Letters from FreakLoud: Common, Method Man, Monkeys, and My Filthiest Secret Revealed!

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I just wanna type the word “monkey” a gang of times. I don’t even know why. I’m just in love with how that word sounds right now. The same way I’m currently enamored with Steely Dan, turkey burgers and plums.

I feel like I need to re-introduce myself to you. I know I should probably qualify the above paragraph at least… or maybe I shouldn’t. Actually, I won’t.

Instead, I’ll fortify some of my more base opinions with the finger-lickin’ molasses of self-assurance. I’ve read that a good way to draw proper boundaries between people is to show ’em the dirty parts first. Dispense with all the pleasantries and commence with the hot monkey words.

First off, there hasn’t been a good movie made in a long time. The last really good movie I saw was I Heart Huckabees (2004). The Departed (2006) was a distant second. A few times in-between, I was coerced into seeing trash like 300, which I found to be over-produced, hyper-violent, and covertly racist (I loved the part where the dark guy’s face fades to black, and for a few uncomfortable moments, all the viewer is left with is a bamboozling image of tar skin and white teeth). And who doesn’t love an Old-World tale set to the soundtrack of Mortal Kombat?

I saw Breach, too. I kept hearing it was good. And it might have been, save for Ryan Phillipe’s middle-school-Christmas-play style of acting. He reminded of Method Man in How High, reading his lines as if somebody suggested that random pauses make you sound smart.

Speaking of Meth, I love the guy, but I thought his record stunk. I like him on the couple of new Wu songs that have been leaked, but the wife dug his solo LP a lot more than I did (She bumps it in-between Jodeci and Busdriver). I’m not really into the new Common or Kanye, either. There’s about six songs between both of them that pique my interest. I know that they’re both solid records, but they’re just not for me. They’re for younger and more worldly folks that haven’t availed themselves to as much music as I have. That’s not a knock on any of them, but it’s sure as hell not a knock on me, either.

See there, I’m doing it again. Every time I sit down to share with you, I tell myself that I’m not gonna continue to make this a “talk sh*t about rappers” column. I’ve been doing that since 2004 and it’s beginning to feel juvenile. There’s only so many times you can question pink clothes and fart-noise beats before the bass in your voice flutters away like so many tattooed butterflies.

Plus, as much as my bank account won’t admit it, I’m in the game now. Even though I’m just making niche-market hip-hop, I’m still competing for the spending change of hip-hop fans around the globe. I’m competing right alongside those I detest—the gold-roped monkeys that continue to make monkey-ism contagious. Since I share similar economic goals as the simians, bitter Internet slander ends up looking like presidential mud-slinging. Mud-slinging is a sophisticated way to say bitch-fighting, to which I am painfully allergic.

So rather than write with an epi-pen, we’ll have fun exploring new ways to be entertaining without being predictable. The fun thing about experimenting is that we open ourselves up to a wide possibility of outcomes. The not-fun thing about experimenting is that it leaves us equally open to some bullshit. All I ask is your patience and honest criticism. If you’re tired of reading the word “monkey”, by all means, let me know.

That may have been the world’s longest intro. If this article was a movie it’d be one of those crime-caper nouveau yarns where there’s twenty minutes of shooting and gambling before the opening credits roll. But alas, we’ve arrived at the beginning.

I’m here today to share with you a problem that I have.

It won’t surprise many of you, and I’m sure that some of you have been trying to find a way to tell me this for years.

This will validate anyone who’s ever thought me to be a little bit more awkward than that for which this life calls. It will also finally vindicate any woman who no longer wished to deal with me but couldn’t figure out a way to paint an accurate picture of how and why I got on their “last gott-damned nerve”.

Dear hearts, I’m here to admit to you, finally, that I have a condition.

I’m slightly autistic.

I haven’t been diagnosed, but I’m fucking convinced of it. It’s all there—the poor social skills, the inability to engage in small talk, the over-exaggerated comfort of isolation.

I’m sure that if I were examined by experts, the needle of my diagnosis would land firmly between autistic and normal on an imaginary continuum.

I repeat, for many that have dealt with me closely this is no surprise, and as I type this I can vividly remember the faces of some frustrated past lady friends who desperately trying to find these words. They wished to scream them at me, hurriedly, while the rhythm of the argument would deem them relevant.

Aside from my romantic life, nowhere is my condition more relevant than in my music.

I hereby formally apologize to anyone who’s ever bought music from me in the expectation that it would be somewhat relational.

I’ve learned a lot about this thing called music lately. I know now that most people don’t really need it for much more than the rhythmic rattling of their bones from time to time (look out for “rhythm”, it’s the new “monkey”). The vibrations help many folks to relieve visceral stress. You can almost gauge how much stress the average person deals with by how loudly they listen to music. Those who lead the most challenging lives are willing to sacrifice their hearing for it.

Another popular way that music is used is to assist people in social gatherings with connecting with each other. In hip-hop clubs, it guides the penis-to-ass grinding in which many indulge. In house parties, the choral singing of a favorite song is a social lubricant on par with the huskiest of cheap whiskeys.

The problem that this presents for someone in my predicament is two-fold. For one, us anti-social folks live in our minds instead of our bodies. This makes my experience of music much more cerebral than physical. Meaning that I’m much more interested in the pictures that a song paints than whether or not it “knocks”.

The other issue is that as a socially-impaired rapper, I don’t give a ashy damn whether you feel compelled to shake your ass or not. I’m sorry, but I don’t. I guess if it were up to me everybody would meet their live interests at the library or in line at the post office, exchanging wanting glances while choosing a cushion-mailer.

Autism also affects timing. So naturally, I learned all this after I spent most of 2007 recording another solo album.

If you’d asked me two months ago, I’d have told you that it was the breathing reincarnation of the holiest of sliced bread, but since then I’ve given a few copies out to friends who have been strong enough to give me the most honest of honest feedback:

Dead silence.

I can now say that I understand. Most of the songs are masturbatory in a way that only a band geek could love.

Don’t get me wrong, it has flashes of brilliance, since it was a very well executed autistic concept. I’m sure some of the more inward-directed of you will be able to appreciate it. Most won’t be able to categorize it, though. Which leave them to focus on the ambitious but certainly not ass-moving production quality.

For riding with me this long, though, I’ll let you be the judge. I’m giving the whole thing away on MGF, one song at a time.

Its called The Meditation Hu$tle: The Self-Help Bathroom Reader.

This first one is called “Slightly Autistic”. It used to be called “Rearrange”. Now it’s not. It’s one of the nicest-feeling things I’ve ever done, though. It’s one of the quintessential reasons my record came out like it did… I was making the kind of songs that I like to hear.

Follow this link to download.