#declaime

[lordrahlprotects]

They took this off Spotify in Ireland for a while. Stoked it's back.

[radiophd]

declaime -- heavenbound

[votava-records]

Pop Fly · LMD

Cali rap heavyweights LMNO, MED, and Declaime have joined forces to spit blunted tales, make wack emcees tremble, and showcase their lyrical gifts as the group LMD. And for their debut release, Flying High, they’ve called on another longtime collaborator—none other than living production legend Madlib—to produce the entire project. He provides his signature mind-bending instrumentals for his rapping cohorts, and the result is an organic, expertly crafted slice of hip-hop.

Flying High is the embodiment of that smoked-out, spiritually inclined boom-bap you’d want from this trio, with a few surprises along the way. You may also catch a contact high from a few of these cuts, because you can almost smell the weed smoke on “Flying High” and “The Cypher.” There are strong hits of soulful funk on the album, too, like the DJ Romes-assisted “Super,” as well as smoothed-out burners, like “Kool,” which features raps from Fly Anakin and scratches from J Rocc.

When they began to create the roots of Flying High in the mid-2010s, the three emcees hit the studio together with the shared belief that they needed to shake up the rap game by restoring the culture’s essence. And through plenty of trial and error—and bags of weed—LMD was inevitably formed in the way we get to hear them today. To say the wait was worth it would be a massive understatement, because this crew of hip-hop greats has certainly outdone themselves.

this record is a Bang Ya Head official release.

[brodasweb]

Declaime & Madlib recopilan la parte 3 de la serie "In the Beginning" (reseña del álbum)

Declaime & Madlib recopilan la parte 3 de la serie “In the Beginning” (reseña del álbum)

Este es el decimocuarto álbum completo del veterano de Oxnard Declaime. Debut en “WLIX” del segundo álbum de Tha Alkaholiks Costa II Costa en 1995, no fue sino hasta 2001 que Dudley Perkins comenzó a lanzar álbumes bajo su propio nombre dejando caer andsoitisad. Pero recién salido del esperado debut de LMD vuela alto el verano pasado, se volvió a conectar con Madlib para la tercera entrega de la…

[lyrics724]

2MC ornot 2MC (Intro)

2MC ornot 2MC (Intro)

[Intro] [?] [Chorus] 2 MC or not 2 MC That is the question Keep ’em all guessin’ Teachin’ niggas lessons With the mic as this tool The mic be the tool Translatin’ this soul out to all of you [Verse 1] Who you be? I be, cool ass emcee Get my point across sharp With this delivery This art from the heart Nonstop envy Since we off like a thief in the night Dealing on the ones who try To reduce my…

[dragonsinthedarkness]

"But I hear other voices. A chorus of voices. Multitudes. They reach back centuries. Men and women and children who lost their lives to men like you. Man and women and children forced to wear your chains. I must answer to them.

And this war, Flint’s war, my war, it will not be bargained away to avoid a fight. To save John Silver’s life, or his men’s, or mine.”

I’d like to start from this beautiful speech from Madi to explain why I think Madi is the war itself. Why she was exactly what Flint needed to start fighting it and why she couldn’t be further away from Silver as a person.

Just because I rewatched the final ep. today and I feel the need to honor the one who lost part of herself in this and to reason about the dynamics among the two persons who might have changed the world and the one who kicked that hope back into the dark corner of the untold.

As always, Flint and Silver’s conversation at the end of ep.XXXVIII made me think A LOT. First time I guess I was overwhelmed by emotions, but this time, between the bitterness of the betrayal and the desperation of Flint's loss, I think I started to see exactly what Silver couldn’t get about the war. Which basically is its meaning.

But let me begin with Flint, because is the character I think I know better by now and because I need to start from a warrior who is not the war itself.

Flint started by fighting a war, another one, an easier one, alongside Thomas. He found himself in that period of time, but he lost that war and the one he loved the most with it. Then he started to fight another kind of war, twisted himself in order to fit into its lines. That war was never about liberation, even if that was what he had been telling himself all along and maybe what he hoped he could eventually accomplish by fighting it: it was just about revenge and something to grab in order to stay afloat. It took him to lost every hope of happiness he had left (Miranda), the last possible meaning of his life and of the person he felt he really was deep inside to see the chance for yet another kind of war. A wider one, a harder one, a most fundamental one. It took him to meet Madi. Knowing her, someone completely different from anyone he had known and fought along in the past, someone who was somehow closer to him as a person than anyone he had ever known (except maybe Eleonor, I’m talking mainly about the pirates. Thomas and Miranda were close to him but not very similar in character I’d say and maybe this is why they got along together so well), he finally had the chance to understand that he was not alone in his misery. She had the courage to be what Flint didn’t even know he could become, the fight not for the fight’s sake but for the outcome, as much as he reputed himself already excluded from it, because however he couldn’t ever be part of anything again, not in the way he had been with Thomas and Miranda. But there’s a difference between fighting just to kill and fighting to save who the one you are killing would have been willing to kill, and Madi represented that change for him.

And the war represented the only meaning he was still able to give to his life.

He is defined by his past, absolutely and mainly, and this makes him both someone with valid reasons to fight and someone with reasons to stop fighting.

In the previous episode we see how Silver instead refuses to be defined by his past, which could be a good or a bad thing, depending on how one let that past influence themselves, but that in this specific situation is basically what makes him unable (just my point of view of course) to get the general meaning of that war.

He chooses to erase his experience in favor of the moment, of the future maybe, and this makes him unable (as much as he likes to affirm the contrary, which I had never agreed upon) to understand the minds of the ones who let that experience shape them. And even more, it makes him unable to understand the minds of the ones who don’t need to have cruel experiences behind them in order to feel the fight. That is, Madi.

To link with my previous post ( https://www.tumblr.com/dragonsinthedarkness/758840316125216768/from-the-moment-he-started-speaking-i-couldnt?source=share ), in that infamous conversation in the last ep. Silver confesses he felt the war only (or especially, but I’d say only) when he lost Madi, because he felt the need to honor her sacrifice, avenge her lost and everything Flint had been doing for years, and the point is that that war was EXACTLY that. It was answering to the multitudes of voices who had undergone all that suffering and that demanded justice for it. It was trying to accomplish that as few others as possible could undergo that same fate.

And the point I want to make is that Madi was not only a warrior but the war itself because she felt those voices and the need to answer to them EVEN IF she had never personally experienced such tragedies. She was raised with the Guthries, then in the camp, she had probably even had the chance to be happy in her childhood, but this didn’t prevent her from developing the knowledge of that evil or the responsibility to fight it as leader of her community and as sisters of all the ones who had suffered before and may suffer again.

She wasn’t defined by her own past, but she brought on her shoulders the most painful and important legacy and decided to honor it.

And one may ask for justice for what happened in their own lifetime with a single chance of succeeding, that can make a great warrior of them, but those voices REACHED BACK CENTURIES, as she said. Her justice, their justice, would have been hopeless as long as something bigger as that war started to change things, and this is exactly what Silver couldn’t understand.

Now of course I know changes don’t happen overnight because “the world is too strong for that”, but I’m talking about their reality in that age right now and I think that as much as a war couldn’t have probably changed things, it would have been a beginning at least. A scream echoing in the night of their existences who would have maybe be heard, and as long as even a single person was able to gain goodness from it, it wouldn’t have been in vain.

As I believe all their efforts had not been in vain, despite the outcome.

For one hour, a month or a year (to improperly quote Silver) of freedom.

For one single moment of victory, of light in the dark.

[spencersliv]

[hexjulia]

"Taking an occasional step forward is acceptable, provided it is deliberate, short and steady. The same is true for walking during the delays created by applause, although Cicero says that pacing should be rare and of no long duration. Running about, or what Domitius Afer called Manlius Sura’s ‘hyperactivity’, is completely ridiculous. Flavius Verginius displayed his wit when he asked a rival professor how many miles he had declaimed."

from Quintilian's Oratorical Instruction: Bad Uses of Gesture in Ancient Rhetoric by Thomas Habinek.

[calkale]

so torn between growing my hair out, getting a buzzcut an getting the haircut i always get 😠

[some-stars]

ive been seen….

[forthepleasureofmylife]

Declaiming in Central Park

Photo: Dieter Krehbiel

[ritterum]

Man is unique not for his cruelty, but for his propensity to revel in it

[liesmyth]

how do you find all these great books? do you watch booktubers or something? everything youve recced ive read and loved!

ty!!! I'm a book nerd so this is very flattering

I'm on goodreads and it can be useful for help finding new books, based on 1) previous ones I liked and 2) reviews from people I follow whose tastes align with mine. The downside is that GR pushes very hard for some authors I know I don't vibe with and the reviews can be very inflated; I pretty much only look at the summary + reviews from people I follow + 2-stars reviews from people who didn't like the book (I find them way more useful than 5 stars reviews full of reaction gifs and just squee)

Not to make it obvious that I go to FFA but... FFA. It's an anon-only comm on dreamwidth (and like all anon communities an occasional haven of wank BUT!) the regular book thread is a goldmine source of quality book recs

Other word-of-mouth online hangouts! ONTD @ livejournal has a weekly new book releases post and their comment section doesn't 100% align with my tastes but when it does it's great. The myanonamouse forums too. Very, very occasionally reddit.

[vorakh]

going absolutely wild feral insane about harrier du bois, the most regular specialest man

[cypress-punk]

The fact of the matter is that no organism can survive by devouring its own body. Believe me, we've tested it. The fragile balance of organ systems we call homeostasis or occasionally "life" requires input from the outside world. Be it the light of a star or the body of another organism something must be taken in to keep the machine going. There are no closed systems. Everything flows into everything else.

So when someone says that a machine will one day produce all art or do all work remember that they are describing an organism that eats itself. They are dreaming of a closed system. A perfect machine that takes nothing in and produces endless wealth on the other side. They are lying. Their terms are contradictory. They have failed from first principle. They will find that they cannot live by autocannibalism.

While they attempt this fool's errand I suggest we, being of sounder minds and more common sense, move on and build something better together. They have made it clear they do not want us, because if they did they would not try to close the system. So let us do elsewise since we are not wanted and cease entertaining the madness of the autocannibal.

[rincewindsapprentice]

I guess the speaker of the house situation hasn't really phased me at all because that is just what happens in every parliamentary government ever, so I'm surprised it took 200 years for it to happen in America