#player hating

[brennaneden]

Listen to music from brennaneden’s library (18,681 tracks played). brennaneden’s top artists: Venetian Snares, Amon Tobin, Black Sun Empire. Favourite tags are acid electro, braindance, acid. Get your own music profile at Last.fm, the world’s largest social music platform.

I like this site. It helps me keep track of tunes. If you also like it; send me a friend thing. :)

[fuelbydreams]

I might not have a boyfriend

However I'm stacking cash with my job.  I spend most of my day deciding where I want to go out at night. Doing game night with friends, eating things like nachos and homemade oreos. I also going climbing. 

Not the worst.  

[soulless-power]

MFW I find out Ian Watkins DIDN'T kill himself in jail .....  nobody likes a kid diddler' .... Especially if is a kid diddler' who use to be in a REALLY shitty band nobody remembers unless you play that one song they're known for.

[auralbliss]

Undun

Undun is the story of this kid who becomes criminal, but he wasn’t born criminal. He’s not the nouveau exotic primitive bug-eyed gunrunner…hes actually thoughtful and is neither victim nor hero. Just some kid who begins to order his world in a way that makes the most sense to him at a given moment. At the end of the day…isn’t that what we all do? -The Roots

I've always been a huge fan of The Roots. For all y'all who don't know, check out their website, www.theroots.com.  In December 2011, they released an amazing album, Undun, that was centered around the life of Redford Stephens. Redford was a drug runner who met his end in 1999, as the video shows. After I bought the album, it was all I listened to for about two weeks straight. The rawness of it spoke to me. They are giving it to you straight and unfiltered, with jazzy and funky grooves helping to soften the harsh blow of its realness.

I re-discovered this album about a week ago, after seeing the premiere of a documentary at Cafe Istanbul named, Player Hating: A Love Story . This movie was directed by Maggie Hadleigh-West and tells the story of Half-A-Mill. Half-A-Mill is an up and coming rapper about to release his first album, while still living in the Albany Projects in Brooklyn, NY. Maggie follows him and his crew The Godfia Criminals around leading up to and after the release of his album, Milion.  After watching the film, I feel like I listened to Undun with different ears. I appreciated it more. If you haven't already, you should go get the album. Here's my take on the songs that are featured in the video above:

"Tip the Scale" feat. Dice Raw

The video begins with this song, which is actually the last song before the four instrumental movements that conclude the album. This song talks about the struggle that most people living in the "hood" have. Constantly chasing this dream that they are sold by the mass media of money, cash, clothes, and hoes. Redmond's life was devoted to that chase, but he wouldn't have it any other way. The alternative would have been "living life as if I'm some animal that consumes its own dreams like I'm a cannibal."  The sad part about this type of mindset is that it usually leads to jail (as was the case for Redmond's brother), being on the run (like his other brother), or dead (like him).

"Stomp" feat. Greg Porn and Just Blaze

"Sometimes you have to pick up the gun to put the gun down" - Malcolm X

This one is the seventh song on the album. It starts off with what seems to be an internal pep talk voiced by Just Blaze. Redmond has to kill someone and this song serves as a play by play description of how he does it and where his head's at. There are so many internal battles going on during this song. Redmond knows what he is doing is wrong, but is going to do it anyway. He is grasping at straws trying to justify his actions on the one hand, then boasting about how good of a killer he is on the other. At the end of the day, Redmond chose death.

"Make My" feat. Big K.R.I.T. and Dice Raw

"A man is born alone and dies alone; and he experiences the good and bad consequences of his karma alone; and he goes alone to hell or the Supreme abode." - Chanakya

This one is Redmond's eulogy, swan song if you will. He knows that this is the end and decided to take stock of his life, which as Big K.R.I.T. says, was all for the money. This song has the most jarring visuals and begins with a man in an unmarked room waking up, then getting shot down in a Wild Wild West type shoot out. Even he is trying to make sense of it all in his final moments, but knows that his legacy will not be remembered. 

"Sleep" feat. Aaron Livingston

"Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live." – Norman Cousins 

This is more of a haunting song, and the first actual song on the album. This is also the end for Redmond. We all knew that it was coming, but it still sucks that he had to go out like that. Karma is on of the main themes throughout this album, which Redmond realizes may be the reason why all the bad he did finally came back to him. Most people who live the lifestyle that Redmond lived always have to be on guard or running from something; the law, other hustlers, or even themselves.

"One Time" feat. Phonte & Dice Raw (song playing while the credits roll, just in case you watch it til the end)

This one gives you a little background of what made Redmond Redmond. He felt unlucky as a child so he had to get out there and create his luck. Take control of his destiny. I've heard once that most crimes that are committed by people are crimes of desperation. It's not like someone came out of the womb a murderer, thief, or other type of criminal. At some point along the way, they were told or shown something that allowed those types of heinous acts to be justified and/or normalized. 

Our brains are programmed by what we hear and what we see, that's just how we are wired. Redmond was programmed like a lot of young, poor children are programmed, to do what you have to do to survive. My friend's dad told us one day that if a people are too busy struggling to survive, they don't have the time or the energy to focus on thriving. We all have expiration dates, which is one of the universal truths of the human existence. I look at Redmond's story as a tragedy, but for me it reiterated that life is too short to spend chasing material things. Why not spend it nurturing the things that will continue long after you're gone? Just a thought.

[ancientyouthtruth]