CURRENT MISSION

Panama!

ABOUT ME

Traveling, learning, trying to remain humble and find the balance between my responsibilities as a business man, and my creative drive as an artist necessary to pursue my dreams and unlock the greateness within. I was raised on the West Coast (N.E. City, and what?!?!lol) and now reside in Harlem New York, but the paths that I've tread on this journey thus far have made me a painting with many different colors. Clean, curteous, respectful and hella funny, I'm into community and figured I would see what types of people I can connect with in my travels to make my experiences on the road that much more meaningful.

PHILOSOPHY

Our lives consist of an intrinsically broken string of interactions through which we share of ourselves, principally through the imperfect form of communication known as speech. Clearly, our thoughts and ideas are capable of being directly communicated in this fashion, but if this is the stuff upon which our lives and existences are formed shouldn't we want to express more than that? What about our dreams and emotions? In comes art.When you come across a piece of art; true art, it conveys an emotion. Wether it be a painting by Gomez, a solo by Coltrane.....a sixteen by Juice or a sonnet by Bach, what we get when experience and interact with another being's artistic expression is a feeling, an emotion. When I listen to Tupac it makes me want to do something. It makes me want to pick up a book or hit the block and act crazy but it makes me want to DO, to act. Our art should serve as an impetus to activity because words in and of themselves can only do so much to effect change. Without art, TRUE art our lives are incomplete and the experiences within which they are framed are meaningless. Just a bunch of words

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

HOW I PARTICIPATE IN COUCHSURFING

Connecting and being connected. I'm just now coming back to this after a brief hiatus. Hit me up!

COUCHSURFING EXPERIENCE

So, a few years ago, a friend of Dekk's hit me up about the possibility of going on a college tour with him and his snowboarder friends. Basically we would be hitting mad colleges on the west coast and I would be able to rock everyone of 'em so long as I pitched in on the manual labor end of things and helped to set up/tear down as well as promote for the show.
And about six months later...here I am.
Since I started rapping I've been facinated with the idea of "going on tour" so that I am actually here, in Spokane (Spokompton, apparently to the locals) is a great look.
I got here yesterday and will be here until Friday when I will be boarding a plane back to the Bridge City to rock a few shows, after which I will be rejoining the tour in Boise on the 14th.
So far, so good.
Kid Couture and Dan ("the boss"-he's in charge) picked me up from the Amtrak station at like 12 in the morning and I climbed aboard the tour bus, a marvelously refinished and refurbished old Greyhound I was told, to the somber surroundings of 12 sleeping snowboarders. After exchanging pounds with the few cats I did know, and briefly discussing the possibility of exploring a nearby convenience store with Kid Couture (tour dj, co-owner of Spread Label which is the company I partnered with to release Beautiful Music) I hopped into my bunk and promptly passed out.
Dan, said we were gonna have to be up at like, ummmm... ten am to start promoting.
So he said.
I learned in the morning that this would be, if nothing else, a very chill experience. Cat's started to come back to life around twelve noon and then after bsing around for a few minutes, Kid Couture announced to us all "showers!!! who wants showers?!?!? Outside...Now, Let's Gooooooo!!!"
A flurry of activity.
I was, for good reason, still at a loss as to why this was such a big deal, until I realized that some of the my cohorts hadn't showered for as many as FIVE DAYS.
And I thought brothas in the hood was grimy. Deeyum.
**********
So after we got all showered up, we headed out to the main quad and promoted.
"Yo, Nif....you know how to do this man?" I was asked by a somber gentleman named Dominick, a cat I would come to know as a point man of sorts in Dan's absence.
Do I know how to do this???? Pass out flyers???
Son.
I grabbed the megaphone, jumped on top of some masonry and went to work.
"THE CRICKET RAILJAM TOUR IS ON YOUR CAMPUS AND WILL BE HOLDING A LIVE SNOWBOARDING COMPETITION ON THE CROSBY QUAD THIS THURSDAY AT 12 NOON.....WITH LIVE PERFORMANCES FROM JAY-Z AND KANYE WEST"
That last statement drew a few dubious glares, which I gladly answered with a charming smile and shoudler shrug ;)
And so began my first day of promotions....
**************
After we finished promotions, I got back to the bus and immediately plugged into the wi-fi. Amazing, the tour bus has a wireless router and hence better inter connectivity than my own apartment. I guess that's why I get paid the big bucks.
Briefly I reflected upon how easy it is to get all of my business squared away when I can get on the internet as I please before my wandering ruminations were interrupted by Logan, a twenty-one year old snowboarder, pothead, and all around good guy "you tryna go check out this spot?"
I decline and go back to my laptop. This time it's chess matches against my powerbook, and then a little bookkeeping studies before I find a quiet parking lot to make my salaats and then lumber off to bed.
Just before I doze off Im brought back to wake by a gentle nudge.
Kid Couture is standing next to my bunk with an impossible grin on his face.
"Get some good rest bro, tommorrow we're going dorm storming"
No question. Sounds like fun.

Interests

Africa, Latin America, Islam, free thought, and good conversation.

• cats
• arts
• books
• fashion
• acting
• chess
• traveling
• painting
• music
• snowboarding
• muslim
• cricket
• business

Music, Movies, and Books

The Holy Qur'an, Confessions of An Economic Hitman, Destruction of Black Civilization, The Tao Te Ching, Catfish and Mandala, Les Miserables, The Prophet (Gibran), Stolen Continents, In The Spirit of Crazy Horse....etc, etc...

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

The most profound things are the phenomenally mundane acts that give our existences substance in such subtle ways that they defy the fractured form of expression known as speech.
True dat.

Teach, Learn, Share

If sanity is quantified by our individual willingnes and/or desire to conform to societal norms as defined by society en masse, I am insane.
Life is, put simply, the most precious of gifts. For that reason, and none other, the struggle to uphold life, to beautify and reinforce its transformative powers should be our primary goal as a human race.
The protraction of a thing can prove to be as destructive as death itself, more so. Hence, the when I speak of upholding a thing, I speak not necesarrily of prolonging it's existence, but rather, its ability to be a groundswell of righteousness so long as it exists.
Though life, as I see it is the greatest of gifts, it is no way superlative good (or bad) as such definition of a thing lies, existentially, within the realm of pragmatism and application. For that reason, we must, often times, in struggle to create life, take life away.
But in a planet comprised of endlessly complex eco-systems acting and interacting with one another seemlessly, creating and recreating continually, life is not to defined only as human.
Life is not breathing.
Life is not moving.
Life is not eating, buying, spending fighting or laughing.
Life is not consuming.
Life is, rather, the plodding and ceaseless pendulum swing between good and evil and the friction, hidden to the naked eye, a subsequent reality often taken for granted that is as important to the perpetuation of life as are any of it's more obvious characteristics.
Only through an understanding of the whole can we secure for ourselves a proper respect for each individual component.
Our ability to reach our greatest potential in this system created upon wrongdoing and perpetuated through falsehood (mostly to ourselves), the most twisted dichotomy where the meanest starvation is just as commonplace as the gaudiest over abundance lies not in trying to rectify the system through a piecemeal approach to fixing it's most glaring contradictions, but rather facing our collective consciences in the looking glass of self examination and coming to grips with the reality that so long as we allow our deeds continue to be viewed through glasses tinted red in the blood of the Third World, our true reflections, as spiritual beings of the highest choir, will forever remain obscured.
So I am insane.
I am insane because I am not at all concerned with who sits on the throne. Because the greatest portion of my attention was long ago dedicated to undermining the structural support of the palace.
Understand that through assiduous denial of all that is wrong we can, and must over come any and all injustices that lessen our collective claim to humanity.
Either act, or cease acting.

Countries I’ve Visited

United States

Countries I’ve Lived In

United States

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