This is the audio companion to the chapbook the adolescence of the cool. The point is to build a multi-media extravaganza of astonishing proportions never seen on radio or television. This project started well over three years ago. I had to buy a lot of equipment. I had to learn a few things and thangs. This is a personal challenge. Very personal.

Gangstarap Preamble

Sunday, August 08, 2004: This cut is arranged in ACID featuring assorted hip-hop loops and big-beat shots that eventually degrade into increasing abstraction. Vocals from an old Macintosh text-to-speech synthesizer are featured. One of the lines sounds like Will Ferrell doing Janet Reno but this is not comedy.

Tuesday, August 10, 2004: For you young cats out there “a pimp named Silky” is a line Huggy Bear would use in Starsky and Hutch. This is meant to indicate that these Gangstas may be more like actors than like hardened criminals. And never forget that ol’ Huggy was an informant for “pigs.”

Gangstarap

Sunday, August 08, 2004: This cut is arranged in ACID featuring assorted loops and shots over a vocal track. The vocals were taken from my early “techniques” of capturing vocals and are little rough around the edges (literally, there is distortion). But the mood is a little rough so I can live with the distortion (as of this writing). Nevertheless, this song is my homage to The Last Poets. I worked hard on the words and the delivery. This is why rasx() needs a spoken word project.

girlfriend is paulacole

Tuesday, August 10, 2004: This was originally meant to be a part of a spoken word collection after Invisible Man but my output is not a potent as previously thought. This piece explores so-called “inter-racial” relationships from the troubled thoughts of the male “of color” toward his girlfriend that he superficially compares with pop star Paula Cole (who, by the way, reportedly had an “African boyfriend”). It is tracks like this that will guarantee my obscurity among obscure artists. Sometimes a subject matter that is very unique is very unique for a reason.

girlfriend is paulacole (part 2)

Tuesday, August 10, 2004: I wanted a more electric African feel that eventually forms into wanna-be Euro-synth pop. It’s sarcasm that may not be welcomed. One remark about a detail: referring the Black woman as a “waiter” is an unconscious insult coming from our colored character. He is unable to see the feminine in this woman.

Invisible Man

Tuesday, August 10, 2004: So this is the title track. I wanted to revive the work of Ralph Ellison in a postmodern cyber thang. That’s kind of there but now there’s more to it. I want to drop some resonant filters on this to get a stronger beat. I want to expand the vocals and lyrics.

The Cosmos Are

Sunday, August 08, 2004: This cut is arranged in ACID featuring assorted loops and shots. Indulging in euro-synth abstraction with a bizarre-comedic Judeo-Kamitic twist. Not exactly a cut you can bump in the pimped-out ride. I am still in the middle of “upgrading” this arrangement to ACID 4.0. There are some small panning issues in the first few seconds of the cut that have to be corrected.