sunez
By SUNEZ #SkillastratorLO
Compose your humanity for this will be taken
Souls in the twelfth jewel playing through the burst hydrant
Only to be the blood of others’ hearts in rivers of dolor
Dollar motivates how they foolishly clap
***
We speak mathematics, supremely that is, nigga, cause the whole universe we create from quantum thought through wave and particle, a whirlwind of colliding equations. Simple shit like ounces in the medulla and the inches in a Timb. The steps to a corner with how many dollars in a pocket divided by the learning forums for a child. Then equate-to-sun, the equation, the unknown ways of the culture add to an equality where the ounces in a brick subtract the principles in the book. The grades could be calculations of worth just as ICE raids are the erasers of depth in a household. The formula for the Black children–calculate the shades as the square root of a two powerful equality–to be a a rising Sun or a growing Earth or crowding dirt and a burnt dunn. All these numbers and too many variables! A nigga here, nigga there, spic right here, 120 for some, today’s math for less, so many sum to be greater than the some but just a mere something is what he too often adds up to.
These are just some numerations that highlight understanding while we listen to the LPs that stay near our book of life. Like when I remember this Knowledge Build year and Ralphiie Reese glooming the air in my lab to the right tinctures of focus. Shit isn’t sweet even as the wordplay was type 7 diabetes, concentrated cleverness in overbearing menace through the loneliest moments of these Soul crates.
These young brothers got no A&Rs now so I worry how they flood and could turn good chlorophyll to chlorine’d water. And I let go the worry when I heard Reese be the Artist that studies his own Repertoire. Always working on that cut between quality and quantity. And in these works is a phenomenon I haven’t seen meld though I seen it tried, some sincere, many more disingenuous and most failing. Let’s build on the God’s aural tablets…
When we talk we give all praises due the Wu-Tang, knowledge of self in the most abstract, arcane slang’d poetry ever. And wisdom power years later, a quarter century from protectin’ ya neck, we even gotta lament the GOAT candidates in the born man cipher going mystery allah. That is worshipping a–shit! Just worshipping anything outside of themselves cause seeing self as the Almighty God with science, math and lots of fucking (counter-cultural) attitude was what the Wu-Tang secret was. Is!
So the next generation of MCs, the ones sparked by the RZA recting tracks (with the most concentrated year of lyricist depth in Hip Hop history, 1997) to Meth ODing live shows and all them GOAT candidates in between with linx clientele shadowboxin, work to capture the aura. Some today disrespectfully think they are replacements [insert obese grafted ghost here_____], others dynamically amplify and distort aspects to an entirely distinct stylization [i.e. Roc Marci] while now I see an even deeper inspiration to a glorious elevation with Ralphiie Reese.
“Judge Wise,” Reese proclaims as his thematic aphorism through most tracks, before he destroys the booth or after he’s left it uninhabitable. A deep thought Ghostface uttered at the dawn of the #DarkAges but taken so much farther by Reese. The Wu’s grimy atmosphere where the samples are not cleaned nor chopped to exact measures and the verses are done when the stream of illness is exhausted not when sixteen is counted or dressed hooks are factored into the party. That very musical anti-musicality is an intention Reese has molded his whole recording career by. From the album covers that became these gorgeous horrors of bloody mosaics to the song titles that become more than just our way of wrong spelling but visually arresting (i.e. “10-1 Hz DTz Dartz,” “Butterfly Needlez XII,” “Le Dieu des flechettes (Interlude),” etc.), there is a Wu homage that catapults to one of the most unique MCs to emerge out of this #InvisibleRenaissance….
So I will let the Tyrese Davis LP befit a start to this Reese plus lesson. Through his “(Opening),” he builds, “20th letter, T. Truth is understanding reality of wisdom, Allah shows his powers and proves his powers…” and through a slowing down of Alc’s take on “The Realest” he offers declarations of his own self on “HANGMAN,” “Rhyme collegian/handle my shines I’m shape shifting for snake niggas/ultimate math, I politick it different/what’s the difference?, my chapters is long/waging war through the lines in my song/hieroglyph ‘em/hit ‘em with the realisms…” Tyrese Davis is musically filled with slowed down takes on known tracks as “27 Bladez on my Dressah,” or shorter looped isolations as “Sadart Hooslain” that let Reese’s free flowing stream of consciousness work itself. Or the right gorgeous Soul vocals right on the horns as “Luv Hell or Right” and the blind rage Blues of Ralphiie poeticizes through it, “I never lost when it count/I lost respect for every life form/I’m colder when I channel my warmth…” Tyrese is an opening to how effortless Ralphiie will continue to make it seem…
***
And from the sidelines we are punished
For all of ours they stole between the mind’s lines
Wonder the color of a pill that used to spay spics
The matrix is a home of rewards looming
From the charming colonists, a tip of the red cap
***
..Shyne Mosley II targets his menace more potently as the thickened, always slowed drums of “Pro Laced Me” kicks and he verses with extreme slang creation and grammar liberties that razzle the ruggedness, “Judge Wise…the evils came to battle so we alright/wild for the night/the heat’s brisky/85er drama…proceeded to splash your physical, fact/change your mentals when you enter my town/terroristic for tourists, you looking nervous on the corners we orbit…” The stylistics are now a brand of integrity here, the freedoms taken in writing with wild structures are now a standardized technique and his slow flow tempos are now specialized illness, that is, Ralphiie is rhyming now… And you hear again, undergirded bassline grooves and Reese dives in right in on the airy strings and floats in the pocket of “Killah Kitez.” This masterful muck that blends homage in innovation is everything we need from our culture and music that has reached absolute peaks and needs to use those peaks as stepping stones to the next peaks. Again, slowing things down extremely, Run DMC’s Beats becomes “Loozin Salushunz,” with Reese’s version of speed rhyming the second verse, [knowledge the fresh bar jumpstart just prior] “I move troops/molest booths/you end on the snare/I’m on my second wind/knowledge the spear/pack twelve like a carton of smokes/scanning niggas with the blazer/it’s heat in the strokes from hot sabres…” And then the magic of math masters is all in his longest platter…
…Maffmajishun, the intensity is furious even at its slowest tempos and the lyricism is now not just freely delivered but basking in its own blooming culture. Ralphiie Reese works don’t exist without the 90’s and its grime crime word crafts over filtered drums and crackling, dusted Soul of yesteryear. This is the the score for the urban samurais that read Ghostdog’s Hagakure with Pearline. “Vanity causing insanity/your egos is wack…” (“Fl0we On”) Reese is steeped in anthemics that match the thematics he has developed. This isn’t just a dynamic slang creator/grammar manipulator but prose that set up an aura, one that he decorates as on the backdrop scenery of the “(klozing) – N’Tha Rain!” but also the exquisite poetics of purpose and directives as on “Four60 AKA Bitter Dymundz” scribing, “Four60 handling better/check this lecture from a diamond getter/if I get caught give my babies a letter/we never slippin’ but just in case Daddy don’t make it home/It’s better than chrome/I move along Four60/bitter dymundz in your science you lying/it’s my prerogative I gotta live/and if you reading this letter, remember my quest for finer things/Poppa didn’t sing and the nigga did his thing…” Through that deepened bass measure with chimes clanging seasonally snowy to the horned wailing and thump drums of “Bladez (N’Tha) Glitchez,” Reese makes an art of the choice of words for their lushness of sound as well as adroitness (“I’m a prince of my city/I keep it gritty for bad bitches/rhyming pharmaceutical grammar..these blow cock niggas plot on my contra/I spin three times and pitch a javelin…” – “ALL”), their syllabilic matching for smooth layering (“Seven7Cevyn”), their tempered coupling (“Roman Numeral 374556”) and the right menace to go with the oft kilter arrangements of production he essentially is leading (i.e. “Butterfly Needlez”). Musically, the samples are often familiar to the deep crate diggers but the chops and tempos are original to us all. In a Hip Hop cipher, the real shit where criteria is skills, content worth and degree of difficulty, Reese’s Maffmajishun is the first opus, the immediate proof to a naysayer or those ignorant of this illy…
…And Arrow Bowie are the continuing proofs of a musical ingenuity of sound guiding his stellar lyricism. As “Le Dieu des flechettes (Interlude)” where a slow stomping piano bass is consistently reminding a thick drum to plod with it, he canvases letters like, “Judas on the twenty four shines/ I’m like a scene full of flowers/we wardrobe Gods, knowledge your dowers/holy in the heart of the Lord, I rhyme heavily/crafting lines like they come from a brick/manifesting on my physical self, I need infinity stones…” Arrow is listening music for men of deep minds in the hells of the shallow and clenched fist swingers roped in around replicating enemies. Arrow Bowie still shows the seemingly blasphemous feel his tracks are chopping and Boom Bap screwing great underground tracks of yore as that break and digi keys are slowed to half the bpms they’ve ever been heard at on “Jerzeez n’tha Winter.” It’s also a sound that is getting crisper in its thickness (“Innalekkchewal”) and more daring in the brilliant use of the blatantly used sample (i.e. Al G. for “Daggaz & Spearz”), the tempos and bass madness applied are the perfect pockets for Reese. The trials of the God (“Innalekkchewal”) through the battle bars (“Daggaz & Spearz”), distinguishing the deeper mentalities (“The shit you tell a commentator if they never played” – title track) or creating new word worlds (“..cocaine lines all equivalent to blood ballads..” – “Penicillin”), Arrow Bowie continues the road to mastery Reese is on. A road that has beats with growing originality and already powerful vibes captured (i.e. his beat tape Countess Dartula: Volume 1) and a need to forum his family that includes The Dart Unit as his compilation LP, Tha G.O.D Hour, attests to.
This is a Ralphiie Reese road where records are art pieces, collages of words with meaning that can be enjoyed for their mere choice, sound or the aforementioned depth. His voice is a tone of warm peril forever in the pocket effortlessly with an emotive relaying that makes a stylistic, unique blend. Ralphiie Reese’s builds as the Original man being God, in abstract prose paintings of warrior ethos make his work in 2018 a living rewind for years to come. Records that we are expected to judge wise with and ever reprise in the speakers blasting through our inner mind’s eye.
***
Encircle them with civilization, they say
Triangular torture from their invented father, son and holy spook
To the stabbing of the refused corner stone into our hearts
A gentrification from colonization, a genocide from all the homicides
Still,
our square somehow kept borning
and now we always clot injury with clout.
They in for a bout beyond the round about.
Swinging builds from the chains that blind,
the deaf saw an iron butterfly fluttering peace,
the dumb played with the darts that struck them…
Sunez Allah #SkillastratorLO of the LO LIFES
#LOVEandLOYALTY A #LoLife
The organization of these principles around a counterculture, an expressive arts of creation that uplifts the ideas and thoughts of an oppressed people, is why I’m an honored builder amongst legends, knighted by heroes of Medina (Rakim Supreme Shabazz Allah/Rudy Lo, Thirstin Howl the 3rd, Bonz Malone) to further create in my element as a Hip Hop Writer (creative author/principled journalist/honoring historian) of #ArtOnArt & #ScienceOnMusic. So the world may find love that locks in with the action of loyalty though they may never find another writer with my kind of grammar…
Living and sharing the pillars of:
#KnowledgeOfSelf
#LoveAndLoyalty
#OriginalCreativity
Peace, Sunez Allah
#SkillastratorLO #PowerWrite