The Journeys of Speed

Greetings, all.

As soon as I posted my “retirement” notice, I started futzing around in Fruity Loops. The end result was a beat that has bass, pianos, sweeping strings on the chorus, and is pretty much perfect for a “I’ve effed up in life, but I’m still doing what I need to do to make amends for my past sins/transgressions so that I can be an effective leader” type of track. My personal (and obviously biased) opinion is that it’s a pretty sweet beat.

But, when I compose “sweet beats,” I get the urge to write to them. This one was no different. Speaking on some issues that arose over the past few years (my party habits, my former misogynistic tendencies*, etc.), I jotted down a couple lines and, from there, had two verses written within an hour. Stating that “I’m never a saint,” I began to dissect what made me want to change my ways from a free-spirited party animal into the instrument for change that some of you may see before you right now.

So, right now, I’m staring at these verses–and the ACID file for the instrumental. And, I’m thinking to myself, “Self, what you have here could possibly be a conscious rap ‘banger’. All you need is a third verse and a chorus.” And, that, my friends, is where you all would come in**. If you’re interested, hit me up on Facebook, Gmail or Twitter. I’ll detail the framework for the song and if you’re cool with it, I’ll send you a snippet of the beat (the third verse or the chorus, depending on which one you think you can contribute to) and from there, everything will be hunky-dory. The finished product will even get heavy promotion via JdotSpeed.com, Facebook, Twitter, Soundclick, etc. In addition, this song will probably take the place of the rumored “Feel Me” remix that I’ve been floating around in my head and on Facebook since Freshman year.

Got it? Coolio. I look forward to possibly hearing some feedback from you guys out there.

Women of the world, I have reformed myself from a grab-assy type of guy (as indicated by the fact that I’m engaged and in a monogamous relationship). And, while I was never the promiscuous one or anything of the sort, I did, a couple of times, allowed my little head to think for me. It happens, and I apologize for it.
**Interested parties, this is on a first-come, first-serve basis. This, of course, means that if you come to me in late April talking about “Yo, Speed! I wanna get on that song,” chances are I may respond with a “you should’ve jumped the gun and ‘got at me’ sooner.”

Greetings, all.

So, like one of my favorite blogger-types D dot Omen (and countless others), I have reached that point where blogging and not recording has become more fun than recording. I mean, I’m a twenty-one-year-old future graduate from the University of Maryland (I’m going to get an English degree this May, for those that are wondering) that has been known more for my way with a pen and/or a keyboard than my way with the mic. And, honestly, I love it. I love writing reviews, promoting albums, and using my analysis skills to pick a track apart (three things that helped me over the years with the music, especially that analysis part) a bit more than making music. Musically (as with everything), I’m a perfectionist. I even use a generic set-up in my apartment just because of the homeliness and because it gives a layer that some lack: that unpolished, “down-home” feeling that makes you say “Damn, it’s not pretty, but it gets the job done.” And, it’s that perfectionism that has ruined quite a few opportunities that I’ve had. It’s ruined a couple friendships. But, it’s made some pretty, in my obviously biased opinion, beautiful music (c) Drake.

But, when you add my love for reviewing and crap, perfectionism to the fact that almost everybody that I’ve come across in the past couple years has done music at some point, it gets a bit boring, a bit tedious, and a bit–I don’t know, cringe-worthy. No offense to any rappers out there, but there are a lot of us. There are probably more rappers (and wannabe rappers) than doctors. I won’t tell anyone to stop what they’re doing, but there’s more that you can do with life than rap. And, if you love music, you can still be involved in it without having to rap.

So, maybe I’ll still record music, maybe not. Buuuuuuut…the point that I’m getting at is this: I love music, and I know that rap isn’t going to pay any bills (at least not as quickly as a real job could ), so, to recording, I have two words.

Auf Wiedersehen (evidently, it literally translates to “until we see again,” but it was on Wikipedia; you know how those things go)

-Speed

…have I spent over the years on partying?

I figure that if I dropped about–on average–30 dollars each time I went out/helped set up a party/hosted a party, and I’ve been in college for four years, and out of those four years, maybe 25 weeks out of each year was spent hosting/having/going out to parties, on average of twice a week (Friday and Saturday)…that equates to $6,000.

Six thousand dollars.

With six thousand dollars, I could have rented out a nice apartment with a swimming pool and my own laundry room–instead of the no-pool having, “share a laundry room with a 70-year-old woman and her family” basement apartment that I have now (not complaining, though. It could be a lot worse. I’m just saying). With $6K, I could’ve put a down payment on a car (provided that I had my license). With six thou, I could have put some into stocks and went about my business.

But, nope. I decided to live it up in college.

And what do I have to show for it, other than about 15 extra pounds? A lot, actually. Sure, I could’ve done without all the partying, but it helped me crawl out of the shell that I had been in for so long during high school and such.

That is all.

-Speed

So, I went to sleep last night with dreams of some sort of Marvel vs. Capcom platformer racing through my head (in case you never knew, I am a pretty big gamer nerd ^_^), wondering what my Ravens were going to do now that the free agent season was broken wide-open by Da Bears signing everyone but the guy that played Michael Oher in The Blindside. I wake up, turn on ESPN and find out the Ravens traded third and fourth-round picks for (gasp!) Anquan Boldin. I broke out into a cheesy grin a la McLovin after getting his first taste of popularity–and the “bootay,” as some would refer to it.

The deal should’ve happened last year, but heck, I won’t complain. Now, I know there’s that group of people that think that this is a bad move and that the Ravens should’ve gone after Brandon Marshall. Those people, no offense, are a tad on the “not-so-bright” side. Would you really want to trade a first-round pick (with a possible certified winner-winner-spaghetti-dinner) for a disgruntled star, or trade two draft picks, pick up a fifth-round pick and get one of the best WR in the game right now? Honestly, I’d rather have both, but something’s better than nothing.

Boldin brings experience, speed, hands–and those three things alone were lacking this past season. He also brings a bit more of an even keel to the team that Marshall may have not. Sure, Boldin was a bit livid last year, but at least he wasn’t complaining about not wanting to be with the Cardinals DURING the season (and fired Drew Rosenhaus). So, to Ozzie, I say congrats on getting the deal done and that 2010 is ours for the taking.

-Speed

by the fact that jdotspeed.com has been up and running again for little under half a week and I’ve already gotten some flack about my reviews. #wowzers

As a consumer, you can go and do whatever you like, but think about it this way: if you were buying a car, wouldn’t you want to know what to expect from the car, how it runs, how much GPM it gets on the highway, the odds that it could crash and kill you and your entire family in a fiery explosion? The same rule, to a lesser extend, applies in music. You shouldn’t want to walk into a song blindly, not knowing what to expect. That could turn out to be auditory suicide, to put it in the harshest of terms. You could walk into a song and walk out a far worst person in the long haul, which is why the world needs “critics” to aid in weeding out the good, bad, and ugly of music, TV, etc. Most of the time, we’re pretty much on the point (unless we’re talking movies, then forget that LOL; they tend to only love indie movies that get overrated and sweep the Oscars, like Slumdog Millionaire, which was, in no way, that great of a movie.)

I’m just saying.

-Speed

Greetings, all.

This is going to be one of the most random things you’ll hear from me (I’ll get back to the music and random ramblings/rants in a bit). I enjoy Googling and looking at…old television network and channel logos. It started over one Christmas break while I was still in high school. I was bored as all hell and I had dial-up, which translates to me being able to access (and use) about 25% of what the internet had to offer by 2006. So, I did a search for NBC and clicked through some photos, finding the old-school peacock logo with the “N” in it. I was amazed and entranced from there, thinking to myself “wow, so this is what TV looked like in the 1970s.”

The next logical step, for me, was to start looking up how the news and other aspects of television were presented in Baltimore. I fell in love with the funk-based news intros (even attempted to sample one for an instrumental, all J Dilla-style; I’m still working on that), the vibrant colors, and the overall feel of the news back then. It wasn’t as crisp and clean-cut (unless you were the almighty Cronkite), the logos were superimposed on the screen with wonky, color-changing trails, and every 30-minute news report had some derivative of “ACTION” and/or “NEWS” in it.

I started gobbling up these logos, expanding my knowledge of random facts (I think I pushed out information I needed for a paper I had due after break for it), and before I knew it, I had about 40 megabytes of data from old news broadcasts, commercials and everything. I guess the fascination with this stuff is that it’s history. Granted, it’s not what you’d see in a college textbook (unless we’re talking about advertising or journalism), but it’s something that shouldn’t just be disregarded because it’s a bit more random than other aspects of history.

Ok, I’m done. But, before I go, take a gander at what I mean when I say that news/sports openings, while they looked cruder back in the day, sounded SO MUCH nicer.

-Speed

Greetings, all.

So, evidently, I still have a Myspace account (I remember that I had one for my music, but I thought I deleted it back in like 2007, 2008) and I got the brilliant idea of logging onto it a couple days back.

Boy howdy.

The set-up’s the same: there’s your profile, your spam messages, your 1000 rappers (ironic, I know) that want you to listen to their music, your random 15-year-olds trying so hard to look old before their time (seriously, young girls, you probably shouldn’t whore yourself out on Myspace; I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t do it in real-life), your “Myspace celebrities,” and your flame wars. What really shocked me about Myspace was this: there are still people that haven’t upgraded to Facebook, Twitter, or anything that wasn’t big when I was in high school. #wowzers.

I asked them why. They responded with a simple “just never got into Facebook.” So, what? You’d rather hang out with skeezy teenagers than upgrade to skeezy young adults?* Man, oh, man. Some people, I just don’t get.

*Of course, they are the exception to the rule. Both sites contain fair-minded, respectable individuals that don’t need to show their naughty bits just for the sheer delight of showing their naughty bits.

Greetings, all.

I remember a couple years back when I used to go to the Juke Joint at Maryland like it was the thing to do. As it is now, you had two sets of people: your rappers/singers and your spoken word artists. Now, see, spoken word artists are supposed to be these “deep” people that talk about everything that you and I are (supposed to be) afraid of touching on. And, most of these cats were pretty in tune with their consciousness, you know?

But, every now and then, there would be a spoken word artist that would get up there and ramble off some just straight garbage. It made me realize something: just because you do spoken word and have dramatic pauses every two seconds, it doesn’t mean that you’re deep. Heck, you can be on the same ish as the people you believe you’re more conscious than. Besides, doing the…dramatic…pause with a COUPLE…of raises in VOLUME of your voice…in an overkill FASHION ONLY…makes you seem like…you’re…mimicking WILLIAM…Shatner and will get you laughed at by yours truly, a guy who is not a spoken word artist and regularly regulates himself to the “lower art form of Rhythm and Poetry (rap)” #/sarcasm.

Like, for instance, there was this one girl–I don’t remember her name. She got up on stage and delivered one of the most droll pieces of poetry ever. But, with about 50 dramatic pauses, a couple of rises in tone and a few elongated syllables later, everyone was calling it the greatest thing ever recited. If that’s not a #fail, I don’t know what is.

-Speed