Wednesday, July 28, 2010

True Story

Making coffee is probably the most annoying task ever given to me at my job, but somebody's gotta do it. plus when it's really slow or i don't feel like manning the register? it's a good way to burn out a good 25-30mins standing there shuffling around &running water. shit gets real tedious after some time and today the store was real slow anyhow, i guess people in Williamsburg don't need gas or coffee or munchie food. cause we definitely got it all.

i'M changing the coffee out, dumping the old grinds, marking the re-brew time, &putting more coffee in the filter for the next 2 pots, minding mines jamming to pandora in my pocket via the Droid. next i know, a guy who's making his little ice coffee (we sell that too) looks over at me &here comes the downfall. "you live in Williamsburg?" - "yeah...?" - "oh, okay." now it's not the first time i've been asked that question, and it's not the first time i got the "oh, okay." response, you know the response people give you, especially those of the lighter skin complexion ;) when they don't (EX)pect you to reside in such a nice, small, clean, Caucasian dominated place. where your kids go to pre-school to hs together, where the soccer moms roll big, where the pizza guy always had a crush on your daughter type town. 

What was coming next i couldn't ever prepare for. "i should ummm, bring my gf in here" , as he whips out his blackberry, pushes a couple buttons to reveal presumably his gf: real life character from sistah-soulja/zane novel. i'm talking tiny framed, weave droppin`, black mesh shirt, blue skinnies with hands on thee hips image of LaKresha 
(yes, spelled with a K). 

"...Oh" that's all i said cause that's all i could get my mouth to say. "yeah you know, we've been living here for 2yrs &it's hard for her to really meet any friends, cause... well you know what i'm getting at, around here it's difficult, you know. i'm always catchin` slack cause i'm older & (muffles) awhitemaledatingayoungerblackgirl `n so it's hard, but we're doing alright." - "yeah." - "well yeah, so maybe i'll bring her around here, to the store, then you guys can chat, i'm sure you guys have something in common. it'll be good for her." - "yeah" -____- 

Now in my head, i'm already off the richter, i'm talking fcuk 10, i'm at 5011. there's nothing about me that would suggest that i would get along with LaKresha there. how did he come up with this conclusion? i simply wear a brown polo, black jeans, and old black dunks to work. i rock an Aum symbol necklace, with a peace sign hemp-made bracelet, i have a lip piercing, and my music was playing GCH. maybe i'm wrong for judging her, maybe she isn't as bushwick as i gathered. but in all honesty, idgaf. i was judge, i was (PRE)judged. &its not that he took the time to gather up all his information. it wasn't even that he took the time to correct his pronunciation of my name ("AyeIeShaye?"). he simply looked at me, saw i was a female of a minority race complexion &(ASS)U(not)ME that i &her would have something to talk about. i don't know what he was getting at, but i know where my mind placed him. he's the type: the-ignorant-don't-know-any-better-says-things-that-are-so-unpolitically-correct type.

Dude proceeds to finger taste his ice coffee, i guess he doesn't like everything black. re-brew in 2hrs. i'll be making my boy brew that shit, i can't deal. hell i'm thinking, good thing he didn't see the tattoo of Africa on my ankle. he would have really hit the nail on the head. 
i should get a raise for customer tolerance.

Thursday, July 15, 2010

Where's the Diamonds?

so I was cleaning up just now after cutting my hair, &+ for some reason i was thinking about how homosexuality is the black. got all these young girls running around here thinking that they're barbies, thinking that having babies when they just a baby is a-okay cause they momma will take care of it and it's a way to keep a man around, and basically how sleeping with another girl (if you're a girl) is alright, &if i see one more talk show host do a special called "gay for pay".

I was just thinking about growing up in my hood. And there was this girl named "diamond" &she was known to be "gay". now even though i had been known i had an attraction for girls, my first kiss was with a girl, the first time i was felt up or "humped" was with a girl; i had no idea what "gay" was or what "homosexuality" was, that shit didn't enter my vocabulary till I was a freshman in hs. i also didn't know it was "wrong" , or such a controversy. for all I knew, girls liked boys and boys liked girls, i liked girls, i was a girl, whatever. who cares. but back to diamond, she was like feared in my hood. i mean when diamond was coming around all the girls would come running in the house "diamond outside! she gonna get you!" it was like a disease you could catch, or atleast back in my childhood it was comparable to being tagged IT.

nowadays? there's such a stigma that comes with even someone thinking you're gay that my moms yells at my 3yr old brother for playing with barbies &liking stuff with glitter. hell he like spiderman and diego too. i think what she needs to realize that all he sees is his daddy drinking &acting like a little btch when he dont his controlling way, and that she always leaves him with my 12yr old jonas brother// justin beiber obsessed sister. there's not really too much else for him to like besides pink and purple shit. shuuu.
&my 12yr old sister just added me on FB. there's no need for her to be scared of "diamond" because her worry is not meeting an old pedophile named Steve that lives down the street. she knows what gay is, she knows what homosexuality is -- hell my cousin, who's also 12, told her that she was bisexual. "ma, ___ said that she gotta girlfriend!" my sister told my mom with her big gray eyes. my mom didn't even question it, she just laughed it off.

i guess what i'm tryna get it is that kids nowadays have way too much exposure to what society wants them to be. and forget about it if you're a minority. and definitely dead your hopes if the child is raised in a lesbian-parent home, because chances are the parent is just as confused as the child will end up. minority lesbians, i've observed are really messy, &those who have kids are a h.a.m. especially because most of them were in a long-term committed relationships with a dude for all their lives, but they're in the same scene as their teenage daughter who just dropped kid number 2 -- they're just gonna fuck with girls.

there's no "diamonds" anymore. so all of everybody basically are just digging in the rough, looking for someone to hold onto, someone that'll give that attention. whoever gives them attention, that's their "best friend."

be easy ya'll !
- Ace

A Letter to Ms. Hill

this morning because I couldn't sleep &+ because the song Adam Lives In Theory was stuck in my head, I did some research (aka Googling) on Ms. Hill. it left me with this eerie, goosebumps, paranoid feeling. she's a character, indeed, belongs on USA network type. i guess 3wks ago she came out in an interview with NPR stating that she's going to comeback into the game.

"Lauryn said that her heart was in Zion, 
I wish that her heart still was in rhyming"
- Kanye West 
everyone's got stuff to say about it, wondering if she'll have the "Sade Effect" on listeners, or so they're calling it. you know how Sade didn't have a record for 10yrs, and then she showed up with Soldier of Love &+ blasted all the bopz out the water.

honestly? I don't care what effect she has on anybody else. there's a mixture of feelings towards her return (whenever it is, due to the rumored method to her 'madness' I read about her studio affairs; if you don't know Ms. Hill was sued by her team that claimed they helped write songs &produce Miseducation, cost her $5Mill - then she was ghost after that speel. so I guess now she makes everyone who's anyone that she's considering to work with sign a waiver saying they give all creative &financial rights to her on any music they make with/for her, and half the time she postpones appointments, and the artists eventually get aggy with waiting &losing money so they go their business. *which I think is dumb as hell, but maybe I don't see the blessing the same way everyone else does, hell I'm just a student of hers)

Ready or Not, Here I Come, You Can't Hide....

  • Urgency: Ms. Hill's return is vital to the pullback of music, to the voice of our generation (&those coming up under it, I mean 1998 was 12yrs ago, I was only 8yrs old, but even those younger than me know the words to "Doo Wop (That Thing)"  "Ex-Factor" "To Zion"
  • Fear: with her religious radical ways, formulated by the cult she was yielded to by this dude named 'Brother Anthony', and her outburst towards the Vatican ; I don't know... It's kinda scary.
  • Hype: no matter what it is or what people say about her, it's Ms. Hill, the one &only. the sickest and rawest talent I've ever heard, male or female. The influence to so many, especially my other teachers of the Neo-Soul movement. 
people say that she's crazy (bi-polar allegations have been on the scene for some years) or brainwashed (cult religion), drugs? nah, that's my girl Badi (ya'll know I'm telling the truth). personally? I think Ms. Hill went through a life cleansing that all of us if only lucky enough to receive could have. she really had the time, money, and will to pull-back &away from everything and everyone - and just learn (&continue to) S.E.L.F.

I ain't no music critic, I don't work for VIBE &+ I've yet to hear back on my internship to Rolling Stone, but what I do know: music. Music is what feelings sound like. &so whatever she's feeling, that's what I'm waiting on. to see what she's wanting to have expres-sed.
take your time Ms. Hill, and with all due respect, Take Care.

- A Student,




*I address Lauryn Hill as "Ms. Hill" because that's how she wishes.
(That much is confirmed.)