"Hit 'Em Up" by Tupac

“Hit ‘Em Up”

I was debating on whether or not to use this song,  “Hit ‘Em Up,” by Tupac. It is not a song you will be playing at Christmas dinner, Thanksgiving dinner, or at any formal function whatsoever. However, it is one of my favorite songs. 

I once left my iPod playing on shuffle mode in my car while I ran in to the grocery store and a female friend of mine was still in the car.  When I came back to the car, she said, “Man that guy was really mad, he kept saying fuck you.”  I could not help but laugh.  I instantly knew the song she was referring to.

This song was written right after Tupac was shot while in New York.  He wasn’t sure who shot him but thought that all of  the East Coast rappers where behind it.  “Hit ‘Em Up” was written with raw, powerful emotions behind it.  The lyrics speak for themselves.  The hook is “Hit Em Up,” meaning: I’m going to retaliate against you, I’m going to kill you, and I’m going to fuck you up.  This is not your ordinary rap song.

“That’s why I fucked your bitch you fat motherfucker.”  This is something that people might think, something people might even say to their friends, but never to a person’s face, or let the whole world know exactly what they did to another person.  Tupac did just that, he lyrically expressed how he felt about Biggie, Puffy, and Junior Mafia in one song.  What keeps me drawn to the song is Tupac’s uncensored thoughts of what had just happened to him. The song motivates people.  This song has been used by many athletes to pump them up before a big game, I use it to pump me up at the gym on a regular basis. 

While writing this blog I wondered if this song reflects who I am.  In some ways it does.  We all have this inner demon in us. We’ve all said “fuck you” to someone, or we have all thought it even if we haven’t said it.  “Why did you take my parking space? Why did you cut me off in the freeway?”  No I’m not going to go and hit ‘em up like Tupac wanted to do.  But we can all relate on some level.  I don’t like to be messed with, I think that nobody likes to be messed with, and this song speaks to me in that sense.

The song is full of lyrics and very little “hook music” meaning that the same thing is not repeated over and over again to keep a person singing the song.  That’s probably what I like the most about the song.

DJ Shadow "Long Stem"

Long Stem

Long Stem was my favorite song of the whole DJ Shadow album.  When I first started listing to the album I did not know what to make of it.  Most of the songs seemed to be ones that one would listen to while on some type of psychedelic drug.  I was almost ready to go and buy some mushrooms so I could continue listening to the rest of the album. 

Then Long Stem rose came on.  This was a song that I could listen to.  There are very little lyrics which made it all the better.  The song is a long one, hence the title Long Stem.  It put me in a nice tranquil place where I could relax.  The beginning seems to be a very long intro but in fact it’s the actual song.  I felt like I was watching a movie in the 70’s and something was about to happen.  I’m not sure where DJ Shadow found the beat to this but it would make for a great song.  There are two spurts of random lyrics

Then go, Back, Head, There, Decide....

I think he wants us all to stop and listen and decide.  We might be in the middle of making a decision we should just go back and decide.  This verse can be used in many different ways it just depends on who is listening and what they are going through at that particular point in their life.

I say parking tickets! you're crazy, i don't...

He says well, they have some outstanding warrents left on you

and they want to just solve them you know, whatever it'll be.

So they take me in on a chain down to long beach

and now they lock me up in the cell behind the courtroom in long beach

while i'm awaiting to be heard on my traffic offences! parking tickets!

I paniced, i'm thinking, oh my god, man, while i'm here, what's to stop them?

I mean what's really to stop them, oh, i assumed that maybe some day

my mother would realize that i should have gotten out! yeah,

she was nice, she would have known but still, what's to stop them?

and finally they called, so, they called, oh, man....scared

This lyric that he put in towards the end of the song really makes you think.  He put it towards the end for a reason.  I feel that it’s to make you again make a decision.  The person in question is talking about being taken to jail on some parking tickets.  Why didn’t he just take care of the tickets so he could avoid the whole scenario?  That’s what DJ shadow wanted to get across.  Why don’t we take care of small things before they become big issues in our lives.

Groundhog Day Phil's Love Cave

Phils Love cave

Ground Hog day begins with Phil being an egocentric person.  He is only concerned with himself and feels that everyone and everything should revolve around him.  He finds himself trapped in a day that keeps on repeating itself, and with no way out, he feels he can indulge in a world where there are no consequences. After indulging in his world, Phil finds that there is still something missing from his life.  He tries to make Rita fall in love with him. He tries to remember everything about her.  He gets to know her likes and dislikes.  He finds out what kind of drinks she likes, what she majored in and what eventually made her take the job that she did.  He soon learns more about her like the fact that she likes French poetry and that was actually her major.  He makes a wise remark about her major and sees the look on Rita’s face. 

Thinking to himself that he should not have said that he repeats the event until he gets it right. 

While Phil is trying to get the day he and Rita spend together perfect down to the last detail, Rita still manages to see through him.  Phil was trying to get the day perfect so Rita would sleep with him.  His ultimate goal was not love but sex. 

He finally realizes that his plan to have Rita fall for him in false pretenses was not working, he tries to kill him self.  He feels like there is no escape from this world.  To his surprise he keeps on waking up and repeating the same day all over again.  In one scene he has a conversation with Rita and she tells him that he looks at the world all wrong and that he should look at life like an opportunity.  He senses that there is some truth to this comment Rita makes. 

Phil finds himself getting satisfaction in helping people.  He sees that the world does not revolve around him but he should revolve around the people he has.  He gets to know all the town people; he makes a remarkable news commentary about ground hog and the town’s people.  He catches a kid falling from a tree and comments on it, “No need to thank me kid, I only saved your life and almost broke my back, but don’t worry I will be here tomorrow at the same time to save all over again.”

I think this was the turning point for Phil as he realizes that its not about him anymore or him getting praised for doing things.  He then goes around the town and helps everyone out, not asking for anything in return or even waiting for a thank you.  He starts jacking up a car while the three ladies where inside and they comment to him, “Thank you young man.” Phil responds, “There is no need to thank me I was just around the way with a jack and a spare tire.”  He was doing this just for the simple fact that it was the right thing to do and not wanting any thing in return. 

At the end Phil is playing the piano that took him years to learn.  He is playing at the towns yearly ground hog dance.  Never once in his last day did he make an attempt at Rita.  Rita just came to him.  They start dancing and all the town people start coming up to him thanking him for all his good deeds and he is very modest and doesn’t even go into detail when Rita asks him about it.  Instead he just makes it seem like he has no clue why all these people are thanking him.

At that point Rita falls for Phil, all the town people love him and the ladies are commenting on how good of a catch he is.  The annual singles auction starts and instantly they call Phil up to the front.  He is the town’s hero and women have a bidding war over him.  Rita sees this and out bids them all.  Phil in one scene is outdoors with Rita and carves an ice sculpture of her face.  Rita asks him, “How did you do that?”  Phil tells her, “It’s like if I know every inch of your face.”  The scene breaks and Phil wakes up in bed to the same song but he then sees Rita lying next to him, and he starts looking around and finds that he has finally escaped Groundhog Day.  He starts making out with Rita and she asks him, “Why weren’t you like this last night?” and Phile responds, “Maybe it was because you where so tired from doing all your errands yesterday!”

To me, that was the best part of the movie. Phil finally got it right. The world did not revolve around him and at the end he got Rita.

The Love Cave

The Love Cave

          I was raised by a single-mother of two boys and I was the youngest.  We came to the United States after my Mom had enough of my Father’s infidelity.  He had two other kids with two other women.  I didn’t know this growing up.  All I knew was that my family consisted of my Mom, my Brother, and I.  When we first came to the U.S. from Nicaragua, we jumped from city to city. We started in Miami, went cross-country to Los Angeles and then finally made our way up North and landed in San Francisco, where we stayed until I was 12. 

When we moved to San Francisco, we moved in to a one-bedroom apartment with my Mom’s best friend and her family. We somehow managed to squeeze seven people in it.  I don’t remember much but I know that it didn’t last long.  We soon moved in to our own room that we rented from a family friend.  Our family friend was an older lady that was involved in a Spanish Baptist church. My Mom took us to church one day and we all really enjoyed it and felt at home. At that point, we began practicing Christianity routinely and going to church on a weekly basis. I think that was the beginning of how I came to realize that I was stuck in a love cave.

My Mom always sent us to all the church summer camps, as a way for her to make sure my Brother and I stayed out of trouble since she was always working.  I always remember the Pastor, or the Sunday school teacher, telling us to only date within our own “kind.”  For starters, they meant Latinas. Then they even got more specific by saying we should only date Latin Christian women. They even took it one step further: Latin, Christian, Baptist women where the only ones that I was allowed to date.  I was so young and didn’t know any better. 

I can still remember older gentlemen from church asking me, “So who are you going to marry when you get older?” I would reply, “A Latina of course.” Then they would ask, “ What about a white girl?” My response would always be, “No way.”

I can look back and see how this has always affected my love life. When I was 12 we left San Francisco and moved to this unknown city, San Pablo, which is nestled in the East Bay.  Growing up from 12 to 18 I was in a prominently Latin environment. I mean, the white people were the minority.  All the schools that I went to the race category broke down like this: Latino, Black, Asian, Other, and then White.  White people were less than 5% of the student class. This also had a big affect on my love life.  I’ve only dated Latin women. 

I was in my late teens when I started to see things differently.  I always thought that I would grow up and marry a Latin, Christian, Baptist girl and live happily ever after.  In church, divorce was taboo and infidelity was even worse.  So here I’m getting older and I start to notice that the married couples around me are having problems.  I thought this wasn’t possible.

My Sunday school teacher had an affair with other women and ended up divorcing his wife. This was the man who I looked up to.  I didn’t know what to think.  A few years later, there was a wife and husband that cheated on each other with the spouses of another couple. One of the couple’s ended up getting a divorce and the other couple stayed together.  The couple that stayed together just looked so miserable; you could tell that they only stayed together for their kids. Not for love. 

I was young and so confused about love, relationships and religion.  My faith in God has never gone away but my beliefs that I grew up with were questioned. 

I’m now 32 and single and I don’t think I have had a true happy relationship. Either I find flaw or imperfection in my partner, or I fall for the wrong woman all together.  I’ve never really been able to make sense of it all.  I think now that I’m older I’ve been able to climb out of my cave. I always had puppeteers telling me and showing me only what they wanted and I’ve always felt restrained from whom I could date because of this.  I can now look back into my cave and say that I’m out.

The Truth

The Truth

Every one wants to know the truth, or at least that’s what we say.  But in reality we live in a world full of lies.  They surround us.  “From error to error, one discovers the entire truth," said famous psychologist Sigmund Freud.  We only find out about the truth on accident or from mistakes that lead us to them. For example, we can have an idea programmed in our mind, yet, all it takes is to read an article in a newspaper, or see a segment on the news that may contradict everything that we once believed in.

Growing up I never thought of how we got our food.  I didn’t know where a burger came from, or how hot dogs were truly made.  I just knew how savory and delicious they were when I would eat them. As I got older, I started to ask and wonder about things.  When I was 18, I went to my home country of Nicaragua and stayed with my Grandparent’s in the village of ( FILL IN BLANK).  I remember all of us sitting down at the dinner table as my Grandmother asked, “Would you like some chicken for dinner?” With all certainty, I responded, "Yes.”  I mean, who doesn't want a home-cooked meal prepared with love from Grandma?  I then heard my Grandma yell to my little cousin through the kitchen window, "We are having chicken tonight!”  I didn't think much of it until I noticed from the corner of my eye that my little cousin Lizet, was chasing down an innocent chicken with a cobble- stone. As the chicken ran in circles around Lizet, I turned very casually and asked my mom, “What is she doing?” My mother responded, "Killing the chicken for dinner.”  And that’s when it hit me. We have to kill animals in order to eat them. 

I was able to accept that, yet there are some people that cannot and in turn become vegetarians. I can respect that as well. I came to an understanding of where our food comes from and how it actually ends up on our table.  Did I really want to know the truth?  I think not.  I know the truth, but I chose to ignore what I stumbled upon while in Nicaragua. I think I choose not to face the truth; yet from time to time there is no way I can avoid it. Could this seem to be contradicting? Absolutely. But this is the only way I can have peace of mind. In some ways, we all do this.