Cover of The Cold Vein
[Vordul]
Pop goes the flow of the weasel
Strapped with an Ox full of diesel
Trapped in the desert with eagles
Thoughts of ghetto acapellas in cathedrals
Spilling heavy gospels with cheaters
Twisted up, high off the reefer
Lost beyond regions of logic and reason, just being
We high so be not so obedient to society's laws and limitations
Lost in this ghetto population
I'm just another face that's facing all types of, like
Stereotypes and hatred
But I ain't going to whet that and get all stressed out
I'm just trying to make it and strive with my...
Hellbent
Hell went through changes, emotions, inner thoughts and rages
Relieved and released on pages
My life in its cycle and stages
Seen through descriptions in nature
Ever since back in the days when niggaz was loving and hating
Everyone trapped and two thou caught The Matrix
With diseases of judgement that breed through the hatred
Conceived through these scenes and then painted
Now what really defines the line of a hater
And what defines the line of someone even greater
And what makes somebody jump that line trying to take it
Wrapped behind enemy lines trying to make it
Mind in another universe while my physical's stuck on the earth
In these inner city mazes
[Vast Aire]
Yo (11x)
Lay that shit down
What is you, a clown?
You wanna see a little kid get shot?
Give me two good reasons so I don't smack you
For flashing a gun in my face just to get some respect
All in all, it's all love and I'm here to protect
You only twelve years old, someone'll snap your neck
You let your pants sag, but your thoughts gotta pull up
Mental calisthenics, lazer brains can't push up
Or even sit up to fight for what they believe in
He thought about it
I said, "Peace, keep breathing."
I see him mumbling, shrugging his shoulder
He probably cursing, but he know better
He had a beretta with the rubbed off serial digit
And I know he got it from Carlos The Midget
The only cat I know cold enough to hustle shit to kids
Been in this three man team forming eight arm squid
And they laugh in the face of
Any possibilities of being through and dead
We're all from the same ghettos
And these are the same hollow tips that knock nearly out of stilettos
He cocked first, I cocked second
And in that exact second both of the gats burst
"Man, this is your last fucking chance."
"Fuck you, this is your last chance."
[Vordul]
Live and orchestrated
From blocks where animals grew up as four lazers
We twist mad sabres
Rock the sky pimping jays all day blazes
Wrapped in these inner city mazes
Relaxing on corners where cats stay wasted
Choking on 4-0 basics, you taste it
My life's an oasis, this trife's what I make it
Straight through these days spitting raps that laced it
I'm just trying to blaze these mics on the stages
Write on these pages like life as a scene, in amazement
Like, "Ima stay blazing mics until I'm fading
Off of this surface to return to my nature"
In the meantime, spit flows and cop acres
Put my fam in it with shelter that spaces
Everyday life, yo, is rap in these mazes
I'm just trying to make it
The O-E slowly dissolves in my belly, got me aching
Niggaz up the block, yo I swear, trying to take it
But I'ma stay patient, watching every move made in the jungle
It's live trying to strive in this struggle
New York state of mind, that's the home that I come to
Nothing but pigeons living, trapped in this system
Bleeding, screaming...phoenix
We needed that scrap for that meaning to stay shining
Trying to escape out of hellfires and lakes
Brain on another plane gliding through acid rain
That's stress trying to master pain
Spit words, not to hurt, but to bash your brain
That's the worth of an MC wrapped in the vein
New York
I defy anyone to put these words next to anything they can find and find them lacking. Were I to get back into that silly conversation about whether or not song lyrics were or could be poetry, I'd put this on the table, way before Bob Dylan or Leonard Cohen, though barely before a Chuck Berry or Cole Porter. I don't know of a better set of words in song.
This is no small achievement, and if I could point to an album that is totally underregarded at this point, it would be "The Cold Vein." It has a status in tiny circles something along the lines of "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band," that is to say, a genre-defining classic. Unfortunately, underground hip-hop circles are much smaller than those of mainstream pop, and this means that Vordul and Vast Aire haven't earned the money they surely deserve and like all modern humans could use.
I don't know too much biographically about the pair, but a quick look on the web puts them in the Five Percent Nation camp, and this strikes me as essential. I know no Five Percenters personally, I should disclose, though I am aware that the network such as it is extends to California. The Nation of Islam to this day continues to be represented as a hate group in mainstream media, which only focuses on Farrakhan, who is doubtless problematic but whose problematic statements and ideas are vastly tamer than any number of white members of Congress, let alone media. That said, the Five Percent Nation split from the NOI, and--here I suppose I'm making a sweeping judgement--took things to genuine, deeper spiritual levels.
The fundamental problem I can see for people in the United States, for all sensible people, is the question of how to keep one's bearings on a spiritual, human level--there is no distinction, ultimately--in a society that is fundamentally sick. It's worth noting that I no nobody, nobody at all, who thinks that we live in a basically healthy society. Examine our political discourse: it's all premised on the idea that things are completely screwed up. So, saying we have a sick society here shouldn't be taken as a radical proposition. The Left and the Right can agree on that one thing. The arguments come over the reasons for the illness and the proposed cures.
Clarence 13x, and in this sense Cannibal Ox is right with him, dealt with the question of how one retains one's true spiritual self in a context that seeks to destroy it. I often find that white liberals, while phantasmically believing they want a more just society, see poor communities, especially non-white communities and above all Black communities, as too fundamentally damaged to do anything but survive. This is what we could call the Daniel Moynihan Syndrome. Really, the contrary is true, for anyone who is personally familiar with truly oppressed communities. This is where you get the deepest living. Jesus pointedly offered his "eye of the needle" comment, and however people in this country like to pretend otherwise, he was making a valid point. Clarence 13x is a perfect example, and so are Cannibal Ox.
What does it mean to be--as Cannibal Ox puts it--a Phoenix, rather than a Pigeon? The line above is real, deep spiritual practice:
All in all, it's all love and I'm here to protectThat is to say, you see a kid who needs guidance, you step up and give it. That's really it. You don't analyze his oppression or feel his pain--you step up.
You only twelve years old, someone'll snap your neck
You let your pants sag, but your thoughts gotta pull up
Mental calisthenics, lazer brains can't push up
Or even sit up to fight for what they believe in
He thought about it
I said, "Peace, keep breathing."
I see him mumbling, shrugging his shoulder
He probably cursing, but he know better
It should be pointed out as well that one won't find a more idiosyncratic approach the the sound of hip-hop than one finds here. I for one am always amazed when what to me an organic sound is coaxed out of electronic instruments. The use of reverb--actually, I've thought it through and I'm not sure it's actually reverb--here is astonishing. I have no idea precisely the technique here but it sounds almost as if the vocal tracks were doubled, the second track reduced to snippets, and those snippets distorted and shifted in their placement. The effect is not only musically brilliant but produces a sense of dislocation entirely of a piece with the thematic content of the song. Not many people in the music biz do this kind of thing with any consistency, but the album is, start to finish, loaded with this kind of real wizardry--wizardry, meaning I can't quite figure out how it was done, so I assume magic of some sort was involved. Duke Ellington, Andre Previn remarked with slightly different language, did the same thing, in more or less the same neighborhood.
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