a connoisseur of precious things

philosophy is everyones business

[heartzilla-blog]

to all you tumblrs who kept on tumbling

peace god. *raekwon voice*

so much of life's joys, pains and absurdities I haven't put up here lately. that's about to change.

[thepussyproject]

[heartzilla-blog]

august alsina - i luv this sh!t

[heartzilla-blog]

no matter what you do, it's never enough 

[nevver]

Santiago, Chile

[heartzilla-blog]

heart. palpitations. 

[shemsubireda-blog]

Doing an actual work on the ground is tiresome. It requires energy, time, effort and outputs that are tangible and measureable. In this day and age of information technology, no one has the time or energy to engage in such nonsense. Rather, thanks to the way the world has now become a small...

[durukuli]

I like to work while people sleep nearby, close to me. Near is a relative term; they could be right beside me, across the room, or in another room altogether, but they are there. There’s a calm, a safety, a focus I get from that I can’t really explain…

[heartzilla-blog]

the official world and the unofficial world... 

[heartzilla-blog]

west coast classic. severely slept on. 

[heartzilla-blog]

"There is so much overhead in life that is soul crushing." -Brad Feld 

[heartzilla-blog]

repeat

[heartzilla-blog]

curve

1. v: to (deliberately) counter, or otherwise reject an individual's direct or (more often than not) indirect sexual advances (especially when said individual assumes they will get sex or is attempting to lure/seduce you); to deny/reject an individual's expression of interest 1. n: the act of withholding or rejecting sex from an individual who has the intentions of having relations with you; the act of rejecting an individual's advances or expressions of interest

my boy just told me this girl he's talking to invited him out for sushi with another dude. they have mutual friends and they been talking so he didn't want to be a douche and not show up when they were going back and forth about hanging out. he was thinking maybe he was gonna smash tonight. sushi. it's tuesday. it's the middle of january. a few drinks...and of course she invited some cat named Brian well isn't that swell. 

i sent him a text asking him what the deal is, how the night going.  i'm like "maybe it's like a vetting process and she trying to bring you by the friend to see if you're cool. like a house of cards type of thing" 

he sent me back a text saying "house of retards" 

he's taking this kind of hard...calling himself Curving Magic Johnson 

[heartzilla-blog]

she's perfect. 

[heartzilla-blog]

r. kelly said taser tongue and ludacris said my tongue just like a jacuzzi jet in the same song... black men. welcome to your 30s now it's cool to openly sing/rap about box eating abilities. they a decade late to the party... 

[heartzilla-blog]

I can't stop looking at this and laughing uncontrollably... and then I think about it and I start laughing even more. 

[heartzilla-blog]

added to my 'i heart couscous' playlist 

[derica]

They wanted to give me all this money up front but I’m like, keep the money. Let me be involved as a partner. And niggas couldn’t do that. And it’s not because the people at the label didn’t want to help me. It’s because the corporate structure of their companies would not allow ownership. And I’m offended by that. I called an audible and I withstood social pressure. I believed in my heart that I would be less of a man to not stand up for what I believed in. I felt like it was racist. Like, I don’t deserve some shit I just built by myself? You want to give me some money? Oh, because you don’t think I know what the asset is? You think I don’t understand where the real value is?

- Nipsey on a racist, capitalist music industry in Complex

it’s because the corporate structure of their companies would not allow ownership….i felt like it was racist… you think I don’t know what the asset is? you think I don’t understand where the real value is?

This has been in my drafts for months, but as I institute some welcome changes in my life, and listen to Beyonce’s “Ghost” thinking how comes? I’m remembering what a relief this interview with Nipsey was this year.

Nipsey talks about white owners of entertainment companies who are the gatekeepers and arbiters of mainstream culture, and who trade off the cultural and financial capital that being associated with blackness affords. He then draws a deft parallel between how major labels use black rappers as frontmen for their white-owned companies, and how hip hop/black culture publications might have precariously employed black/latin@ writers/freelancers/interns but not black/latin@ editors/partners: “They’re using you like these labels use these rappers. Listen to me real quick.”

Within and against this economy in which black people are native informants but not consultants; freelancers but not editors; fixers for foreign correspondents but not journalists, Nipsey rearranges value systems. Artists and producers get paid for their creative work. He’s also alive to what it means to be poor and black in America, and resists a prison industrial complex that would shit on the lives of formerly incarcerated people: “I got employees that have felonies and they can’t get jobs. They work for me”. Why equate all of this with manliness (“I would be less of a man…”) I don’t know, but small signs and wonders…

At the end of the year, as at the beginning, Carrie Mae Weems in my head like “I knew, not from memory but from hope, that there were other models by which to live”

(via derica)