Pissing Excellence in the Wind

Today (March 7^th, 2011) is the day that Prodigy of Mobb Deep is released from prison. I’m happy for him and his family. Prodigy is one of my favorite MC’s. That’s not to be confused with being considered one of the best. Wu-Tang has always been full with great MC talent, anyone of them who could conceivably maintain favorite status. However, only a couple of the noted rhyme slingers out of the Wu-Tang camp would ever be considered one of the best to ever breathe on the mic.

On the other end of the spectrum, an artist like Jay Z would probably easily gain a consensus of opinion that he is one of the best ever. This consensus would be achieved easily amongst both his peers and music fans alike.

However, this doesn’t mean that Jay is one of your favorite artists. At least in my case this is true. As I’ve grown older I have been able to greater appreciate Shawn Carter’s vision and approach to his craft. With that said, there are many other artists that I enjoyed much more than the Jay Z songs that came on the radio and many of my friends listened to incessantly.

Case in point, the Old Dirty Bastard. He wasn’t even the best MC/artist in the Wu-Tang Clan, but he was hands-down my favorite. While everyone was fixated on Method Man & his clever wordplay early on in their career, ODB was the one who I was listening for. Old Dirty had this ability to verbalize the sounds in his head and use inflection to capture his sentiment perfectly without the use of actual words. For example, one classic ODB line goes: “I’m cherry bombin’ shit, BOOM, just warming up a little bit, VROOM-VROOM.” Before Old Dirty, no one was crazy enough to even attempt a line like that without the fear of intense ridicule and career suicide.

Back to my point, Prodigy, one of my favorite MC’s comes home today. It makes me feel good to both publicly welcome back to this side of the “G wall” and to be able to use his work to make a valuable point today. Mobb Deep’s music (particularly the “Infamous” album) sonically captured the feeling of many youth on the violent streets of urban centers across America. In the song “Survival of the Fittest” Prodigy rapped, “There’s a war going on outside, no man is safe from. You can run but you can’t hide forever, from these streets that we done took, you’re walking wit your head down scared to look. You’re shook, cause ain’t no such thing as half-way crooks.”

The verse from “Survival…” is a classic. More importantly, the sentiment that it communicates is powerful and represents a turn in the genre where artists began embracing “reality rap”. Whether or not it was truly Prodigy’s first person narrative, he wrote in the voice of a young urban outlaw in one of the most dangerous areas of New York. He spoke to the mentality of youth entrenched in urban warfare, a game of survival of the fittest. Most importantly for the purposes of this writer & this blog he embraced his deviance as normative, he embraced his monster.

Sure, Mobb Deep is predated by the likes of N.W.A, Ice-T, and Kool G Rap. However, what makes them different is that their music wasn’t about them being “the guy”, the dope man, the quintessential gangster. Their music was more on par with a slice-of-life perspective of the low to mid-level everyman.

Here’s where things take an interesting and most unexpected turn. One must keep in mind that although there is a grain of truth to what is being communicated through Mobb Deep’s music, it’s still only entertainment. That monster music is there to entertain individuals with truths, half-truths, exaggerations, critical omissions, and flat out lies for art’s sake. Not even Mobb Deep is Mobb Deep (See Jay Z’s summer jam performance from 2001: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jay-Z_vs._Nas_feud). Prodigy (legal name, Albert Johnson) went to jail for losing his sense of balance, for letting his monster roam free without rules, for letting Prodigy overrun the will and conscience of Albert Johnson. Basically, he was imprisoned for going Charlie Sheen (the verb, not the proper noun).

It took my muse recently to direct my attention to the spectacle that is Charlie Sheen. It seems that everyone has developed an opinion one way or another about what has widely become recognized as his media meltdown. Up until the last few days I purposely looked away figuring that this had no bearing on me, or how I live my life. However, mark my words when I say that there is something that we can all learn from the grand unmasking of Charlie Sheen.

Charlie Sheen is not only a monster. One worthy of not only our acknowledgement but our full, undivided attention. He is a samurai without a master and no rules of engagement. He is THE monster, his deviance is unrivaled, his candor unmatched, and his filter, nonexistent.

We know that Charlie (CS henceforth) has lived a privileged life, and that’s putting it mildly. CS is the flesh & blood embodiment of Ricky Stratton from “Silver Spoons”, never having wanted for anything. He grew up to work in an industry where his career path is determined by his awesome talent of being born the son of a famous actor. There is no real reason care about the man as a normal human being one way or another.

But wait, as he grows older he begins to diverge from his path of normalcy in privilege. We would be remiss if we didn’t note that normal is a relative term and is most likely an unknown in this equation. So, we’ll equate normalcy with common perception given our socio-cultural metanarrative on what we should assume an upstanding well-to-do man to behave like.

CS has been berated, less for his lifestyle choices and general position in life than for his language and attitude of superiority. Surely, knowing what we know about CS up until this point in time, should you poll all Americans on if they would trade places with CS today, at least 80% would (and I consider that a low figure).

The man has fame, wealth, family, lives a rock star lifestyle, has an open relationship with two women (“the goddesses”…who also allow him to have orgies with porn stars), and just got fired from a job that is required to continue payment to him of millions of dollars. The man has tiger blood coursing through his veins. He is a miracle of science. He is right. That is winning. The media and the court of public opinion seem to disagree, but I don’t know that they should.

What his critics contend is that CS has lost sight the fact that it was not his reckless and deviant behavior that achieved his present lifestyle for him. The monster & drug that is CS is not perceived by the public as either virtuous or meriting his extravagant behaviors and attitude. In fact, common knowledge would indicate that it was the meticulous balance of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by his father that secured him the opportunity to embrace the monster’s ball that he calls life. The monster unchecked is a dangerous thing. No one can go all “monster”, all the time.

Nobody likes the monster to walk amongst us unabated, and even fewer condone his/her selfish indulgences in theory. No one wants to acknowledge its existence though we all have intimate knowledge of its whereabouts and how it moves through life. His (what the astrologer would call) “off the record” behaviors have become the CS narrative in its entirety. I personally think that it’s all a well choreographed act. Nobody during the course of one conversation drops that many priceless quotable statements. Dave Chapelle couldn't make up such an outrageous persona (Wayne Brady was good...but come on). No matter what, the material that he’s producing is of the highest quality. Either we are watching the epic self-destruction a solipsistic hedonist or maybe as CS says we should just, “sit back & enjoy the show.”

Welcome home Prodigy. I hope that you get a chance to check out the drug that is CS. No matter how you slice it, he’s winning. As Prodigy could tell you better than anyone else, life is a game. It is, “survival of the fittest, only the strong survive”...and all CS more than surviving, he's winning.

Enter: Alistair Cookie

As a youth, I was a big fan of Sesame Street and the Muppet Show. Of course I was. When I was around ten years old it was normal for kids my age to watch and enjoy those shows. Naturally, kids would be drawn to different characters and we would argue over our personal favorites. But I had a particular interest in the monsters that were featured on these shows. I enjoyed that the characters who were monsters had a tendency to “go monster” from time to time. The same case could be made for the characters that were animals (think “Animal” from the Muppet Show), aliens, and weirdos.

I think that what caught my attention and imagination most was that being a monster as performed on the shows meant being deviant or “bad” sometimes (and not necessarily at other times). Sometimes being a monster translated into being uncivilized or giving into “primal” or base urges. Such behaviors weren’t condemned but they did serve the purpose of reminding the other characters and viewers that they were monsters (and that’s what monsters do). There was a certain element of chaos and recklessness that for instance, Cookie Monster, could deliver but other intriguing characters like Ernie or Fozzy Bear could not.

My absolute favorite skit was the “Monsterpiece Theatre” bit from Sesame Street. The Muppet Show may have offered more nuanced themes and matured humor, but for some reason the “Monsterpiece” sketch resonated with me the most. For those unfamiliar or in need of being refreshed, Monsterpiece Theatre was a parody of the popular 70’s – 80’s program “Masterpiece Theatre”. The PBS show was well noted for its refined English host (Alistair Cooke) would introduce segments of an ongoing miniseries filled with drama and mystery. On Monsterpiece Theatre, Cookie Monster played a monster playing the part of a refined host (Alistair Cookie) of a television show, but prone to outbursts and erratic behaviors.

So, I would just fall out every time I caught the show. Here’s this monster in a silk robe and ascot, seated in a high-back chair, and smoking a pipe while talking broken English, slowly. I loved every minute of it. In fact, I probably love it even more now. In a certain light I relate to that character. Yeah, I said it. I relate to an imaginary, puppet-monster character mocking the performance of an aristocratic English gentleman. How is that so different from what I do now? I’m an invisible man who code-switches so as to not only be acknowledged, but embraced by a community that thrives on its ability to keep others like me (and sometimes me specifically) invisible...or at very least, a puppet. In some ways, the monster in gentleman’s clothing is how I see myself. To take the relation a step farther, the opposite is probably equally as true, I can also be a gentleman in monster’s clothing. That is surely an entirely separate entry however (tie a knot around that point and we’ll come back to it at a later date).

Since I was a youth I would watch personalities like Alistair Cooke (not Cookie), teachers, politicians, etc., and be amazed at how well they performed their identities. I would wonder if one could always stay in the moral, upright, dignified character. I would wonder who they were when they were “off the record”. I couldn’t believe that Alistair Cooke could be the Masterpiece Theatre guy at home and behind closed doors. What a bore he and others with similar performances must be if those characters were their totality (kill yourself Alistair Cooke...not "Cookie").

I am Alistair Cookie. I live in a small library and smoke a pipe. I am a cookie-eating monster posing as a refined gentleman with an innocent milk mustache. I am a man predisposed to erratic, monster-like behaviors. I am sure that the ‘Masterpiece’ host was too. It’s just that at some point I decided to own up to the fuzzy, wide-eyed monster hiding under the silky robe. 2011 is the year of the monster within. Reporting live from inside a couple single malt highballs, somewhere deep in a thick fog of pipe smoke, planning your untimely demise.