Waste Management

I mean . . . I'm sayin' . . . I'm rockin' it . . . You knomesayin'? . . . You knamean?

To be consistent with the liner notes of my last two albums, I suppose I could come up with some rather esoteric, highfalutin, quasi-psuedo-academic, self-deprecatory-yet-pretentious prose to frame the sounds collected here. Something about collecting and recycling the detritus of postmodern culture under advanced capitalism, a celebration and subversion of the strictures of the socio-economic structures in which I am mired, an ambivalence indicative of the loss of center in our present historical moment. But I have no desire to do that.

There are certainly enough words on this album to let it speak for itself. I am excited to finally have the ability to produce and perform the rap music that has been in my head for so long. Let us give thanks for the bedroom studio. Technology enables, no doubt. (As long as you're on this side of the digital divide.) Some of these songs I wrote as long as five years ago. I have lived with this material, internalized it, rehearsed it for innumerable hours on the back of a garbage truck.

As the abundance of narrative-based forms here suggest, I'm a storyteller. I have always been drawn to hip-hop's storytellers: Slick Rick, KRS-One, Biggie, Nas. I enjoy experiencing so many levels of meaning at once. I follow the narrative's plot but also its execution: the rhetoric and language, the rhyme scheme, the rhythmic flow, the relation to the beat's drama. These are all things I strive to achieve in my own rap.

Because some of these songs are fairly dated (at least in terms of my rapidly changing outlook on the world), I am slightly wary of presenting them all here. In the end, I believe the ones that I have chosen to include still hold up in some way. A case in point is the song, "Droppin' Bombs." I wrote these lyrics in 1997, when I was living in the dormitory where Ted "The Unabomber" Kaczynski had spent his undergraduate days. The song was intended as a meditation on and fantasy of the Unabomber's state of mind as well as a satirical send-up of gangsta rap--taking threats of metaphorical or real violence to a ridiculous level (though plenty of gangsta rappers already do this).

Plenty of people had reservations about my expressing such sentiments even then. Of course, in the wake of 9/11, I became much less comfortable with the song's stance on terrorism. On that day I could not imagine ever performing the song again. Yet as time passes and war rages on, it is clear that the conditions that compel people to commit acts of violence against each other (even if state-sanctioned) are not going away. The song has taken on a new kind of resonance for me. It is, of course, not an endorsement of violence. It is, I hope, a provocation to consider all perspectives.

More than anything, Waste Management refers to my experience working for the Cambridge Depahtment of Public Works, specifically the Pahk Depahtment, in the summer of 2001. It was a great experience for many reasons, and I recommend it to anyone who needs to get their hands dirty. Spending nine weeks driving around in large, orange trucks, hauling trash, provided me with a well-needed, major dose of working-class attitudes and the terribly endearing Boston accent. Growing up in a family and neighborhood struggling to transition from working- to middle-class, these attitudes and this accent are just as much a part of my character as anything I have learned in post-secondary school. I embrace them ambivalently (of course) and attempt to temper my celebration with criticism, my habits with self-reflection. My rapping here might embody this tension best, at least in terms of accent. Why I pronounce some R's and drop others is a mystery to me. If anything such apparent contradictions speak to the performative nature of identity: we all wear different masks, put on different performances, and play various games at different times, depending on our audience and our ends. Perhaps recognizing such performative layers is a necessary first-step toward getting past them, toward a greater sense of openness, honesty, confidence, and sensitivity.

And here I go, slipping once again into (overly?) reflective academic discourse. There is nothing to be done about it, I suppose. I embrace my selves as not only different but dynamic and, importantly, changeable. I seek to constantly reflect on the world, my place in it, and what I can do to make it a more just place. Making music (as a form of storytelling) is one of my favorite ways to express these thoughts and feelings, to put them into some kind of practice. As I argued in the liner notes to Like the Moon, the meanings are up to you once I put them out there. It is my hope that this music can at least provide some compelling and challenging material for making meaning. Thanks for listening.

Big thanks, shout-outs, and much love to: my brothers Nick and Jason, who always support my music (even when they tell me to sell my lyrics instead of perform them); my mother, Tricia; Andrew Scannell, my musical blood brother; Ben Z, for constant intellectual, musical, and political dialogue; my executive producer, webmaster, and sweetheart, Rebecca; Charley “eon” Nesson, for his guest vocals on “The Mission”; Byron and Gabe, for the most stimulating conversations about hip-hop and Dr. Who I’ve ever had; the extended circle currently chillin’ at Hamilton Street, especially Luke for his enthusiasm and jambalaya; all my Madison people, notably Amy&Ron, Greg, Mike Z, Ryan, Brad, Steve, Ron R; all my Cambridge people, including the folks in West Cambridge/Mt. Auburn, the Pahk Depahtment, C.R.L.S., and HU (from where I should single out Liz V, the Whiskey Moan guys, and the Eliot house extended family). Peace.