Domestic Violence – Folly of Man

Girl: You ain’t shit your daddy ain’t shit
your brother ain’t shit your money ain’t shit
your lab ain’t shit your rings ain’t shit
your gear ain’t shit your jewels ain’t shit
your kicks ain’t shit nigga your whips ain’t shit
Bobby you ain’t shit nigga I’m the shit
you ain’t shit your daddy ain’t shit
your brother ain’t shit your money ain’t shit
your lab ain’t shit your rings ain’t shit
your gear ain’t shit, your jewels ain’t shit
your kicks ain’t shit, your whips ain’t shit
Bobby, you ain’t shit, nigga I’m the shit
you ain’t shit, your daddy ain’t shit
your brother ain’t shit, your money ain’t shit
your lab ain’t shit, Bobby you ain’t shit
your rings ain’t shit, your gear ain’t shit
your jewels ain’t shit, your kicks ain’t shit
your whips ain’t shit, nigga, I’m the shit
You ain’t shit, your daddy ain’t shit
your brother ain’t shit, your money ain’t shit
your lab ain’t shit, your rings ain’t shit
your gear ain’t shit, your jewels ain’t shit
your kicks ain’t shit, your whips ain’t shit
nigga, I’m the shit…

Comment: The culmination of interpersonal hatred and the disparaging of human worth. Human beings don’t ask to be born. Much less do we ask to be told, “we ain’t shit.” Of course, we ain’t shit. We’ll all pass on down the hill before long, many of us not even having realized our full potential, many of us far too soon. This existence – so ephemeral, like snow just before spring. And as First Sergeant Welsh told Private Witt in the 1998 film The Thin Red Line, “in this world, a man, himself, is nothing. And there ain’t no world, but this one.”

In the Dhammapada, the Buddha says that there is no person in this world who is universally praised or universally chastised. We ain’t all that, no matter what we think. To get rid of ego is very healthy, to get rid of vanity leads to clarity, to get rid of narcissism dispels delusion, to eliminate self-importance is the road to health. We ain’t shit. All we are is what we are.

One still must deal, though, with the biting words up above. “You ain’t shit, nigga I’m the shit.” What if I don’t want to be “the shit?” What if I just want to be a human being? Fame, glory, riches, none of those things move me. I only want to give my life for the betterment of humanity, especially Afrikans. All I know is the world mostly sucks, that I’m a part of it, and therefore I can play some roll in overturning the suckiness of this world. This is something like the Bodhisattva’s vow (to unselfishly enlighten sentient beings). But I don’t consider myself enlightened either. I’m just the world’s student, a work in progress, humble and trying.

“You ain’t shit.” Human beings, in pairing up, may come to hate each other such that their hatred is of a magnitude many times more intense than the heat of the sun. Is such an outcome necessary? I think not. It is total misfortune when it occurs; it brings down families, children, communities, nations, and civilizations.

As humans, we mostly seek affection; we seek validation. The patriarchy of men, which leads to the oppression of women, all too often messes up our chances of seeing each other as human beings, as potential bearers of greatness. The arrogance of men – it says to women that they “ain’t shit” every day of the week. It’s wrong, it’s pompous, and it leads to the destruction of relationships on up.

We should thus recognize correctly, “we ain’t shit.” When we wake up to the reality that we ain’t shit, we become everything. Then we can embrace one another in an atmosphere of openness, honesty and sincere motives. Yeah, I ain’t shit. I hope not to be doing stupid ugly crap that makes you have to remind me, your voice full of hatred, shaking with pain.

Post-Colonial Boogie

This brief rhyme and the video were put together and spat by yours truly, Young Dessalines, the Precision Afrikan. You can pretty much ignore the video images; they are sort of random images from the Eastern Parkway Labor Day Caribbean Carnival in Brooklyn from 2007, just there for the eyes to have something to look at while the ears listen. The lyrics are below – what y’all think? Maad cheesy? It’s a very elementary and humble attempt.

Post-Colonial Boogie

This track is like Paul Bogle
Dessalines on a team that’s local
Nat Turner on a ear-drum burner,
The batwing looks like a trike-bike learner

Harlem to Harare,
We saw the sorry sagas they kicked back our way
Post-colonial Christmas,
The wealth that they stole, it feels like the sunshine missed us.

Who do we blame, the white man,
The ice cream man, or is it the Son of Sam?
Or is it time that we got self-critical?
The fattest man amongst us looks pitiful!

Look at Kibaki, breast-fed by George Pitaki,
Rolls down his draws and khakis
I mean to say, it’s the West or the rest,
Puppet government crest, mediocrity’s best

Robin Hood in a fat suit, swollen ankles,
Steals from the poor from their food to their summer bangles.
It’s cash-crops, minerals and labor,
No getting ahead unless we do them all a favor.

Coup d’état, revolution, Uhuru Sasa!
Long struggle, Chimurenga, behead the bosses!
Amandla! We gotta cut the head from the snake,
Reveal the ways of the leaches we shake.

Poison, pop rockets, slingshots
Strikes on the docks, striking the locks,
The government archives revealed they squeal
Like colonial scrolls, like Mobutu’s soul,
Like a tail of mining concessions
Rehearsed like a Catholic confession,
French firms get perms on unequal terms,
This false democracy only as good as germs,
So when will we learn?

Working-class heroes and sheroes,
They call us underclass dealers and zeroes,
Yo check the mic, who’s Neo?

Lost boy twitches his broken wing
He looks his bully in the eye
He cocks, he swings

Mubarak and Suharto,
Jonas Savimbi,
Kleptos like Ren and Stimpy.

Masses rise up now!
Ceasar’s dying in the forest,
Brutus chicken and he can’t call foul!

New world order?
Not in my name, not in my enclave,
Not in my world, not even over my grave,

You can’t privatize the world,
Steal everything I made,
Can’t toll the seven seas and
Patent the color jade.

We get analytical, the mass gets critical,
The unborn force umbilical.
We the people get off our chains, we lose inhibitions
We beat down Bush with canes!

We getting off the superficial,
Getting off Beyoncé,
Read a little Amos Wilson,
Read a little Chomsky.

Neoliberalism,
Maad unhealthy.
Neo-colonies make slavery stealthy.

Guerrillas in the mist with clenched fists
Do battle with the bosses and slice wrists!

We get free, get a little nookie,
The name of this rhyme is Post-Colonial Boogie!