I wanted to drop another little ditty from Where Your Mind Is? 38 Reflections. What follows is ‘I Wonder’, a song from the first Ruztik label showcase EP, ‘The Construction Series Vol 1’, a song blessed with production from Rola. The original version was a beaut, then sadly some assholes broke into Rola’s studio and stole his mixing desk and other equipment. We remade the song, and the new version was better. Whatever is thrown at us, we will always come back stronger. So, here follows the quadriptych of ‘I Wonder’: the lyrics, the montage, the footnotes, and the song (which you can listen to here). (psssttt … there are still a few copies of Where Your Mind Is? 38 Reflections available… email me direct or order on Bandcamp).
I wonder, will I ever make it real large?1
Charging across the marshes, I pass(es) in my mirage
I forge an image, I see, I see me the Project Cee
With a door of silver screening my Bentley in the garage,
Take to multiplexes drive my Lexus, when I go to the beach
Teach scanty clad women ‘bout being leeches,
Wake out of my dream I seem to be sailing down a different stream,2
With the wrong end of the stick, an ignorant team of
Directors, directing me and my own competitors,
Registering pseudonyms with hyphens and Js in,
Rapping on a din with bass bins as thin as thin tin,
Can’t begin this rhyme they wrote for me, I wanna get out, not in,3
Simple tragic—there’s thirty-six rappers in this ridiculous team,
Captured in wide cinemascope to fit us all on the screen,
I run off the set, eject the tape deck, stop the junk,
Passing for a track of solid rap,
They made me wear for some of my man’s herbal wares, he wears
Twenty-eight inch flares and builds up proper long spliffs, they lift me,
Smoke them on the cliffs, material things
Lest I forget,
And watch the sunset from Devon to Dorset.
I wonder as I wander through the trees,
Will the planet save me as I fall to my knees?
The wind rushes through my head thoughts escape me,
Organics of the Earth always seem to take me,
I wonder as I wander through the trees,
Talking to me and whispering through the leaves,
The rain absorbs into my skin I’m the Earth’s son,
I’m not the only one that gets warmed by the Sun.
Never got a look at this code, although the roads as long
As the Romans posed a threat to Pagans, I’m saving, I reload
My rhyme barrels, call them lungs, tongues fuelled twice again,
To turn into sense what’s stemming from my brain,
Off topic—sorry you bought it— ‘Analyse This’
Because it’s all about— ‘Where Your Mind Is?’
I’m giving slivers of saliva, get behind a safer wager,
Wavering pagers mobiles—you won’t get a signal here,
The beer’s about as brutal as the pier at Brixham switch the mix in,
The house I live in only got an outside kitchen,
Hear the bitching—here you call them urban myths,
Spliffs I make, give you wobbly legs,
I’m cooking garden parties, harking live at the barbeque,
Pursue microphones, never alone in the queue,
A mic ain’t present, I won’t resent to earn my invite,
Keep you up all night with tight lines, top cider up with Sprite,
The citrus makes me sicker that sick bags upon your first flight,
Hot air balloons, blow the roof off I might,
Delegate another emcee, upcoming crew,
Kicking like seven-legged chickens doing Kung Fu,
Many got the talents from the country north to the south,
Born with nothing to rub together but three words in their mouth,
‘Course it sounds irregular, not better sideways see,
Organical mechanics taking antics up a tree,
No skyscraper present, any turf close I roast,
Turn the spike on the spit roast on open fires,
We all desire something unusual, I fuse you with booze and all,
And spark a different lumen consume it all.
I wonder as I wander through the trees,
Will the planet save me as I fall to my knees?
The wind rushes through my head thoughts escape me,
Organics of the Earth always seem to take me,
I wonder as I wander through the trees,
Talking to me and whispering through the leaves,
The rain absorbs into my skin I’m the Earth’s son,
I’m not the only one that gets warmed by the Sun.
This is the kind of question I guarantee all rappers, emcees, DJs, producers, dancers, writers, and every other kind of hip hop practitioner think about at some point in their trajectory. But what does ‘large’ mean here? It is commercial success, underground peerage, respect, money, and/or acquisition of a myriad of other tangible and intangible cultural capital?
L.L. Cool J’s ‘The Do Wop’ (1987) is a superb story-telling song. Despite using the tired ‘it was all a dream’ trope, the level of material detail explored throughout the narrative from, “Woke up at 9:30 on a Saturday morn’,” to, “And that’s the very moment I woke up from the dream … Aahh!” is exemplary. The ‘rap dream’ trope I introduced in ‘I Wonder’, where the dream places me as a potential antagonist about to disrupt a clichéd video shoot with “scanty clad women,” “thirty-six rappers in this ridiculous team,” and artists with “hyphens and Js in”—the latter two being observations of the commercialisation of contemporaneous rap music and its materialistic framing. But as I write this note, it is only now I realise that the song structure of ‘The Do Wop’ consists of a single verse of 94 bars—epic. As a devotee of long standalone single verses for song structures, this is enlightening—first, it goes some way to explaining my adoration for ‘The Do Wop’, and second it further underpins my believe that L.L. Cool J has much greater level of sophistication in his early work—particularly his Bigger and Deffer album—than commonly discussed.
‘I Wonder’ continues the autoethnographic methodology; an autoethnomusicology of sorts, and brings together the themes of regional-rural with micro-ecology and micro-economy and begins to wittingly suggest a field of cultural production which rejects the commercial agenda of the early noughties, through a story which sees me abandon a commercial music video shoot, as I “Can’t begin this rhyme they wrote for me I wanna get out not in.” Following my comments on the idea of a new form of methodology, ‘autoethnomusicology’, please do indulge me in a proposition here. The cultural practices and methods of autoethnography have been extensively drawn upon in music practice and research to empower the value of the reflective and reflexive in relation to relevant external contexts (Lee 2010, Bakan 2016, Wiley 2019). Concurrently, practitioners and theorists involved in ethnomusicology continually practice autoethnographic methods which, through practice, become personal (Myers 1992: 21). There is much scholarly literature on the relationship between ethnomusicology and autoethnography, in addition to the intertextual potential for deeper understanding of the practices of ethnomusicology and the rituals of autoethnography. methodological and contextual progress of these fields. Why then, does there not exist a subfield of autoethnomusicology? Taking from the lessons learned in the components made so far, this new work will explore the above question through my direct experience, practice, and research in hip hop culture, particularly focusing on the regional-rural UK. Within hip hop culture globally is multitude of global/glocal attitudes to hip hop’s cultural production. Audibly, these carry their own narratives, reflexive and reflective on the artist’s life experiences. My previous work explores certain methodologies in ethnomusicology and autoethnography, beginning to define a prototype set of methods, methodology and means of production for a subfield of autoethnomusicology. This multi-textual and multi-modal work will test the possibility of autoethnomusicology through British regional-rural hip hop culture—not, as previous work would suggest, located in a slice of history—but with more elasticity to stretch into the past to carry out deep readings, and stretch forward to explore progressive potential. Operating intertextually between song writing, literary nonfiction, text-based illustration, and academic writing, an autoethnomusicology is produced by reflexively writing hip hop and writing about hip hop. Furthermore, the work will operate multi-modally in its research methodologies. The proposal will be to interweave a new rap song ‘Remember Deeper’, a thick, illustrated piece of literary nonfiction with academic writing to frame the practice of autoethnomusicology as a critically reflective process located at the in-between of writing practices. The writing practices are not exclusive; rather they are worked symbiotically with music and visual art practice. This new work will argue for a narrative-driven space of autoethnomusicology which can dispute the parameters of academia, practice, publication, and authorship.