I’m feeling lazy on the picture for this post.
I’ll admit I was a bit reckless during the neophyte stages of the dopehouse. Still angry from my “Slap-Boxing With Jesus” days and failed attempts to not rely on my family for rent money, I will confess that during the site’s ascension I rarely gave a shit about anybody’s opinion but my own. In my advancing age and dwindling sanity, however, I began to have second thoughts.
Then 2011 came around. Without going into details, I will say that those 12 months made me reevaluate things. Seriously, you come home from a night of partying on your birthday to find that the place you rest your head at resembling a scene in Backdraft and see if that doesn’t fuck up your year.
One of the most common questions I get asked is how to get music from my bloated inbox to my eardrums and, eventually, onto the site. So, rather than use this piece of bandwidth to talk some nonsensical shit (read: use this piece of bandwidth to talk some nonsensical shit), I figure I’ll let some of you aspiring *insert profession here* in on some of the “rules” I go by when it comes to ultimately influencing my opinions.
The Twitter is not your friend. Unless your last name is “West,” using the Twitter as a means of getting out your dreams to the masses almost never works. A recent example was Sean Price’s short-form rant on the “please listen to my demo ass rappers” who solicit him while he’s waxing poetics on decidedly non-musical topics such as copping Pampers for his daughter at the neighborhood supermarket. I spend more time writing dirty limericks, lamenting about the frustrations of getting a cab in New York late at night and trying to philosophize pornographic culture than I do about today’s rap scene on that thing, what makes you think I’m going to use it to check out your music?
There’s a good chance I won’t like, or even see, your stuff. I, as well as the other purveyors of this site and other sites like the dopehouse, get bombarded every single day with hundreds upon hundreds of emails. While I try my best to look through all of them (yes, I still do that) I’ll still somehow miss a few, the email will end up in my spam box or I just won’t like the contents at all. That doesn’t mean that I won’t like future offerings from an artist, however. A good example of this would be Lute and his West1996 project. It’s a tape I’ve thoroughly enjoyed and constantly played since its release, and the thing will end up on my “Best of 2012” list… but I do not like the cover art, and it almost made me ignore the entire thing altogether. I’ve seen enough Illmatic rehashes – hell, rap’s Prom Night Dumpster Baby Charles Hamilton and fellow North Carolinian J. Cole each did one about a year and some change before Lute, and I’m sure Pen & Pixel have made some extreme version of it during their No Limit days, complete with flaming background and blinged-out polar bears – to last me a lifetime and more. Yet that does not take away from the quality of the project (it’s a really good project), and it ultimately didn’t matter to me.
At the end of the day, I don’t have to like your shit. And even if that happens, Shake may feel the opposite and fuck with it. Or Peas. Or Justice. And nothing is wrong with that at all.
At the end of the day, I’m human. That means exactly what it says. Just because my “job” of sorts revolves around the Internets and its infinite fuckery doesn’t mean my life does. I’m still a grown-up juvenile who enjoys sneakers, candy and all drinks grape-flavored like normal folks, and apparently this deejaying hobby of mine seems to be getting some footing. So, if your song doesn’t end up on the site as soon as you sent it to me, chances are I’m probably out getting some sun. Or washing my locks. Or not really giving a fuck about the Internets at that time. Pick one.
It’s not hard to find me at all, nor does it take a lot of effort to get my attention. The only issue is keeping it long enough for me to give you a chance.
Oh, and Vandalyzm, I apologize. See, that wasn’t so hard right?
