SONG OF THE DAY: World

We was normal poor folks so summertime we spent at grandma’s, which few generations back would’ve been mountain home but by the time of Reagan admin meant grandma’s trailer at the bottom of a hill not to be mistaken with “The Hill” which was one hill over where buncha cousins and shit lived. But it was grandma’s got my first taste of homemade vaporwaves, old style, buttermilk vaporwave that she’d mix up and store in the icebox for couple hours, mixing it up before sunrise while my uncles still was sleeping on the pullout sofa bed in the living room of the trailer, walls covered with three generations of 8x10s, and before my daddy had dropped me off bc he had to go to work and won’t no child care but grandma’s trailer and I was still too young to stay home by myself bc I wasn’t old enough to look at all the penthouses and hustlers I knew was hiding.

Grandma’s vaporwave would be sitting there in the icebox when I got dropped off, making sure not to slam the screen door bc grandma would be like “boy, stop slamming that screen door!” and then later in the day we’d be in and out and she’d go “make up your mind either in or out, in or out” and when I’d be getting there my uncles would be getting up not wanting to go to school but they couldn’t sleep on the pullout sofa bed in the living room with 19 nephews and nieces and not for-real nephews and nieces but grandma watched them too just like her own, and I was usually the first to get there which was weird bc my dad ain’t like to go to work just like his half-brothers ain’t like to go to school, but everybody went where they wasn’t wanting to go bc that’s what we was supposed to do and it wasn’t nothing to do where you’d end up being if you didn’t go nowhere anyways.

But I’d get to grandma’s trailer at the bottom of the hill and she’d reach in the icebox right beside the big jar of pickled beet eggs and pull that homemade vaporwave out she’d mixed up before the sun, and it would be so firm and thick and she’d ladle it out into her skillet synthopan, dropping dollop of bacon grease she’d saved from Sunday morning in old tin can on back skirt of stove, and fry me up a big ol’ slab of that shit, drop it on my plate there at the kitchen table, me squeezed in next to the wall bc my uncles was more grown so got the seats that opened out and wasn’t so stifling. I’d sit there with that vaporwave, put a little bit of syrup on that shit, and just start freestylin’ on it. My uncles would be coming out from the bathroom, “damn mama, vaporwave again?” and they ain’t like it and ain’t want it and they’d grumble off to school, you could hear the Frankenstein Nova they shared roar to life outside in the yard like a guard dog seeing the clock sneaking up in the middle of a decent morning, and they’d be gone and it was like five minutes of quiet before all the other little shitheads started showing up and I’d take my uncles leftover vaporwaves and be rhyming over them too and finally all the other kids would be there and grandma would kick us all out except the babies who were just babies so had to be tended, and we’d go outside and have hella kickball games out there at the bottom of the hill in the trailer park, and all day long I’d still taste that vaporwave when I rubbed my tongue over my crooked teeth.