seeing erykah live last night got me in a dilla type mood…it was crazy to me…when she shouted him out…there was no applause. i know he would get more love in detroit and maybe new york than anywhere else but…i’m like damn…NOBODY in miami, who paid MONEY to see both erykah badu and common live, knows who dilla is or that he produced at least 15 of your favorite songs? i’m not a musical elitist by any means, i’m not jay dee’s biggest fan,as a matter of fact it was a non-detroiter who first made me aware of who he was…but still i was very shocked by that. even my friends that i was with were like “huh?” and had no idea who he was either…

it’s crazy…i never heard a dilla beat i didn’t feel. all his music is just so fuckin soulful…i’m not a hip-hop head, i’m not the type of person who just sits around listening to instrumentals…but i listen to his…i actually feel proud of the fact that he’s from the d, like there’s some type of special brand of soulfulness that can only be found in Detroit…and every time i look into his catalogue, i find a new song that i didn’t know he produced and i’m like…yo… if it wasn’t for him would i listen to hip-hop at all? i mostly knew the newer shit he did…you know, erykah, common, slum village, d’angelo…but, for example, i just found out that he produced “find a way” by tribe called quest and “runnin away” by the pharcyde…and my mind is blown a-GAIN like damn…i feel like it’s no exaggeration when people say shit like “Dilla IS hip-hop”…especially when i feel like he greatly influenced the only other producers whose names i care to know: hi-tek, 9th wonder, and kanye… and it’s crazy to me…i just read some magazine–can’t remember if it was vibe, xxl, or the source–talking about his estate, and how his mom and daughters are going through crazy financial drama cuz they can’t access his money…what a shame… apparently common doesn’t use the “n-word” anymore, at least in his performances. at first it was kinda jarring when the words i knew didn’t match the words he was singing…and he used to use mad profanity, i feel like “bitch nigga” was one of his favorites…

me and “nigga” have a funny lil relationship…right now i’m at the point where i try to evade it as much as possible, but still use it when necessary to articulate my true sentiments. but i think language really frames how one conceptualizes life…and in my truest heart i don’t think i should believe “niggas” exist.

but it’s hard. cuz i’m so “black.”

my wakeup call this morning was from my boy…we were talking about his relationship with his gf, and i was asking him if religious differences had caused any problems, because he’s muslim and his girl is christian…and he was saying that for him, before any religious choice, is his blackness. i feel very similarly about myself. but my blackness, my conception of it, and my relationship to it is, to a great extent, the basis of my cosmology and subsequently my morality. i’ve tried not to make my beliefs something that imposes limits on me or my life…but i am who i am…and i like myself…at the same time though, sometimes i feel entirely too ethnocentric. i feel most comfortable around other “consciously black”, black people. i don’t mean “conscious” in the spoken word, natural hair, incense burning sense…but i mean people whose blackness is omnipresent. or people who choose to be black. people for whom blackness is a way of life. for myself, i should be able to define “blackness” and when i sit down and think about it, i will…i’m not talking about any type of innate characteristic. not like black people have soul or some natural african rhythm or have better features, or not shit like that…it’s like some implicit assumption of community, collective identity and collective future…and i realize that is idealistic but this is why–though i wouldn’t say my blackness is my religion, it has a spiritual aspect to it. i wanna see my people succeed, i wanna see my people fly. not at the expense of anyone else, not because i believe we are supreme to other people, not because i believe in the purity of our race or our essence or that we are a race or have an essence,

but just due to the particularities of our circumstances…we have become an amorphous “people”…most of the people i love the most in the world are black…because my family is black, and i grew up in black neighborhoods and went to black schools…and that influenced my speech and i love the way(s) we talk…and there are still so many factors and infrastructures working against black success, and black self-actualization…and i’m struggling against those things… i think blackness is like any other god…for those who believe in it, it’s real. for those who don’t, it’s a coincidence of birth that doesn’t have to impact their lives any more than they allow it to. and that’s cool too.

talking to my boy made me feel real good though…it was a good conversation, i feel like we both encouraged each other. i would never have thought we would still be friends…we met in 2000 at presidential classroom…kept in and out of touch, and then saw each other again in 2006 (damn has it been that long?) for like a few hours when i was in texas for a protest with a van-load of volunteers and he let us all take showers in his dorm…i’m happy that we’re still friends.

i was talking to him about dating and meeting men…

random shit: my thighs: i love how they look when i’m standing up. especially now that they’re getting a lil bit more toned. so i like to wear shorts, skirts, and dresses…but i hate how they look when i’m sitting or laying down…LOL…like if i catch a glimpse, i think to myself:ugh. and then i have to stop myself. to be honest, guys telling me they like my thighs is the only reason i ever developed an appreciation for them :-/

music: lately i been really revisiting the following artists/groups: jagged edge, erykah badu, ginuwine, common, les nubians, the dream, r. kelly (i know, i know), jill scott, musiq, floetry… i really need to give papertrail a real listen though… i’m currently infatuated with “rockin that shit” by the dream. i think i already discussed this. yesterday they played it at one of the LONG ASS intermissions between artists…i had already said that i really wanted them to play that song. when they finally did, I SCREAMED…lol…and started dancing…that’s my SHIT though… i really like the dream. the critique i hear most often is that all his songs…sound like all his other songs…but since i liked all the other songs…i don’t find this problematic as yet.

talked to dude i met the other night at the club…we had a pretty interesting conversation about religion…i love when people converse about complex topics completely in ebonics and slang. this is a big turn on for me. but anyway…it was all good…and then this dude tried to invite himself to the brunch i explicitly said i was having with my girls…that was a big turn off. i don’t care if you comin at me at friend mode, or dating mode…unless we really cool, don’t invite yourself to do shit with me…i know how to say “i’m doing x,y,z,…you should come.” if i don’t say that, don’t be on some “me too shit”. UGH. anyway…other than that he seemed like a cool dude. but old. i think the chances of us being friends are very slim though–because of how i originally came at him–and since i wouldn’t date him i’m not sure if anything is going to pop off. i can’t tell if the main reason i couldn’t date him is because of his age, or because of his lack of height…besides the fact that i’m not tryna date right now anyway.

man…i’m so infatuated with black men from the south…i know my love for detroit dudes must still exist but i think it’s hiding…i like chicago guys too…but it’s them southern accents…GA, the sip, texas, louisiana, florida…so pretty to my ears. it’s funny how you pick up shit without even knowing it. i think the way i speak has gotten more country…but i also hang around a lot of people who learned english as a 2nd language…so i find myself using the present tense more often. in general i use “i am” + gerunds [present continuous?] to describe present tense things, unnecessarily so…but now i find myself using the good ol present simple a lot more often. i keep thinking about love lately…because of mamyrah, and because i’m a romantic, and because i haven’t been this single in a long time…i just want some realness…ultimately just someone who would try to make some shit work with me… but i’m not on some woe as me or hungry/thirsty shit at all. i just know that this is something important to me and i refuse to get into any more situations where i see from jump that shit ain’t finna be about shit, but go with the flow anyway.

i wish i could fuck every girl in the world

i very recently said some things about drake (pictured above with [his mentor?] weezy) that could be construed to be haterous.  i take all the shit back.  i’m officially on this nigga nuts.  or more specifically, i’m on his voice’s nuts. if that were possible.  his voice…makes me wish i could stick my tongue down his throat just so i could lick his voice.  umm…just kidding.

naw. but foreal. i’m big on voices.  and his is sexy as hell.  especially combined with his lil witty lines, smooth flow, and cockiness.

so anyway, i accidentally bought a weezy mixtape.  and that’s where i happened to hear the following gem, with the same title of this post “i wish i could fuck every girl in the world.”

i honestly don’t know how i feel about it.  i feel like i should think it’s demeaning to women or something.  but i don’t.  not that i carefully listened to the words or anything.  and i love the beat, it seems like a fun summer song.  perfect for “tell you n your friends, to get with me and my friends” type get-togethers that will result in inebriation and shared pleasure for all involved.

but the concept made me think of gender and sexuality.  in a heterosexist framework, if a guy smashes multiple women at once it makes him look good.  if him and his boys all smash the same female (that’s some gay shit), the males involved just made the most of a situation and the woman is a “sto”, a woman who lets multiple niggas run up in her and bust one.

that’s annoying.  but it’s hard for me to get worked up about it cuz i’m not into multiple penetration, nor do i have gangbang fantasies, and i also wouldn’t be with my girls trying to fuck the same dude with them all at the same time.  but there are other women who may find either or both of those situations enjoyable and should feel free to engage in whatever type of orgiastic activities they choose, without being stigmatized.

i do not wish i could fuck every guy or girl in the world.  but i wish sex outside of some societally accepted relationship or the illusion of it, was more acceptable.  or respected, even.

i know, i’m wishing for a lot.

ok also on my mistakenly purchased wayne mixtape is some song ciara singing, about how she lookin for a trapstar.  it’s modified inner rat bitch inside me that feels that shit!   don’t blame me, society made me this way!

seriously.  to be a trapstar rather than your run of the mill corner boy, means you are somewhat intelligent and have attained some level of success.  and any modicum of success achieved in turn requires a certain level of drive.  these are attractive qualities.  on TOP of that i’m attracted to black men, who have some type of hoodness to them, and wear “urban wear” as opposed to all this “grown and sexy”, carlton-from-fresh-prince lookin attire.  i mean that’s cute to me too, but a guy who can rock some crisp jeans or sweats, a crisp tee, polo, hoodie, nice sneakers, and a fresh fitted…would get it all day.  the excessive jewelry is…unnecessary, whether fake or genuine, but i guess you take the good with the bad.

so i guess i’m on a trapstar hunt!

i’m kinda kidding.

amanda diva is my homegirl

I’m back.

It’s 5:56 and i’m up. Not sleeping because my mind keeps running in the same circles, thinking the same things about the same thoughts i’ve been recycling for days now.

There’s just so much.

For 10 days I lived.

I don’t have pictures.

I was so anxious to leave Miami that I convinced my sister to leave for the sip right after we came home from Tropix and packed. Hit the road at 5:20 a.m. EST. Arrived to Byram around 6 CST.

I have 3000 more miles on my car now than I did the Saturday before last.

Alabama was some of the prettiest driving. The section of Florida that lines the turnpike and I-75 is very uneventful.

Alabama is pretty too look at, even on a gray day.It was spring.  Trees had blossoms.  The houses were pretty.

Aside from being cleaner, Mobile, Alabama is all the worst parts of the east side (of detroit) magnified. the hoodness.  the desolation.  coulda been that i was tired of drivin, but i thought it was some bullshit.

There is a stretch on the way from Mobile, AL to Jackson, MS where there is no highway. You just have to drive down a street. A regular ass street, that has traffic lights and stop signs. And I cussed out Alabama the whole way, for being so behind that they didn’t have an interstate.

But Alabama was pretty though.

I was so excited just to cross the state line into Mississippi. Mississippi is a trip. I see why Nina Simone had to write a song about it. It’s not like going back into time. It’s like an alternate universe. Where 21 year old Black men get high underneath the trees and the starlight and tell you what it’s like to buss a deer wide open with a shot gun, and how good deer sausages are. And dudes that look hard as hell come to Karaoke night, and the song they sing is “Put On” while girls in their entourage pop on the floor around them, and the next act is an old white guy with a faded baseball cap singing some country song about Indiana, that you’ve never heard before. Where guys brag to you about how they either look like T.I. Or Plies based on how they tip their fitteds, and buy you patron shots because they can tell you’re from out of town, cuz you got a whole different swag.

My first night in the sip I was overwhelmed with it all. Went to a late-night fish fry, where a girl my age had been frying fish for hours non-stop, for her boyfriend and his friends. It was so gender segregated that it caught me off guard. I can’t remember the last time I went somewhere and all the women talked in one room while the men smoked and drank in another. In the meantime the 8 year old daughter was up way too late for it to be a school night, while 20 something men around her blew weed smoke in her face, rapping along to music videos talkin about “gutta bitch”es and “bricks. All white bricks.”

Aloud I said “Damn. That’s sad.”

I wonder how this girl is gon grow up, and if her definition of love will be a guy loving her for being his gutta bitch.

I wasn’t tryna judge though.

Some short dude with a real cute face and pretty eyes called himself flirting with me, I guess. I was not at all in the mood for it. I’m very picky about how niggas interact with me in group settings. If I come at you on some teehee-in shit, or lookin like I’m thirsty, that’s one thing. But if I’m just being regular, drinkin with you the same way your niggas are—don’t try to turn that into a opportunity to get your dick wet, cuz I’m not interested.

The fish was good as hell.  I love catfish.  Even if it is a bottom feeder.

Underlining all my thoughts, I was thinking about “the youngin”*. I felt overwhelmed by 6 months of anticipation as soon as I saw the “Welcome to Jackson” sign. Things didn’t go exactly the way I wanted to but I saw him. Seein him for the first time since September did not give me any rush of feelings except relief. It was like: finally.

Out of the way parking lot car sex ensued, after some talkin and chillin. I didn’t have that “best ever” feeling because I was not entirely pleased with the scenario and I was also exhausted, but it was still really good and I felt totally relaxed afterwards and ready for some more.

Day 2 updates to follow tomorrow.

*best sex I ever had. Hands down.