molemen beat tapes

were copped from Gramophone. cassettes jammed into a factory- issued stereo deck of the hoopty i rolled around in. a bucket. bass and drum looped with some string sample, fixed. a sliver of perfect adjusted. the scrapes of something reconstituted. there was so much space to fill. an invitation to utter. Iqra- Allah said to the prophet Muhammad (peace be upon Him). a- to b-side and around again. a circle a cipher. i’d drive down and back in my mom’s Dodge for the latest volumes of sound. i’d stutter and stop and begin again. lonesome and on fire. none. no one i knew rapped. i’d recite alone on Clark St. free, styling, shaping, my voice a sapling, hatchling, rapping my life, emerging in the dark of an empty car. • there was a time when hip-hop felt like a secret society of wizards and wordsmiths. magicians meant to find you or that you were meant to find like rappers i listened to and memorized in history class talked specifically to me, for me. • & sometimes you’d see a kid whisper to himself in the corner of a bus seat & you asked if he rhymed & traded a poem a verse like a fur pelt/trapping. some gold or food. this sustenance. you didn’t have to ride solo anymore. • Jonathan was the first kid i met who rapped. he was Black from a prep school, wore ski goggles on top his head & listened to Wu-Tang which meant he was always rhyming about science and chess. his pops made him read Sun Tzu. his mans was Omega a fat Puerto Rican who wrote graffiti and smoked bidis. & they’d have friends & the backseat would swell & the word got passed/scooped like a ball on the playground. you’d juggle however long your mind could double Dutch. sometimes you’d take what you were given/lift off like a trampoline rocket launch. sometimes you’d trip & scrape your knees. tongue-tied, not quick. words stuck on loop, like like words, stuck, like that. but break thru, mind, knife sharp, mind darts polished & gleaming we’d ride for the sake of rhyming. take the long way home or wherever the fuck we were going cruise down Lake Shore & back, blasting blazing. polishing these gems. trying to get our mind right.