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Unsung Warriors Always Prosper: Indie Go Go Campaign

Support the Mixtape that continues to promote #UnsungWarriorsEra a brand about how we all have the ability to find strength in adversity, and get free stuff!

Check out Picasso Sight's Indie Go Go Campaign. Support the man! Madd free stuff! Great music! All that!

Forreal though, he's a friend of VERGE for a good reason. We love him, and you should too. Check out the campaign and support your local artists!

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Unsung Warriors Always Prosper!

Indie Go Go campaign.

We urge you to support this brother. His music hits hard, it's real, it's GOOD, and it's not about being positive forces in the world.

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an excerpt

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KEEP IT LIGHT: A Cross-Country Travel Log by KV Sart (Part III)

  DAY TEN:

Paul B. Johnson State Park, Brooklyn, MS

            Departure Time: 10:45 A.M.

  To

  New Orleans, LA

            Arrival Time:  2:00 P.M.

1.

A city was built below sea level.  A city off the Gulf of Mexico

The city of New Orleans is a good example of man trying to conquer nature, and though, for a time, the will of man may hold out, the natural course seems always to return.

            The bridge leading to New Orleans feels like it extends for miles.  Personally, I love driving over long bridges; it feels as though you are floating.

            As we entered the New Orleans city limits, the layout of the city was somewhat unexpected.  For some reason, and in retrospect this seems a silly presumption, but I thought New Orleans would be a relatively small city.  Not necessarily small in expanse, but small in height. 

In short, the city has a great deal of sky scrapers.

  2.

            After we parked the van, checked into the hotel, and unwound for a bit, we met up with some of the locals.  Kate’s college roommate, Kendal (an Ithaca transplant), recently moved to the city.  She currently lives in the 9th Ward with her boyfriend, Johnny, who has lived in the city his entire life. 

            Johnny is a member of the New Orleans based rap/SMOOTH hip-hop group, the Nola Fam (formerly known as the Nola Boys).  These guys are about as authentic as they come.  They all live in the same shotgun style apartment, scrapping together money to continue making the music they love.  All members spit words, plus, they have an in house dj; and they write, produce, and master their own music.  Their style is mellow, and oh so smooth.  Additionally (bonus points for transitions), they have an open minded world-view, and (if your wondering) they live this message. 

If I owned a small, budding entertainment and event planning company in, say, New York, and I was looking for authentic artists (with a message) to bring to the city (New York City that is), I would definitely get these guys’ contact information (hint-hint, Mr. Campbell).

            We enjoyed a meal of Cajun boiled crawfish, (crack the tail, suck the head, eat the tail meat), drank a bit and took to the town.

  3.

  Before entering a major city, it is imperative to know people who live in that city.  Otherwise, you are confined to the tourist traps.

 With that being said, there is a certain beauty to the tourist scene.  Bourbon Street is an example of this.  Life at it’s most, moronically, decadent.  To be clear, I am not a proponent of engaging in this decadence, it has become apparent, by observation, that too much indulgence in the sensual pleasure tends to dull the mind in detrimental ways.  To go too far in any extreme (ideological or practical) dulls the intellect; that does not mean, however, that watching those who engage in such intellectually dulling rituals is not enjoyable.  Maybe it’s pure schadenfruad, or maybe it is simply the sheer comedy of ritualistic partying.  Either way, places like Bourbon Street are enjoyable for extremely potent surface level explanations.

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Revelation Dreams

Jersey Campbell's Reddit friend TruthfulNudge requested that he post the lyrics to Palindrome's "Revelation Dreams"... OP delivers!

*lines omitted in final version look like this*

He goes to sleep at night, obviously

And in his dreams there is a fight

A battle is waged- Ideological warfare

In his dreams there is fear for he fears there will come a day when this shit will be too much to bear

Here is a brother willing to share a moment of the mind

So we may all hear and bear witness to his time of despair...

At this moment, he awakes

Thoughts bleeding through so potent

He shakes

Never will this be a reality

The stakes forever and ever left a potentiality

Must we endure immorality?

It makes him yearn for fatality

Inviting death before hope because hope is reserved for the hopeless...

He sleeps

And in his slumber he weeps

There is no comfort in these sheets

A praise to disengage

Burrowing in a maze for a reward that cannot save him

Or us...

Gone are the days of wise men

Or there are wise men but they do no advising

The eyes see what is unlikely

For while he sleeps, while he dreams there is a passion ignited

We have failed

Origins of discontent

He rises, sure of mission and intent

It went

Like this:

"I pray to my higher self

It of infinite knowledge, infinite wealth

Supply your material existence with the tools necessary for a cultural revolution

Human evolution to the ultimate form

Divine execution defeating hosts forlorn

Point to the path where we may build with people who have peace and love instilled

Reason, sail the vessel of the people's appeal

Let us not steal not because it was written by the concept of God

Let us not steal because the universe has given us a gift, and we must honor this eternal law

With reason we evolve

Release the world of dogmas and bigotry

Let us build and grow to crescendo to a peaceful symphony

Let us recognize the burdens we must all bear in this existence

Let us be persistent, in our search for truth

Unwilling to ungrow

Unwilling to stop the gears of being in the direction of the unknown

Let us understand there will be things we will never know but

Give us the strength to perservere

Enrich our minds with epiphanies and revelations

Condemning stagnation let us only look forward

With minds full of history's lessons from the era of Persian Cuneiform to the Great Depression

Let us discover this revelation

We are master of the game

Consciousness grants us that title

Let us use it for collective gain."...

He wakes up again

A mission he can see plain

A vision

Swiping rain of doubt off the windshield of the vehicle of decision

To his own admission,

The fear disapated

Leaving avenues, pathways to an end

Sacrifices made to fortify this trend

To fortify ideas transformed into sensory perceptions

To fortify sensory perceptions into timeless erections

To fortify timeless erections into human perfection...

He no longer dreams in sleep

He dreams in sunlight for all to see

Naked and exposed

Minds he is frequenting

Dreamers of the day are dangerous being for

They dare to create things from non-things

His task was to bring enlightening to strike down like lightening to the unsuspecting peeps...

He returns to sleep

But in the meantime

He dreams...

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What is Art? (and who cares) Pt. 2: Jersey Campbell and KV Sart discuss!

Catch up on the discussion:

Part 1

And now for Part 2 of What is Art? (and who cares?)

JERSEY CAMPBELL

Apparently there is no limit. Let's continue!

The reason why there is some credence to #2 is because of the golden rule. Tapping into the conscious of my contemporaries via social media, I have found that there is huge backlash against the Lil Waynes of the world. People genuinely believe that the heads in control of releasing music and making ads are indoctrinating us with nonsense, only producing and promoting art which can pacify us. The concept of the culture industry comes into play here; consciously manipulating the production of art to serve a general purpose, be it pacifying or enlightening. To even combine these two words- culture and industry- is saying that culture is sort of unnatural in a way.

But with #1, in regards to hip-hop, punk rock, and other counter-culture musical movements, they fit in with it just fine. If art is a reflection of culture, then this art would be a reflection of the rejection of the dominant culture. A portion of society's natural reaction to their dissatisfaction with the way the world is; they express themselves via art, because this is the medium allowed to them...

... But now we return to #2, because over time, these movements have been co-opted and turned into the very thing they detest. How many times have we heard that if such-and-such from the early days of hip-hop heard this nonsense going on he/she would flip out and find the music deplorable and sacrilegious? Kinda getting on tangents now, but you know when an underground band or artist has a dedicated following from early on, they stick by them and always are supporting them. But something strange happens when the underground band gains enough steam and becomes mainstream; there's a schism between the original fans, who resent the new fans, and the new fans who hopped on the bandwagon late. It's almost as if the original fans would rather have their band stay underground and never make it big because of loss of exclusivity.

Ok, how'd we get here? I don't even remember what we're talking about.

  I've always been confused about empathy; I'm not sure I know what it really means even though I can recite the dictionary definition. It looks like you're saying the root of morality is being able to put yourself in the shoes of the other. Casting aside the fact that this is FUCKING IMPOSSIBLE, let's entertain this for a little. We are individuals, and we can think and conjecture about how the other is feeling, but we'll never really know unless it is explicity expressed and even then, it could still be off the mark.

But this is what you are saying, and our boy Tolstoy takes it even further. Good art is that which can relate to everyone and anyone. Unless some sort of global shift of consciousness happens I don't see how good art (according to Tolstoy) can be produced. There are so many different cultures and viewpoints, and what it amount to is the dumbing down of our art to the point where everybody "gets it". Diversity is beautiful, it is fitting for our art be as diverse as we are.

Perhaps there is a base- a thought, or an emotion- that we can use for the production of unifying/infectious art. This is something I doubt.

  KV SART

I don't see where the golden rule ties into that...and I'm not so sure I buy the whole, "Heads of record labels are trying to indoctrinate us with nonsense" thing.  I think they push what sells.  It's a business.  They don't care about the message, they care about what sells.  They don't care about niche or unique music, they care about what sells.  I don't think they have some agenda to pacify the populous, they just want to make money.  The consumer has a choice over what they consume, especially now in the internet age.  You can find non-mainstream music to get behind, but if people would rather go for the easy, sensual pleasure and fame messages in pop music, that's the fault of the consumer.  There is some debate to be had about children and a child's inability to actively choose the kind of music they are exposed too, but even then, the record industry just pushes what will sell. When you begin talking about movements being co-opted, you are out of the realm of art discussion.  We should try to stay on an analysis of art.  WHAT IS ART!? As far as the empathy discussion, It's not about getting the feeling perfectly right, it's about engaging with the cirumstances of another as if it were your own.  This is why morality is relative to a degree.  Our notions of other's moral choices are skewed relative to culture (i.e. female genital mutilation and the like), yet we still try to conjecture about the moral status of these actions.  Just because all people don't feel the same way about an action or situation as we might, we still engage the faculty of empathy, and a moral judgement or attitude springs up, intuitively, from within. I think Tolstoys "infectiousness" criteria fails precisely because he goes too far into the importance of religion.  He also talks about the individuality of the feeling, which i think is more the point than producing art that appeals to all at once.  I don't think you need everyone to agree that a work is good art, you only need the one perception of it as such.

  Thanks for reading.

Continue the discussion... Part 3 now available for your intellectual consumption!