Rest in Peace Kevlaar 7

May 27, 1977 - December 23, 2014


Nature destroys us

Time destroys us

We destroy ourselves

Angels wings clap, 
I feel the wind in my cells

- Kevlaar 7

This morning I learned the devastating news that Kevlaar 7, a master lyricist/producer with the Wisemen from Detroit, died this past Tuesday from complications related to a blood disorder. He was 37 years old.

Kevlaar was one of my favorite hip hop artists of all time, a poet with a magnificent gift for stringing together intricate and inspiring bars who was also a highly talented producer. He was also a friend. A lighthearted, down-to-earth, humble and extremely intelligent person, Kevlaar would often reach out directly to his fans (I'd just had a text message convo with him a few weeks ago). A beloved friend to many, he was a proud father of two children who he frequently posted about on Facebook and mentioned in songs. He even included a clip of his young daughter saying "I'm learning, daddy" on a track from his first album, and put an image of his son on the cover.

In this blog's five-year history, I've spilled many words on the work of Kevlaar 7. The first piece I ever officially published was a review of Kevlaar's EP Who Got the Camera? for Slant Magazine. He and his younger brother, the Wu-Tang affiliated emcee/producer extraordinaire Bronze Nazareth, have brought an unparalleled approach to their craft and quickly became my favorite contemporary artists, of any genre. Unfortunately, during his career Kevlaar's work was relatively slept-on and underrated for such a great talent. A poet with a vast perspective, his verses were often inlaid with hints of his words living on and inspiring listeners long after his death, hence the title of his first album Die Ageless.

When I heard the news this morning, I had an immediate physical reaction. My heart sunk into my stomach and my hands were shaking. It was complete shock. Kevlaar had always been an active voice not only through his music but through social media, regularly posting articles and news throughout the day. I learned a great deal from him. He had a passion for science, especially astronomy, and was a strong advocate for healthy eating through a plant-based diet. A friendly and irreverent person, he was loved by many. Despite his talents and reputation, he was an extremely humble and accessible guy. I could always rely on him to respond quickly to any text or e-mail. The thought of him being prematurely silenced by death just didn't seem possible. His energy seemed too powerful, too important, too necessary to possibly be taken away. In this tumultuous moment in history, we need poets of perspective like Kevlaar. I feel deeply saddened, a heavy depressing gravity in my chest when I ponder proceeding into the future without Kevlaar 7 actively supplying us with his inspiring gift.

I've been a passionate fan of hip hop music since I was a young kid and once I learned about him (around 2006) there was hardly anyone whose work I looked forward to hearing as much as Kevlaar's. A new piece of music from Kevlaar 7 would always be devoured; played over and over again to catch the wordplay, double entendres, and mesmerizing flow. I can remember a conversation with him a couple years ago where he declared to me that his confidence in his artform was as strong as ever. He felt he could step on a track with any emcee in the world and shine, commanding respect and admiration. I'm convinced he was as good as anyone out there, an individual embodiment of the cutting edge in lyrical hip hop's evolution. If that sounds like hyperbole, I suggest reading some of the analytical pieces I've written about his verses.

In loving memory and reflection on the life of Kevlaar 7 (real name Kevin Cross), I am including links here to the many in-depth pieces I wrote about his work. Rest In Peace Kevlaar 7!!! You will be sorely missed.

I give you power with my words

It's a gift and a curse

Like nursing a dead flower 

back to life

I watch you grow

Then let you go

until my final hour

- Kevlaar 7

"There Are Some Lost": A Reflection

An analysis of a track Kevlaar devoted to his deceased cousin.

Album Review: Who Got the Camera? by Kevlaar 7

A thorough track-by-track review of Kevlaar's debut release. A very timely piece with meditations on the growing epidemic of police brutality.

Album Review: Who Got the Camera?

(alternate version posted at Slant Magazine)

My first official published article, devoted to an important and far-ahead-of-its-time project.

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

A line-by-line breakdown of one of K7's most impressive tracks, written in a verse which parallels MLK's most famous speech. "I have a dream today that the devil vanished/ re-plant this in our handbooks/ teach our children the answers."

Interview with Kevlaar 7 and Bronze Nazareth 

Part 1

Part 2

Discussing their work and their album Children of a Lesser God.

Album Review: Die Ageless

A lengthy track-by-track review of his most important album.

Album Review: Sophisticated Movement

Reviewing his last full-length project.

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.

Scenes from Adventures in the Iberian Peninsula, Part 1

Back in April of this year, I had the privilege of traveling to Lisbon, Portugal and Barcelona, Spain for a two-week vacation with my girlfriend. Documenting that here is long overdue. Here are some pictures from that unforgettable adventure.

Lisbon's reputation for having a rich street art culture was part of what drew us there, so you will notice lots of street art photos here. We even went on a Lisbon Street Art Tour that was excellent.

Ranking the Albums of the Wu-Tang Clan

The Wu-Tang Clan will form like Voltron once again. The Staten Island supergroup, widely considered to be the greatest rap group of all time, is set to release their 6th studio album, A Better Tomorrow, next week in commemoration of their 20th anniversary. Generating a massive amount of media buzz for a bunch of 40-something rappers (many of whose contemporaries have faded away by now), they are also going to be auctioning off a single-copy "secret" album, Once Upon a Time in Shaolin, which has already garnered multimillion-dollar offers and may never be heard by the general public.

As the 9 lyrical swordsmen are primed to release their first official group album in seven years, here is how I rank the five albums in their catalogue.

The Lingerous Longerous Book of the Dark

One of the larger, more challenging pieces I've ever written is finally finished. For almost two years now I've been studying John Bishop's classic work of Finnegans Wake analysis, Joyce's Book of the Dark, and spent the last year writing a walkthrough/summary of its important ideas. The final part of that 4-part review is now posted at my other blog. I encourage you to go give it a read.

This final part is all about the female archetype in the Wake, the river goddess Anna Livia Plurabelle, and what she comes to represent in Bishop's interpretation. His entire book is built around the premise that the Wake is the account of what goes on inside the body of one man as he sleeps. Having constructed a towering argument on the basis of his thesis, Bishop concludes with an in-depth analysis of the 8th chapter of the Wake, the Anna Livia Plurabelle chapter. He finds that the sounds of "the hitherandthithering waters of" night (FW p. 216) described throughout the chapter are actually the consistent systole and diastole thumps of the sleeper's pulse. As he falls into deep sleep his vigilant ears focus on the sounds of his heartbeat leading him to reminisce, regress back to the prenatal bliss of "foetal sleep" (FW p. 563) inside the womb.

It's a groundbreaking argument, unlike anything I've read about the Wake, and Bishop presents his ideas so thoroughly and with such scientific rigor that it transforms not only the way one looks at Joyce's book but the phenomenon of sleep in general.

That is why I had to write about it. To be honest, I have wanted to write about Bishop's book since I first discovered it, years before I actually read it. One of the reasons I decided to start writing a blog in the first place was so I could eventually share an in-depth look at Bishop's text. (In fact, the title and subtitle for my other blog come from Bishop's text.) I discovered it back in 2009 or 2010, thumbed through it in amazement and was shocked and disappointed to find that the internet contains virtually zero discussion of this great book.

It's often said that you can find everything on the internet. While there's plenty of great material out there about Finnegans Wake, somehow the finest analysis of the Wake was not discussed anywhere. I wanted to change that. It took me an absurdly long time, but now I've finally finished it and web surfers curious about the Wake will be able to experience a surface-skimming glimpse at what makes Bishop's book so special.

I've also provided links to a video lecture of Bishop discussing the Wake, an audio interview with Bishop, and the iTunes University series of free lectures from Bishop discussing modern English literature.

I hope you'll find the time to go have a look.

Here are the links to the full four-part series.

PART 1

Discussing the basics of Bishop's theory and the psycho-archeological approach Joyce adapted from Vico.

PART 2

 On the Wake's science of sight and sound for the sleeping.

PART 3

How to read Finnegans Wake.

PART 4

 An examination of Bishop's "Riverbabble Primer".

The World Series is Here

In a short series between two evenly matched teams, predictions are practically meaningless. Despite that, I love this time of year when we get to break down one final match-up to its most minute elements.

And there's been plenty of good preview material written about this series. Sam Miller dissected the participants at Baseball Prospectus, Ben Lindbergh and Jonah Keri argued the merits of each team  at Grantland, while Joe Sheehan shares his usual unique insight in his newsletter, suggesting the Giants' many left-handed hitters might tie up Ned Yost's bullpen management, while once the series shifts to San Francisco and Yost is forced to use pinch-hitters (which he did fewer than any manager in his league) his poor tactical skills could cost the Royals.

Making the Fall Classic 29 years after their last postseason appearance has brought an abundance of good vibes around this Kansas City Royals team and they're actually considered the favorites in this series.

Consider this more of a statement of my rooting interests than a prediction: I really like the Giants here. They've won 8 straight postseason series and have been an extremely entertaining group to watch during this dynastic run. Their cast of characters is as colorful as a comic book cover. Pablo the plump Panda, Brandon Belt the Baby Giraffe, Hunter Pence the Alien/Praying Mantis, and even Buster Posey who's so strikingly normal despite his fictional-sounding name.

Beyond their aesthetic appeal, this Giants team has displayed an unshakeable resilience, especially in their last run in 2012 when they won both the Division Series and League Championship after falling behind. Of course, they also snuck up on the favored Tigers in the subsequent World Series, with Pablo Sandoval joining elite company (Reggie Jackson, Albert Pujols) by smashing three homers in one World Series game.

We've seen enough from the Royals in the last couple weeks to expect plenty of fight from them so I think this could end up being an epic series between two teams who put the ball in play, thrive on sharp fielding, and clamp games tightly in the later innings with strong bullpens.

Happy Baseball!

Your Mind-Boggling Artworks of the Day

It truly boggles the mind how gifted some of our fellow humans are. It's hard for me to even fathom how these magnificent works of art were created.

Adonna Khare won a $200K Art Prize back in 2012 for her otherworldly triptych entitled "Elephants"---drawn entirely, all 13-by-40 feet of it, with a pencil.

I'm blown away by this piece and how she did it. Apparently the arrangement wasn't even pre-planned, just flowed out this way. If you'd like to take a closer look there are videos on YouTube and plenty of pictures.

And one more:

Phil Hansen created a perfect rendering of Nikola Tesla's portrait, using electric sparks. Take a look:

(Found both of these via reddit.com/r/Art)

Some Thoughts on Moby-Dick

I spent the last couple months reading Moby-Dick, finishing it last week. A massive and often tedious epic, it's not a very easy read but the short chapters make it manageable and the language is deliciously rich and grandiose. The meditations of Melville (through the book's narrator Ishmael) often reminded me of Ralph Waldo Emerson; so immensely poetic and majestic, and yet the prose is also extremely precise in its realism.

With plenty of other writings on my plate at the moment, I'm hesitant to really dig into an in-depth analysis or reflection of this undisputed champion of the American literary canon so I'll instead just share a few thoughts and favorite passages from it.

On Reluctantly Returning to NFL Fanhood

The NFL season officially began yesterday and I didn't watch a minute of it.

I've had a love/hate relationship with football for a while now. This year my interest has been rekindled to such an extreme that I've been devouring all the season preview material I can find---especially the fantastic Football Outsiders Almanac 2014---and yet I still don't have any desire to watch games yet.

If I had to rank the available methods for consuming NFL football from most to least favorite, it'd probably look something like this:

1. NFL highlight shows
2. Madden videogames
3. Fantasy football
4. Reading football articles
5. Watching football games

The Madden franchise helped lead me to become an NFL fanatic for a good decade or so. I didn't care about football growing up until I was in junior high, then it was football videogames and an exciting New York Jets team (in 1998) that combined to reel me in. Not long afterwards I was ritually recording the Jets game on VCR each Sunday so I could spend the rest of the week watching it closely, then trying to reenact their gameplan in Madden using the same players. I lived and died with Curtis Martin, Vinny Testaverde, and Wayne Chrebet. I was furious when Laveranues Coles departed to the Redskins in 2002 (the Jets would eventually trade to get him back a few years later).

Rooting for the Cleveland Indians and Team Entropy

Here's hoping Carlos Santana and the Tribe can make things interesting.

It's been a rather weird baseball season thus far. The game's twin giants, the Red Sox and Yankees, are among the lowest scoring teams in the league. The Texas Rangers, a popular pick to win the American League pennant, have the worst record in all of baseball.

On the positive side of the ledger, the Baltimore Orioles have surprised everyone all year, building a commanding 7-game lead in the AL East with nobody mounting much of a threat to knock them off their perch. They've bewildered analysts by succeeding despite a subpar pitching rotation and limited contributions from key players like Matt Wieters (elbow injury, out for the year), Manny Machado (knee injury, done for the year), and Chris Davis (healthy but batting .194 following his breakout year in 2013). Their formula has been defense, homeruns, and a strong bullpen. With all the other AL East contenders faltering, that's been enough for them build up a big lead.

The Oakland A's were the most dominant team in the game for much of the year but they've experienced a sudden rapid descent in the past month after executing a daring trade that sent one of their most imposing hitters, Yoenis Cespedes, to the Red Sox for pitching ace Jon Lester. The A's were leading the AL West division for most of the season, but they're now looking up at the Angels and a possibly insurmountable 4.5-game deficit. Alas, the Wild Card safety net virtually assures they'll be playing October.

In the Midwest, Detroit and Milwaukee have also both relinquished division leads they'd been holding onto for much of the year. The Tigers have played below expectations as they often tend to. A blockbuster trade for David Price merely patched some holes in their rotation where Anibal Sanchez is hurt and Justin Verlander ineffective. Detroit hasn't fallen into any prolonged funk though, they were simply overtaken by a surging Royals team who are, like the Orioles, succeeding despite major flaws. Kansas City's offense is among the worst in the American League. Their success has been predicated on the league's best defense and a shutdown bullpen.

The Brew Crew got off to a great start, hung around atop the NL Central while their rivals struggled to figure things out, and now have gone 22-30 since the beginning of July. The wheels appear to be falling off for them as they've now lost 8 games in a row and their best player Carlos Gomez is out with a wrist injury.

Neither league looks to have much of a thrilling playoff chase in the works as the contenders are pretty clear. In the NL, the Nats, Cardinals, Dodgers, and Giants are virtual locks for the postseason with the Braves, Brewers, and Pirates fighting for the final wild card spot. In the AL it's the Orioles, Angels, and A's with the Royals, Tigers, and Mariners fighting for the other 2 spots. The Yankees are also technically in the mix but I have zero faith in them to stay there.

There's one other AL team on the outside looking in that I find highly intriguing though, and that's the Cleveland Indians.

Now Appearing at Amazin' Avenue

Last week I wrote my first piece for the popular Mets blog Amazin' Avenue, covering the team's success with forming a bullpen after years of frustration in that department. It's the first of what I hope will be many articles for me at Amazin' Avenue and I'm honored to be given the opportunity to contribute there as I've been a regular reader of theirs for years.

As fun and exciting as it is to write about baseball, the material tends to be transient as teams are playing every day with new and unforeseen events constantly occurring and changing the outlook on things, and relief pitching especially is notoriously volatile. Since I wrote that piece, Mets closer Jenrry Mejia (who I praised quite highly) has been completely bombed and revealed that he's been playing through multiple injuries, among them sports hernia. The team is letting him pitch through it but he's getting smacked around. So far this month batters have crushed him to the tune of a .981 OPS. It's already been a very frustrating season for Mets fans thus far, there's no use keeping an injured and ineffective pitcher in the closer role. Watching potential wins slip away in the 9th throughout the final two months would be a terribly demoralizing end to the season.

With that said, I still stand by the main point of the piece. The Mets bullpen outlook as a whole looks better than it has in many years.

On another Mets-related note, Jerry Seinfeld did an interview with ESPN.com talking all about baseball and his favorite team, it's a great read. An intensely devoted and passionate fan who says he spends all day thinking about the game, Seinfeld relates:

When I think of retirement, all I would think of is going to a baseball game every day.

I kind of got into the World Cup a little bit and watched some Stanley Cup this year. They're both great, but it's not as good as baseball. Even in replay, the sequence of how the events took place is not as clear to understand. In baseball, you understand as it's happening, you see something that's transpiring in the moment because of the geometry of the game. These other sports don't have that clean geometry. Even in replay, you can't fully diagram in your mind, how did that even transpire?

In baseball, when someone tags up, knowing the excitement of what each guy has to do, and then you watch it. It's unbeatable.