: One Day They'll Never Know That This Existed

In Ceschi I find a kindred spirit, an intimately familiar angst.

I know it's already a bit of a stretch to call this one a trilogy, so you'll have to forgive me when I add that if you want the full experience you should add This Guitar Was Stolen Along With Years of Our Lives between Sans Soleil and Bring Us the Head of Francisco False.

A Pragmatist's Guide to Revolution

• YOU BETTER WEAPONIZE
• War Balloons
• All Dressed Up, No Funeral

To the best of my knowledge, Guante has never called this a trilogy; but these records fit together like they were made to go together, so it's a trilogy to me.

Honorable Mentions

It's very difficult for me to limit myself 😅

38th & Chicago Ave

• 38th
• Chicago Ave

'Nuff said.

Worlds Not Yet Gone

Sole's concept album, a sci-fi tale of our near future told by the Poet of the Void, is one of those stories that will stick with me until the day I die, you know? Masterful storytelling. Haunting. I always need the instrumentals at the end to reflect.

@bandcamp@piefed.social @music@newsmast.community @hiphop@fedigroups.social
#Qobuz #Bandcamp #Music #HipHop #ConceptAlbums

Let's Fucking Go!

Let's fucking go

Do you believe in Unity
Do you believe in You and Me
Or do you believe the lies they sow
To keep us at each other's throats

Reach past the scalpel for the machete
Or better yet that can of gas
We'll burn it down
This wretched town
Incinerate it
Straight to the ground

We can thrash
We can swing
Come with us while we sing

We can slam
We can rage
Break down the barricades

Change the state of mind
That divides the human kind

Change the state of mind
Get your shit together!
Lets do this!

Dying in darkness
Before our eyes
Like a frog in a pot
Right before he dies

Dying in darkness
There is no truth
Rewriting history
So you never lose

Despite how it looks
There is hope
We're in this together
Even on a tightrope
No dying in darkness
We will see
Fuck the bougiesie!

We can thrash
We can swing
Come with us while we sing

We can slam
We can rage
Break down the barricades

Change the state of mind
That divides the human kind

Change the state of mind
Don't just stand there
Lets go!

This is about community!
It's about your neighbor
Your friend
Your coworker
The stranger who you have more in common with than any billionaire dickhead

It's about our relations, creating relatives with our fellow human beings
If you can't see the value of community
Try harder!
We'll all be better for it!

Compassion
Love
Empathy
Support and lifting each other up!

Community protects!
Community builds innovation and strength!
Community builds value for each of us individually!

LETS FUCKING GO!!

We can thrash
We can swing
Come with us while we sing

We can slam
We can rage
Break down the barricades

Change the state of mind
That divides the human kind

Change the state of mind

No excuses!
Get off your ass!
We're in this together!
Lets Fucking Go!

— Dead Pioneers, "LFG"

If you're looking for excellence in punk and haven't already heard, I highly recommend Dead Pioneer's most recent release, Wagon Burner ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

"LFG" is a fantastic song that I'm sharing here in honor of my sister, who shared it with me. I'm more cynical than she is, and my breadcrumb to this record would have been "The Worst Among Us," with Jason Williamson of Sleaford Mods; but, truly, the entire album is, IMO, peak punk 👌🔥

@bandcamp@piefed.social @music@newsmast.community @punk@fedigroups.social
#Bandcamp #Music #Lyrics #Punk #Rock #SpokenWord #Indigenous #DeadPioneers #AntiRacist #AntiFascist #AntiCapitalist

"Damaya at the fulcrum of it all": A crack in an otherwise flawless story?

Originally published from my BookWyrm account, I'm republishing here to test what happens when a littleFedi user publishes a blog post with a content warning. (In this case, a SPOILER WARNING ⚠️)

In Chapter 11 of The Fifth Season, "Damaya at the fulcrum of it all," we read about the bullying Damaya suffered during her early years at the Fulcrum, and the terrible fallout after she takes action to put a stop to it.

When Damaya realizes how dangerous bullying at the Fulcrum can be, she approaches Crack, another Fulcrum grit who is also being bullied, and enlists the other girl's aid to execute a plan to catch the conspirators who have been tormenting them. Crack agrees to help Damaya, and the two go through with their plan. However, things take an unexpected turn when a cascade of finger pointing reveals that it was Crack who was the mastermind behind the effort to break Damaya, leaving us to wonder:

Why did Crack help Damaya?

Me and my partner are not the only readers to wonder. This thread on Goodreads reveals some readers' frustrations with this part of the story. I found Reddit threads that also discuss this part of the story. At first pass, it doesn't seem to make much sense that Crack would agree to help Damaya when she's the one who was behind the bullying. It seems to make even less sense that Crack wouldn't fuck Damaya over—by hiding Damaya's shoes somewhere other than Maxixe's chest—after they've set the plan in motion. So why does she agree to help, and why does she do everything according to Damaya's plan? After a long discussion with my partner, this is how I've come to think of it:

First, we have to understan Crack's position.

We gather that she's been the target of bullying for some time before Damaya's troubles begin, and perhaps her bullying has been worse. Certainly, she's in danger because of it; remember that the stakes at the Fulcrum are life and death.

So Crack is angry and afraid and desperate when she goes after Damaya. Hers isn't the typical "popular kid hazing the unpopular kid" bullying—it's a matter of survival. She needs the other grits to expend their cruelty on Damaya; otherwise, she is the target of that cruelty, and she's at the end of her rope.

Note, here, that Maxixe—the target of the girls' plan—is one of the popular kids, and it's very likely that he's been participating in or even instigating the bullying of Crack. Note, also, that it's implied that Damaya has not been bullying Crack.

It's in this context that Damaya seeks an ally in Crack, and their first interaction is loaded with more complexity than Damaya can know:

Crack eyes her. “Really? Things are bad enough that you need me?”

It’s a good sign that they can be honest with each other right off. “Yes,” Damaya says, and sits since Crack hasn’t really objected. “They’re messing with you, too, aren’t they?” Of course they are. Damaya hasn’t seen whatever they’re doing, but it only makes sense. There’s an order to life in the Fulcrum.

Crack chose Damaya as a target because Damaya is the goody two-shoes grit who makes all the other grits look bad by comparison. Whatever Crack is expecting from Damaya, it's not empathy.

Crack sighs. This makes the room reverberate faintly, or so it feels for an instant. Damaya makes herself not react, because a good partnership should not begin with a display of fear. Crack sees this and relaxes, just a little. The judder of imminent disaster fades.

Damaya's empathy knocks the wind out of Crack. Then, when she doesn't react to Crack's literally palpable emotions with fear, Damaya gives Crack some of the humanity the other grits, in their fear of her, have denied her.

“Yeah,” Crack says, softly. Damaya realizes all of a sudden that Crack is angry, though she keeps her gaze on her plate. It’s there in the way she holds her fork too tightly, and the way her expression is too blank. All at once Damaya wonders: Is Crack’s control really a problem? Or is it simply that her tormentors have done their best to make her crack? “So what do you want to do about it?”

Damaya outlines her plan. After an initial flinch, Crack realizes she is serious. They finish eating in silence, while Crack thinks it over. At last, Crack says, “I’m in.”

I understand that initial flinch to be Crack reacting to Damaya's plan to use the very same ploy Crack used to land Damaya in trouble as a means of catching out the ringleader of the bullies. Crack weighs her options as she eats in silence:

1. She could confess to Damaya and apologize, but the risk that Damaya won't forgive her and will instead turn her in to the instructors is too high. Despite the goodwill Damaya has earned, Crack can't trust her that far.
2. She could refuse to help Damaya, but then there's a chance that Damaya might target Jasper. Jasper, who knows that the person Damaya is looking for is Crack.
3. She could agree to help, then betray Damaya instead. Damaya would get in trouble, but probably not the terminal sort. She'd still be around, she'd know that Crack was responsible for some of the bullying, and Crack would have earned a new and devastatingly clever enemy.
4. She could help Damaya get someone else in trouble, someone who can't implicate Crack in the original theft of Damaya's shoes, throwing Damaya off her scent and earning Damaya a new enemy—an enemy who might be so focused on Damaya that he wouldn't have any energy to spare on tormenting Crack. Two birds, one stone.

All things considered, that last option really does make the most sense. It could even have resulted in a lasting alliance with Damaya, even as Crack could have secretly continued to plot against the other girl.

But Crack didn't know that Maxixe saw Jasper steal Damaya's shoes. Didn't know that the popular boy would tell on Jasper. Didn't know that helping Damaya pin a trumped up crime on Maxixe would seal her fate.

Only Jemisin knows for sure why Crack agreed to help Damaya. (Maybe. I know that storytelling doesn't always work that way.) However, I haven't found anything written online that suggests she's talked about it in an interview somewhere. This is how I make sense of it. I'm comfortable with the assumptions I've made, and I'm satisfied with the conclusion I arrived at based on those assumptions. If this part of the book nagged at you, as it did me and my partner and other readers who went on to discuss it on Goodreads and Reddit, then I hope my short essay has helped you make peace with it—or at least given you more to think about.

#Books #Reading #SFF #SciFi #Fantasy #BrokenEarth #littleFedi #littleFedinauts

Revisionist History Blues

Two, three, four—

The world ain't how it used to be
When I was watching it on a TV screen
When I went to school they taught to me
A revisionist version of history
Where MLK was never shot by the FBI
And every war we've ever been in was justified
Where the judges and the juries are colorblind
And our worst days are long left behind

But that is not the world I see
When I look at what's right in front of me
The cops keep killing, and we all watch
They get two weeks of paid time off
We all still watch the genocide
And look away when we get tired
We still salute the war machine
Until the soldiers come back and need somewhere to sleep

Oh yeah…
This ain't the world you promised me
It's nothing like you said it'd be
We live to work
Until we work to death
For a CEO we've never met

They said everyone trusts the government
'Cause criminals can't be president
And politicians only represent
The people who elected them
But that is not the world I see
When I look at what's right in front of me
The poor stay poor and then drop dead
The rich get richer off their blood and sweat
Everyone gets an atom bomb
The people cheer and clap along
As the show begins, the fever starts
It's our own nuclear holocaust

I sell my life for pennies flat
For someone else, I break my tired back
If I'm leaving—you're coming too
Before I go down… I'm getting you

Everybody!
When we go down
When we go down—that's right!
We go down together
When we go down—yeah!
When we go down—that's right!
We go down together

Together—alright!
We go down—hey, hey!
We go down together

Oh yeah!

— Moon Walker, "Revisionist History Blues"

#Bandcamp #Music #Lyrics #Rock #PostPunk