CULTIVATED INFLUENCE

Well, this has certainly been a long time coming.

I’m really looking forward to defecating on the dreams of you “up-and-comers” with this (that means “shit on” if your vocabulary stinks). If you post Instagram photos of your savings account in $100’s and $50’s on your bedspread, this is for you. If you have to PAY money to open shows for washed-up artists in your own hometown… This is for you.

Local rappers. Local, local rappers. It’s about to get real unprofessional for a bit, so as a fair warning, don’t have any liquids next to the electronic device you’re reading this on.

Let me relay this right away so we establish the tone, rappers. Unless I’ve given you a nod of approval, your music sucks, simply stated. Your stuff is garbage, man. Trash. Waste management. Basura. And I’m not about to let any of your dirty, Cheeto-stained SnapBack wearing hipster fans convince me otherwise, either. My ears are better than theirs and that’s that. If you don’t like it, I suppose there are plenty more cameras for you to flick your middle finger in to let those “haters” know how you feel about them.

I’m just asking a lot of you to stop sharing the music you make, please. We’re already overcapacity with awful musicians.

Now, to attempt to get through to you dorks, let me take off my humble hat and tell you what’s up. This applies to 95% of local rap “artists” I know.

Son, this blog will get more views than your user-submitted mixtape on DatPiff or HotNewHipHop will. My self-hosted website, owned and ran by yours truly is viewed in more countries than your mixtape has total views and it’s been alive for three months. Why? When creativity has a grain of substance or quality — with the proper avenues and networking — people recognize it. Even if you had the potential to go next level with your craft, you couldn’t reach a target market if you were standing in a parking lot facing a giant bulls-eye. (That’s a double-entendre if you’ve never written one.)

But really, you REALLY want to be a rapper, eh? If you haven’t noticed, most of you sound like one another. Is your life that uninspired? You want to live a life founded on facades, masqueraded in braggadocio, all while you portray to be something other than yourself? Lol. Okay. You understand that the lifestyle that you covet is mostly an illusion, right? You super cool kids with your “middle of the mall” jewelry accessories that were probably made from melted down Hot Wheels tracks in inland China and dipped in metallic paint have it figured out, though. Fake it until you realize you won’t make it.

Maybe I can’t relate as well because by no means would I want to pursue a “rap” career, but I wouldn’t want a life that consists of keeping up with an idea of something I wasn’t, and you shouldn’t want that either.

Anyway. I’m out of here. I have Facebook spam statuses of basement freestyle battles to un-tag myself from.

Stay safe, be great, do something different.

-SG

P.S. If the musician you aspire to be like most has been in jail more than once in the last five years, you are a fucking moron. Grow up, man. Please.

Follow @SpencerGlover on Twitter.

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