pay attention to the lecture

Read this rant by Prolyfic on twitter regarding the real reason why Lupe Fiasco won’t release his new album. Harsh words, but it all makes sense, and I’m glad Prolyfic said it. Maybe now Lupe won’t be as hesitant to release the album. I was just thinking about his new album earlier today, too, and as soon as I get on my computer I see this story. Awesome. Read it.

http://www.hiphopdx.com/index/news/id.11782/title.lupe-fiascos-former-producer-calls-him-out

summer birthday, i

have only three followers

help me get some more

This story was copied and pasted from an internet forum I visit, Teh Vestibule, part of the IGN network. I was completely blown away with the detail, and read the whole thing. I think it’s worth the read.

Was inside from July ‘08 until Tuesday this week. Feel like I’ve lost more than two years, like I’ve lost a decade or so.

This was my first time inside.

Was done for armed robbery and got 18 months on a plea bargain. Got *%%%@@ on three parole hearings and ended up doing another four months. You hear of these guys who get out early because they were ‘model prisoners’ I don’t know how they do it.

So while I was inside I made a list of the worst things about prison to share with the boards I used to frequent. Seemed like any discussion of prison would be all like ‘lolrape’ and no actual info for anons that might find themselves in my %$*%%@ situation. So here it is, the top 10 worst things about prison that you never knew about:

10. The Smell

Prison smells like !$##. Smells worse than !$##. You know the smell you imagine jenkem to smell like? Imagine that, only it’s being rubbed on the arm pits of a sweaty mexican and then his armpit pubes are being set fire too. It’s that bad. No one flushes the %%@!$++ john. Ever. You know how clean prison looks in all the pictures? It is, because we spend all %%@!$++ day cleaning it. And then convicts just basically !$## themselves for a laugh. I switched buses on the way back and sat next to this guy wearing cologne. I’m not gay (well, as not gay as you can be after being inside) but I got a boner as soon as I smelt it. %%@!$++ amazing.

9. White people.

After the first year, I was ashamed to be white. In the world, white people are capable of all kinds of great things, and all kinds of bad things. But inside we’re just universally c—-s. Aryan Brotherhood weren’t a big presence in my block, but they were bad enough to make you kind of wish your mother had been raped by a !%*@!+. And that’s before you meet your boss’s. Correctional Services officers come in all flavours, but white screws were the worst. Black screws, you could tell were just poor +#$$!*# trying to get by in a %$*%%@ job. Only white guys ever seemed to enjoy their !$##. Rape, dispite the rumours, is not a big deal inside. It doesn’t happen that often. But everytime it happened on my block it was a white guy. And every time anyone got murdered, it was a white guy. There were 33 murders while I was inside, 12 of them in my block. All because white c—-s couldn’t keep their #$%+* in their pants, or else ‘cut someone’s eyes’ which was slang for stealing someone’s !$##. Being black in prison would have been awesome.

8. Getting fat.

There is no gym equipment in prison. That whole, ‘bunch of guys sitting around pumping iron’ image you have? Forget it. Gym equipment is a weapon, and weapons are forbidden. Our block had one treadmill that would occassionaly work. You couple that with high fat food, all day, everyday, you start to go flabby really quickly. One of the things that occupies a lot convict’s days is finding someway to try and do some physical activity. After about six months I could feel my muscle mass going, so me and my cellmate would deadlift each other for a few hours. Gayest thing you’ve ever seen, but it filled in the time.

7. Solitary

I was %%@!$++ terrified of solitary confinement when I first went inside, which contributed to me behaving myself. Until I realised that solitary isn’t something you can hold off by just not being a #*$%. It’s a reality of life and you will, at somepoint, be put in solitary for no %%@!$++ reason at all. Usually, because there is a remand inmate that needs to be cycled into gen pop before trial and they need to free up your cell - so you go into solitary because there aren’t any other beds. I did two months of that all up. No books, no blankets, no light, 23 hour lockdown. Most they can do is 1 week at a stretch - worst part was knowing you were going to go back after a week if the block was too over crowded. You spent your whole time in gen pop just anxious as @+++ because you could get dragged off the chain at any moment and sent back.

6. The Drugs

After a while, drugs become a viable option inside. There is a lot on offer. If you can get it out in the world, you can get it inside - for a better price strangely enough, considering the difficulty of getting it in. That is if it is what your man says it is. I decided to get onto horse after a few months, mostly as something to do. I’d tried heroin outside, but hadn’t liked it since getting on the nod seemed like a waste of time. But inside, it’s great - a shot in solitary can make a week pass in no time at all. Problem is the !$## it will be cut with. Flour, baking soda, jell-o crystals - all !$## that should not be in a vein. After a while, you just end up doing things that outside, you never would have dreamed of. I was paranoid about getting the AIDS, so I kept this one needle the whole time I was inside. Went rusty and I ended up spending a month in sick bay with tetenus. When I couldn’t score for junk, I scored for codeine tablets. Grew my thumb nail long and wrecked it on the concrete so it was sharp enough to cut open my thigh, and would stick the crushed up tablet inside.

Yeah, !$## got that bad.

5. The Economy

I joked to my cell mate on the first day that at least the GFC couldn’t @+++ us inside. He’d been done for assaulting a cop when his house got taken by the bank. But within months ‘GFC !%*@!+’ became the standard reply to any query as to how black market prices were suddenly going through the roof. The price of a deck of smokes tripled. There was an actual economic reason about this. I went away in Michigan, where a lot of people lost their houses, mostly poor people already. When they had to move away from the prison, it meant they couldn’t bring their loved ones as much contraband , which meant the price of what there was sky rocketed. And the worse things got, the more the people who worked in the store would wonk and take home with them, which meant stocks ran low which *%%%@@ us even further.

Bet you didn’t read about that one in the Wall Street Journal.

4. Losing everyone you ever loved.

No one ever talks about this because prison makes you a hard %@!. Or at least you teach yourself to think it does. The first ones to go are your friends. They tell you they’ll write and send you stuff - take every friend you’ve ever had, now pick one. There will be one that actually does it. But they’ll stop after a few months. Then your girlfriend - they might say they’ll wait, but you know they won’t. I called mine on my second week and told her it was over. Apart from the total shock of going away, I couldn’t stand spending every night wondering if she was getting cranked by some other dude. Was one less thing to worry about. My kid, who was about to turn 1 when I went away, will never have any idea who the @+++ I am. Her mom took her away the second I went inside. Never called. Don’t even know where to begin looking. My Mom and Dad were the worst. They promised me when I went inside that they’d stick by me if I stuck by them, that all they wanted was the occassional phone call to let them know I was okay, and they’d make sure they visited regularly. I was so *%%%@@ up half the time I forgot when visiting day even was. I realised, and tried to tell the boss that I didn’t want to see them, that I was too messed up. So the c—-s dragged me by the hair through the block to the visiting room and propped me up on a chair in front of them and laughed. They never came back, and they haven’t seen me since I got out.

3. Lonliness

An old timer told me that when he first went inside, in the 80s, prison was all about cliques. There were different gangs, people stuck together because of ethnicity, even religion. Back then there were Irish Catholic cliques, Nation of Islam cliques - even white collar guys started cliques to avoid getting stepped on.

One thing the boss’ do very well is create an atmosphere of constant paranoia. If you get shaken down and you get contraband found on you, they’ll stick you in solitary and finger your best friend for setting you up. If you come inside with a pre-existing gang affiliation, like a lot of black guys do, they start by stepping on your friends straight away and blaming you for it until you’re a pariah. Forget about the yard being full of big groups of guys chilling together. No one hangs with anymore than three people for a stretch. If you’re seen with a big group, you’ll be targeted by the screws. Mostly, people do their time alone. Pacing the yard, or even just ignoring their cell mates completely.

That gets to you more than anything. The constant suspicion, and knowing you’re alone.

2. Death

I saw 12 deaths inside. Three of them were at the hands of screws. One of those was a gunshot to the head while a guy was trying to escape. The other two were beatings, and I didn’t know they’d died until later. It’s not right to call a prison shanking a ‘stabbing’ because that’s not how you die. Inside, we called it ‘digging a hole’ or ‘digging a well’ like ‘he got a well dug in him’ or ‘pulled out a hole’. The reason for this is the make shift weapons used inside are not easy to kill with. You basically make a hole as fast as you can, by stabbing as fast as you can, and then you try and get a grip inside it and just start pulling. I saw this right up close one time. I had the distinct misfortune of having my cell behind a pillar, like a bulkhead kind of thing in the middle of the block. So if you wanted to shank someone, it was a great place to hide. On the flip side, it meant the boss’ gave it a lot of extra attention, which was bad for rubbing one out or taking a hit. Two guys were loitering around the pillar one day, waiting for this fresh kid to wander past. Prison gossip said he’s been worked over on his first night by someone who wanted him for a wife, but the kid fought back and nearly bit some *#$+%%’s nuts off. So his friends wait with a t-shirt, and a filed down toothbrush. They’ve cracked down on plastic toothbrushes, but there used to be enough of them that a lot of guys have them stashed away. You can file down the ends on the concrete to a point. One guy wraped a t-shirt around the kid’s neck and lifted him off the ground from behind, and the other starts stabbing his gut. After a few stabs, he starts trying to get his fingers inside and he just pulls all this meat out. I thought he was going to pull out his intestines like you’d see in a horror movie, but instead, he just pulls out fist after fist of this yellow jelly !$##, and then big hunks of meat like raw mince. Screw’s arrived and tasered everyone. Even the kid. He was on his side, right in front of my cell, and every jolt from the taser made the big hole in his stomach smoke.

You don’t see something like that and not have it @+++ you up worse than you already were for being incarcerated.

1. Getting Out

On my last day I started writing this list in my head, and thought it would be funny to post it on the Chans. But really, now I’ve written it, it’s not funny. For lols, I was originally going to talk about prison rape. But really? It’s a small part of doing time. On any given block, you might only have a dozen or so convicts who are likely to rape someone. And they go after the same kind of convicts every time too. Because if you try to rape the wrong guy… you might end up with your guts pulled out.

That’s not to say consensual gay sex doesn’t happen. I had it, and I enjoyed it. I’m not going to go and @+++ a man on the outside, but a combination of drugs, lonliness and boredom do strange things.

So instead of rape, the thing that tops my list was getting out. After 18 months, I felt like I had the whole prison kick down. I felt like I belonged. New guys looked up to me, like someone who’d seen !$## and made it through. As I scaled back on my pretty huge habit, I started to get this kind of zen calm about incarceration, and I liked to think I helped a few guys through their first weeks.

The last months before I left was the happiest of my entire life. I started making lists, like this one. Lists of what I was going to do. Lists of things I was going to eat. Lists of places I was going to go. I almost felt like I’d had a near death experience, and now I had to live a better life. Then I left.

Two years is a long time. The world literally changes without you. I got off the bus and went to my favourite bar. It was empty. I went to a cafe my friends used to touch #$%+* at. None of them were there. I went to my house, pulled the boards off and went inside. Everything was just as I’d left it with two years worth of dust. Most depressing thing you’ve ever seen. I lay down on my bed and paranoia started setting in. I realised I was pretty much squating and was paranoid about being picked up by the cops and breaching my parole, so I went to my parents house. They let me in, but told me I couldn’t stay until they were sure I was off the drugs. I checked into a motel and sat on the edge of the bed, watching MTV and ordering Pizza. I must have ordered like five pizzas from five different places, stayed up till dawn. Thing about prison, is that sleep becomes like a chore you do each day. You’re never really tired, so you never really want to sleep, it just breaks up the time. I felt like I didn’t want to sleep ever again. Next morning I decided to go for a drive, and thought I’d rent a car - but my driver’s licence had expired. I went to get a new one, but because I’d been inside they needed me to get a letter from my parole officer. So I just wandered around for a day. Felt like everyone was staring at me.

You just feel completely lost.

Well, it took 2 years and 14 trades. I’ve used craigslist a bunch and got some pretty good deals, but this guy is a master. I’m gonna start using craigslist more.

http://jalopnik.com/5591644/how-a-17+year+old-craigslist+swapped-an-old-phone-for-a-porsche

http://allhiphop.com/stories/rumors/archive/2010/07/16/22299508.aspx 

it’s says it’s not official 


1)Hell Of a Life (feat. Lil’ Wayne) [Kanye West x DJ Toomp]

2)Dark Fantasy [RZA]

3)Power [S1]

4)Chain Heavy (feat. Eminem x Jay-Z) [Kanye West]

5)Ghetto University (feat. T.I.) [Kanye West x DJ Toomp]

6)That’s My Girl (feat. Katy Perry x Kid Cudi) [Kanye West x Jon Brion]

7)Runaway [Kanye West x Q-Tip]

8)Lost In The World (feat. Nicki Minaj x Rick Ross) [Kanye West x No I.D.]

9)Gorgeous (Ode To Kardashians) (feat. Drake x Game x Ludacris) [Kanye West]

10)Monster [Kanye West x DJ Premier]

11)Holding Me Back (feat. Mos Def x Talib Kweli x Phonte) [Kanye West x Madlib]

12)Devil In a New Dress [Pete Rock]

13)The Joy (feat. Common x John Legend) [Kanye West]

14)So Appalled (feat. Drake x Jamie Foxx) [Kanye West x No I.D.]

15)Blame Game [DJ Toomp]

16)Sweat On My Face [DJ Premier] 

If this is true, expect it to sell HUGE numbers. I’ve been waiting for this album forever, and the hype is definitely setting the bar high.

This story was copypasta’d from a facebook conversation I had with a friend, and I didn’t want to fix the formatting well… because I just got back from a plane ride…

Anyway:

6:30pmMe

well i gotta shut my computer off

6:30pmKatherine

y

6:30pmMe

gonna go through security and try to board the plane

6:30pmKatherine

k

see ya

6:30pmMe

looks like no more delays from here to atlanta

ill get online in a couple of hours though when i land in atlanta

theres definitely going to be more delays

6:31pmKatherine

k

Today

12:37amKatherine

YER BACK

HOW WAS YOUR PLANE RIDE?

12:48amMe

bumpy

just got home

1 sec ill tell you the story

its good

12:58amMe

ok

so when i said I’ll be back, i turned off my computer, went through security, waited in the little waiting room thing for a bit until the plane could be boarded, and then got on our plane at about 6:55ish

the plane had to sit on the ground for a bit because they knew there were delays in atlanta

then we took off at like 7:30

it was about a 45-50 minute flight, we get to atlanta at like 8:20

the pilot tells us that we have to stay in the air because we are like 10th in line or something

so he just circles atlanta for AN HOUR

we finally land at about 9:15

we knew our next flight was supposed to be at 9:10, so we think, no big deal, they had to have delayed it

wrong

1:02amKatherine

the other plane left

1:02amMe

we get out of terminal B6 and have to run like 1000 feet to terminal B30

well, we didnt run this time

we walked because we werent worried

we didnt really check the flight TV things either

we just walked at a slightly faster than normal speed

we get there and the dude is like, nope plane left

so we ask what we can do and he says go to terminal A31 or something

to get there we basically have to go back that 1000 feet to terminal B6, walk further to like this main hall thing, walk all the way to those fast trains, get on it, ride to concourse A, then walk all the way to A30something

all within 10 minutes

lol

so I took the boarding passes and said I’d just run there with my brother, kept my backpack on, took a suitcase, and sprinted as fast as possible the entire way

with my brother

we get there in like 15 minutes

and turns out the guy basically lied to us

that plane was going to charlotte north carolina

so we ask them for help again and they say concourse C

like C44 i think

so we’re like WTF

and we have to be there in another 10 or 15 minutes

we run as fast as we can again, still carrying a suitcase each and i had a backpack, and we get to C34 in like 10-15 minutes

something like that

we look and that was going to like Kansas

we’re like WTF

and we look at the those flight TVs and see that it was actually C44

and we had about 10 minutes

so we ran there in about a minute and told the lady the story

she said she’d put us on the waiting list or whatever, and if the plane has seats in about 4 minutes, we’d be allowed on

so we call our parents and tell them to go to C44 as fast as they can

they get there in a few minutes and we board the plane

it got about a 10 minute delay in the process so they our parents luckily got there in time

and we just got homem

home*

1:10amKatherine

wow

lol

sounds crazy

1:12amMe

it was ridiculous

looks like im not getting home until like 3 am… oh well, i didn’t really want to go to work tomorrow anyway.

themauricio:

iownimages:

Speaking of Bacon and fries

Government pork wins again.

(I got that from the Digg comments, so don’t praise my wittiness.)