Wednesday, November 7, 2012

Hakim | Greatest Hits



Listen to "Wala Waled"

Pick it up here.

As snow pours down into New York, thousands of people remain without power--to say nothing of those who have lost their homes altogether. (The fate of more than one of my co-workers.) So it seems almost criminal to pull down this uber-celebratory disc of polycarbonate plastic to rip for you all this evening. But, then, we do have something to celebrate tonight: The United States seems to be on the verge of slowly--key words "verge" and "slowly"--shifting a bit to the left. 

Legalized marijuana in Colorado and Washington. Same-sex marriage in Maryland and Maine and probably Washington? (I've sort of lost track of that.) Tammy Baldwin elected as first openly gay senator in Wisconsin. More women in the house of reps now than ever before. That whole Todd Akin thing shut down by Claire McCaskill in Mizz freakin' Zouri while in Indiana, God's Will intending for Richard Mourdock's political career to get fucked. Finally, President Obama reelected, despite having pissed off just about as many liberals over the last four years as he has conservatives.

Yes, I know that close to half of the voting population voted for that other guy. And that celebrating your gay marriage by getting stoned is not legal in most states--or federally, for that matter. And that Michele Bachmann, a woman who believes that slavery was eradicated by our founding fathers, that getting vaccinated for HPV leads to mental retardation, and that the Muslim Brotherhood has infiltrated the U.S. government, actually held her house seat in Minnesota. (Having lived in Minneapolis-St. Paul for six years in the 1990s, I am extremely disappointed with my former state mates.)

But, still. As even conservative poll aggregation enthusiast Dick "I Goofed!" Morris seems to be realizing, the United States is a multi-culture, not a mono-culture. And we sort of showed that, kinda sorta, via last night's elections. 

So, in celebration: Could there be anything more life-affirming, more get-you-up-off-your-ass-and-dancin', than Hakim? I found this best-of album at the Nile Deli on Steinway Street a couple of days after Sandy had passed and picked it up to lift my spirits. A few days after that, I offer it to you, for yours.

6 comments:

Hammer said...

Hakim? Haha, that's funny, really. Such an oddtastic choice, Gary.

No-one here in the Middle-east was surprised by Obama's reelection. Actually, quite few here do give a damn about the USA. I heard that the country is now going to witness one of its worst-ever economical tailspins. Even Wall Street journos are predicting the worst is yet to come (unlike the POTUS' own victory speech where he claimed that the "Best is to come").


In another similar vein, I wrote a beat-poem last night for this occasion, dedicated to a girlfriend who lives in Chicago, Illinois. Here's it:

Ct'd.

Hammer said...

The Anomaly of The United States of America: Oh-Bummer! Obama won!
A Beat Poem.

Dear, Obama:
You won nothing and has now, the best seat in an anomaly
Called the United States of America; this union;
This place of malfunction in unison
Given a time to develop into fixed fictional mayhem
An appearance at the end of the world of stagnant idealism
A creation of European madness
A dictatorship felt in safety of unaccountable schemes
Like a dead dog full of maggots
After its masters left it more than half a millennia ago
Proclaiming freedom by taking it from others
A country made on a roster of statistics and experiments
With only freedom taken away as the catalyst
Useless minds, with paradigmal choices
Electoral citizenships of the keypaded doom clucks
Conspiraled war tacticians on terror like a dick in the robin eye
Diseased prohibitorial problematics with the federal recognition
Slow progress stale as a dreamt idea called ‘The Dream’
A struggle to build burdens and debts instead of life
And anthems sung for deities bred with force and power
Flags made out of symbolism for the Devil
Co-tested in old manuscripts revealed in revelations
A country writhed in sodomy and sex like a bouncing ball
And mega-boards and giant TVs distributing consumee pathologies
Going from analog to digital lost in the dialogue
The modern-day Gog-a-Magog
Where words are used as truncheons in lieu of a massacre war
Appalling speeches ululatory killer machines
Wading through the fat, fickle-minds of millions’ dreams
Fed like parasites on diets full of toxics and tease
Beneficial chaos for the money-making idiot idolators
U.S.e-lessly nauseating with required capabilities
Of the fool, hero, beach-bodied lover, and the badass whore
Shitlessly boring like their charismatic president puppets
Suckling chemicals independent like air in an asshole
The message says on the bottle ‘Live and Let Die’
Statism, anarcho-capitalism, presidentialism. You-name-it-ism
The type they throw your way you fix in that hole
Idiolised filth continuously reposed
Races, faces, places, ... Sit and do nothing: There you go
Because you’re Big on their confusion and it hurts them to be you
Amerivolutionary bastards with their inexcusable crimes
Improving this piece of old shit picking it back to life
The game unnerving for these electing Amorons
Fault-filled peasants, yokels, rubes, hicks and horny bucoles
Politishitians kill their speech for the win, oh yeah
For the winner is acting inside the most valuable stage
Peace is violent and violence is peace they adhere
Mass-class-holian en-mass riots will soon appear
Oh, the plotholes, the ramified people of ol’Bailey boobah
Rehearsed in super-pooper-computer like a film comic
Dirty tricks and sacrificial assassinations for the public galore
Securazy safe-sacks and cops’ asses playing court
Christian zealotry and the Judaical damnation
Topple this, top that, one day-more-crazy every damn day
Cosseting to schizophreniac Dr. brain-wash Ron Paul
The philosophers’ ring shoved in communitarian, secularity states
Who’s going to take charge? Of what, I should say?
This Corupporation? Those English kings?
Rockefellers, Morgans, the megalocracies
Rulers of ideologies dead from times Roman
All for one common purpose of rebuilding Babylon
Or, so they want you to believe and conceive
Oh, sheeple fuck off! You nefarious human filth
You oral fixations and première works of doom
Veterans of the United States Americans paying in their lives
The Living Checks, Security-Numbered factorials
Made Gods of the Already-Made dainty fanfare
Exhausted, yellowing, frayed ray-caked mannequins
Psychotic, insulated, animotional, dirty nobodies
Societal strata-fucked high-minded useless street spenders
Miracle dildos conferring in the human-billfolds of cock and cash
Entertainmentalists smoking their paradise to ashen cinders
Teutonic mad-hats of the old tantrums headless, faceless, and averse

Ct'd.

Hammer said...

Who could blame you, Blamericanusholes?
You look good only in shit-brown tan
Hiding there in your shit-choked shelters of magical bauds and bytes
Yeast-infested FaceBook is at the helm now
Tell-tales and signs of how the ground no longer loves you all
Oneiric cataclysm of contextual retweets, of tweeple poos
Visionaries of hung journeys Kerouacian wikidiots
Filtering sunlights through beeping ‘Beam me’s of protocol malls
Tiptoeing in asphyxiational reap rape and sexual wanderlust
Licking your lips to hairgina views of shaved and paved perversions
You’re drunk with power and hormonally-fucked so to speak
Your ideopathos makes your non-existent minds weak
Beauty? Boastful foul mouths of the ghost-bellowed brains
Cancerous prima facie’s paying in the doll-ar dazzle dues
You are the politicians’ paradises and preachers’ hells
Hymnified bullshit of the Now Salvation of your ills
The earth will bear you no more
Superman is dead, clinching his jaw so tight
Far from righteous he was the snake oil of your foil
And gently, soon, you’re going to fall
Like a petal’d wedding mold falling smelling of death
The earth will be your chamber’s execution hall
The sun has whispered its secrets old and young
Spitting you soon some of its breath
Oh, devious skies come and comet-spew your tongue
A nuance on this dirt is camera’d in doom at last
Soon, the U.S. will get its ass handed to it fast
Let’s roll the film, now: Hollywood is good

Action!

OBAMA WINS THE ELECTION!

Yeah, babe! Let the endtimes roll.

H.H.

Tyler Hewitt said...

This sounds great! It may replace Dancing in the Streets, the current song to reflect my post-election mood.
I was very happy with the election results, Michelle Bachman aside. I got nearly everything I wanted. It was better than Christmas.

burntoutsavannahs said...

gays can smoke weed while getting married in washington gary. it's a pretty great time to be an american.

tetedur said...

I love your taste in music and eclecticism, your writing and now, even more, your politics. Thank-you and...congratulations!!