Somebody was blasting bad rap out of their SUV, as I was sitting on a bus bench yesterday. I just started coming up with rhymes about bad, wannabe rappers. This one is dedicated to all the MC Wiggety Wacks out there.
Same Ol' Rap
I got bitches
I got money
Same ol' rap
You heard a thousand times, honey
I dress dope
I act hard
But I live in a tent
In my mom's backyard
I don't drink Cristal
I drink orange soda
Cruisin' down the street
'94 Toyota
I smoke a lot of weed
I act insane
I recycle beer cans
To buy fake gold chains
I like falafels
I really like pitas
I don't tell the girls
I'm straight outta Reseda
I rap about my days
Sellin' drugs in the hood
When I'd visit my grandma
Down in Inglewood
I need money for the dentist
I got a cracked molar
You know I've had a gangsta lean
Since I was in a stroller
So I wrote this rap
That don't say shit
Let me talk to Dre
So he can make it a hit
I need bitches and money
So I can be a baller
I'm as smooth as Eminem
But my dick's much smaller
I'm gonna have a Rolls
Ya know I ain't dreamin'
Gotta move out of this tent
'Cause my mom's always screamin'
I gotta make rap work
Nothin' else will do
'Cause my mom just hit me
In the head with her shoe
-Steve Emig, The White Bear 7/1/2024
I've been doing most of my writing lately on Substack, a platform designed specifically for writers. Check it out:
I saw first watched this today, after Alex Leech from the U.K. shared it on Facebook and said he was watching this guy's video late into the night. This performance/video blew my fucking mind. I'm not even going to promote this post. It you're meant to find it, you'll find it. "Hi Ren" by Ren.
Therapist reacts to "Hi Ren" video(The therapist cries before the end of the video, her reaction video is about 35 minutes long, but definitely worth watching if you're a actively creative person of any kind, or have struggled with depression/psychological issues at some point)
Ren has a bunch more work to check out. If you like these, keep digging...
It's been two days since I clicked on a Facebook post to watch "Hi Ren" for the first time. I didn't know what I was seeing. Instrumental? No, he's singing weird sounds... "Oh shit, there's lyrics..." This video changed me. It's as simple as that. I told Alex Leech, whose post I saw this video in, "some pieces make say, 'that's cool,' and make me want to go create something amazing. This is the second kind."
I've been looking for a new direction for my Sharpie art, I want to stop doing my take on classic rock star or BMX photos, and I want to draw pictures that say something. Yeah, making a living and actually having a place ot live would be nice, too. But I can live this crazy street life a while longer, if I'm doing some seriously cool work, drawings, writing, blogging, whatever.
After watching Hi Ren several times, and several of his other videos, I've finished one new drawing, a totally different idea. I started writing poetry again, which I stopped doing in late 2008, when I lost all my creative work, including 165 unpublished poems that no one else had ever seen. That was ten years worth, the best creative work I've done. Part of the new poem, called "You're not doing it right," is in the first new drawing. I'm now working on a second new drawing, another completely new direction. We'll see how it comes out.
The big things I got from being exposed to Ren's work is 1) Tackle the hard subjects, go deep, don't be afraid of going into the really deep ideas I've held back from writing and drawing. Go deep, dig into the meaning of life stuff, the things I had in the back of my head, but didn't write or try to draw. And 2) Be honest. "Brutally honest," seems cliche', but that's when the good stuff comes out, or comes through us, creatively.
I was already really prolific writing and drawing before this video sparked me in new directions. But now I'm twice as amped to dig into new themes, go deeper, and see what comes of it. That's what I got out of a video by a guy half my age, who had the courage to make one of the most incredible pieces I've ever seen on video.
