Breaking my creative protocol today with how I'm writing these
song of the day thangs which, years past, was zippyshare links. But now ppl don’t
dl music, they just stream. So I adjusted to using youtube links, because that
give constant for these semi-daily triggers to write nonsense gibberish built
off musical foundation of something I’d been listening to a lot. But then today’s
song didn’t have a youtube link that I could find. And normally I would’ve just
thrown a couple gifs together, slapped it into a youtube video I make and
upload, and ran with it. That’s my method for this particular project, which is
one of like a dozen or two ongoing projects that all have methods and rules
that keep me creating at a high rate. I don’t even know how many projects it is
because if I get caught in the details, I’m not creating. I have to do my
variety of creative endeavors, or I hate life. It’s that simple. This is a
small part of it.
Today’s song though is a person I think of very
highly – BlackLiq out of Richmond, VA, who hopefully you know about, but if you
don’t familiarize yourself. He’s an absolute beast of freestyle skills, and has
been releasing mixtapes all year long from his extensive freestyle sessions on
his radio show over the years. He is a highly prolific and genuinely authentic
creative. I’ve seen a lot of ppl apply that title “creative” to themselves,
even with a capital C, but I’mma be honest, not everybody claiming it is really
possessed by it. I say that as somebody possessed by it, and recognizing that
same possession in BlackLiq, as well as others out here – many others, but many
of them in obscurity or outside the accepted realms of what’s considered cool
art or not. In fact I got kinda pissed about that same shit this past weekend
because I saw signs of someone I’ve experienced in real life as inauthentic but
who is highly respected connecting with others who I have suspected as possibly
inauthentic but also respected. And I also know I’m no judge of authenticity,
so fuck it I won’t speak on that more than to say when you are possessed to
create, you have to create. All the rest of the shit that comes with being
economically successful – the marketing and acceptance by gatekeepers and being
funded/supported by financially powerful people – that’s got nothing to do with
authenticity, or merit.
With all that being said, because I respect BlackLiq’s
artistic immensity so much, I ain’t make no youtube link to keep up with my
protocols for this one tiny thing in the realm of Raven Mack nonsense. I
embedded his bandcamp page for this track. When I seen this dude perform this
song year or more back, it’s one of those fun ass songs, because he’s a live
beast, gets down in the middle of everybody, and he’s pointing out big ass
white people on the chorus to say “You wanna be black?” and it’s that wonderful
discomfort but feeling okay about it that good art does. And I love for
BlackLiq to blow up to where it meant economic comfort for him. But I also feel
good in knowing this dude is out here teaching others to express themselves
through their art, and sharing the power of the creative path, out of his need
to do so, and his knowledge that it’s made him a better human being. And people
like this gonna be doing what they doing until death, always something new,
never no old age reunion looking back on what we did a long time back, because
if you’re creatively driven, you’re always moving forward with constant drive.
All this is a long-ass way for me to say if you don’t
know BlackLiq, get to know him. A friend of mine told me a year or two back
about an old crazy artist in Detroit who described himself as “a natural born
artist” and living that in all ways of every day. I strongly identify with
that, and I strongly identify that with Black Liquid as well. If you don’t know
of him or his work, explore that bandcamp, and get baptized in the benefits of
getting to know another full-blown natural born artist. There’s more of them
out here in this world than you realize, and the most natural born of them are
often still mostly unknown by the creative meritocracy that trains us to decide
what’s really real and what’s not.
This also makes me wanna have a “who are some
natural born artists?” discussion on social media, but it’d get hijacked by the
poorly opinionated, as usual. So drop them natural born artists in the comments
below if you read this far. Let’s talk it out.
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