Beyonder and word vomit

This is a post in which I attempt to address the music of Jarren Simmons but I really address my and possibly your life in a way that I find disgusting but necessary.

Xtra Medium has been giving us bangaz for years now. Literally years. Doesn't that make you a little depressed?  No? Just me? Anyway, YM embodies my college experience the way no other music can...mostly because he was there. "Attending" the same classes. Eating the same late night food. Lifting the same weights. Kissing the same girls. Even back then the production value of his music blew me. The songs we played in the locker room while taking 3 minute showers so we could make it to Commons before Leroy stopped making pizzas into anthems depicting Yale's beloved student-athletes. I will never hear Bling Bling again without changing the words to those of Kenny Bling. When I'm feeling nostalgic about college, there's nothing better to throw on.

Fortunately, (or unfortunately,) we are still on a journey together. Now more than ever, those years feel like the shortest gladdest years of life. Maybe we did the Ivy League wrong. Maybe I'm overreacting. Or maybe we have souls that would putter out and die if we took a job we wanted instead of one we Wanted. Us creative types. Writing words for you. Singing songs for you. Making pretty pictures for you. Because whether you realize it or not, we are you. Tucked away in our apartments or at your local coffee shop doing what we may or may not do best but doing it because we have to. Because we can't be just another cog. Because it's bigger than us and it's JUST US at the same time.



Leather Laces seems to be the track of choice for a lot of people but who would I be if I didn't show my appreciation for Upstream, the song featuring J Prophet. I was listening to him long before our days at The Eliot. Since the time of Bulldog Days when he sent me Run to the Rock.

I don't know how much time Xtra Medium put into this mixtape just like you don't know how much time I put into anything I write. But I know what he put into it. I think a lot of us are Broke but not Broken but I don't know how long we can stay that way. In this fucked up world we live in we're all a bunch of camels and there's no telling where that next piece of straw is going to come from. Let Our art be your water and strength. All you need is the heart to keep going.

DL the mixtape here.

Xtra Medium - www.oakboyfresh.com/

J Prophet - www.JPROPHET.com