Jam Session at East Cleveland

by Chimezie Ogbuji

I had the privilege of having (the equivalent of) front row seats to a jam session at the home of a fellow Taichi student was kind enough to let me come.  He hosts these sessions at his home every year, apparently.  It was a blast.  Good food, folk, and an incredibly talented group of musicians: 2 trumpets, an alto sax, drum set, viola, piano, and an upright bass.  

The drum sets and upright bass had rotating musicians (2 on each).  One of the trumpeters was also a fellow Taichi student who had never played with the group before.  I couldn't even tell as they blew some incredible music from their horns.  

The rain caught up with the set and I had to leave prematurely, but took some pictures from the steps where I was sitting right in front of where they performed.  

Who's Gonna Take The Weight?

As for the second point, I say what our faith says, and the truth of the matter. At a certain time a motion begins which is not precipitated by another motion and this occurs in this very manner: that there has been eternally a first mover, although there was not eternally a first moved; but at a certain time the first moved began, and then motion began.
—Albert of Saxony, Questions on the Physics (Questiones et decisiones physicales insignum virorum). Uche Ogbuji's translation. Latin original as follows:

Quantum ad secundum, dico quod secundum fidem nostram et rei veritatem. Aliquando incepit motus quem non precessit aliquis motus et hoc per istum modum quod eternaliter fuit primum motor, licet no eternaliter fuerit primum mobile; sed aliquando inceperit, et tunc incepit motus.

For some reason I've been sparring with the notion of the Prime Mover a lot this year.  In my poems and other writings I've taken on the idea playfully, angrily, and sometimes in sheer bafflement. The idea comes from the tortured efforts to reconcile Platonism and Aristotelianism, received by medieval scholars with such reverence once re-discovered in contact with the Islamic civilizations, with Christian dogma. I think this struggle still dominates modern science and philosophy, though no serious enquirer outside the Bible Belt, except maybe Peter Geach, would dare plead directly to Christian principles in such discussion, and not many would directly invoke Aristotle. Despite this coyness a great deal of thinking behind Western civilization is bogged down in two theoretic systems which seem to betray utter ignorance of the natural world.

Daniel Huntington—Philosophy and Christian Art

Albert of Saxony was one of those medieval natural philosophers instrumental in marrying Aristotle with St. Augustine; I believe I ran into his quote at the library of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, and I managed to dig it up again in God and reason in the Middle Ages by Edward Grant.  As I've grown older I've become very sympathetic with Epicurianism, respectful of Sophism and hostile towards Socratism, the great enemy of both.  Unfortunately Socratism won out in post-Classical times, with its insistence on impossible absolutes and false humility in style. I won't go so far as to claim that looking back more to Epicurus (who in turn looked back to Democritus, subject of savage attacks by Plato) would have prevented the religious distortions, cultural chauvanism and geopolitical distortion that characterize the West's material triumphs, but I do think Platonism served as a heavy, clumsy stick swung wildly about the world by Europe.
I must admit that it was not Plato and Aristotle who gave the Europeans that chilling formula "dico quod fidem nostram et rei veritatem", "according to faith and the truth of the matter," which so polluted Medieval natural philosophy with divinity studies.  Ibn Rushd ("Averroës" in the West) had already compiled a herculean defence of Aristotle against some agents of Islamic dogma, having to cover much the same ground as Christians did centuries later. Since they were getting their Aristotle from the schools of Ibn Rushd, the Christian philosophers had to deal not only with the Greek, but also with the brilliant (though fundamentally flawed) elucidations of the Spanish Moor. In the end they pretty much just cut Ibn Rushd out with the neat scalpel of church dogma. Back to superstition square one. The dogma of six-day creation sixteen hundred years before the great flood could not withstand the empirical idea from the natural world that nothing suggests any beginning to the chain of causality. Things are in motion because things have always been in motion. The church needed to silence this heresy to make room for Yahweh and they did so with the garrotte rather than with fair debate.
The lasting effects of this strangulating threat occurred to me once again a few days ago when listening to Kool and the Gang's soaring, aching composition, "Who's Gonna Take the Weight." What lyrics there are to this song are eye opening:

People! The world today is in a very difficult situation,
And we all know it because we're the ones who created it;
We're gonna have to be the ones to clean it up;
We're gonna have to learn to live together 
And love each other.
Because I believe one day someone or something
Is gonna wanna judge 
Who's creating all this corruption and death and pollution,
All these difficult situations on earth.

And he's gonna wanna know:
Who's gonna take the weight?

So the world is screwed up, and we're the ones who have to sort it out, but why? Not because it's our world to sort out, but because it's a world belonging to some Daddy Abstract hanging out in the sky who's going to come along some day to judge what we've done. What's the point of so much soul if all were doing is renting it, anyway?
Under the Aristotelian shadow of Ptolemy both Islamic and Christian natural philosophers wound themselves into ridiculous contortions until Copernicus and Galileo. The primum mobile, the first or empyrean sphere was equated to utter goodness in gratification of Christian doctrine and was accounted by Sacro Bosco in his seminal De Sphaera the only sphere of "motus rationalis" (i.e. rational motion by which they meant the rotation any idiot can see by observing the sun) and then by complete hocus-pocus the idea came about that all other spheres were of "motus irrationalis sive sensualis" ("irrational or sensual motion"; take that, Aristotle!). So now suddenly the church had not only the keys to goodness, but also to reason. How convenient!

Ptolemaicsystem-small.png

Sadly, I'll close with one of the more lurid illustrations I've seen of how all this nonsense addled even the most brilliant minds in the West. "Good-friday, 1613, Riding Westward"
by John Donne is a poem of his usual technical virtuosity, but is full of the sloppy, slavish sentiments that leave me so scornful.

LET man's soul be a sphere, and then, in this, 
Th' intelligence that moves, devotion is ; 
And as the other spheres, by being grown 
Subject to foreign motion, lose their own, 
And being by others hurried every day, 
Scarce in a year their natural form obey ; 
Pleasure or business, so, our souls admit 
For their first mover, and are whirl'd by it.
Hence is't, that I am carried towards the west,
This day, when my soul's form bends to the East.
There I should see a Sun by rising set,
And by that setting endless day beget.
But that Christ on His cross did rise and fall,
Sin had eternally benighted all.
Yet dare I almost be glad, I do not see
That spectacle of too much weight for me.
Who sees Gods face, that is self-life, must die ;
What a death were it then to see God die ?
It made His own lieutenant, Nature, shrink,
It made His footstool crack, and the sun wink.

This is about the half-way point of the poem, and marks the heave of theme from a philosophical to a devotional bent. The church was all about facilitating such arcs, and The Dean of St. Pauls well illustrates how they got their wish for so long. I like to think the 21th century will mark another turning point in which we throw all that twaddle into the vaults of history, and actually look upon the universe with our own eyes. I personally have no truck with waiting out to determine Who's Gonna Take the Weight.

King David's Nkrumah Salute

The first leader of a newly independent Ghana
Faced many a challenge to visions of utopia;
The vision is based on science and agriculture;
Here come the vultures shitting like pigeons on a sculpture.
Nobody's perfect, yo! he's got faults you can list them...

Dr. Nkrumah's intentions were the best
Why it's all a mess cause we still needed lots of help from the West...

Kennedy and his foreign aid
During the cold war turning Ghana into economic slaves...

Military coup after coup it's appaling
Seventh time a charm: enter Jerry Rawlings...

There once lived a great man with a geat vision, great plan,
A great dreamer determined to realize what he'd seen for Africa
Things fell apart at the seams in Ghana...

We salute ya, we salute ya,
Dr. Kwame Nkrumah
—from "Nkrumah Salute" by King David

My cousin and sound producer extraordinaire released this clear-eyed tribute to the great man who spearheaded the African independence movements of the 50s, including that of Nigeria, whose independence came a few years after Ghana's.  Nkrumah was the father among pan-African visionary leaders from Nyerere to Azikiwe who did succeed in the most visible successes of independence, but whose energy and charisma were not quite enough to counter the complex manipulations engineered by colonial powers within the field of influence of the globally influential cold war poles in Washington and Moscow.

What I like about this Nkrumah salute is that it doesn't shy away from calling out the disaster of Nkrumah's Volta river project, which also pioneered errors repeated across Africa where ambition for foreign exchange and rapid industrialization led governments into economic patterns that extended the hegemony of Western powers while decimating indigenous industries.  These errors led to corruption, which led to erosion of the most important human resources and caused perilous internal strains.  In Ghana the false gold was bauxite, which inspired the Volta river project.  In Nigeria it was and still is petroleum.  Such projects required strong central control, which bred autocracy, in which Nkrumah was also an unfortunate pioneer, and eventually this led to a wave of military coups across Africa, and made it easier for the CIA and KGB to conduct their proxy wears across the continent.

Despite all that we rightly salute Nkrumah.  if these have been harsh lessons for Africans to learn, it has been essential that we learn them ourselves, and Nkrumah led the way to such self-determination.  It is also for us to address the problems over time.  We should be wary of quick fixes.  Everyone salutes Mandela for his greatness, but I'm sure he paid careful attention to his African history, and learned the right lessons.  Even Mandela had his elders, among whom Nkrumah was a leading light.

I've always personally enjoyed the fact that Nkrumah took his pan-Africanism even as far as matters of the heart, marrying an elagent Coptic Egyptian lady Fathia, whom he impressed as a fiery African nationalist in the spirit of Nasser.  The marriage fell apart with the strains of Nkrumah's later years in power and Fathia returned to Cairo even before Nkrumah went into exile in Guinea, but after Fathia's death a few years ago she was flown according to her wishes to be buried beside her husband in Ghana.


ObPoeticReference: 

We are the punch bag of fate
on whom the hands of destiny wearies
and the show of blows gradually lose
their viciousness on our patience
until they become caresses of admiration
and time that heals all wounds
comes with a balm and without tears,
soothes the bruises on our spirits.
—from "Ghana's Philosophy of Survival" by Kwesi Brew, richly discussed in "Poetry as Cultural Memory", by Koranteng Ofosu-Amaah.  It's also well worth reading "Africa, 1966" on the same Weblog.

Chez Labbé, au-delà de la terre

Je vis, je meurs: je me brule et me noye, 
J’ay chaut estreme en endurant froidure: 
La vie m'est et trop molle et trop dure. 
J'ay grans ennuis entremeslez de joye: 

Tout à un coup je ris et je larmoye, 
Et en plaisir maint grief tourment n'endure: 
Mon bien s'en va, et à jamais il dure: 
Tout en un coup je seiche et je verdoye. 

Ainsi Amour inconstamment me meine: 
Et quand je pense avoir plus de douleur, 
Sans y penser je me treuve hors de peine.

Puis quand je croy ma joye estre certeine, 
Et estre au haut de mon desiré heur, 
Il me remet en mon premier malheur.
—Sonnet VIII by Louise Labbé (I found an English guide to the poem.)

The first time I heard Morcheeba's Au-delà, featuring Manda, the french fan who became a lead singer for a brief spell, I was at a Morcheeba concert in Denver, just before the album Dive Deep came out.  When she started singing the lyrics, I started jumping up and down yelling "C'est Louise Labbé!" I guess half-hoping Manda could hear me.  Yeah, wifey thought I'd gone mad.  She would have thought so even more if she'd realized, as I did quickly, that the lyrics that started with Labbé quickly went its own way.

Morcheeba-DiveDeep.jpg

Je vis, je meurs; je ris, je pleure.
Je vis de la mer; je vis de la terre.
Je le dis aux fleurs; au lac de vapeur.

Au ciel de toutes les couleurs,
Ton soleil réchauffe mon cœur.

Je vis, j'ai peur; je crie de douleurs.
En secret je m'enterre: je cherche la chaleur.
Je m'enfuis dans les airs; au delà de la terre.

Au ciel de toutes les couleurs,
Ton soleil réchauffe mon cœur.
—"Au-delà" by Morcheeba

I live, I die; I laugh, I cry.
I live of the sea; I live of the ground.
I say it to the flowers; to the lake of steam.

In the all-colored sky,
Your sun warms my heart.

I live, I die; I scream of pain.
I bury myself secretly: I am seeking heat.
I abscond into the air; beyond the earth.

In the all-colored sky,
Your sun warms my heart.
—translation by Uche Ogbuji

BTW the last time I mentioned Morcheeba on Copia I was anticipating the new album after Skye Edwards had rejoined them.  "Blood Like Lemonade" came out last year and is I think worth the wait.  If you've been sleeping, wake up and check it out.

vitrail_louise_labbe_gd.jpg


Labbé's sonnet famously brings Petrarca's style of antithetical tropes into French.  Just this morning Au-delà came up in my shuffled playlist and I remembered I'd resolved to translate it, to see if I could preserve some of its music, which has eluded translations I've seen so far.  Here is an excerpt from my attempt:

All at a stroke I laugh and I lament,

And suffer many torments in my pleasures:

They live forever, my absconding treasures:

All at a stroke I wither and augment.

—from "Je vis, je meurs" a translation of Sonnet VIII by Uche Ogbuji

re: lament/augment, you can either accept it as rime riche, or consider the "g" borrowed into its following syllable, as it does sound in my pronounciation.

Tout baigne!

Marie: 
Aujourd'hui je bouge
Chercher mon nouveau move
Je n'ai plus de cash
Même pas de crédit card
Je fais façon-façon!
C'est ce qui fond ma conviction! 

Refrain (Marie & co.): Tomana Toma cha na taboo!
Toma na Toma cha ni tout baigne! 
 (4x)
 
Toma! (Tout baigne!)
Na Ouais! ça bouge
Tomana Toma
Ah! Tout baigne 
Mon plan pour ce soir
J'veux pas vous décevoir c'est moi qui vous mène
Et ça en vaut la peine
Trop de frustration
Vivre dans une money nation (money nation)

Dis-moi, toi! 
Arno, dis-moi!
Sans l'argent 
Dans l'attente
Tu fais quoi?

Refrain

Arno: 
Toma ton machin,
Ça c'est bien ça!
Sans argent, t'as pas le choix
On rève, comme un roi charmant
On chante "ah si j'étais riche moi!
(What we're gonna do today?

Refrain

My favorite song off Zap Mama's "Supermoon" album.  When she came to Boulder a few years ago to support it (as she does often, happily) one of my keenest disappointments was that she performed the song mostly translated to English, so I couldn't sing along with the French lyrics I knew from the album.

Yeah yeah it's a rat race and blah blah blah and we're all just squirrels trying to get a nut and yada yada.  It's nice to have someone actually having a great deal of fun with those old complaints.  And I love Marie just doing her wacky thing in the video, especially pop-locking in the robot get-up.  Charming chemistry hanging out with French pop-rocker Arno, too.

10611-supermoon.jpg

Today I'm getting my ass in gear
To figure out my new move
I ain't got no more cash
No more on the credit card
I'm just making do
Which is why I'm ain't messing around...

As a bonus, here's a fun music video by Arno:

http://new.music.yahoo.com/videos/--39147064

Fela in Calabar

First of all let me mention that I've just completed my second installment in my series "50 Observations on 50 years of Nigeria."  I'm giving it a day or two for a fresh-eye proofread, and I'll post it on The Nervous Breakdown probably tomorrow.  In part 1, item 9 I said "Fela Anikulapo Kuti. 'Nuff said. We've always known he's the man. Nice to see the world catch up."

I recently ran across video of a Fela performance in Calabar in 1971, shot by the legendary drummer Ginger Baker who recorded with Fela.

Calabar is where I was born, and this concert would have been taking place as I was perfecting my toddling technique a few miles away (though I did also spend a lot of time rather farther away in my maternal home town of Ikot Ana).  It's quite something to see that infectious energy of Fela.  This was in the early years of his superstardom, and you can still feel the raw edge to the band which would grind its way to such unbelievable chops.

Quotīdiē ❧ Ndugu's proper chocolate jam,

Shed a tear of delight; don't you worry about a fall tonight
Birds flying free; What about you and me
Ooh!

Take some time to let your feelings flow free
You can't hide away from what you'll be
Search the sky for new horizons to unfold
Set yourself on the oceans of dreams to behold

—from "Take Some Time" by Ndugu & The Chocolate Jam Company

I remember hearing this slow jam a couple of times at dances in Nigeria in the early 80s.  When Erykah Badu flipped it for "Ummm Hmmm" off her latest masterpiece New Amerykah Part Two (Return of the Ankh), she put a weeks-long itch in my skull, and I bet a lot of others who had grown up on a soul diet.  I finally twigged it last week, and went to hunt down the Ndugu & The Chocolate Jam Company original, but it seems to have faded into the mists of the past a bit, which is a true shame.  I did find the following audio version on YouTube, though.

Here is Badu's "Ummm Hmmm," accompanied by some lovely stills of Fat Belly Bella herself.

Of course Badu wasn't the first to discover the great sample possibilities of the Leon Chancler (AKA "Ndugu") jam.  DJ Premier used it back in '07 for the NYG'z project song "Welcome To G-Dom."

Of course, I love me some Primo, but Erykah pwned this bitch.  It's over.  I hope no other DJs think they should dare follow her.

Then again I'm thinking of using the Primo loop to back a poem recital one day.  And maybe I have just the poem.  Having learned about the terzanelle form from Heather Fowler a few weeks ago, I fell in love with the form, and I've been writing a sequence of terzanelles, one for each song on New Amerykah Part Two.  I'm on "Ummm Hmmm" and the first few stanzas of my poem are as follows:

Take some time to let your feelings run free
Heart's desire—thump! thump! I've been here before—
You can't hide away from what you'll be.

You can't hide; don't cheat I've been keeping score.
Place your bet, love; scared money don't make none.
Heart's desire—thump! thump! I've been here before.

Truth and Icarus dare, the money sun,
Angel bird, let's jump off into your world.
Place your bet, love; scared money don't make none.


Naturally it includes elements from Ndugu's song, as well as Badu's.  I can't find the lyrics to "Take Some Time" anywhere on the Net so I, ah, took some time to transcribe them myself.  As you can see from the square brackets and the ellipses, there are some parts I can't figure out right now, but I think I got most of it.

"Take Some Time" by Ndugu & The Chocolate Jam Company


Do you always conceal what you feel inside
Man does not ever drift with the flow of the tide
Makes it hard to see when [it attracts you and me]
And there comes a time when your feelings should run free

And understand that you're over me when you're ...
It'll lend you a helping hand when your [crimes] cross the tide
Takes you high in the sky of your heart's desire
Float through the valley of love; you'll start to fly
Like a bird in the sky who's just learned to fly
Makes you feel so proud you might want to cry

Shed a tear of delight; don't you worry about a fall tonight
Birds flying free; What about you and meNdugu Chancler
Ooh!

Take some time to let your feelings flow free
You can't hide away from what you'll be
Search the sky for new horizons to unfold
Set yourself on the oceans of dreams to behold

Well you're pride by your side when we're looking on
Keep your head to the sky through the weather of the storm

Take the compliment as if it came heaven-sent
From someone up above [with music] with love

What's the nature of your mind when the trouble starts to [grind]
Do you leave yourself behind, not to be caught up on the line
Signs of life is a lot to see that you hold in your [belief]

Free your time; what about your mind
Wow!

Take some time to let your feelings flow free
You can't hide away from what you'll be
Search the sky for new horizons to unfold
Set yourself on the oceans of dreams to behold

You will find further on down the line
Is what you've got to do, to see you through

Take some time to let your feelings flow free
You can't hide away from what you'll be
Search the sky for new horizons to unfold
Set yourself on the oceans of dreams to behold

Take some time to let your feelings flow free
You can't hide away from what you'll be
Search the sky for new horizons to unfold
Set yourself on the oceans of dreams to behold

Talib Kweli on the Politics of Oil: Ballad of the Black Gold

Spotted this new Talib Kweli song, called the Ballad of the Black Gold in a hypem link (you can watch the video there). Very timely given the recent BP mess. Much respect to Talib for going into some of the history of Oil politics in Nigeria; an excerpt from Verse 2 is below:


Nigeria is celebrating 50 years of independence
They still feel the colonial effects of Great Britain's presence
Dictators quick to imitate the West
Got in bed with oil companies and now the place is a mess
Take a guess, which ones came and violated
They oiled up the soil, the Ogoni people was almost annihilated
But still they never stayed silent
They was activists and poets using non-violent tactics
That was catalyst for soldiers to break into they crib
Take it from the kids and try to break'em like a twig
And make examples of the leaders; executed Saro-Wiwa,
Threw Fela's mom out the window right after they beat her
In an effort to defeat hope. Now the people's feet soaked in oil [?]
So the youth is doing drive-bys through speed boats [?]
They kidnap the workers, they blowing up the pipelines
You see the fires glowing in the nighttime

Just learned Skye Edwards is back with Morcheeba, and they're working on a new album

Lori and I were just listening to Dive Deep, and reminiscing about a memorable series of concerts we attended in Denver a couple of years ago, including Morcheeba, which was fantastic, even though they had a French singer substituting for Skye, and serving as a somewhat pale shadow.

I was curious what Morcheeba is up to lately and came across this article with the good news that Skye Edwards has rejoined the group, and that they're working on a new album for release this summer. I'm well stoked for that because Dive Deep is a beautiful soundscape, but just short of its full potential without Skye's luxurious voice, and Skye's solo album was really just no fun. They needed to get back together, so here's to a new, proper Morcheeba album and a new tour stop in Denver, I hope.

Quotīdiē

I say people, people come on and check it now
You see the mic in my hand now watch me wreck it now
What is a party if the crew ain't there?
(What's your name, kid?) Call me Guru; that's my man Premier
Now many attempts have been made to hold us back,
Slander the name and withhold facts.
But I'm the type of brother with much more game
I got a sure aim and if I find you're to blame,
You can bet you'll be exterminated, taken out, done.
It doesn't matter how many they'll go as easy as just one.
Bust one round in the air for this here
'Cause this year suckers are going nowhere,
'Cause my street style and intelligence level
Makes me much more than just an angry rebel.
I'm Gifted Unlimited Rhymes Universal
MCs that ain't equipped get flipped in my circle.
I'm aiming on raining on the bitch ass chumps
Cuz their rhymes don't flow and their beats don't pump;
And niggaz better know I've paid my dues and shit.
I'm 'bout to blow the fuck up because I refuse to quit.
I'm out to get the props that are rightfullly mine,
Yeah me and the crew think its about that time.
But on the DL you know that Gangstarr will conquer.
That's why you stare and point, and others cling on to
My Nautica, asking for a hook-up;
Well sorry but my schedule is all booked up.
Nobody put me on; I made it up the hard way;
Look out for my people but the suckers should parlay.
'Cause it's business kid, this ain't no free for all
You have to wait your turn, you must await your call.
So now, now it is my duty to
Eliminate and subtract all of the booty crews,
And suckers should vacate, before I get irate
And I'll kick your can from here to Japan
With force you can't withstand
'Cause I'm the motherfucking man.

—Guru's verse, Gang Starr - "I'm the Man"

rapper-guru-dies-at-43.jpg

When I heard yesterday morning that Guru had died, a sequence ran through my mind of classics rendered in that inimitable monotone.  "Just to get a Rep" and "Words I Manifest" were my introduction to Gang Starr and the group's charismatic MC.  I'm not one to dwell much on celebrity life milestones (though I do remark the excellent NY Times obit), not even in the tragic case of a quietus descended at young age. But it is certainly occasion to remember the music that kept me, my brothers, and my peers well entertained for a good while.  As you can see from the above verse, Guru never pushed the bounds of complexity too far.  His rap was mostly classic B-Boy swagger.  But classic B-Boy swagger is what drew so many of us to Hip-Hop in the first place, the rump-of-cold-war kids born of the first generation able to take full advantage of the global village, finding our way as far-flung misfits.  We didn't really know of any advantage to our polycultural dexterity, but we definitely understood the message of uncompromising personal expression, no matter how awful your personal ghetto.  The braggadocio was the gateway to something that became richer and more abstract as we brought that polycultural dexterity to bear, and one of the last pushers of that pure, gateway drug hit was the Gifted Unlimited Rhymes Universal.

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"Dwyck" was the anthem around when I arrived in the US as my family immigrated.  Daily Operation is probably my favorite album, with killer tracks such as "Take it Personal" and "Ex to the Next."  I also enjoyed a lot of Guru's creative collabos in the Jazzmatazz series, and being a Soul junkie, I definitely dug the likes of "Keep your Worries" with Angie Stone and "Plenty" with Erykah Badu.

Guru always surrounded himself with talent that complemented his skill and curiosity, and in a later verse to this Quotīdiē's track, for a cameo that straight flipped my wig (and those of many others), Guru introduced a young bridge from that B-Boy classic style to the emerging abstract/black-power style, Jeru the Damaja.


I'll tap your...jaw; you probably heard it before
step to the Bedlamite I'll prove my word is law
Drugstore worth more, dope rhyme vendor,
Not partial to beef, the chief ambassador
Niggaz get mad 'cause they can't score
Like a wild west flick they wish to shoot up my door
But I incite to riot, don't even try it
Bust up chumps so crab kids keep quiet
Like I said before, I tap jaws, snatch whores
Kill suckers in wars, vic a style you said was yours.
Money grip want to flip, but you're fish;
House the mic like your hooker and did tricks on the bitch
Dirty Rotten Scoundrel and my name is Jeru
Utilizing my tools in '92
MCs step up in mobs to defeat us
When we rock knots and got props like Norm Peterson;
Lot's of friends, lot's of fun, lots of beers
Got the skills, kreeno, so I always get cheers.
Troop on like a trooper, no tears for fears.
I'm a get mines 'cause the crew will get theirs.
Cut you up like Edward Scissorhands
you know the program I'm the motherfucking man.

—Jeru the Damaja's verse, Gang Starr - "I'm the Man"


By the way, when a friend confirmed for me that Jeru had thrown in a word of New Testament Greek ("κρίνω" or "krino"), I thought it helped confirm him as the motherfucking man, but if so, that became the case under the mentoring of Guru, and the same can be said of a fair number who now make up hip-hop royalty.

Unfortunately, mad drama has started immediately in the wake of Guru's death.  All the reports are dominated by an unseemly spat between different factions from the man's life.  Despite that ugliness and indignity, no drama can take away the essence of Guru's legacy, which lives its part in my collection of three Gang Starr CDs and all four Jazzmataz joints.  The hard monotone in which the Words Manifest.