This machine kills fascists and 11 other language moments that are important.

Wilson Pickett, my favorite Alabaman (it'll make sense when you scroll down), with guitarist.

1. Woody Guthrie is the original Rakim in my heart, and today would've been his 98th birthday.


Since the foundation of male attractiveness is established for a girl during her childhood, Woody's a big part of why I like boys who amplify their voices and pour their respective hearts out over beats. The rhymes from the microphone soloist Mr. Guthrie were revered in my household. So, yes, Woody was like Rakim to the little-girl version of me, only in my heart Woody's mixed in a little with my dad for some nice Electra complex sprinkled on top. Years later, me listening to lots and lots of The Coup can be directly traced back to lines like You won't never see an outlaw/Drive a family from their home.









2. “Every sin is the result of a collaboration.” - Stephen Crane


Rick Rawss and Gordon Gekko both know that greed is good and both of them think they're doper than they actually are and neither of them will ever have the pleasure of seeing what color my undergarments are. I like Gordon better, though, because he doesn't clog up my RSS feed with a new rap collaboration every 12 hours. Noted overweight Floridian Rick does, though. And I know it's because he's got good shit on a lot of dudes, since otherwise what the fuck is happening here. This Maybach Music takeover cannot be explained any other way.

I'm familiar with the concept of blackmail, which is different from extortion in that extortion involves the added distress of a crime being committed against you, and also one time Havoc said Extortion is the key I got the key for extortion. Havoc never wrote a rap about plain old blackmail, a bad thing that you can do to somebody which is slightly less sinister than extortion because it just involves psychological distress, like when a big fat MC with a weak voice gets superb talent to appear on his album or else he will reveal their secrets. Enter, sinful collaborations.

Jay did a song with RAWWWWSSSSS called “Free Mason,” which, in a super bitchy move, doesn't even mention Behold a Pale Horse. The only redeeming part of it really is Jay's line “I’m on my third 6 but a devil I’m not.” (Har, Sean.) Then Curren$y and Wiz did a song with him. Then Rae did. Then Erykah Badu agreed to direct a video for him. Then I opened up my eyes real wide and took a look around at this strange new world, like Alice in that Tom Petty video. I pray it's all just a bad dream.

The Ross domination has been going on since right around “B.M.F.” started getting played on the radio. I have many problems with “B.M.F.,” the most obvious one being that it's by a rapper who can't rap but there's also the fact that nothing in that chorus rhymes (Hoover/hallelujah, God/start) and that nobody actually says whippin' work and anyway what does that even mean? Must be a regional thing, Florida and Alabama and such. Styles P also stipulates (as most of 'em have over the years in coke raps, so it's not necessarily him I can blame) that there are 36 o's in a kilogram. This is untrue, and he's therefore training a whole bunch of suburban 16-year-olds through repeat listenings how to weigh it out sloppily. It's just over 35 ounces (35 and a third). So your customer who buys in bulk is getting almost 20 grams for free and that's just bad business practice, daddy. Sixteen ounces to a pound, twenty more to a ki. Nope. Unless you're Mos Def. Then it just adds up, for some reason.









3. Paul Wall just made an awful song called “Live It” in which he holds a gun to Rae's head and forces him to join in lyrically (blackmail tactics boosted from Ross, no doubt). It is a song I will not be linking to at this time due to the fact that I have good taste in music and cannot allow my stock to plummet. The only reason it gets a mention here is that Paul name checks Nickatina! “People in Texas have heard of Nickatina?” went the response in apt. 15. "I thought that was a regional thing." The conclusion is either that Paul reads the Slap message boards or he used to get loose at Embarcadero and I just never knew. The 14-year-old in me is mad that he likes something only I'm allowed to like. If Mac Dre starts showing up in verses we're going to need to have a little chat.

4. To Kill a Mockingbird turns 50 this week. I love smart dudes in glasses who know something about the legal system and who hold back a little emotionally. Sooooo basically, Atticus Finch, get at me.

(Introducing my newest tag, Fantasy Mixtape Titles. First up: Just One Kind of Folks, hosted by some great combo like, I don't know, Wolfman Jack and Mister Cee. Also, Scarlett Jo in some of the skits in between, because I love her speaking voice.)

It was hard to choose just one string of words to pull from the text. I always liked this one, though: "She seemed glad to see me when I appeared in the kitchen, and by watching her I began to think there was some skill involved in being a girl." You goddamn right, Jean Louise Finch. Every time I start to bitch about something, like if I have to go somewhere I don't want to or if I want to go somewhere but I can't get there, I try to remind myself I'm lucky not to be an 11-year-old girl during the Depression in Maycomb, Alabama, with a pretty great father but a father who has a deep kind of melancholy due to being a widower. That usually clears it right up, the bitching.

Wilson Pickett - “Mini Skirt Minnie.” That voice and those HUH!s come courtesy of Prattville, Alabama.

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“You got all the men chasin after you, baby/you got the women cryin and carryin on,” AKA Logan goes to Trader Joe’s.










5. We are the ever-living ghost of what once was.

Cee-Lo covering Band of Horses is somehow able to supersede an unnecessarily glitchy beat and a tired old video concept (boring thin white people freaking out) mostly just by using his vocal chords, as they can do no wrong. I'd like this song in my record collection, please, even though I'd never listen to it because of the pain exacted in my heart region as a result of its lyrical content. I still can't listen to side A of Cease to Begin unless I'm being cuddled and I'm confident in that moment that the cuddling will only stop when I want it to. Otherwise, I get pangs in my soft girly heart and I start to worry that the moment will end. I've only listened to this version below once and yeah I got misty a little and that's about all I can take, as there is currently no one present to cuddle me.

Anyway, Cee-Lo's voice is going into the Smithsonian someday for being a thing of impossible note-hitting smoky high-pitched beauty.

Rae, Capone, Sean P. (I stepped out of the hug so I could take the pic)

6. CNN are back in a not-so-big way, based on everything I've heard from The War Report 2. How sad, since Queens is otherwise doing so undeniably well these days! “With Me” is the best example of the album's dreariness, as it features a plodding beat that makes me want to take a nap, and a corny feel-good chorus by Nas that is so highly feel-good that I believe Em was offered it for Recovery but turned it down because it was too saccharine. Capone slightly redeems the song with his line Frequently I like to Buck shot(s) like Evil Dee, because “frequently” is terribly underused in songs, because everything Black Moon related is valuable, and because ME TOO, CAPONE! I like to buck shots too, you dreamy son of a gun.

Let the record reflect that “T.O.N.Y.” is a shining, perfect example of a sing-along, feel-good chorus. Me and you/You got beef? I got beef. Solidarity, you guys! I don’t have beef with anyone, really, and even I sing along with that part. (I also love the old-timey use of “jakes” for “police officers.” It feels so ‘20s, like I just bobbed my hair and I'm giddy 'cause I just got the right to vote even though I have breasts)









7. Grease is, in fact, the word, as well as the time, the place, and the motion.

It is also the title of a joyful, bouncy song that a kind man on FM radio was playing during my extended time on the 101 the other day. The rule in determining whether a song is quality is that you picture Stevie Wonder either having composed it or singing it, and then you listen to it through that filter. Just ignore everything else. “Grease,” with that bassline, the way it's structured melodically, that moment around 2:30 when the horns pass the baton to the drums, surely passes this test. I know it, 'cause I tried it, and wouldn't you know, I solved my problems and I saw the light. I went home and I looked up its history, and I found out that Barry Gibb wrote it (and “Islands in the Stream” too!). And then, 'cause it was Saturday, I went to the roller rink.












8. “Madre mia.” - my newest paramour Sara, below, after her boyfriend Iker Casillas, the captain and goalie of the Spanish soccer team who has a classy Basque first name, cries and is overcome with emotion and kisses her. I keep watching this and automatically taking my dress off in a quick and obedient manner, a pure Pavlovian example of “Ladies like to be grabbed and kissed in a sudden and surprising way.” Genuine emotion has been getting ladies out of their clothes ever since I can remember and it's not going anywhere. Live it, be it, achieve it.











9. Aubrey Graham won't leave me be. We're just two lost souls swimmin in a fish bowl, year after year. The latest in the story of us is that he showed up in one of my lady mags with no warning. ("Warning," by the way, is a song by slain rapper Biggie Smalls that Drake hadn't heard until last week since it was made in olden times, before '06. Drake's good now, though; Wayne played it for him and he thought it was uhmayyyyzing, so authentic, the way Biggie nailed in the narrative all that talk of clips and Rolexes)

It happened yesterday, in Elle mag (do not judge me, please), in my hands, on the couch in apt. 15. I read this quote from Drake, in response to being asked which rappers influence him:

“intelligent, clean-cut, nonviolent, non-drug-oriented (MCs).” (!! !!!!)

THIS GUYYYYYY. Groan, cringe, groan, groan, CRINGE. When you give the same answer to a question about rap music that Bill O'Reilly and the nation's grandmothers would give, you are performing at a sub-par level and you should stop it. He is an awful person. Drake is just so awful. I mean it. I wish bad things would happen to him. My mother would say Logan! That's not very nice because she's a real sweetheart, but she would also say There are far too many kids around today getting record deals because they are good-looking, know the right people, and do not challenge the dominant paradigm. And then my buddy Steve P. Morrissey would add Sing your life/Any fool can think of words that rhyme, which kind of sums up that record deal thing that my mom was just talking about. And then Affion Crockett would show up and give me exactly what I need.









10. Curren$y n' Devin the Dude!, “Chilled Coughee.” It's Devin the Dude; obviously this was going to show up on here. I don't need to explain the hows and whys to you. Last week I did a post that was a link to a video taken on a cell phone of him reading the phone book. But for today, just this:

GPS loaded with the coordinates
of this bitch crib to receive love and nourishment
In the form of joints rolled, drinks poured
Her in nothin but a robe, playin her role.

Aw, that's all that men really want, isn't it? It just hit me. Love and nourishment, and a girl to greet you at the door, clad in nothing but a robe. Even Rawss wants that, I bet. Even Rawss.

I know, right? You just look at this and right away you think "boning."

11. Christina Hendricks discusses boning in the LA Times magazine; I feel good and validated inside now because like any foxy lady, I, of course, am well-versed in boning.

As a woman, I have to say the retro underwear on Mad Men actresses looks like utter torture. Am I wrong?

“No, you're not wrong...(Those) undergarments really aren't made for relaxing.
(If) I have to wait a few hours for my next scene, I have to learn how to position myself, otherwise the boning presses into my guts.”

As shown in the uncomfortable bodice of my dress above (that's boning, you guys; it keeps everything in place up top) there's work involved in being a girl. The narrator of To Kill a Mockingbird taught me that. And boning jokes are classic, hilarious since since oh-nine.









12. “Wrong guy.”

- A-Rod, when asked for his opinion on whether
the 2011 MLB All-Star Game
should be moved from Arizona.

Presenting A-Rod, my new Least Favorite Dominican (sorry, Juelz!).

“Rod,” by the way, is short for “Rodriguez.” And still, he has no opinion on xenophobic, illegal policies that affect people who look just like him. And so it was said, so it shall be done: 2010's Most Superior Bitch Move, decided and awarded, swiftly and officially, to Alex, based on the 2-word snippet above. The year's only halfway through, and he had to go up against LeBron's self-fellating TV hour, and still--A-Rod came out on top! That's some real skill.

Seu Jorge - “Queen Bitch.” My heart's in the basement/My weekend's at an all-time low, Bowie said. This song's about A-Rod, you see. 'Cause it's about a bitch.

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