hump jones, back to scoop more fries
and get paid like the liars at the new york times
which is every single writer for the new york times
but hey, we all shovel shit in the food court line, right?
white collar, blue collar, two dollar confidence jobs
...nobody stays honest for long
it’s not a concept when your wallet is gone
then it’s promises, pawn shops and property laws
hump jones, politics, press the flesh
drunk shows, college kids, fresh connects
front row awesomeness, wrecked the set
and you cut throats copied quick to get respect
your act is hurting, you lack a certain edge
all you got is average zombie rapping for the working dead
yeah kid, I can see that you think you’re the shit
I just happen to disagree with every inch of my dick
world around sound, and we build to suit
skills and truth, the foundation that fills the room
world around sound, we build and we break
cuz we’re still willing to make all the illest mistakes
yeah, I got a couple million names to kill the game with
so I can fail a hundred thousand times and still be famous
for my skills, my commitment, and my innovation
plus my psychedelic fully illustrated filthy statements
you make threats, I make bets, that makes sense
I see people waste breath and it’s cheap as hate sex
...but me? nah, me, I’d rather sleep with great friends
and take some pain meds, been a freak since grade ten
hump jones, time to define my goals
and unfold the finest in mind control
on a budget plan...I’m just doing it because I can
I love my fans more than any fan can understand
...do I even need to explain
that repetition is the rhythm of the media game?
and that’s the main reason that I keep repeating my name?
and I place so much faith in my team, it’s insane…
world around sound, and we build to suit
skills and truth, the foundation that fills the room
world around sound, we build and we break
cuz we’re still willing to make all the illest mistakes
“Where you been, Uncle Hump?” For once, the answer is simple: waking up.
Few things are more dangerous than believing your own hype, especially when you lack any of the real-world skills required to actually live up to the legend. I can rap, write and fuck, and up until 2011, that was really about it. Not much of a resume, you know what I mean?
So what changed? Well, here’s a thousand words, for starters…
I would be hard pressed to say if my heart was broken open, or my head. Based on my experience, though, it definitely felt like everything began and ended in my chest. Heartache is certainly nothing new to me, but the intensity of it was. Smug neurologist types discount the very existence of heartache—Carl Zimmer dismisses it as “brainache.” Despite my disagreement, he might easily be right, and it doesn’t matter either way. I don’t need to convince anyone reading this that kind of pain is real. You know.
So: It began as a heartache without apparent cause and deepened and persisted until I fell asleep exhausted. When I woke up the next morning feeling exactly the same, I realized something was up. What followed is something I am still at a loss to describe. I was definitely in states I can only compare to bad trips and insanely powerful drugs. I consistently had the sense that my experience was being guided by Something Else, yet I cannot recall ever actually interacting with the Other.
Incoherent story short, I was basically forced to confront myself as I actually am...for six days.
In the bewilderment after all this finally subsided, I was reminded of a cold December morning in St. Johnsbury, Vermont back when I was in the third grade. Some enterprising Evangelist had dumped hundreds, maybe even thousands, of those little Jack T. Chick comic books. I remember them being scattered all over the place, and I remember sitting down and reading THIS WAS YOUR LIFE from cover to cover. Even then, it was absurd to me that God would individually watch movies of every human being’s life, but the imagery was powerfully simple enough to stick with me ever since.
That comic, ridiculous as it all was, is basically what happened to me. I have never been through anything remotely like it.
As I’ve covered before here, science is brutal stuff. Men and women in starchy white coats will do things like torture mice in order to observe whether or not other mice have a physical reaction to seeing the agony of their fellow prisoners. (They do, of course...yet another experiment that could have been avoided altogether by simply asking any child.)
Since that experiment was initially performed in 2006, it’s been replicated in nearly a hundred metal rooms around the world...you know, just to be sure. Just to be thorough, just to be objective, and just to fine tune the findings and figure out what the physical mechanisms at work were. The answers led to mirror neurons, vagus nerves, and the puzzle pieces that make up the Science of Heartache. And it’s not much.
Latin is a dead language in every possible sense. Rome burned to the ground like it deserved to and the great Empire tongue became the secret code of celibates and pedophiles for a thousand years...today, it’s deader still, weaponized by the grim cult of Science into a system for rendering our common sense experience into unreadable jargon. Thus does “heartache” become “stress cardiomyopathy,” for instance.
Modern superstitious primitives are given magic formulas to ward away the terror of the unknown: as lots of “rational” guys have explained to me over the years, love is just a matter of chemicals, see, and...well, you may already know, all too well, where that empty line of thinking leads young men. So I question the wisdom in laying out the chain of causality here, especially when it’s built on such fragile and fleeting data points. Whether you believe in cortisol or oxytocin, Artemis or Isis, the throbbing physical pain of heartache burns the brain empty. When you’re sobbing on a sofa, Science does you about as much good as one of your parents giving you an awkward speech over the phone about “other fish in the sea.”
I’m fortunate to have a large and strange international network, and I’ve been told this experience is nothing new. I have been given detailed, eloquent explanations of what happened as a Kundalini event, as a Saturn Return phenomena, and a miraculously simple matter of bioelectricity and some disputed properties of my DNA. My critical and cynical brain will only accept all this as mere primate guesswork, Anthropology at best. I’m a dick like that...and thank Ganesh for that much.
Skeptic I may be, but the rawness of it all left me shaken. It feels like a giant punctuation mark separating my life before and...well, whatever the hell is going on in my head now. I joke about being a Recovering Asshole but the fact is, I’ve been fairly lost since this occurred. I don’t know what happened to me. I also don’t know how to honor what I was given and I don’t know how to integrate what I learned. I can at least promise to keep y’all posted.
I do know that I was living inside my head altogether too much. In breaking open my heart, I felt firsthand how much information is swimming through my veins. I was tuning out most of my body and I suspect I’m hard at work forging those same shackles again. My ego has an immune system of its own, and it has been raging to regain control of the circus. 2012 will be, as promised by every charlatan I’ve spat in the lying face of, a powerfully strange year of personal transformation. Amen.
Pema Chodron: "Although it is embarrassing and painful, it is very healing to stop hiding from yourself. It is healing to know all the ways that you’re sneaky, all the ways that you hide out, all the ways that you shut down, deny, close off, criticize people, all your weird little ways. You can know all of that with some sense of humor and kindness. By knowing yourself, you’re coming to know humanness altogether. We are all up against these things.”
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party people in the place put your hands in the air
leave your drinks on the stage and your pants over there
all the ladies in the house, put your hands in my hair
and your feet on my chest as we stand on this chair
party people in the place...now is the time
to get into the groove and straight out of your mind
party people blah BLAH blah, gather round the rapper now
mushrooms are kicking in, had about a half an ounce
cold killing it, tracking down a classic sound
your girls a problem, though, tragic how she’s acting out
used to love to party, I did a one eighty
the way I see these young ladies getting drunk lately
ridiculous, man...I’m all about drinking, but damn,
she’s having a seizure and pissing her pants
I’m not calling it wrong, I understand it, but dude,
I am calling her Mom and an ambulance too
the dopest at it...been flowing total madness
from broken prophylactic to floating open casket
the show is classic...all photographic flashes
closing act is asking “we’re going after THAT shit?”
...drunk and stoned and then conduct the whole symphony
I’m slick enough to switch it up without switching beats
I’m big enough to listen up when my critics speak
I see your point but I just see it kinda different, see?
skinny jeans, shitty beats, rap show misery
promoter said it’s not an open bar, it is for me
the venue says we’re starting late, I kinda disagree-
it’s bad enough you motherfuckers give MCs chicken feed
flow whiter than most, a ghostwriter for pros
but won’t bite for the dough, I’m nice and I know it
nine dimensional, certified live professional
hired spectacle, fist fighting with poets
live life in the moment, spit twice as devoted
as the average rapper whiz kid biting for bonus points
...wait a minute, hold this joint, light or roach it
but this is my world and I don’t like where it’s going…
...I don’t know much I don’t already know lately
I been to the future and the past looked crazy
walk onstage and get paid like a late fee
suckers say I’m simple but they never say they hate me
nerd rap if I need to, Christian rapper for money,
backpacking and cheap food, I did travel the country
work back in the green room, spit ragged and rusty
last act was complete proof that shitty actors are funny
...lost the locals, they don’t love me no more
but see I’m here to start a riot just cuz fuck it, I’m bored
dude, dudes dumber than you have done it before
and see you’re dumber than me, so trust in the force
but stop talking to me, I do not want to emcee
problem is, I’ve always got God watching me breathe
it’s costing me sleep .. went to talk to a priest
but see I recognized his face now he’s rotting in peace
and your mom is a freak for DJ Squid’s chocolate beats
he’s in her spot as we speak...shot a dot com on her sheets
watch it and weep, another hot, erotic EP
my name is hump jones, proud vermonter and freak
YO HUMP JONES...yeah, I’m listening man
cuz I don’t really have a habit, I just drink for my fans
YO HUMP JONES...shit yeah that’s me
getting paid to black out on big badass beats
shout outs to the rich kids who bow down to their privelege
the perks in the package, the townhouse in the village
big ups to the waitstaff, tip cups and name tags
doctor gonzo shots, fist up, straight back
shout out to reporters, you’re prostitutes and liars
except for maybe 4 of you and all of them got fired
big ups to the cops in the back of the club
dude, I know you’re not a dick...you’re just acting like one
because you’re dressing like one, that shit gets your head
and yeah I guess what I said could probably get me arrested
shouts to the bartenders...this drink is a joke
it’s like I paid eight bucks for you to piss in my throat
big ups to the sound guy...for sucking at life
I know, adjusting it right is really tough with one mic
….
put your hands in the air if your parents are scared
and just move ‘em around if you’re in tune with the crowd
go drink a pitcher or three until you’re hitting your knees
then buy a shot for the bar and try to walk to your car like
YO HUMP JONES...yeah, I’m listening baby
cuz I care, even if you don’t really give a shit lately
YO HUMP JONES...shit yeah that’s me
getting paid to black out on big badass beats
nobody ever quits rapping, they just quit drugs
and I can’t quit drugs unless I quit rapping, shit sucks
nobody ever gets a verse from a clever nerd that
tries to measure up to master rappers that you never heard of
nobody’s gonna see another weak drunk emcee
who cannot compete, compare or come and fuck with me
and nobody’s gonna need another MP3
for a steady week while this friendly message gets repeated
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Back with a brand new cut for the party people. Had more than a few emails asking about the lyrics, so I’ve included those here. Enjoy, and take the time to get familiar with Daimyo if you’re not already up on his work...dude is absurdly good at what he does.
After Napster, kids today are thinking it’s a different game
actually, you’re only going broker on a bigger stage
embrace it, failure’s a given these days
shit, I live in the shade of every bad decision I’ve made
playing loose with my crazy youth, hoping it sticks
before I’m finally forced to notice I’m too old for this shit
you got a nine to five, I got a monday to sunday
and a mouth that can mangle your drunk face off one taste
but I don’t give a F how you handle your B
cuz everything is complicated in the Land of the Free
I’m not leading a movement, or even keeping ideas congruent
if I wrote it, all I know is I needed to do it
nothing too elaborate, unraveling some stupid habits
brainstorming better tools to screw the fascists with…
I’ve been told I’m not supposed to do it all
but I guess I’m too evolved with my superhuman balls, huh?
this is not a cult, kid...all swamis can suck it
goes nature, beauty and truth...God’s not in the budget
sacrificed half my life getting my name out
but instead of a breakdown, I’m just never awake now
we’ve all got excuses, a generation walking wounded
I’m fucking lucky all I want is honest music
I’ve been to the dark side, it’s nothing but smart guys
who sold out at the first sign of some hard times
we’ve got no name for it, control whole languages
privatize the profits, socialize the blame for it
that’s how they always fuck us, right? nobody’s responsible
but if you wanna fix it, that’s totally impossible
why is that conformity is only cutting one way?
assholes, fuck faces and corrupt racists
you know a few, only doing what they’re told to do
inside, though, they know the truth, eyes like an open wound
that dead smile, nah, that predatory threat smile
squeaky clean evil gleam beaming out your head smile
the sickest part is how they never even see it
people feeding demons and believing they believe in Jesus
here I am, throwing stones when I got no right
I know, right? hard enough carving up your own life
when your brain is designed to find the easiest ways to get by
we stay crazy instead of changing our minds
so I’m not blaming you for making brainless moves
I break shit, too—but I’m aiming to escape this zoo
playing loose with my crazy youth, hoping it sticks
before I’m finally forced to notice I’m too old for this shit
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Been getting a lot of panicky emails and worried phone calls lately. Well, worried voice mails, since God knows I never answer that fucking thing. People are concerned about a growing rumor that Uncle Hump went and found God, and I assure you that is pure horseshit.
I did, however, find Jesus.
The Lincoln Patriot Bible Center is just getting off the ground, but our faith has been strong and the miracles have been coming left and right. Me and Brother Ronnie have a very specific brand of Jesus Fundamentalism and I think you fine folks will enjoy the ride. A great many regular readers have expressed some confusion regarding exactly WTF we’re doing with this—rest assured, it is not a joke. We are incorporating an actual Church and we will be taking our media outreach program very, very seriously.
Just wanted to let you beautiful bastards know what I’ve been up to lately. Stay tuned.
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