Little P Goes To LA

 Little P loves LA.  

  He loves Venice Beach. 

 He can tell you what sunset blvd looks like.  

  Tells me all the time how he's gonna live there when he grows up.

I mean he describes landmarks that only someone who's been to LA would know about. 

 There's only one thing....

Little P has never been to LA.

      One day I asked him how the hell he knew about Los Angeles like that.  He looked at me like I was a fool and was like "video games and youtube Al!"

 I felt extremely old.  

Its kinda crazy how a kid can recognize a place they've never been to or seen before from a video game,  in real life.   

 Like the actual place was built after the game.

Which brings me to the question

Does art imitate life or is it the other way around?

   I remember hanging out with my friend Chinky's son Nutty one time, driving in the car,  and Mr. Cee was on the radio with the old-school-at-noon thing.  EPMD's Get The Bozack comes on, and Nutty starts bugging, "ohshit yo, they just took DMX's beat like that?  Thats messed up!"

who knows. 

  Either way I was pretty amazed that T'shaka  knew soo much about the wessssyde.

Lil P is a skater, and he's dead serious about his skateboarding. 

 The boy is focused. (hmm  i wonder where he gets that from)

  I didn't believe him at first, I figured it was another phase, but he came thru with his skateboard one day and was busting kickflips and ollie manuals like it was nothing.   

So, when he caught wind that I was about to be going to LA and then Las Vegas to dj a party for my homies Crooks and Castles, he put his bid in!   (Lil P knows Uncle ALC is easy to pushover)

Funny 'cause I remember when I was his age , all I wanted to do was move to New York.   

Open off of breakdancing, grafitti on trains, and rap music. 

  So moms took me on a trip one time. 

  I remember telling my mom, " can we go to queens?".    All I knew was that it was the place Run DMC rapped about all the time.

  

I figured why not?    

A couple travel agent manuevers and the next thing you know, Lil P was on his way to the airport, skateboard in hand, on his way to LA, ready to tear it up!

Stay tuned.   Bout to post up some footage of me and Lil P TEARING UP the streets of VENICE on our skateboards.    

Oh , you didnt know i was nice??????

On another note, today is my brother's birthday.    Happy birthday  Boy Wonder!

The Dope Poet Society

 That was our first group.  

  Bursting straight out the slums of Beverly Hills. 

    We used to do little shows at rich girl's houses when they're parents would go out of town for the weekend, setting up shop in their living room,  rapping over pause tape beats that I used to make with my homey Ecto's karaoke cassette machine. (he's the one cheezing with the off-shaped jew fro)  

We had typical this-is-my-first-demo names for songs like "expression is the weapon" and "positive vibe".  

  Shit was hot.   

 

Being that they were my older brother's click, I was always the youngest, and as you can see by my midget-like appearance, the smallest.    

Maybe its the Notre Dame Sweatshirt or those dumbo ears , but it looks like i'm holding it down for all the hip hop Keeebler elves across the world.  

 Yo, remember when rocking overalls and letting the straps hang was fresh?   (Terrible trend in retrospect.  Please no hipster revivial)   Or what about when you'd have one strap on , and let the other one hang?   Im trying to remember who really made that look famous, or if it originated on the east or west coast.    Someone help me out. 

That was around the parachute pants era ( another trend that should be burned and buried). 

  It was me, DJ Shalom (you can laugh now) holding down two plastic aiwa belt drive turntables and a karaoke machine ( the original 360 instant replay machine)

On the the imaginary 'air' mics were the devastaing sounds of  Ecto AKA Loveboat to my left,   Kairi AKA Kid Kai (ohshit Kai was early on the 'kid' thing) holding it down with the hooflattop that ruled in 89,  my big brother Neil aka Boy Wonder uptop with the bootleg gucci tee,

And the there was Jubin.  

To this day i still think about Jub, and how nice he was.  He was FAR more advanced than any of us at the time. 

First of all, off top you can see the MC Serch resemblance.  Yo I even think we got the 3rd Bass fanclub adress off their album once and sent a pic of Jubin, in hopes that they'd recognize and maybe use him in a video as a young Serch.    That was his nickname.  Serch.

  

He was of Persian descent.   This was around the time when rocking X hats and African medallions was in, and it really wasn't that fresh to be a white rapper. 

  I remember he had some rhyme where he proclaimed, "im Asiatic, from Iran".   

  

We were all fuckups for the most part.  6th grade, just starting to smoke weed, doing grafitti,bad grades,  just being idiots.   

But not Jubin.

He was like the smartest kid in the whole school.   And when we decided to do the group thing, to most of us it was just another fun thing to do, just clowning, trying to get girls attention.   We'd probably get bored eventually and move on to something else like kids always do.  

  But Jub took it serious.    

Ill never forget we all slept over at Jub's crib one night, and I remember seeing this chart on his wall, like a calender that was written in his father's handwritting.  

  It was like an ultimadum!

  It had one date marked on the calendar that said on it something like " if you don't complete this music project by this day, you must move on"

  I couldn't even comprehend it.   Dude we were in 6th grade.      He was the man.

 When i think back, the way Jubin was, and the way his parents were on top of him about relentlessly achieving whatever his goals were, it stuck with me.    Cause that's how I am now with myself.    

   Needless to say, The Dope Poet Society had a short run, and over the years Jub went his own way, as we got older and kept fucking up more, I guess he and his parents realized we we're not the right group of kids for him.    I still see my brother, Kai and Ecto to this day, but I haven't seen or heard from Jubin in at least 15 years. 

  Heard he ended up being a huge doctor who makes way more $ than  the remaining members of DPS combined.   

 I mean he was super intellegent, but he wasn't no square either.  He was hop 100%.   

I think about the homey all the time. 

  

Angry Smurf Discovers The Sixth Sense

     Am I the only person who wakes up on some maniac shit? 

 Like, the second my eyes open, the mental to-do checklist starts unraveling.   Im grabbing my blackberry, sending wild messages, and text banging Angry Smurf style................................

Its starting to feel like new-Alchemist-album season, and

  I must say this new ALC/CNN joint is harder than a two day old shit  word to Phife Dawg............................... just read the treatment for the vid.  beat makes your face have that "i smell shit" look.     Gonna be on both their new album,Channel 10 and mine, Chemical Warfare. 

    stay tuned ima post it soon.      

  I live for the Family Guy.  Brian kills me.  Whoever writes that shit might be the only person in town with stronger weed than me.............. I wonder what I would have to do to get an intern job as a writer over there......................  

  As I was chopping up this well-known break the other day (that shall remain nameless) I heard a James Earl Jones type voice in my head saying  'Many humans have sampled this break before, many have even chopped the same pieces.  But there is NO motherfucker on this planet that will do what you are about to do to it.'................people without imagination are lame.

   Imagination should be like one of the five senses.  Hear, smell, touch, see, taste. 

 and imagine.

 And if you don't have it or were born without it you should be considered handicapped................................

the 6th sense.

    By the way, horrible movie..........

you know a movie sucks extreme ass when in the first two minutes there's already  corny cliche lines with the movie title blatantly placed in them.    ex: 'oh, no, lookout, its......The Sixth Sense!'   or  'and then they discovered.....The Sixth Sense!'     just bad................

   So i'm in the crowd watching Kanye kill it at the Garden last week, as I manuevered closer and closer to wherever the soundboard was.....................    

  Wondering how much of this rap money I would have to hit the soundman with to sneak plug in this portable dat on the low, solo the bass and synth tracks, and press record.   

Holy shite his band was retarded with it.     

Shit was like listening to a record.........one of those craazy prog rock records where, even if its not a part to sample, the whole record just sounds good...............I was bugging on how Kanye weaved his whole catalog together musicaly like that.   Shit was inspiring, he's the man.     

I went straight home charged and made two new ones.

Live From Behind The Wall

                               Jail is foul. 

  

 Everything about it is designed to break your spirit.  

   I mean from the stink smells, to that ' frying electric chair' sound that the doors make when they open and close, to those funk looks on the CO's faces......... even little shit like the colors they use to paint the walls.   

 

Foulness. 

  You know from the second you pull off the highway onto that long, secluded road in the middle of the straight up Ozark woods that this could never, ever, never be a place that any human would willingly choose to go to.  

   Midstate Correctional Facility is in upstate New York, about 4 hrs away from Manhattan.  So in order to get there with enough time to see the god we had to be on the road by 6 A.M. sunday morning. 

 

Mind you, 6 A.M. sunday morning is arguably still saturday night, depending on your grind level.

  So, when 5:30 arrived I found an open vein, intraveneously attached a Starbucks I.V. to my arm, and after a proper caffeine doping,  I was off..... 

 1st stop:  pickup  Pee's wife Kiki.   

         Kiki typed the adress into the robo navigator device and we hit the highway.

   Then we drove.......and drove.....more driving......trees....streams....driving more......a homemade beef jerky shack.....bigger trees.....more road.....The Erie Canal?  goddam they got my homey way out in the boondocks....... Im looking at the exit names........

Schenechtedy, Rome, Utica? 

  Im wondering if we're still in New York.  I don't even think those places are in America. 

      On the way there Pee's wife and I talked, of course my stupid ass had to roll one up (who smokes weed on the way to a jail?)  The regular asshole routine.    It wasn't until we saw the exit sign for the facility that it really hit me........Damn............ we weren't driving to a do a show, we weren't driving to Atlantic City to throw dice and bug out for the weekend. 

 Nope.  This was not a vacation.   We were going to visit P in jail. 

 But nevertheless, I wasn't down.   I hadn't seen Pee for a minute so I was hype. 

       We made a stop at the market for some canned vegetables that Pee wanted (you already know the food in there is straight dogshit) and about 20$ in quarters so we could take pictures.

  They got a little vending type machine you put quarters in, only takes quarters, and it gives you a voucher for a polaroid photo.  (more ridiculous, demeaning shit they do to try to break your spirit) Then you take the voucher to polaroid man (another inmate whose job it is to take pictures) and he pops a quick flick wherever you'd like in the visiting area. 

Later, when we took one of the pics, Pee put up his trademark two-fingers-together peace sign, and polaroid man waved it off.  Said something about 'you know I don't give a shit but you know how these dudes are in here.  They gonna think its a gang sign.'  jail.

  

       When we finally got to the end of the road to nowhere and pulled up to the place I was kinda surprised. 

 It wasn't what I expected.   I guess when I think of prison I think of big square, grey brick buildings.   

 The shit looked.....colonial, for lack of a better word. 

 It was old school!   Not Afrika Bambatta old school either.   I'm talking George Washington old school.   The only thing that made it look like a jail was those crazy looking barbed wires that surrounded every section of it.       

      Not that i'd know what a busy day was like, but the visitors center didn't seem too packed. 

 I didn't know there was a limit to the comissary ammount.  50$.  Thats it.  They ain't letting you stack chips in jail. 

  We filled Pee's to the max, and after filling out papers and going thru the whole search process,  we walked over to the visitors room, where two doofy, cartoon-looking, balding COs sitting behind a desk assigned us to an indoor table to sit and wait for "Johnson",  I guess Pee's new temporary name.    

 

  It was clear the the outer shell asthetic of Midstate Correctional Facilities was nothing but a 'colonial' throwoff, as the minute you step inside of one of the buildings you realize that, yes, this is very much a jail, and very much like how you envisioned the inside of one of those big brick, square, grey buildings that you always thought jail would look like would be.  

 Dirty. 

 Huge electric sliding metal doors.  Cameras.   Shitty bricks.  Corroding steel.  Loud asshole voices.   Jail.   

      The room was pretty big,  had about 40 visiting tables,  most of them filled with people on visits.   On the side was a bunch of vending machines, the polaroid voucher machine, and a microwave,  so if you want, you can sit up and have a nice cup of soup or a microwavable buffalo burger with your peeps.  Box lunch, kid.   

   They got a black line on the floor that indicates the area where the inmate can walk.   They must stay within that line.  The vending machines are beyond the line.  So the inmate can walk up to the vending machine, look at it, say what they want, but someone else has to get it for them. (any chance the get to fuck with you in there they do).    

   A steel door slid open, and Pee rolled in, unaccompanied... with the H.N.I.C. bop, maroon shirt with the state greens, and a pair of all black rebooks like just another day holding it down as usual.  

He rolls up to the dickhead desk and waits for them to point him to our table.

Now one of the dickheads barks at him.  Tells him to step back until he calls him to the desk.  Pee steps back, and 2 seconds later he calls him up.   

 Im thinking, 'that man is a dick.'   But I guess I keep forgetting that its jail. 

   Pee reminds me that they dont have to be corteous to you.  Theres nobody you can complain to for poor customer service.   Not all of them are dicks tho, he says.  A couple are cool. 

  But still all the little demeaning bullshit they try to do in there doesn't seem to be affecting Pee.   Shit, it made me feel like things weren't really that bad.

  But he's a motivator like that, just by him being himself, leading by example.  Thats just how he is.    

   We sat and talked for a while about everything.  we talked music.   He told me he was proud of me for the Lil Wayne joint, and that he was actually building with Weezy alot right before he went in, which I had no idea.

  I told him about the video I made for our record "Key To The City", where his son plays him.   How Lil Pee Killed it!  How I got on my "Pee shit" and just grabbed a camera and shot the shit myself, edited it myself, everything.  Renegade style.    I was all hype trying to describe to him how it looks.  I know he'd like it.    I wanted to just bust out my iphone and play it for him, damn.  Or just to show him the new iphone even.    "Its allgood", Pee said.    "Just drop that album, thun!"     

   I told Pee that the illuminati video is crazy (goodshit Broadway), and we discussed ways to keep the HNIC 2 album popping.  Tours, remixes, collaborations, promo etc. 

 Even in that dirty ass visitor's room we were able to sit and build creatively, and for a second, as we were coming up with ideas, it felt just like we were back sitting in the lab.  

  We came up with some crazy ideas! 

  Id rather not spill the beans now, but lets just say that we're up to some things............uh..  music related things..   (this doesn't mean were planning some great escape from prison, but yes, that would be the shit)

   Of course Pee has been reading and writing.  Not just writing rhymes either.  Books, movies, etc.  His health is good, and as you can see in the flick, the god had gained some pounds. 

  I let him know that his internet presence is still heavy thru the blogs and hnic2.com. .......

Oh yea, for those that were confused or in thug dreamland, no there is no computer room in prison, and no, you cannot go online in jail.  

 He did let me know that he does read all the mail that comes to him from fans,  and every so often he writes back.  So if you got love for Pee write him. 

 ALBERT JOHNSON

 DIN #08A1481 10-2

 PO BOX 2500

 MARCY, NY 13403

   As far as him coming home,  it's looking like Pee will do just another year.  Its hard to believe, but he's already been in for six months.  He probably wouldn't say the same, but it seems like it's moving fast. 

 

  I gave him some time with the wifey and ate some Doritos off to the side for a while, just bugging on the whole predicament of the human cage that they got my friend and many other peoples friends in.   Shit is wack.    But I must say, its not affecting him.   Pee is pushing thru his bid like a G.   

  We stayed until they kicked us out, around 3 pm.   I asked him where he was at in the writing of his autobiography, he said he was almost done.  The last thing i told him when i left was, "don't finish it, save some room for when u come home!  The story ain't over!"  

  Here's a little unreleased old Alc/Prodigy treat.  Its only right.    FREE P

                                     

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