Author Archives: RP

06.20.16
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All year long I waited for summer

All year long, like a child, I waited for summer. Now I find that June has brought only heat and very little warmth. I search for purpose amidst confusion. I constantly resist taking a natural attitude towards systematic destruction. They attempt to destroy the structure and the soul, the church and the congregation are aflame. I stand alone always isolated and barely sane. I count money that I don’t have, I check-in with the dead, I kiss perfect memories throughout the night. I get high on nostalgia like so many pills. I’m addicted to escaping traps that I have already transcended. I play games like a child. I listen to Nina Simone on vinyl like an old man. I miss her like a fool. I am poor like the uneducated. I stand all alone like the completely misunderstood.

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I smile easy. I cry hard. I speak well. I die. I wake up. I sleep not. I am in constant pursuit of inconsistency. Could you tell her that I’m looking for her? The next time you see her could you tell her please? No. Nevermind. Again I am content. I just forced myself to remember the misery. It’s very foolish for a man to want what people believe that he should have. Only a coward would let someone else define what happiness should mean for him. And so I move forward corrupted by my past. I sleep with ghosts. I pray to god. And I feed on my inability achieve serenity.

-YB

05.23.16
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Soulful Presents The Fire THIS Time

imageIf you will be anywhere near the San Francisco Bay Area on 5/28 the you need to come to this event.

The Fire THIS Time” will be a night of SUPERDOPE poetry you won’t soon forget, with dynamic performances by:

Dom Jones & Donte Clark!

You will definitely want to be in the building as two of the illest poets in the state of California tell us what it means to be young, black, and aware in these tragic yet inspiring times.

There will also be an open mic session so don’t forget to bring your own poems with you. This musical, poetic and politically conscious event will be hosted by the lyrically gifted and all around righteous brotha Davin “Do Dat” Thompson. Not to mention sets buy the ultra smooth band WVG.

In addition to the excitement onstage,

The hottest young entrepreneurs in Oakland will be selling their products in the lobby. So please support:

“Dope Lash”
“Oakland’s Own” – the freshest clothing company in town &
“The Cake & Sugar Company” – the best cupcakes you will EVER taste!

This event is guaranteed to be the realist thing to happen in Oakland since Festival at the Lake.

Only $10 at the door / you can purchase your tickets early, here!

See you all at The Fire THIS Time

05.22.16
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Notes on The Fire at 73rd and Macarthur

EAST OAKLAND FIRE AFTERMATH

I sat in Eastmont Barbershop for hours as a young boy. Looking out of the window while waiting on the best fade in town. I stared out onto 73rd and Macarthur Boulevard at all of the Cougars and Mustangs, Chevelles, Novas, and Cutlasses that were coming from the carwash on 90th and Mac and gearing up to hit the Foothill strip. They would rev their engines up until the 73rd light finally changed then they’d peel out down the block. This was back in the 90’s when the Foothill Strip was two lanes and everyone who had access to a car from all parts of the town would ride it every weekend all the way to Lake Merritt. It started right there on 73rd and Mac. 73rd and Macarthur is the gateway to Deep East Oakland going one way and the start of the Foothill strip going in the opposite direction. It lay right in the center of the largest black community in Northern California. It’s a major thoroughfare. It’s important. And now as of yesterday morning the whole block has been burned to the ground.

 

As I look at the changing demographics in the area right above Macarthur Boulevard and to a lesser extent below it I suspect, no I know, that it’s a blatant case of insurance fraud. A few blocks down on 77th and Macarthur there were also a few businesses that were burned under mysterious circumstances. Someone is reaping the money from this destruction while local children must endure a neighborhood that looks like present day Damascus. These building will remain burned out until enough white people move into the neighborhood. Then they will buy it and then this community will go the way of West Oakland, the way of Brooklyn, the way of Brixton, and the way of D.C. And all things poor and black will be shipped off to a suburb 50 miles away.

 

To love a ghetto as much as I love mine may seem oxymoronical to an outsider. I love the way we struggle. I love the bluntness and the humility of hood life. I love the pride of the people even though it is far too often misplaced in street corners and cars and gang signs. I love the blackness. Much more significant and perhaps much more telling, however, is this fact: I love my hood because my hood is all that I know. I’ve gotten degrees and come back here. I’ve gone around the world and come back here. I’ve taken a chance with a woman or two but always I’ve come back here. And now as I look at 73rd and Macarthur the only thing I see is my childhood all aflame and my heart in ashes. The invaders have made their move and indeed they have left their mark.

 

-YB

03.21.16
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A Bad One

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When she finally came, she squirted so hard that it scared her. She squirted right on her boyfriend’s stomach as if she were the dude or something. And then she laughed. She actually laughed out loud while she straddled him. He tried to flip her on her back but she got up and went to the bathroom. Then she played with herself while she starred in the mirror wondering if she could do it again. She did. Not as hard as the first time but she managed to do it nonetheless. She was so focused. Just like those people that move things with their minds. She had harnessed all of her desire and all of her sexual fluids into one tiny spot and released it.

 

It was only about a week ago that she had seen Jadafire do it on a pornhub video that she watched while her boyfriend was in the shower for way too long. It amazed her so much she just had to try it out for herself and she got it. She flexed in the mirror. She felt bad, like a bad bitch, The Baddest Bitch, although she didn’t like to use that word. She had never been anything close to a hoe but she knew that she could be one if she wanted to and that gave her one more thing to feel confident about. Like car note paid off; check. Master’s Degree; check. House; check. Passport; check. Pussy control; check. She was everything and she loved it. She knew her worth and therefore she would never let anyone make her feel less than perfect. She blew herself a kiss in the mirror that she selected in the bathroom that she designed which sat in the house that she bought. She was The Baddest one alive and she knew it.

 

-YB

03.15.16
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I like the dancer

 

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On her profile picture there is an image of a newborn babe; her 2nd child in three years. This child is light in complexion just like his mother but bares the eyebrows and nose of his darker skinned father. I scroll through her pictures, liking many of them, as a means of catching up with her. I haven’t interacted with her page in years. I haven’t seen her in much longer. I met her my first year of graduate school. She was an artist and I was an artist so we clicked. She was into black consciousness as was I. She was a dancer though who performed in front of hundreds of people in the theater while my craft required that I sit alone in a dark room with my laptop and brood for hours at a time.

 

I liked her. She was very refined and at times she could be distant but there was nothing arrogant about her. She just moved through the world like dancers tend to do, she was so obsessed with her next move that it often times caused feelings of unease in the people around her. Shortly after graduate school I clicked on her page and found out that her relationship with her longtime boyfriend had ended and she wasn’t taking it well. That summer I saw her at the Juneteenth festival in Berkeley. She was by herself. I was with my mother and daughter. I slipped away from them to speak with her and her face looked even more pensive and weary than it did on her selfies. I came on to her strongly. I asked her what she was doing for the weekend and suggested that we kick it. She said no. Actually she said that she was trying get herself together or she wasn’t ready, or some crap like that but all I heard was no. Then my daughter spotted me and she noticed how much my child had grown and said as much. Shortly after that the conversation was over. She moved away to Texas and that was the last time I saw her in real life.

 

But now she looks so happy and I feel so ridiculous. Her man wears a proud yet goofy smile as he holds their child. He is tall, his posture is erect, and he possesses an enormous inner-confidence. The photo garners 217 likes including mine. And it’s funny when I think that I was so delusional as to believe that I could have made her that happy. I could have tried but I would have failed and she would have ultimately moved on to someone like the man that she is now married to. I realize six or seven years later as I have become more comfortable within my own flesh and more aware of my limitations, that I was never meant to dance with her. Just as she was not born to share my lonely darkened room and transfer all of her inadequacies to the written page. No. All I can ever do is like her. Like her photos, like her comments, like her memes, like her videos and like her life. All while hoping that one day when she’s really bored she’ll click on my profile and like me back.

 

-YB

03.03.16
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Kevin Gates is the King of the Trap

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The hood feels rapper Kevin Gates in the same way that the hood felt Mike Tyson, Allen Iverson, and the movie “Paid in Full.” Kevin Gates is a man that unabashedly represents the ghetto mentality in an era in African-American culture where the black bourgeoisie seems to have taken center stage. Let me explain. The reigning king of hip-hop is a half black Jewish kid from Canada and the Black Lives Matters Movement—though very admirable in both their pursuits and organizational skills—is very far from being a movement that is based in the ghettos of America. Contrarily, The Kevin Gates Movement is.

 

Any person that was raised in the hood is going to be intrigued by a man that shouts “Penitentiary Rules!” as a means for setting the protocol for an interview he was about to begin with The Breakfast Club on Power 105.1 in New York. An interview, like all Kevin Gates interviews, that had everyone from hip hop heads to candidates for PhD’s in Psychology buzzing for days. Kevin Gates is ridiculously forthcoming about his incarceration, his open relationship with his wife, being shot, his father dying of AIDS, not vaccinating his children, and everything else that most other human beings would keep to themselves; and that is why the hood absolutely adores him. Kevin Gates holds the unofficial distinction of being the realist man in the music business right now and at times I wonder if he truly realizes his power and is he ready to deal with the pressures of leading the most feared group of people in this country—the young, black, criminal class.

 

In January at the People’s Choice Awards a delusional aspiring rapper named Zacari Nicasio crashed the stage and interrupted the acceptance speech of cast members from “The Talk” to, among other things, give a shout out to Kevin Gates and tell people to buy Gate’s album. On February 18 in Easley, South Carolina three teenagers were being arraigned for murder when they broke from the proceedings in order to ask for followers on social media. One of the suspects said “Follow me at Luca Brasi Jr.” Luca Brasi was Vito Corleone’s most reliable hit man in The Godfather movie. However one should note that Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather was released in 1972. Teenagers only know who Luca Brasi is because that is the name of two of Kevin Gates mix tapes. He even has an image of Luca Brasi being strangled tattooed on his body. So when the young brotha chooses Luca Brasi Jr. as his Instagram handle it is fair to say that he is naming Kevin Gates as his father.

 

The young suspect in the South Carolina murder case has probably never respected anyone as much as he respects Kevin Gates. He didn’t decide to name himself after his pastor, or his teacher, or Tavis Smiley, or Lil Tunechi, or Barrack Obama, or Drake or Alicia Garza or K-Dot. He chose to follow in the footsteps of a man who he feels speaks for him. And in the most precarious moment of his life he showed his allegiance to a man who he more than likely will never meet.

 

The aura of Kevin Gates, unlike rappers from past generations, seems to emanate more from his prowess on social media and his consistent presence on the interview circuit than it does from his actual music. On his Instagram page it isn’t uncommon to find him walking comfortably through the housing projects in Memphis, TN (Gates was born in New Orleans and raised in Baton Rouge), hanging out near the Eiffel Tower, riding in a car with some of the grimiest looking dudes you’ve ever seen, or getting married to his longtime girlfriend who he often describes as a real ride or die chick that accompanies him almost everywhere.

 

Kevin Gates has the down chick, the face tattoos, the money, the game, the reputation, the jewelry, and the international ghetto pass that every young hustler desires. For anyone that follows him on social media or youtubes his videos or downloads his music it would appear that Kevin Gates is living a real life ghetto fantasy. He is a successful trapper who survived the lifestyle that kills thousands of black men every year. To the young black criminally inclined individual Gate’s is one of very few genuine people in a world full of phonies. Kevin Gates is the unofficial King of the Trap and in the same way that young white college kids made pilgrimages to the home of a reclusive J.D. Salinger after reading The Catcher in the Rye in order to seek advice or shake his hand or just to simply see him; young black men who feel as though they have been forced to live a criminal lifestyle cling to Kevin Gates.

 

There is something mysterious and dangerous about the bond between those that are misunderstood and the artist who understands them. For a young child who grows up experiencing the daily degradations of having a drug addicted mother and an absent father only to grow up selling the exact same drug that his mother is addicted to and living the exact same lifestyle that caused his father’s absence, life is often completely miserable and failure often feels predetermined. This state of mind is further exacerbated by the lack of having a voice. For there is no group of social activists that represent your needs, no successful politician that speaks directly to your experience, and even the form of music that was supposed to be created to tell your story has largely abandoned you—but not Kevin Gates. Kevin Gates is to the hood what the republican national convention is to the white upper-middle class—he represents their values.

 

The question that Kevin Gates must grapple with is does he have any obligations to his constituents other than making money and providing entertainment. Should he attempt to educate the masses of black people that school systems around the country routinely fail? Should he use his highly coveted position as King of the Trap to lead his people and to inspire righteousness or should he only continue to depict the gritty underworld that shapes his character? As a brilliant mind that made it out of the prison of the ghetto and the actual penitentiary, does it behoove Kevin Gates to somehow change the mentality of young hopeless black teenagers around the nation? The answer depends on how one views the role of the artist in society. What is not debatable however and perhaps is most frightening to the power structure is if Kevin Gates wanted to start a revolution then he absolutely could. For the hood feels him that much. He is that powerful. He is the King of the trap.

-YB

01.26.16
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Am I an Opressor? Notes on the murder of Janese Talton-Jackson

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A few months ago I was on BART headed to San Francisco when a gorgeous young black woman stepped onto my train. She knew she was gorgeous too, as did everyone else on the train that evening. She had a brightly colored flowing scarf wrapped around her neck and lipstick that made her lips look wet and loud, reminiscent of a jolly rancher. She was a bit of a contrast in terms of style. She was like a mash-up of India Arie and Trina with her conscious side just barely beating out the ratchet. I dug her from a distance.

Every single passenger in our car, male and female alike, stared at this sister and then quickly looked away. They tried to remain focused on their newspapers or the old structures that passed right outside the window barely lit by the streetlights. The gorgeous young lady also tried to pretend as if she was completely engrossed in the screen on her smart phone but every now and again she would look up to see who was looking at her. I was looking. I swear I wasn’t looking harder than anyone else but I was definitely struck by her beauty. The sister saw everyone else looking at her and appeared to be charmed. She saw me looking and became uncomfortable, if not agitated. I could almost read the frantic thought that pulsated in her head: “Please don’t talk to me. Please don’t try to talk to me.” We were the only two black people on the car.

 

Her body language hurt me and my attitude immediately became morose. I did not want to talk to the young lady. I did not want her phone number. OK maybe I did want to tell her she was beautiful but I was not going to harass her or compromise her regality in any way shape or form. I did not understand why I caused her so much consternation and how was it that she seemed to want the attention of everyone in the world except that of a black man. I did not understand. But now after the murder of Janese Talton-Jackson I get it. It makes sense why the young lady sat as far from me as she possibly could and why she all but ran off the train once her stop came. For I have come to realize that as far as she is concerned, I am her oppressor.

 

Janese Talton-Jackson was a 29-year-old mother of three who was murdered last Friday morning in Pittsburgh, PA because she would not talk to a man after leaving a bar. Apparently his ego was so fragile that after being rebuffed he felt the need to shoot Janese in the chest. Both Janese and her murderer are black.

This is why so many of our women fear us. Why they see us talking amongst ourselves on the corner and cross the street. This is why we say hello to them and they say nothing. This is why young black women would rather fall in love with one another than to let us come anywhere near them. This is why so many of our women hate us.

I think about how I respond when I am walking down the avenue and I look up and see a police car. Or when I’m driving down the street and see a squad car in my rear view. I get nervous even though I haven’t done anything because I know that the police have the power to harass me anyway. That they can take away my dignity for their amusement. That they can beat me up because they don’t like my attitude or that they could even kill me. For one to have a forced interaction with the outside entity that has power over one’s life is always visceral and intense. Janese Talton-Jackson chose not to have this interaction and was killed for her decision. In the same way that Oscar Grant was killed. In the same way that Trayvon Martin was killed. In the same way that Laquan McDonald was killed and in the same way that Mario Woods was killed. Janese Talton-Jackson was murdered because she had enough pride to resist.

If only coming to terms with Janese’s murder was that simple. The fundamental difference between her murder and the murder of black men at the hands of white male authority figures is that Janese’s murderer will spend the rest of his life in jail while police officers routinely kill black men without consequence. However even as I live in this truth I am still left to ponder the questions; To what extent are black men the oppressors of black women? And to what extent do black women have the right to be deathly afraid of us? I know not the answer and I have no solutions. I do know that the young lady on the BART train was a stunning example of flawless three-dimensional art. Her surface was impeccable but on the interior she was wounded. If I could I would apologize for all of the pain that black men such as myself caused her and pray that she could internalize the message. And If I could I would bring Janese Talton-Jackson back to life and tell her that she was beautiful and assure her that I wanted nothing in return.

-YB

01.10.16
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The Christianity of Tupac Shakur

 

the-don-killuminati-the-7-day-theoryAs I listened to the song entitled “Blasphemy” by Tupac Shakur I found myself thinking about how much of a Christian the man truly was. “We probably in hell already/ our black asses not knowing/ everybody kissing ass to go to heaven ain’t going.” Pac was a pastor preaching to an unsaved congregation in a manner that they could understand. He encouraged young black people to change our conditions here on earth as opposed to waiting for a paradise that was not promised to everyone. Tupac also instilled the significance of spiritual reformation “Do what you gotta do but know you got to change/ try and find a way to make it out the game.”

And after listening to this track for probably the 5,000th time and hyper-analyzing the lyrics I became downtrodden and embarrassed. I was ashamed to be a part of a culture that worships the THUGLIFE tattoo on his stomach while ignoring the holy cross that was permanently inked to his back. Twenty years after the man’s death and we still refer to him as a thug, a rebel, the GOAT, a hothead, and a real NIGGA but we never refer to him as a devout follower of Jesus Christ. For how long will we allow the media to tell us what to think about our prophets? At what point will we seek the truth for ourselves?

-YB

01.05.16
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East Oakland Rain

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Rain speaks to me. Rainfall creates a mood, a train of thought, a release from the cool Northern California monotony. Cars swish by and I don’t want to leave my home. I don’t want to open the curtains. I don’t want to text anyone back. Rain tells me that it’s ok to be antisocial.

I live in my head. I breathe in nostalgia. I spend the majority of these winter days trying to make sense of this confusion. Trying to create solutions for a problem that I have yet to identify. Trying to avoid cliché’s while trying to arrive at inner peace. My bible has fallen to the floor. I haven’t picked it up in weeks. My future is frightening so I disappear into old things. The truth has become so distorted by the lapsing of time that often times I forget how destructive these things were to me. I lose the same race every night. I lose it in my soul.

In between raindrops I smile. While it is pouring, and only while it is pouring, I allow myself to cry. I cry for all of my mistakes. I cry for the dead. I cry for my inability to make things right. I cry to remind myself that beneath all of the masculine ideas that I have learned, I am still a human being.

The rain gives me an excuse to have pity on myself and to analyze the miserable side of being alone. And that being that so many people that I once loved, and even more importantly, that once loved me have moved on to happiness. They’ve moved on to engagements and husbands and children while I continue to move back to nostalgia. The days when I kissed them and left them where they stood. The days when I gave them just enough. The days when I thought they would always be there for me to come back to. The days when I thought that I had it like that. I don’t. I never did. Now all of these thoughts are inappropriate and all of these memories are painful. Just like the childhood memories of playing football at recess, goofing off in class, and getting the phone numbers of cute girls with friends that are no longer living. More dead memories.

I contemplate all of the false steps I have taken to get me to this point. I am astonished at how blind I had to be to have gotten so lost.

-YB