Music and Me for Thirty-One Years

(I don't even remember how old my twin brother and I were in this picture, Auburn, WA, USA)

Today is my 31st birthday and I am going to express a fear. I have always been fearful of keeping up to date and immediately adopting what is popular in our culture. I do not adjust well to change (I know you don't either). I am apprehensive because I have always wondered, "Why do I know about this artist? How do I know about this artist or this technology?" and "Why should this technology and why is this movie or application or television show is said to be meaningful to my existence?". I still engage with the technology, curiously I have been able to abstain from the culture, kind of. I don't listen to most new music because it is the primary source of marketing to a generation starved of and for validation. Every singular moment one of these shitty ass Drake or Kanye West or 21 Savage or Future or Kodak Black or 'enter your name' here fans, every 140 character thought had, is of the utmost importance and if you don't believe or like as they do they will shame you and then succumb to a deep depression that is shrouded by a sphere of ignorance that refuses to understand that their life may be unique but it isn't special.

I am not exempting myself from this ridicule. I am the old fuck who just cannot adapt with the times and just can't understand the minds of the youth. But listen and comprehend what is being said to them what is being sold to them. Just listen to it, watch it,  and I know for a goddamn fact that I understand that most of the music put out nowadays is deplorable. It's gross and disgusting. It's fun! It's party music no doubt but if that music becomes too entrenched in your everyday life. If you are compelled to party everyday or every weekend and do not seek any culture outside of what is presented easily, I believe that you're being controlled. In these volatile times (as projected by the media) all the youth care about is vanity (I see all these youthful "movements," I see them twerking to Juicy J holding a Black Lives Matter sign). It's difficult to focus solely on popular music and popular culture because the subcultures get ignored. But I believe that the subcultures are being ignored by the masses for very distinct reasons, education is one of them. I believe that we have a society have ignored education and disregarded the importance of not just learning but understanding. We can't just be knowledgeable we have to understand why we are learning what we learned and its application. I believe that most of this nation is too goddamn slow to understand deep conceptual art. I don't mean to sound pretentious and I don't want to be that cocky asshole who thinks that everything he likes everyone should like. I just generally believe that in a society that worships the Kardashians and pays too much attention to the political thoughts of rappers who prove their intellect in their music, we have some soul searching to do.

The youth have historically been the leaders of movements that created change or attempted to force some sort of establishment change. The youth have been distracted because the adults have been distracted as well. I contend that marching and yelling and making signs isn't protesting and it isn't productive and that "awareness" is one of the most overrated gains in political action.

The youth will grow up with these changes and with all of these apps and this music and when they are my age and go to "old school" night at some bar with safe spaces for people who hate vodka because their mom fucked a Russian sailor in front of them at eight years old, they will hear those songs and become nostalgic and remember "simpler times." I'm not going to put the onus on a youth that has more access to information than any other generation of humans ever, I'm going to place the blame on parents who were so focused on contributing to the building of enterprises for rapers of world resources and humanity, and their children and their community suffer for generations. They were so busy working 9 to 5 for some exploitive, bottomline, corporate piece of shit puppet so that our generation could have chicken for dinner everyday that they failed to recognize that their entire model of success and how to feed their family was created by the industrialists they work for. They were too busy helping mold the bottom of the pyramid that they couldn't nurture, they couldn't teach, or inquire about their child's understanding of what they take in from the universe around them. Now we had our kids tablets, and cell phones, and video games, and give them access to what is essentially human history and all of its glory and degradation and don't explain it to them or ask them do they get it.  I do not deplore this music because it exists, I hate it because there is no one asking the abused ears of the listener why they are attracted to the sound and how they think that sound affects their behavior, their thought process, their political leanings, their understanding. Can they even comprehend what they're listening to and who it is coming from? If that person was walking down the street would they fawn over that person or would they project their biases upon them?

What kills me the most about popular music (rap and hip-hop ostensibly are popular music nowadays) is that what is said doesn't mean anything. People dismiss it as unnecessary, they "only listen to the beat." This isn't for the billions of "true" hip-hop emcees born everyday this is for the generation of kids who aren't born yet who will deny the history before them because their parents weren't aware of it, foolishly. I think we have accomplished too much too soon because we refuse to acknowledge and truly quantify the past. New hip-hop and rap artists are allowed to be complete idiots without very valuable but ineffective criticism.

What has happened too quickly is our ambition to not reconcile the past, not to study or forgive the past, but sustain a heavy reticence that allows the past to be forgotten. I know the history of rap and hip-hop is littered with artists just as ignorant and nonsensical as the artists of today but they were ridiculed and bullied for not being up to par. We do not allow for people to understand technology or writing or music. A mixtape or an album can be created in a day and it gains too much attention and gains so much support from a masses who are ignorant of composition and artistry. In fact, art is thrown out there and you are told to like it for some sort social currency. I constantly think to myself that there are so many "new" artists that have passed away whose music you have not discovered. Whose music influenced what you're listening to today. I always tell myself that I'll be discovering Young Thug or one of these other clowns when I'm 60 years old like I was a 16 year old kid discovering Bo Diddley or The Electric Prunes decades after they were inactive. We are a masses who are hypnotized by consumerism, vanity and the perception of wealth. It is interesting that listeners have yet to understand how spending money on drugs and vanity are anti-wealth that lifestyle isn't sustainable. An image is being sold and a very very dumbed down masses is buying that image. Actually, I think these motherfuckers are buying a dream. They believe that there is actually enough money in the world where you can just drink, smoke, and fuck all day without any consequences. That is this generation's Utopia. That's why one artist can release one thousand mixtapes in a year and not one of the billion downloaders understands that they're being sold the same fucking thing over and over and over and over again.

Well fuck it. Who cares about people who complain about music? We all have our opinions and they all fucking suck. If I had to have a soundtrack to my life so far this would be it (this soundtrack changes everyday):

Year One: Mad Sin - Born Bad
Year Two: Richie Rich - Fresh Out
Year Three: Alice In Chains - Brother
Year Four: Spice 1 ft. Method Man - Hard To Kill
Year Five: X - Once Over Twice
Year Six: Circle Jerks - World Up My Ass
Year Seven: Baby Huey - Hard Times
Year Eight: Husker Du - What's Going On?
Year Nine: Twinz - Round & Round
Year Ten: C-BO - Ain't No Sunshine
Year Eleven: Dj Quik - Loked Out Hood
Year Twelve: MF DOOM - Gas Drawls
Year Thirteen: The Click - Tramp Dogs
Year Fourteen: Buzzcocks - Orgasm Addict
Year Fifteen: Rappin' 4-Tay- Sucka Free
Year Sixteen: Radiohead - How to Disappear Completely
Year Seventeen: Smashing Pumpkins - Real Love
Year Eighteen: Naked Aggression - Hardcore Guy
Year Nineteen: 2pac ft. Dj Quik and Tha Outlawz - Late Night
Year Twenty: Ice Cube - True to the Game
Year Twenty-One: Willie Hutch - California My Way
Year Twenty-Two: Mac Dre - Grown Shit
Year Twenty-Three: Mad Season - Lifeless Dead
Year Twenty-Four: The Manhattans - Am I Losing You
Year Twenty-Five: Slayer - Criminally Insane
Year Twenty Six: The Main Ingredient - Movin' On
Year Twenty-Seven: Dirty Rotten Imbeciles - No Sense
Year Twenty-Eight: Robert Johnson - Hell Hound On My Trail
Year Twenty-Nine: The Black Dahlia Murder - Spite Suicide
Year Thirty: Hubble Bubble - Sweet Rot
Year Thirty-One: