I met up with a new but really good friend today. He was leaving town for good and even though he had a million things to do, he wanted us to meet up. We met up, walked around – which involved lots of meandering through throngs of tourists and avoiding been run over by cyclists who would knock down an old lady in a minute without remorse since they are really the ones “saving the world” and “creating green energy”. At the end of the evening, he hugged me and said he was proud of what I had managed to achieve in the past 18 months. I brushed it off but when I got home, I realised that I am constantly looking forward, constantly thinking about how to advance my goals that I never stop to celebrate the things I have managed to do. So today I opened a bottle of bubbly, a gift that I received at Christmas and drank it down alone, while listening to Seal, who happens to be one of my favourite artists and whose song supplies the title to this post. While I’m the first to list the disadvantages of drinking alone, today is a ME day. And I’m not going to be apologetic about it.
While it may be a normal/boring/crazy/terrible day for you, have a drink today for me, to the future.
This is the song that made me a fan of Nneka, a very talented but extremely overlooked musician. My favourite feature of the song is the drum beat that runs throughout the songs gives evokes a sense of doom and excitement at the same time. I don’t know how it happened but I didn’t know this song had a music video until today. One of the things I liked the most about the video itself was the setting on the streets and highways of mainland Lagos(?) – often many artistes travel to London or Johannesburg to make very fancy videos with flashy cars and lot of alcohol which I find boring (although such videos may be a reflection of common themes in the musical style opposed to the choice of the musicians themselves).
One type of music I’ve not enjoyed a lot of is rap, the mainstream kind. Sure, there are a lot of lyrical folks out there but most of them eventually fall into the habit of creating music centred around driving the flashiest cars, having a 5-some with 5 beautiful women and generally spending tons of money. It’s hard enough having to pretend caring about that girl’s backside when I’m with straight friends and I’d rather not spend my private time pretending some more. My fantasies also do not involve driving flashy cars or anything more than a 2-some.
Enter Goody Goodies from Cakes Da Killa. He’s a twenty-two year old rapper from the US who’s been out since thethird grade. I enjoy his pace and sassy yet funny persona although some of his lines are rude and occasionally I felt like wiping my speakers down ’cause they had been violated by an onslaught of F-and-N-bombs (up until a few years ago I couldn’t listen to any song with the F-word anywhere, the censored versions with the gaps were even worse). These days there are out gay rappers who are making good music (and not just gay music) so I guess it’s time I explored this genre of music again. I can’t wait to listen to what he makes next.
There was a time that I was very much involved with church and its many activities. Some of these churches literally take up every single day of the week with meetings, prayer sessions and so on. One of the churches I was attending at the time (I would often go to two churches at the same period and actively participate in both) had a very charismatic pastor who had just started a week-long series on sin and temptation. A major talking point in his message(s) was that to be holy and keep ourselves that way, we should cut out/off anything that may predispose us to sin and an important “doorway to sin” was music. Read the rest of this entry »
There was a time in my life that I listened to this song everyday – multiple times. This is one of my favourite songs and is from the album Kaleidoscope from Kelis which was produced by The Neptunes and released in 1999. It’s a bit depressing but I enjoy wallowing in its melancholic ambience.
This was one of the songs from my earlier days (I was probably ten or so) that changed my perception of music forever. It made me aware that you don’t have to understand the language a song is written in to enjoy and appreciate it (it’s in Yoruba which I don’t speak a word of). It was released in the early 1990s and prior to this I didn’t know of any other African musicians besides the local ones. Most of what I listened to were songs that were adjudged ‘safe’ for children by my parents and consisted of music from some local and western artistes (I don’t know how Madonna managed to escape this ban but I will forever be thankful). Commercially it was a huge success and got Angelique Kidjo her first Grammy Award nomination.
This is a video I saw many months back from the Accra [dot] Alt group which organises meetings, festivals and other such events geared towards ensuring comfortable spaces of expression for artists and other creative types to express themselves in Ghana. This particular meeting focused on being gay in Ghana and interestingly some of the gays in attendance weren’t shy about expressing them selves at all. This video is part of a collection entitled Ghana Talk Party Series.
By now I’m sure I have answered most of your questions Mr Pink Agendist…
I woke up this morning and immediately wanted to listen to this song. Not unusual since I tend to feel that way about songs but I hadn’t listened to any David Gray song in years. Took me a while to finally locate it.
Sometimes you listen to a particular song and it takes you back to something that happened in your life or even something that is still happening. For me it’s usually people who left important imprints in my life and contributed to my growth in some way be it good or bad.
A couple of years ago I met this guy who I connected with in so many levels: we had a lot in common, read the same books, listened to the same music, enjoyed the same things. It helped that he was smoking hot! But for some reason, we never connected on a sexual level – I liked him, thought he was cute but I just couldn’t see myself with him. Well, he finally met someone and surprisingly it hurt me a lot. He had become a big part of my life and the idea that I may not be able to talk to him or hangout whenever was difficult to accept. We talked about it and I told him how I truly valued him and how I just didn’t want us to drift apart as friends because he was in a relationship. He waved my feelings off, saying that we’d be friends for a long time. Well shortly after we had a weird disagreement and didn’t speak to each other for over a year. Every time I’d hear this song it was like wounds were reopened. I honestly don’t know why. Sometimes I wonder if I was really into him but was in denial. At that time, I hung out mostly with a straight crowd and to be in such pain and not be able to share it with anyone was difficult. I let myself be sad for 2 weeks then I got up and moved on.
Bills don’t care whether your sad or not.
This post really was inspired by the one on the SingleIn2012 blog. It’s nice to find people who experience and interpret events in a similar way.
Purple Gloves 