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IF you’re from NYC you were born and raised in NYC! Your birth certificate has the NYC seal of approval. If you’re from NYC you’re an Italian kid from Bensonhurst, an Irish lad from Marble Hill, a beautiful Puerto Rican diva from Fordham road, a street smart Jewish kid from the Upper East Side, a first generation Egyptian dude from the Upper West Side. If you’re from NYC you are Asian, Colombian, Greek, Indian, Cuban, and you all cross paths in Jackson Heights, Queens.
IF you’re from NYC, you’re an African American representing all 5 boroughs. Not just Harlem. You were there when Hip Hop came out of Sedgwick Avenue and was exported to the world. If you’re from NYC, you’re an around the way girl from the Lower East Side, a Dominican representing Washington Heights/Inwood, an Albanian repping hard for Pelham Parkway, a no shit taking, fast talking type from Hell’s kitchen, Chelsea, or Alphabet City. IF you’re from NYC you have a love hate relationship with the MTA. IF you’re from NYC, losing the World Trade Center was like losing a limb. IF you’re from NYC you went to the following clubs in your youth: The Tunnel, The Palladium, CBGB, The Red Zone, The Octagon, The World, The Sound Factory and don’t even try to front like you got into Studio 54. You weren’t that cool IF you’re from NYC you were born and raised in Brooklyn but you ended up moving to Staten Island because all them hipsters invaded your home borough and the rent got too damm high! Big up to the Wu-Tang Clan. IF you’re from NYC you were there during the Stonewall riots in Greenwich Village, you’ve seen the city go from Lindsay to Koch, from Dinkins to Giuliani, Bloomberg to Deblasio that degraciado and now Mayor Adams runs the city. IF you’re from NYC you saw Trump go from real estate tycoon to Reality Star to President of the United States and you had a good laugh when that shit happened! IF you’re from NYC you can talk shit with the best of them. You know all the ethnic jokes and no you’re not racist you just got jokes. IF you’re from NYC, you played stickball, handball, and man hunt on the block. You went for a dip in the good ole fire hydrant to cool down every summer, you walk fast, you’re not rude you’re firm, you are suspicious of people who are too nice, you get to the point, bacon egg & cheese and a coffee to go is your favorite breakfast and you can’t stand small talk. The Big Apple wouldn’t have it any other way. IF you’re from NYC, you are a die hard Yankee fan, Mets fan, Knicks fan (Fuck Dolan) Ranger fan, you root for the Giants or Jets, and you live in absolute agony each year. Oh, and “Brooklyn Nets” sorry but you should’ve stayed in Jersey where you belong. We’re all stocked up here. IF you’re from NYC, you moved to Long Island, Westchester, Rockland county, Orange county, or even New Jersey once you started a family but you will always be a New Yorker that is IF you’re from NYC. She came into my life just as fast as she left. She aroused all of my senses: sight, sound, smell, except I could not taste her. She caressed the most vital organ in my body with a mere glance in my direction. She was a beauty in the dust of ages. A symmetrical angel engineered by the Gods of beauty. How I longed for her. She made me want to serve her. Eternally. What’s the point of existing without her? She made me want to love again or for the first time. If she wanted me she could’ve had me whenever wherever. She was the Helen of Troy. She made me want to be a better man the type of man that she could be proud of. When she spoke I only heard the sound of her voice. God, the agony, anguish, and anxiety that is Man without Woman. That Woman in particular. What a Woman! What a Lady! How cruel of the Universe to put her in my path with the full intentions of taking her away. A mere cosmic joke of the stars but a lifetime of emptiness for me. When she left she stole my eyes for I could never see another woman again. All I have left is the faint memory of her. The internet will NEVER lose. Ever. It is the grand champion. Imagine Tom Brady, Michael Jordan, Mike Tyson, Tiger Woods, Michael Phelps all wrapped up in to one. That’s the Internet. We have the cold war to thank for this strange organism. Back then, circa 1969, the Internet was the ARPANET. Created by the department of defense, it was designed to be a series of independent networks. If one network was taken out (due to a nuclear attack) another network would keep on running. Fast forward to the 1989. Enter Tim Berners Lee and the World Wide Web. Now we’re cooking with gas. In the mid 90’s came AOL and suddenly “You got mail” meant you were on the Internet. Hello Cyberspace. Y2K came and went. The Internet survived but Napster divided the music industry like the birth of Jesus Christ divided the western world. It’s now the early aughts, we go from 56k to broadband. Information superhighway indeed. With the advent of smart phones, the Internet was now on the GO! This is when things started getting really interesting as social media came into play. Yahoo had Geocities then came MiGente (big up to all my Latinos) followed by Friendster, Youtube, MySpace, Facebook Twitter, and IG. I could include Snapchat and Tik Tok but I’m too old to be on those platforms. Friendster and Myspace went the way of the Dodo bird so let’s dive right into Facebook. Share your life, rants, best moments all while your data is mined and sold to advertisers. All good. If you’re an activist then you belong on Twitter with the rest of the social media justice warriors. High is the digital podium of these self righteous avengers and furious are their key strokes when they strike down the target of thier manufactured rage. Afterwards, hop on over to Instagram, digital landscape of the narcissist selfie taker, the world travler, the brunch lover, the Bon Vivant, the IG model, or some guy who just likes to share memes. Need a quick tutorial on any given subject? Then look no further than YouTube which serves as the cable access station of planet Earth. So, what makes the Internet so undefeatable besides all the trolls on there that will argue with you over the real color of the sky? Well, it appears that at some point, this snarky, snide, smug, algorithm evovled to react to any event that occurs in the world. Within nanoseconds, there will be a Gif or Meme created to address said occurence. Just ask Michael Jordan. The meme of him crying defeated the six-time NBA champion. Cyber space can also make us mere mortals look ridiculous. You just have to be at the wrong place at the right time for the worst day of your life to go viral. Another one bites the dust because the Internet will never LOSE. ODE TO THE HEIGHTSI keep reading these asinine comments in the social media sphere regarding MTV'S Washington Heights "Reality" show. Something like, "Oh they're not from the Heights, they never went to Woolworth on 181 or this place or that place." Well, of course not, that would require a time machine. Keep in mind that most of those brats on that show weren't even born in your "Time" u old fart. That being said, if there was a time machine I would take you back to the Heights that I grew up in. It was a glorious place filled with gangs, drugs, graffiti, house jams, crazy horse, pellets, trey bags, and hicklicious skanks. It was a place where if you "buffed" my tag on the wall then that would be grounds for a One-D fight at a time and place of your choosing. A place where me and my X.T.W. dudes would rack up on Krylon cans from the R&S Strauss on 175 and Broadway and go bombing on the local tracks from 125 to 59. A Line. Sometimes, I still see some of those tags. It was the Heights of Smith and Sane of JA, of F.K. J.F.K T.N.G T.M.P N.S.G. T.M. J.T.M. O.S.T. X.T.C It was the Heights where the Wild Cowboys ran loose while the Curlys ran amuck. Oh it a was glorious place. I remember breaking into Highbridge with the niggas from POST ave for a late night swim, the 92 riots, it was a place where the rent was cheap and the only gentrifiers you saw were the ones from Jersey who would come in for a quick score. Facebook beefs? Twitter beefs? No, a quick punch to the face and that was it! Negro Claro? Umbrella? No, more like Fuego Fuego. It was a time when the only time you saw rap videos on MTV was on YO! MTV RAPS. It was the Heights where house music and hip hop co-existed. Where Dr.Martens and Timberlands chilled side by side. It was a glorious place. It was and still is the Heights of Mambi and Floridita where me and my Riverside dudes pulled countless "Larrys" after a night of clubbing, drinking, and chasing tale. It was the Heights that claimed fingers and hands every fourth of July due to them M80s. The Heights where niggas got bombarded with eggs on Halloween. It was the Heights of countless beef. The 170s V.S. The 180S Elwood V.S Sickles. Arden V.S. Thayer. Post V.S. Everybody. It was the Heights of the M.G. crew where me and my Thayer dudes drank 40oz. on the corner of Broadway while watching the world pass us by... It was a glorious place....
Suck my D!*k The three most dangerous words in the English language. Or is it a command? A request that does not expect to be fulfilled. When dudes say that to other dudes they are going for the jugular. We know this vile insult strikes a blow to the recipient’s manhood. After reason fails and you are ready to throw the hands, those words will surely start the beef. My dude from the block did some time. I asked him how was it in there? How do you survive up in that concrete jungle? He said, bro, nothing to it. Give people their space, don’t infringe in their personal territory and shit will be aight. However, if you find yourself having an argument with another inmate and that nigga says, SUCK MY D!*K! You have to fuck him up because if you don’t you will be literally sucking his d!*k! The most extreme example of this phrase gone awry is that of Chi-Ali Griffith better know to us old school hip hop heads as “Chi-Ali.” One fateful day he got into a heated argument with his brother in law and out came those words. What was that for? Chi-Ali ended up killing his baby mother’s brother and would end up doing a 12 year bid for manslaughter. The funniest instance of Suck My D!*k is when the girls from the block would say it. On many occasions a couple of my homegirls said to me “Nigga, suck my D!@K!” Of course they do not have a penis but the irony of it makes it that more offensive. I’m sure if you told a Gay dude to suck your D!*K they would be obliged but even they would have to pause and ask themselves why should I provide this Buggaron with such pleasure? He’s not worthy. The cousin phrase of suck my D@%k is “Get off my D!%K! Meaning stop sweating me man. You too up in my business. Anyway, we should not let words rile us up to the point where we commit murder or incite violence on one another. That’s self destruction. If I ever catch myself in a heated argument with one of these Mofos and they tell me to perform fellatio on them I will simply respond by saying, “I shall not!” and walk away gracefully. ODE TO MILLENNIALSOkay, so this next piece is going out to all you Millennials. I know you guys are all tech savvy and digital natives, all of you serve as Chief Technology Officers in your households, all of you are Chief Executive Officers of the I think I know everything corporation. Further, as market research would suggest, you guys seem to get along with your parents better than previous generations. Granted many of you are career students and hence you tend to stay in the nest longer than your predecessors. Shit, when it’s all said and done you little bastards will be the most educated generation in American history. Nevertheless, let me school you on my Generation. Generation X. We are the offspring of the baby boomers. In my case first generation Americans whose parents migrated here to give us a shot at the American dream. We grew up watching MTV (the network that actually played music videos) WWF (80s Version), Kung Fu films on Channel 5, old freaking movies on WPIX, using rotary phones, playing Dungeons and Dragons, playing stickball, Intelevision, Atari, Ninetendo, The Amiga was our first PC, we had Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis. We didn’t have Google but we had library cards and Encyclopedia Britannica. That’s how we got to know the world. Also, we were a patient and courageous generation. Case is point we had to use an array of combinations on a landline phone to spell out “I miss you” on a pager a.k.a beeper. We had the patience to sit through 56k dial up while hearing all that internet noise only to be rewarded with those magical words: “You’ve Got Mail.” Patient enough to wait 15minutes while our copyright infringed songs downloaded from Napster. We had to summon the courage to call a girl at her home while displaying proper phone edict e.g. Buenas noche se encuentra… We had to summon that same courage to ask her out to dinner and tell her, “Sorry it’s not you it’s me. No text message break ups. It was face to face not Facebook to Facebook. We had to endure those ass whoppings from our parents and chancletasos from our grandmothers. No ACS. No problem. The point of this here rant is that when we pull your little introverted, socially awkward, borderline autistic asses to the side YOU might just want to listen. As Louis C.K. will muse older people have been here longer than you have. We’ve had the time to manufacture, package, and distribute our bullshit on a myriad of platforms including digital outlets you LOL mutherfcukers. So, listen up young world you might just learn something. LATINOS AND The N WordIs it time for Latinos to stop saying yo “Mah nigga?” Sorry not sorry for not using the Latinx term. I’m not that woke yet I guess. Anyway, I was at a bar recently with a friend who happens to be black (I hate to use that phrase but I will to make this point ) As we drank beer after beer, I kept saying “Yo mah nigga” that’s when I noticed the furtive looks my way. At that point, as if by cosmic destiny walks in a young man who just turned 21. The bartender strikes a conversation with the boy, Dominican dude from the Bronx, and at one point she suggests that he stop saying, “Mah nigga.” What was that for? The young man swiftly protested. That’s a word he grew up using, Further, he is an up and coming rapper and what good is his vernacular if he can’t say “Yo, Mah nigga?” Oddly enough, I understood his argument, I’m a homeboy from the hood at heart. I grew up listening to hip-hop during the golden age back in the 80’s and 90’s. From my understanding, African American youth took the very loaded word, “Nigger” and made it powerless. They owned it now, it’s no longer that racist word associated with lynchings and the Jim-Crow South. It’s now an urban word, a term of affection for your fellow black brother , Latino brother, or brother from another mother. Tupac said it best in an interview with Tabitha Stevens, “Niggers was the ones on the rope, hanging off the thing . Niggas is the ones with gold ropes, hanging out at the clubs.” Some may argue that the fate of the word “Nigga” falls on the domain of African Americans and African Americans only. Anyone else using that word is culturally appropriating an experience foreign to their own. Such was the case when Gina Rodriguez got into hot water for putting up a video where she sings along to Lauren Hill’s song and “my nigga” is used. The Twitter mob reacted. Some one or the other suggested that only Afro-Lations can use that word but what that fool fails to realize is that some Afro-Latinos do not consider themselves to be black and will even go to the extent of using the real “N” word when referring to African Americans. So, there’s that. The most egregious offenders to use the urban “N” word would be Asian or even white dudes but don’t tell that to white dudes or Asian dudes from the hood for they are as black as they come. If anyone ever earned the right to say “Yo mah nigga” then what would be Emenim . In my estimation he is one of the best rappers to ever do it and he just happens to be white. However, I don’t ever recall him using that word instead he says, “And I just do not got the patience To deal with these cocky Caucasians Who think I'm some wigger who just tries to be black..” Excerpt from the song, “The Way I am.” Back to the initial question, given the current climate, do we in the LATINO community only use the phrase “My nigga” amongst the homies? Or, do we scratch it out from our vocabulary all together? ONE DAY AMERICAThe United States of America will one day be the greatest nation on the face of the Earth. We have so much potential. All the elements are already here. From it’s inception, when the framers put pen to paper, something magical was happening. In a time of kings, emperors, sultans, and dynasties, came what silicon valley would refer to as a disruptor. The world was aghast when the thirteen little colonies that could revolted against the greatest empire the world had ever seen. Overnight, a new world order was established. A government for the people and by the people. “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” How dare they come up with such a thing.
Of course, like every human endeavor, the forming of the U.S. was not without it’s flaws. Free? Yes, for wealthy white men. For Africans, it was a Republic of horror. For the indigenous people of North America, it was displacement and genocide. No pursuit of happiness there. But, as it turns out, the good ole US of A is a land where the rule of law prompts all. And embedded in all of that is a self correcting mechanism that speaks truth to power. And with that came an end to slavery. Women having the right to vote. Civil rights, reparations to the native population (in the form of casinos), and an immigration population from all over the world that help built this country. The message was heard. Come to the United Stated of America. We are open for business. It is the land of opportunity. The land of industry, the land of agriculture, the land of Hollywood, Silicon valley, Madison Avenue, Fashion avenue, Wall Street. It is the biggest multicultural democracy. A shining melting pot sitting on a hill. As President Ronald Regan once said, "America represents something universal in the human spirit. I received a letter not long ago from a man who said, 'You can go to Japan to live, but you cannot become Japanese. You can go to France to live and not become a Frenchman. You can go to live in Germany or Turkey, and you won't become a German or a Turk.' But then he added, 'Anybody from any corner of the world can come to America to live and become an American.” All that being said, The United States Of America is still not the greatest country in the world but here’s how we can get there. We will enact electoral college reform, update the constitution, take corporate money out of politics. We will have universal healthcare, have free public universities, drug addiction and mental illness will be a public health issue. We will have criminal justice reform. Legalization of illegal drugs. Regulation of legal drugs. We will crackdown heavily on corporate malfeasance. We will have a media that’s truly representative of ALL the people. A political body that’s truly representative of ALL the people. We will modernize our infrastructure and climate change will be deemed the biggest threat to our way of life. Our military will truly be a force for good and prevent modern genocides such as Rwanda, Bosnia, and Darfur. One day we the people will do all this and on that day The United States Of America will truly be the greatest nation on Earth. Believe that! |
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