Cellar rhyme, verse the seventh … mind’s eyes and lenses wide for masterpiece theatre of a culture maestro’s midheaven … glasses up, raise a cup — enjoi :

“Daydreamin’” — Lupe Fiasco, Jill Scott (Lupe Fiasco’s Food & Liquor, 2006)

Writers : Wasalu Jaco, Craig Kallman, Dave Mackay, Sylveer Van Holme, Raymond Vincent · · Producers : I Monster, Kallman

:: Primer ::

:: Lupend the third and jilly from philly … so, this canon collaboration … is another page in the chapter of : hymns to which i cannot quite pinpoint my exact personal radar genesis …

that being said, the track itself is one of those ( in my admittedly limited perception, and humble opinion ) paramount moments of alt-rap neo-soul … within the capacity context of genre as frequency, beyond market share and/or structural technicality … something about this tune felt so inherently alternative spin on the contemporaneous, rooted in cardiac attest gospel of nouveau soul … particularly in the mid-aught “urban contemporary” bling/blog precipice pivot … maybe it feeling timeless, and nostalgic, and neoteric – in simultaneity – blurs the distinction of its specific genesis … which, for me, given the timestamp, was apparently circa round two of undergrad’s primary half …

but, eitherhaps … rhyme cellar, at this juncture ( goes with and/or without mentioning ) is a space and way to share musical moments that resonate … each piece features music that just feels like it exists for the sake of shared experience … so, that said, Daydreamin’ is another thus exemplar …

so / but / and the general primer on this one was, and remains, a beautiful synergy of critical consciousness and rhythmic soul … cultural literacy for the kids, in the key of akashic modernity ::

:: On the Palatte · Profile ::

:: on the front : echoes of a clarion laser beam needle drop into the sweet chariot sigh of our songstress scott’s lucid aria lullaby … gentle strings sway in the breeze betwixt and between laid back hi-hat melodies … pivot to ricochet crescendo pique into phaser fade as we cue up the doo wop chorus crooning dialogic … jill and motown philly back again … “daydream … i fell asleep amid the flowers, for a couple of hours, on a beautiful day … daydream … i dream of you amid the flowers, for a couple of hours … such a beautiful day” … watercolor tapestries of sun-kissed reverie usher in the backdrop for a cool young lu’s reel life rhapsody in chimera hue …

As I spy from behind my giant robot’s eyes
I keep him happy ’cause I might fall out if he cries
Scared of heights, so I might pass out if he flies
Keep him on autopilot ’cause I can’t drive
Room enough for one, I tell my homies they can’t ride
Unless they sitting on the shoulders, but that’s way too high …

watch the maker’s theory unfurl like clockwork, how marvelous the maestro music-maker … youthquaker … dreamer of dreams, screener of scenes … it feels metaphive in a world of four score … it feels craftwork artisan in the age of mechanical reconstruction … the creative intellect, for all intents and purposes, and his giant robot, the holding corporation handler — the industry cuff link … the acrobatic affair of commercial artistry … forever traipsing the tightrope … the concerto epode of cognitive dissonance, for the sake of a clean break from plato’s cave … for the kids, for the culture, for the denizen dwellers … and then, the social anatomy of a body politic turned market demographic …

… and then, in the mid-palatte wake of maestra scott’s second wave … where the groundswell of our chorus current combers into tidal uprise … fiasco surfs into launchpad propulsion … the public figuration of pop pantheonic … preamble prognostication station, preemptive prose the cool

And where’s the champagne? We need champagne
Now look as hard as you can with this in your hand
And now hold up your chain, slow-motion through the flames
Now cue the smoke machines and the simulated rain

welcome to the phantasmic world-void of hype manufacture … anti-natural artifice on parade … imperial couture, royal appointment by amaurotic design … it’s high time this living lullaby go full-stop senseless — let’s get unconscious :

But not too loud cause the baby’s sleeping
I wonder if it knows what the world is keeping
Up both sleeves while he lay there dreaming
Me and my robot tip-toe ’round, creeping
I had to turn my back on what got you paid
I couldn’t see, had the hood on me like Abu Ghraib
But I’d like to thank the streets that drove me crazy
And all the televisions out there that raised me

… to keep the chaos of culture industry ad quietus … to maintain the hush in mass-produced havoc … to perpetuate the incubation of realistic dissidents, raised in and of the urban enclaves metropolis robots ruin … is the daydreamer’s nightmare … and the industry captains’ forever conquest … the picture box pipe scheme … but … it’s all make believe, isn’t it … and creative consciousness is the corner pocket keystone … it’s all transmutation …

and now then, on about the finish … that billow into magnanimity of transmundane ambrosiac beauty … jill treads twice more where she serenaded symphonic pomegranate arils twice before … it tastes … something bluebird cupid’s cocktail … it feels like yemaya … a divine wife aquatic … whose hymnal, the most high tide, heralds dawn on a cerulean orchard … and yet and still … all but a daydream … all but cherry blossom petals drifting along baby blue skies …

nothing more, nor ever anything less, than musing those most strange fruitions consecrated on the respiration pages of an imagination passport’s harmonized keys … ::

:: Pairings ::

:: So … sonic aesthetically conjuring … lucid dreamtime to waking life denizen versification of a material world’s modern crucible seven-course cosmic street symphonic sampler … is the general scope of this particular pairing pov … that said, let’s reacquaint palates :

· ·

Rhyme Cellar : Daydreamin’ : Pair’d Playlist :: · “Mystery Of Iniquity” – Lauryn Hill · · “Six Days” – DJ Shadow · · “Handlebars” – Flobots · · “Daydreamin’” ft. Jill Scott – Lupe Fiasco · “Renegade” – Jay-Z & Eminem · · “Jesus Walks” – Kanye West · · “Creator” – Santigold ·

· ·

… just, purely judicious bars, off the jump — bearing witness, establishing blueprints, founding vantage points atop a most luminous lyrical hill … my little brother introduced me to Mystery of Iniquity, hmm, maybe, gosh, about a decade or so ago, roundabout … and the immediacy of revelation upon impact … the long-form spoken word freestyle lyricism … obviously, pure poetry, and the sheer insight and precision to institutional imagery … the systemic dismantling by way of simply naming what is, in and of its ersatz appearance and ever-pervasive influence … jailhouse drop, the unplug …

up next, “hold up, hold up, before we get second rounded, guess who’s coming — it’s — guess who’s coming — it’s … guess who’s coming — it’s : dj shadow … back again, who is he? just your favorite dj savior, usin’ and confusin’ beats that ya never heard … 1990, put a smile on your face like ultra bright” … same silhouette maestro, different tune … Six Days … so, this one just felt astute interlude in the realm of conscious composition upon privatized press … shadow’s signature mixed media melodic staccato as social calendar soundtrack template in the age of corporate media culture industry on the brink of collapse … also, i do just love this tune … onward

ough, flobots’ Handlebars … bless, up, cycle rider pilots … so, this tune, i remember vividly … but also … in a hazy vignette sort of way … as oddly specific somewhat happenstance obama aught-pop era augury … the narrative development on this one feels so perceptibly 2008: a neoliberal about face odyssey … admittedly, this particular rime holds a peculiar place in this heart, as i remember spending election night that year volunteering at a flobots concert in dc … the 9:30 club, if memory serves … school nightlife … anyhaps, the tune remains rooted in realities of reel life politistocracy and the perpetual pendulum pathway from a people’s david to the establishment’s goliath … where “it feels so good to be alive, and on top” … onward

where we let go, hands up freewheeling, liftoff and take flight into the signature centerpiece … concrete symphonies and rem-cycling soliloquies of pure unadulterated Daydreamin’ … onward

a pair of poets to some, a rabbling rouse of common modern-day shakespeares to others … a tandem who willfully faced fate, tossing caution to the wind, commandeering past roads scattered with empty wishbones, crossing seas, blotting eyes with corporate crooks, pondering concrete rose canon prose from mountaintops oft-alone … marshawn matter’s bar-for-bard blueprint opus, Renegade … belonged somewhere in lunar eclipse proximity of lupe scott’s portent woolgathering … much to muse about said mutinous rune … but, in the immediate, feels more apropos to let the lyrics descant on their own behalf … onward … the penultimate …

the penultimate kanye omari … westward flow … commencement speech canticle in a class of alt-education station entirely its own … Jesus Walks … freshman distillation, soapbox scope, panoramic perspective … contrition enacted … this one just feels inherently proximal camaraderie … this song, as story and allegory, belongs … onward … from the crucifix to creatrix … all cycles and seasons of rhyme and evolutionary treason …

so, santigold’s Creator … brings the crew’s chorus line full circle like a band of abandoned wedding rings … casket open case closed coda manifesto mode … running streets, breaking up houses, rivers running deep, and the flames it devours … these motley creators’ thrill is to make it up … chosen to deliver the exposure … all that glitters and those who coda the gold make the rules …

in immediate retrospect, there is an understated, yet intrinsically undeniable, string theory which holds fast and fundamental throughout said seven scene tapestry … neither here nor there, but crossed the aural percussion’s radar and as such felt worth the share … thus and fin de siècle ::

:: Impressions ::

:: First and lasting impressions … on a glimpse in the windy sight scenery of rap van wink and nod … a prescient pulse check of pulp faction and twisted tale of intertwined identities …

when i first heard this track … the gravity on that groove … impressed to embed and engineered to emboss … the dream materialized manifest documentary … it just felt surreal, in its photographic projection of conceptual imagery … the symbolic fact impressed a pact … it sensed so bluesy … so ampitheatric speakeasy … the dusk as dawn … even now, i’m seeing it center-stage in my cerebral, knowing that vision isn’t translating silicon-coded verbal … but, that’s poetry … that’s jazz … that’s the rhythmic kilter of rap …

so … within without beyond and beneath all of my aforementioned inane absurdity … this tune feels anatomy of the urban contemporary artist, in fidelity … pop canonical dissent speech to the perpetual future age … young spiritual of the eternal soul … it feels street sensei pilot flight … ruminations that linger about one’s mind … an imagination’s figments forming as we rest our eyes beneath just another softwood canopy … lucid fantasies burgeoning to light just before philip calls and the sun reveals our blossoming daydream … ::

---