A Brief Note on "Marksmen": the Intricate Lyrical Design of Citizen Ka

Preparatory to an upcoming review of my favorite album of the year thus far, Orpheus vs the Sirens, by the Hermit and the Recluse also known as rapper Ka and producer Animoss (of the Arch Druids), I'd like to briefly make a note on a lyrical tactic from a different song involving these two. The song is "Marksmen" from Roc Marciano's 2017 album Rosebudd's Revenge, featuring Ka on the first verse and production from Animoss.




I love this beat from Animoss, it seems so odd and simple. The distinctive short looped sliver of lightly dribbling guitar string was shrewdly selected out of the original sample "Love Feeling" from Mecki Mark Men, the song title "Marksmen" partly an homage to them. The tiny piece of sound Animoss chose here, and how he deployed it in the beat, fascinates me. Only somebody in a crew with a name like the Arch Druids could have devised this sound.

I've listened to this song frequently the last few months while binging on some of the more recent music from Ka and Roc Marci. The more I've heard this the more things I've noticed in it. The track interests me for a number of reasons. Besides Roc Marci's verse weaved as an array of interlocking musical instrument references, what stands out to me is Ka opening with what seems like a hook over the beat's initial bridge and how he then transitions into the verse. It is that transition from hook into verse and especially the final bars of Ka's verse, that I want to focus on here. There's a fascinating bit of self commentary on the design of the verse itself.

At the end of Ka's verse he says:

"A true verse but too terse
I hope the hook grab em"

and then repeats "I hope the hook grab em."

There's no obvious hook on this track though and certainly the repetition of "I hope the hook grab em" isn't a hook. So what he's referring to here then is the slower delivered set of lines that open the song. Ka rhyming over the beat's precursory windup, beginning of course by saluting the production itself:

"To our production, much destruction for our appetite
With steel fist, if meal missed wasn't for lack of might 
We been binging, we purging dividends with snub nose 
My buds rose, my service citizens..."

I add the ellipsis at the end there because this transitions directly into the first lines of the verse, "My service citizens... Cain and Abel my rapping plight." I believe when Ka mentions he hopes the hook grabbed em he means I hope the listener is drawn to the hook and the clever triple entendre I built there. He draws our attention to it and by doing so gives even another layer of meaning to it.

The first connection that stands out is to the film Citizen Kane, wherefrom the "rosebud" of the album name Rosebudd's Revenge came, with allusion to it in "My bud's rose" and the aural sound of "My service citizens/ Kane." Of course there's also the allusion to the Biblical twins Cain and Abel. And to service citizens cain would be to serve dope to the citizenry, Ka often invokes the economy of crack cocaine cooking and dealing. (Using this last angle then "My buds rose" would also be cooking crack like baking bread, rising yeast.)

So already that quick transition from the final line of the "hook" into the first line of the verse has at least three references:

- Citizen Kane
- Cain and Abel
- Selling crack

He doesn't have to say much in order to invoke these, it's basically all stuffed into one line or one and a half lines. That alone is extremely clever. The creative tactic of directly feeding from the "hook" into the verse, that alone is cool too.

Then to actually make a reference to this "hook" and confirm that the opening is a hook while also explicitly hoping the listener picks up on what he's doing in the hook, you catch the last trick he embedded here: that line "I hope the hook grab em" refers to the hook which hook's right into the word "cane" after all. He hopes to hook you in as with a cane. Or to get citizens hooked on cocaine. Or provide a service to the citizens in the form of cooked verses, an addictive crack of intriguing lyricism.

This little bit of ornate lyrical design, finishing the verse by sending the listener back to the beginning to focus on what he planted there while layering one last bit of meaning onto that part of the song, is just the type of lyrical craftsmanship I've come to associate Ka with. Much as with dudes like DOOM and GZA, Ka is a writer intensely devoted to devising the cleverest turns of phrase, puns, and triple/quadruple entendres with every chance he can get. It is the artful verbal tricks deployed in the hooks throughout his newest album Orpheus vs the Sirens that intrigue me the most about that record. Fitting, then, that I've been so preoccupied with this clever lyrical device from Citizen Ka attempting to pull the listener in with the hook of "Marksmen."

Wu-Tang Clan's Original (and Better) "A Better Tomorrow"

Following my ranking of the Wu-Tang Clan's catalogue of group offerings, this begins a series of posts based around the new Wu-Tang album "A Better Tomorrow" and the factors surrounding its creation and release. Stay tuned for more this week.

For the Wu-Tang Clan's 20th anniversary album, the group's de facto leader Rza intended to craft a record that dealt with the current issues affecting our world today and the dire need for positivity and change for the future. The new album is entitled A Better Tomorrow and features a title track of the same name. That track should have been a "Part 2". Unfortunately, there is no acknowledgment at all made to the group's previous song with the very same title (and similar message), "A Better Tomorrow" off the Wu-Tang Forever album. Maybe it's because the earlier track, from the Clan's peak period, is of far superior quality to anything on the new album. The original "A Better Tomorrow" manages to be sentimental and positive, while keeping it raw.

Smart Infographic Displays Rappers' Vocabularies and Compares to Shakespeare, Melville

While I haven't yet read it, I've heard plenty of lofty, lavish praise for the style and poetic prose of Herman Melville's Moby-Dick before.

"This is the greatest work of prose ever written by an American without contest, I think. I mean I like to think that when human history is written, Americans will be remembered for two things: they went to the moon and they're the people who produced Moby-Dick. This is our Odyssey. This is our Odyssey and our Iliad."
- Terence McKenna

A very telling and well-conceived new infographic by Matthew Daniels ranks hip hop artists according to the number of unique words in their first 35,000 lyrics. Aesop Rock places #1. The Gza/Genius of the Wu-Tang Clan came in at #2 and the top 10 is dominated by the Wu family. Rza, Ghostface, and Killah Priest are all up there as well as the Clan's output as a group on their albums.

The unique word-count for Shakespeare and Melville (specifically Moby-Dick) are included in the chart for reference and you may be surprised at the results. Aesop Rock, Gza, and Kool Keith are beyond Melville. Shakespeare's around the top 10. I'm surprised MF Doom wasn't higher (he's around 11th or 12th). The study probably has its share of imperfections but the results are very fascinating nonetheless.

I can't say I'm familiar with Aesop Rock's work though I've always heard good things about him.

The Gza/Genius is one of my all-time favorites, though. It should come as no surprise to see him up here---the man recently did a TED talk about science, schooled Neil deGrasse Tyson, went on a lecture tour to places like Harvard and MIT discussing hip hop physics, and is helping to promote science education for inner city students through hip hop. Wu-Tang is for the children and Gza has been a shining example of this.

In light of the Genius' ranking on this chart, I pondered some of my favorite verses. So here's one of his best: "Amplified Sample" the first track from his second album Beneath the Surface (one verse repeated twice in the song).

The amplified sample, will trample, delete and cancel 
So vacate your vessel 
Guide this, strenuous as an arm wrestle 
Move swift as light, a thousand years in one night 
In flight with insight
Everything I thought of, I saw it happen 
Then I rose from the soil, the sun blackened 
Then came rap czars, left tracks in scars 
Apparent brightness of exploding stars 
Gave you goods to taste 
No ingredients to trace 
You remain stuck, trying to figure the shape of space 
No edge or boundary, release 2 rounds or 3 
Intimidate, my razor scrape, phony clown MC 
The physical shatter from the blast 
Pyroclastic flow, sets forth a tower of ash 
Through ignorance and misplaced trust your world's crushed 
Too late to activate hyperspace of thrust 
Even wearing camouflage, you're analog 
At war, the scene is high beams and fog 
I came in, accompanied by deadly rain and wind 
Mentally endowed with lightning, hit the crowd 
The warm side, edge across the barrier 
But the storm tide, destroyed your area

"Brilliantaire" by Killah Priest

As I'm in the midst of hammering out a piece covering a few of my favorite hip hop albums of the year thus far, here is one of the finest tracks from the album I'm most enamored with, Killah Priest's vast mystical galaxy of lyrics entitled The Psychic World of Walter Reed.

This track represents the album as a whole as it features the oft-repeated imagery of traveling into the cosmic depths of inner space and becoming in tune with ancient spirits while composing his poetry.

"Then I recline so I can see the design
before he said close your eyes cuz what we need is your mind
and the rhyme, like a storm as the currents blew me on
thru gases, I saw places where planets were born
and the voice that spoke to my ghost majestic
let's show you the essence, let's reveal to you the presence"


"With rare paint, beads, water or oil
saint, holy man, beggar or royal
angels, devils, or aliens
which do you believe in more?
do you receive or restore?
do you want peace or war?
do you wish to live free or by law?
it gets deep to the core
we perform prayers, fasting, and charities, go on pilgrimage
but do we know what real healing is?"

"Re-plant This in Our Handbooks": A Look at the Modern Day Hip Hop Rendition of MLK's "I Have a Dream"

"Go inside, climb a pyramid's incline
I see the promised land planned in Martin Luther's mind"
- Kevlaar 7, "Up There Beyond"

[In early 2011, Kevlaar 7 of the Detroit-based crew The Wisemen released his first album, an EP entitled Who Got the Camera? The revolutionary, scathing social and political material was perfectly in tune with the aura of dissent that was springing forth at that time. Reflecting on this intensely meaningful piece of music, I wrote what I believe are some of my best pieces ever. The following essay is a close analysis of the record's single, "I Have a Dream", originally published on a now defunct blog exactly two years ago and reproduced here in a re-edited format.]


"I Have a Dream" was the first song released from Who Got the Camera? As Kevlaar 7 described it, "this is the great Dr. Martin Luther King's famous speech, 'I have a dream' in hip hop form, our version" and fittingly it was released on Martin Luther King Day.

As the sixth track on the album, it's revealing to consider that the number 6 in the Supreme Mathematics represents "Equality", that principle which the venerable Dr. King was so vehemently and passionately striving for. Equality between all of "God's children," a recurring phrase in King's speech, and we hear this same phrase echoed in Kevlaar's lyrics. The song contains many metaphors and images from the original speech, even produced in the same chronological format as King's paragraphs. This essay will dig thoroughly into the lyrics and shed light on the references to Dr. King's speech and what it means for today. Through this process we will evaluate the song's overall vision and intention as a modern musical version of King's legendary address.

"There Are Some Lost": A Reflection

There's an old saying that death comes in threes. The news of three deaths each successively rippled through my aura this past week, leaving me in contemplation and occasional empathetic mourning. Thankfully, the deceased were not people who were close to me but all three were shocking nonetheless.

With this on my mind, I'd like to share something I had intended to write back in August as a dedication to a close friend of mine who abruptly passed away three years ago at the age of 26. He was initially the only friend who made an effort to stay in touch after I moved out of New York four years ago and, thankfully, I got to see him one last time two weeks before he died.

"There Are Some Lost" is a short, lyrically poignant elegiac rap song by Kevlaar 7 that was released earlier this year. It eulogizes his cousin who was murdered at the age of 20 and, with poetic deftness, manages to encapsulate the experience of losing someone.

I'd like to shed light on the song's two verses, reflect on some of the images, and attempt to unravel the meanings contained in his condensed lines.

Near to the heart of will and striving

Violin string-strummed spirals
Miles in the millions, solar system sphere music.
Improvement of my temperament through diametric spear movements
Near to the heart of will and striving
omnipresent in kinetics while still aligning
spiderweb linked grid thread jingling
sphere-headed being dreaming sun-drenched wave glistenings.

Listening for the next vibecrest to carry me beyond
Along for the ride headphones and sonar sonic bombs.
Hominids travel above abyss and listen to bright psalms
Near to the heart of will and striving
alone and still in the midst of moving mobs.
Wirestrung wig connects, check the line for a break
Four-sided square surrounding, asleep and dreaming of awake.

Break the bond of past mistakes,
whirlwind spin the compass
Make up new creations
and aim again for the wonders.

- PQ 12/3/11 11:23 PM

Gza/Genius Harvard Lecture

The Gza aka The Genius, one of the core members of the Wu-Tang Clan (he, Rza, and ODB are all cousins and had been running around as the All In Together Now crew prior to the Wu birth) will be delivering a lecture at Harvard University next Thursday December 1st. It's open to the public, I wish I could go up there and witness it.

Gza is getting up there in age these days and I've rashly complained about his sleepy flow and delivery on his last disappointing (for me) album but he still remains one of the premier intellectual lyric crafters on the planet. His Liquid Swords and Beneath the Surface albums are personal classics and he was always one of my top 3 favorite emcees in the 9-member Wu-Tang Clan.

He's always good for giving forth fascinating thoughts on the universe, chess, poetry, water, etc in interviews and discussions so I imagine this Harvard lecture will be something pretty monumental. A few years back, an art magazine in Germany did a full issue on The Gza/Genius called "Weapons of Math Destruction" that was superb and I ended up purchasing this magazine straight from Berlin and still have it (in my Staten Island bookshelf, actually). When I go back up to New York for Christmas this year I'll be sure to retrieve that little booklet and inscribe some quotes from it here.

For now, here are a few exemplary Gza tracks beyond the commonplace favorites on Liquid Swords (an album that Rolling Stone magazine listed as one of the "1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die").




"I fashion the first tool
from the elements the earth use
and built it to a complex
network of communications"

Many people forget or just don't even know the profundity of this man's mind and the minds he molded. The Rza (one of the greatest teachers in my life) was mentally civilized and enlightened originally by his older cousin Gza (real name Gary Grice). Gza also mentored and brought into the globe's musical atmosphere two other of my favorite artists/lyricists/thinkers in Killah Priest and Masta Killa. (It's worth noting that the frequency of the word Killah in Wu-Tang names is, as Killah Priest has explained in the past, not simply a different or creative way to spell "killer" but a reference to killing the negative thoughts in one's own and in listeners' minds, the "-ah" suffix combining Allah with the slang Killa; the point is to rebuild oneself into a knowledge of one's own godliness, the Arm-Leg-Leg-Arm-Head so beautifully captured by Da Vinci's Vitruvian Man.)




"Form metaphorical parables that fertilize the Earth
wicked n****s come trying to burglarize the turf!"

"Uncompleted missions/ throw in ya best known compositions
you couldn't add it up/ if you mastered addition
Where I come from/ gettin' visual's habitual"



Gza sparsely appeared on the Clan's third album, The W but he delivered a few incredible verses. Observe:





To top it all off, here is a film clip with Rza, Gza and their good friend Bill Murray:

Watch Delirium - Gza, Rza & Bill Murray in Comedy  |  View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

A Tony Sipp Soliloquy

Here's a little lyric I wrote up while watching the exciting ending to last night's Tigers-Indians ballgame. In the top of the 13th, the Tigers hit two deep shots in a row that looked like homeruns but were caught at the wall in centerfield.

Tied in extra innings, long night in Cleveland
              Indians and Tigers toil.
Detroit thumps bombs, roaring bereavement:
            warning track catch, runs foiled.
Tony Sipp zips overhand heat,
            deep fly balls ensue.
Prospectus reference sought for statspeak,
           on Cleveland: he's Tony who???
Sipp with two P's, the capsule reads...

"power southpaw reliever" with strikeout stuff
If to deep flies the wall catches up,
           he'll last in this league a decade or up.
Good enough.

Housecleaning

It's the 12th day of February and I think this is only maybe the second or third time so far this month that I've had internet access. My iPad keeps me posted on sports scores and I can look stuff up, check email and some other basics but I cannot write blog posts on it because it doesn't support the Blogger software. Can't watch any sports games on my favorite site for that either because the iPad doesn't handle most video applications.

Being limited has actually helped me be a little more productive in a way (getting back into my books heavier and finishing up my studies for the big Dali-Joyce essay I keep talking about) but it's been frustrating because I've often been bombarded and overwhelmed with ideas for new blog posts and I can't channel that properly. I'm left making notes to myself basically saying "write a post about this!" and then I just move on forward past 5 or 6 other ideas. It's as though I'm a passenger on a traveling train of thought and I've come to my stop but can't squeeze my way out. And the train just keeps going along to the other stops. More passengers come onto the train at each stop and the train car is getting overcrowded and uncomfortable, bunched up. And I gotta pee! Get me off this thing!!!


Now that I've finally managed to relieve the building pressure and get back to my Building Roam, I find that I'm overwhelmed with so many things I want to do and see.

I'm in a totally new city (for god's sake!) and I spent a week traveling across the whole Southwestern quadrant of North America.

I've had a new post all about astrology sitting unfinished in my drafts here for 2 weeks now and been dying to share it with the world. I'm still gonna finish it up (hopefully tonight) and get it out there but I've since piled up a Jenga stack of ideas on top of it. Plus, in the past couple weeks so much crazy, noteworthy stuff has happened in my life that I've got all that to talk about.

*   *   *

As I type this, the rows of teeth on the sides of my mouth are aching badly. During my last week in San Diego (I left on January 30th) I had five cavities filled. After somehow avoiding being stricken with even one single dental cavity for my entire life, I had seven of them spring up just in the past year. There are two possible reasons for this: a terrible case of acid reflux I've had for a while now, and the absence of fluoride in the California water---whereas New York's water has lots of fluoride. Either way it sucks. (Plus, I've been under the impression fluoride in our water is a bad thing anyway. Didn't the Nazis purposely put fluoride in the water to make people more docile?)

The cavity-correcting experience was, I guess, not so terrible compared to other more complicated dental work one could have (having my wisdom teeth removed by a shitty dentist years ago was a nightmare) but it was still pretty horrible. I absolutely hate going to the dentist. There's virtually no way I can accept having someone strongly poking and scraping around my teeth with sharp metal instruments. Just typing the words makes my teeth hurt more.

They gave me plenty of Novocaine and I even requested Nitrous gas for the session but I was nevertheless squeamish when the dentist, a petite young Vietnamese woman, really flexed her muscles and dug into small sensitive points in my mouth.

At one point the pain and discomfort was so unbearable, and the Nitrous gas so intoxicating, that I somehow managed to move my consciousness to a lower spot on my spine. It felt as though my center of apprehension was no longer in the center of skull but around my belly area looking upwards at the open-mouthed head that had other people's hands working inside of it. It was pretty awesome, maybe a little freaky. Reminiscent of my experience with Stanislav Grof's Holotropic Breathwork a couple years ago (that's a whole 'nother story to tell for another day).

I kept thinking throughout the process that having these things in our mouths, these calcified exposed bone-like structures, is in many ways a burden. I don't want these stupid things if I have to maintain them and have doctors operate on them like this. The whole thought of teeth and dentists just seemed so strange and distant to me at that time. I should mention that my lack of dental insurance and the thought of having to pay over a thousand bucks for the whole thing contributed to that line of thinking.

Two weeks later, the results have been weird. I know everybody's been getting fillings for years and years, my siblings were getting cavities filled when we were all very young and continued to do so throughout their lives but this is something totally new and unfamiliar to me. Two weeks after the process, I'm shocked that my whole set of teeth aches every time I eat something. It really sucks but I guess that's how one's mouth feels after having 5 teeth excavated.

*   *   *

My last post, written hastily in the chilly (it was 15 degrees outside and the building wasn't well insulated) hotel room of a La Quinta in downtown Austin last week, drew attention to Frank Delaney's awesome James Joyce birthday poem (or "rap" as he called it) and I found myself awestruck last night as I listened to it for a second time, especially the final verse. I was so struck by it that I felt the need to copy down the lyrics and I'd like to share them here.

I think Delaney, who's been doing a great job appraising the jewels in Ulysses' treasure chest for many months now in his weekly podcast, sums up very well the brilliance and appeal of this relatively unread writer who is nevertheless considered the greatest of all time by many of his readers (me included).

Here's what FD has to say about it (and please pardon my creative indentation).

Frank Delaney’s “James Joyce Birthday Rap”

[Verse 3]

Ya know, I often meant to find someone who’d draw me a horoscope

of the stars the night that Joyce was born,

does someone with a telescope

view unusual constellations, see cosmic abnormalities

that would explain this genius birth?

No,

there were no formalities,

                                    no comets crashed,

                                                no planets fell

And yet,

some force was present

some flashing light

some brilliant flame from some uncharted heavens

                                                that shot to earth

and on this baby’s formulated finger,

                                    giving gifts of passion and compassion that would linger

and consolidate until this master knew that he had seen us

            as an artist should,

                                    then wrote it down

            and that’s what was his genius.

He wasn’t born into a house of artistry and intellect,

            his father was a bombast who found it hard to get respect

Yet Jim,

from the time he went to school and then to college,

astounded all around him by the way he soaked up knowledge.

These are well-known facts

about his brain, his great capacity

but the fact is: he’s remembered chiefly for his great opacity

            that’s not why I’m drawn to him

and let me use this day of his to summarize his power for ME

the reasons why he always is the writer I return to

the novelist of primary choice.

To begin with,

            it’s the sound he makes

                        the gliding brilliance of his voice

It’s as clear as any bell

            with the bright led light of crystal

Every word he used inspires me

            he’s the writer’s

            starting pistol

And he’s FEARLESS in his concepts

I mean, just look at the degree

            to which he stretched his framework

                        to fit on Homer’s Odyssey

And next, just think of how he can describe

            a street, a house, a man

without ever giving details,

                        can you do that? who can?

In a sentence, you’re there with him

                        embracing all his references

and in that same damn sentence there might be 30 references

                        and all of them relevant

            with teams of meanings towering

Come on now…

Name another writer

                        whose gift is as empowering

            and the concept

                                    and execution

            THAT’s what makes Joyce shattering

He’ll have this big idea,

            (and I say this not to flatter him)

he’d then find the way, the PERFECT way

            to write it.

THAT’s why we need to warm to Ulysses and not to fight it;

the writer seen in all his power,

                        the literary artist without peer.

For me, it’s finally that one gift of bringing to us here

            all human life put on the page

in language rich and creamy

            he’s the man who showed us that a character can be dreaming

                        while living out his real life

            and often so precariously

so that EVERY page of Ulysses is “to be, or not to be”

and that’s also because he didn’t just call on Homer

            in fact,

            to call it Ulysses is kind of a misnomer

because he also framed it

            against Shakespeare’s Dane

                        Hamlet, prince of Denmark

                                    who was a royal pain

and Stephen, the brooding, suffering young man in Ulysses

is traveling across

                                    a different kind of seven seas

He’s on an inward journey

            and thus the point is taken

that Homer’s hero Odysseus (and here don’t get mistaken)

            isn’t just a sailor                                   

                        he’s a traveler of the psyche

and THAT’s the point of Joyce’s work,

                        however unlikely.

He’s saying that all the movements of our body through the universe

            are metaphors for our mental ships,                       

                        amazing and diverse

And each and every one of us

            though ordinary, IS unique

It’s a brilliant piece of thinking,

            he really means the meek DO inherit the earth

but we must do so by choice.

                        What a wonderful message.

Happy Birthday James A. Joyce