"Hell is near. The writing on the wall is clear." Public Enemy

I got on a Latino hip-hop kick last night, and something flipped.  While I have always maintained that I would have never come back to the US if I hadn't run out of money, the combination of living in a van for 4+ of the 5 months I've been back, not having anywhere to actually go, being crypto-tipped into submission on an article proclaiming the impractical, worthless nature of crypto tips (the kind of insult we're supposed to be grateful for, and which is now commonplace in a culture in which the flow has begun to limp), and other factors, have driven me to the point that my eyes roll so hard on waking that the weather is affected and thunderballs roll through the sky like meteorological earthquakes of pure existential boredom.

But watching Latino hip-hop last night put wings of whatever in my soul.  It's not my scene, not my language, not my people, but when your disenfranchisement is such that you are viscerally more comfortable in the presence of people with whom you share exactly ZERO ethnic or cultural ties,

It's possible that the one foot you have out the door is the only member you have that will actually make it.

Did I lose a foot, or was it the rest of the body that was amputated, and all I am is a disembodied boot hopping down the street of a hostile Latin American metropolis?

Hard to say.  But at least the flow doesn't limp.

It burns.

Note the minimalism.  The purity.  The joy of surfing on a beat with poems written on a city bus in Caracas,

And compare it to this hateful, deadly garbage, and tell me American culture isn't limping.

If that's New York, I'll take Caracas.

Moving down to Colombia to visit the daughters of the barrio, the observation that there is NOTHING like this in angry, artless American hip-hop is so glaring that it takes a conscious effort to ignore it.  Looking through NY hip-hop today is like trying to find the last stale, day-old loaf of bread on an empty shelf in a hateful, POST-FUN wasteland compared to this.

An expression of "fun," presumably. I'd forgotten what it looks like.  Somebody tell these guys, before they forget that all the best players in "the game" (as they play it in America) have been dead for almost 30 years.

You're done.  Mediocrity fatigue has settled on America like an expired sleeping pill.  Time to hang it up, gentlemen.

It's over.

The flow in the first soundfile is limping down the street like like a tired expression of manufactured rage; the second is dated on arrival.  Sounds like the exact moment it was released, and not a second longer. 

As timeless as a stoned banana in the sun.

I tried to like the new Public Enemy, but it is full of effort.  They are trying really, really hard.  It is a conscious act of legend-maintenance, which is one of the many obvious enemies of art in American culture today.   Like it or not, Public Library, you can not fight the power with old-hat BLM imagery.  Not in 2025.

The flow is limping to the Public Restroom, to relieve itself of decades of backed-up, legendary waste.

Side note:  It's worth saying that Public Enemy has earned their legendary status.  Professor Griff in fact turned out to be one of the smartest people in "the game," even appearing on Infowars a few times during its peak, when people still cared about 9/11 truth, etc.  Public Enemy bridged whatever gap may have existed between black and white culture in the 80s, with their genre-crossing collaborations with metal groups at the time.  I always liked Public Enemy.

The world has moved on, is all.

So, since it's over, and we're never going to see a gangsta rap/metalhead collaboration equivalent in this limping, amputated cultural environment, who would you rather listen to, the daughters of the barrio in Bogota, or a bunch of racist, twerking BLM activists on autotune in NYC?

#learnspanish.  Hook a hermano up.

Even if we're not hermanos.

Ah, the unpolluted air of artistic minimalism.  Pure, unadulterated linguistic surfing.  A total absence of legend-maintenance.

Refreshing.

"I have also already set foot in several states, I was also deported, but God gave me another chance to return, and I am grateful to my God for this opportunity." Leymy

In the spirit of the Public Education/Anthrax mashup of the 80s, I propose a trip to Monterrey, Mexico, where we can learn how and what the "other side" thinks.

If the lesson from the early golden age of hip-hop holds,

I wouldn't be surprised to learn that a Mexican gangster chica is a human being, just like me.

It's important to note that Leymy's god is La Catrina, La Flakita, The Skinny One, a.k.a. SAINT DEATH, but no one is too far gone for Jesus.

Anyway, that's all.  Don't confuse cross-pollination for pollution.  "Cultural appropriation" is a term employed by cultural sadists to amputate the flow and send it limping through the dead-end bread aisle, scouring the sidewalk for its own legendary status like a junkie in a zombie daze.

Reject it.  Reclaim the flow today.

Thanks for listening.