Letters From Zion

In a Good way... This is Big Grizzly, The Artist Formerly Known As Blakhart. This is one of my closest homiez, just retarded on the mic. Thanks to Chad Hendricks for laying the vocal over one of his performances of the track. PLEASE just listen to this and be honest.... My Dude is Nice. Find more videos like this on FromDuval.com

So back in the day my Man Keith Murray caught a case for some dumb shit that went down in tha' club. For those of you that know me, Def Squad was and remains as one of my major influences. I was a huge EPMD, Das EFX, Redman, K-Solo fan, and when Mr. Murray came down, I just knew that there would never be another crew harder than them and I wanted to be down. It hurt me when Keith caught that case, real talk.... so I had never written a fan letter a day in my life (who believes the actual people intended to read them ever sees them?) but I figured that my man being on lock was a guarantee that he would read it. I don't recall what I said exactly, I basically told him I was a fan, I enjoyed his work, and to take the time inside to work on his craft, he could only get better by doing that. I kept it 100, I ain't a groupie, I'm a fan. I guess he appreciated what I had to say, because he wrote me back. I kept this letter in my backpack as an inspiration to remind me that thi...

Now, I don't really think I'm really going to be "random", per se. I have a friend of mine on Twitter, her name is @Dioracat , she's a pretty nifty blogger ( did I just say 'nifty'? OMG, no more "Happy Days" on Nick @ Nite! ) and I've enjoyed reading through her blogs and how she embraces her geekness. Geek is actually been very kewl for a long time, the rest of the world just wasn't in on it. Who brought you all the things we do here? Posting online, leaving comments, etc? This came from Bulletin Boards. Most of you out there haven't the foggiest notion of what I'm talking about. Anyway, she can be quite random when she writes, but very stylistic in her randomness.  I'm all about the structured blog, so to speak, but sometimes it's ok to just let it flow naturally. It's a different rhythm. It's like... jazz for blogging. Yeah. I like that. Anyway, she's kinda the inspiration. I've got several things on my ...

Today is the birthday of El Hajj Malik El Shabazz, Detriot Red, Malcom Little... or a name you might know from the Spike Lee Movie or the Autobiography, Malcom X. This man was a very unique, intelligent, powerful, inspirational individual, and everyone should be familiar with who he was for a number of reasons. He shaped race relations in this country for a very long time.  I can't hope to tell the entire story of his life, but he had his story told first in a book, "The Autobiography of Malcom X", then later in film, "X", directed by Spike Lee. The book should be required reading in all schools for young men around the age of 10. I needed this book earlier in my life and I might not have made some choices I later came to regret. I was at the opening night, November 18th, 1992, and I was nervous. I so wanted this movie to not be bad. I thought that there was no way they could go wrong with Denzel... and I was right. I sat and watched the story completely riveted...

D.S.W.G. [Dark Skinned White Girls] - Murs (Yeah, I've used this song before on my MySpace blog, but this will be cross-posted on Blogger.com, it's one of my favorites, and it fits the theme again) Vanilla ice cream is not my favorite. I'll eat it, but it's just not. Chocolate is pretty good, but it can be too much. My favorite flavor has always been Fudge Ripple as a child and as an adult. Something about the stripes side-by-side and the flavors together just worked for me. Me and a good friend were hanging out last week and came across a book title that instantly intrigued us both, " Why Black Men Love White Women " by Rajen Persaud. It piqued our interests so much so that she balked at the $25.oo hardcover price and bought it (I would have read the whole book in the store, but I read 500wpm and can get away with that). We then swung through Starbucks, grabbed a caramel frap & I read two chapters out loud. As I stated, I've only read two chapters of ...

Well, as desperately broke as I am right now, you wouldn't think that I would be glad to "lose" money, but I'm in a situation where I'm rather glad to get something out of the way that's been bothering me. Lately, it seems like a lot is irritating me. I guess I'm just frustrated. But lets get to the point: Okay, for those that don't know me, I have a best friend who is Christian. I don't really have a religious denomination, because I personally think that organized religion is nothing more than a tool by which people divide people, but we'll come back to that later. Anyway, Ill is a great friend, he's been pushing my beats to some other inspirational rappers and they wanted to purchase some beats from me. All good, I can deal with it. I've heard some of the guys, and they can use the help. Christian Rap usually sucks, to be honest. I've heard a few guys who are very good, but the majority suck. The problem being that the focus isn...

Okay, during the election it truly killed me when the Republicants cried about Sarah Palin's family being 'off-limits', and the now-POTUS avoided the potential backlash by wisely declaring the same thing, but since it's pretty obvious her Mom is dead-set on political maneuvering in some hubris-fueled aspiration at running against Obama in 2012, she's now 18 and legally (but certainly not mentally) an adult, I feel I would be remiss to not say something about her recent 'new job' and 180 on the subject of abstinance.  For those of you that might have missed it, Mommy's Little Empire-Killer and Evil Baby-Mama is now the spokesperson for an Abstinance Campaign in New York. How the hell does this work? Anyway, I mentioned before that during the election that kid Levi Johnson, the baby-daddy, was the world's most high-profile political prisoner. Only the most stupid were surprised when they split after the GOP got their balls snipped and Ziplocked in t...