A Tribe Called Quest - "We got it from Here...Thank you 4 Your service" New Album and Hip Hop in general.

A Tribe Called Quest came out with their new CD “We got it from Here… Thank You 4 Your service.” It is a big deal: 1. Because it’s the A Tribe Called Quest and it’s their first album in 18 years. 2. The death of Phife Dawg this year (an original member of ATCQ). He has verses in the album and helped with production. 3. Lastly, because it is ART. Hip-Hop needs this. This is music. This is creating something with a message, with a purpose, with passion to create Art.

I’m guessing that a very few will listen to the whole album, so here are my favorite songs off the album. Featured Artists include – Andre 3000, Kendrick Lamar, Kanye, Jack White, Talib Kweli, Busta Ryhmes, and Consequence. Sampled – Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, Elton John, and others I don’t know.

1.       Conrad Tokyo feat. Kendrick Lamar – This is the most famous song so far. Very different than today’s production of Hip-Hop it’s amazing. Kendrick of course kills it. There is like a 40 second organ piano solo. This song is dope.

2.       Lost Somebody feat. Jack White – This Song is for The Phife (The whole album is though).  Starts off with this ominous Bass guitar, which soon adds this beautiful piano. This is the most beautiful song on the album. Q-Tip comes in and rips it with great flow. And the Chorus is beautiful. This is probably my favor Jarobi verse on the album.

3.       Ego feat. Jack White– Again starts with this Bass Guitar and starts to build with like a violin in the background. Song doesn’t really start till about 52 seconds. And they completely switch it up. Very smooth. I’m fascinated with idea of egos. I tend to have a big one lol. The lyrics in the song are very cool with regards to the title of the song.

4.       The Killing Season feat. Talib Kweli, Consequence and THE Kanye – Kanye just does the hook, but it is perfect. Talib starts, it’s a little different, but song really starts at 45 seconds. Consequence’s flow after Kanye’s part makes this song for me. The beat is so smooth and amazingly different from today’s Hip Hop.

5.       The Space Program – This is also so different. I think it shows the excellence in Q-Tip’s flow. They use such a simple beat but they have this constant like organ or something. But Q-Tip’s flow is what gets me. The Lyrics are so awesome even though he has such great flow. That’s what makes these guys so special. Every song has a message. That is ART.

6.       Kids… feat. Andre 3000 – Andre starts off the song. Not your typical radio song, but if you keep listening it just gets better and better. Listen to the song a couple times. The chorus is awesome. If you are expecting a Fetty Wap style hook, it’s the complete opposite. At about 2:00 Andre 3000 and Q-Tip go verse for verse. It is a song that I can stop nodding my head up and down. I literally can’t stop. It is Hip Hop.

7.        The Donald feat. Busta Ryhmes – Busta starts with this Jamaican accent verse. I love Busta. I think he is hilarious. NEXT, The Phife comes on for verse 2. R.I.P. He is great. I love his voice. The beat has this paino in the background that will change at times, with a very simple rhythm with drum kits.  At about 3:00, the song changes up, the outro gets a little weird but I love it. They put in this electric guitar that kills it. This song could be directed to a certain Donald lol.

Hello peeps. So Hip Hop you hear on the radio sucks right now except for a couple artists. But this whole movement of Future, Designer, lil yachty, Kodak black, etc. It has people negative about Hip-Hop. I wouldn’t classify those artists as hip hop, more like Trap Pop music hahaha. I enjoy listening to them when I’m out. I’m not trying to be a complete hypocrite.

What’s missing from Hip-Hop right now? The answer is Art. Hip-Hop is lacking a passion for Art. Artists who create music for political movements, and combine different sounds from all genres. That’s what makes Hip-Hop so amazing at its core, the combination of all kinds of music. I have always been attracted to Hip-Hop artists that make music for the love of music and influencing people. Instead of the Capitalism of Hip-Hop that really started in the mid 2000’s. “Hip-Hop Artists” right now, are just making music to become famous and make money. Capitalism has a direct correlation with Hip-Hop and how Hip-Hop has spread ideologies across the board. I believe that Hip-Hop once stood for a counter culture, but now it is just a way to make money. Instead of the artists like Grand Master Flash, Biggie, Tupac, Eric B and Rakim, Big Daddy Kane, Sugar Hill Gang, Wu Tang Clan, etc. that seemed to make music because it was life. That doing no other thing in life was as important as making music.

                The people today who I believe make music because it is an art. Pharrell Willams and N.E.R.D., Kendrick Lamar, J-Cole, Eminem, Kanye West, Yelawolf, Asher Roth, Chuck Inglish, Common, Big K.R.I.T., Wu Tang, Dr. Dre, School Boy Q, Anderson Paak, Consequence, and I am sure I am missing a lot. These are the only ones coming to my head right now. If you know of some please share and comment.  

If your goal in life is to become famous or get filthy rich, well you lose the purity of Art, the purity of expression, the true musicianship of Music. I hope you become famous or filthy rich because of your passion to do something, to affect people, to affect change. I try to bring that to Acting.

Thank You, Spencer.

ps. I write based off of emotion. I do not check my work very often. I apologize for grammatical errors.

Things People Don't Normally Think About

 

Things we take for granted and Things we don’t normally think about

Couple quick questions:

-          Who cuts the grass on highways? That’s a lot of grass. Obviously the state, but I-95 goes a long way.  

-          Have you ever met a spy or someone who works for the CIA, or some intelligence agency? Would we know if we did?

-          Do the Men in Black exist? Was the movie a documentary? Lol we would have been nueralyzed. lol

-          Why hasn’t the food microwave in Spy Kids been invented yet?

-          Do people really eat at Arby’s? lol

-          In an alternate unaversive maybe Toyota Corolla’s could be the fancy car? (I drive a corolla s)

-          Why did we stop dueling each other like in the cowboy days?

-          Why aren’t corndogs more commercial? Why can’t I go to a restaurant and order one without judgement? Corn dogs are amazing, but I can only get them at fairs. Lol

-          Why isn’t a sports team named “The Jackals” ?

-          Have you ever seen anyone take a shower in the rain? With soap and everything?

-          What is worse growing up watching Barney (which I did) or watching SpongeBob? Barney was the shit and SpongeBob can get a little grown upy.

 

1.      Indoor Plumbing – seriously how great is it that anytime and pretty much anywhere you can use a public toilet and toilet paper. I don’t think people realize how often we take for granted indoor plumbing. Think about how much weirderer life would be if we had an outhouse hahahaha. You would be like “Mom! I don’t want to empty the outhouse tonight. It’s your turn.”

 

2.      Space – yeahhhhhh, space is a scary thing. We don’t normally think about it. Does it stop? Is it just infinite space? If it is infinite space well then there must be other solar systems, right? What is scarier the fact that we only 2% of the ocean (or whatever it is) or the fact that we revolve around a star with 8 other planets but for some reason we can’t live on those planets and space just keeps goingggggggggggg?

 

3.      Watching Sports – I don’t think we fully appreciate how awesome it is that we can watch any baseball, basketball, or football game whenever we want. If you wanted to see Babe Ruth hit a homerun back in the day, you pretty much had to be there. Now, I can go on MLB.com and look up Mike Trout’s highlights from last night. Unfortunately, the commercialization of sports has taken away from the authenticity of the sport. Watching Mike Trout in person is different than TV. The legends of Mickey Mantle hitting a ball 600 feet would never happen today and it is kind of sad.

 

4.      The Beach (For Floridians) – Our state is very narrow compared to almost every state. Because the beach is always there and usually a close drive away we don’t appreciate it as much. There are people who have never seen the beach which is mind blowing to me because I complain about the “process” of going to the beach (well you have to leave early, make a cooler, find parking, then when you leave you have all the sand all over you, and your hair is all nasty) haha. But the beach is always there and never too far away and it is just glorious.

 

5.      Road Reflectors – If you have ever drove on a highway at night in the middle of nowhere with no lights AND there were not road reflectors I think this topic may resonate with you lol. Driving in the north part of the United States with winding roads and hills, the road reflectors help to show what is coming up just saying. I played summer ball in upstate New York in Utica the summer of 2013. I had the opportunity to get tickets to a red sox game. (It was awesome. That’s a baseball environment, not Miami =/. ) I drove from Boston to Utica in the middle of night from 1 am to 6 am in the pouring rain. When we got off the Boston version of the Florida Turnpike lol, for some reason New York didn’t have road reflectors. By far the scariest driving experience of my life. All 3 of my passengers were asleep (thanks a** holes) so it was me, the rain, the road, and my buddy’s big ass truck (my car is a corolla S). I couldn’t see where I was going it was awful. Since that day I have never taken for granted what road reflectors do! Lol

 

6.      Trees – I know, weird. But trees are pretty cool. We don’t normally talk about them, they are just there. If you google “oldest tree,” one in Sweden comes up as 9,550 years old and one in Methuselah, California comes up as 5,000 years old =O. Could you imagine if trees could talk? Think about how much knowledge we could gain from the Redwoods or some of those moss trees in our back yards. My favorite trees are palm trees. I love those moss trees in Gainesville or on Rollins College’s campus, but palm trees just resemble peacefulness and home for me. I love seeing a big palm tree at the beach or in the outfield of a baseball field.

 

7.       Music in Movies – I am not talking about the obvious music. I am talking about the tones that are supposed to make us feel a certain way in an emotional part or intense part of the movie. Haha. If you ever watch movies, I don’t think we realize how much music is played throughout the film. It makes me laugh if the music is not in a good spot or just doesn’t feel natural. When talking about this all I can think of is “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” when Jason Segal says, “There's no melody, it's just tones. Just dark, ominous tones. The masturbating dog killer is on the loose again. He'll kill the owner, but at least the dogs are happy.” Hahahahahahaha the best thing ever. But he was right, watch a Law and Order SVU or a movie and you will laugh sometimes. It’s awkward to me because there is no music playing in life when getting chased down by a serial killer, but yet again I wouldn’t know. Lol

 

8.       Death –

I’ll leave the most serious topic for last. Nobody likes to think about death. Most people don’t handle death very well. It is extremely sad when someone young dies, that is hard for me to handle sometimes. At the end of the day I am going to die. I could die when I’m 90, I could die walking out of my house today.

Kierkegaard says in "Concluding Scientific Postscript,""I shall certainly attend your party, but I must make an exception for the contingency that a roof tile happens to blow down and kill me; for in that case, I cannot attend." We don't live life saying things like this. Kierkegaard makes a great point.

The sad thing to think about is that my parents are going to die one day, and that will be a hard thing to deal with. But, in order to live life we have to accept that we will die. I definitely don’t want to die before it is my time. I believe most anxiety comes from the fear of death, and the fear of not getting something you really want (job, kids, championship). It is crazy to read stories and watch videos of people who free climb and do dangerous things like that. Those people have completely accepted death. Which is the most interesting thing to me. Below: No harnesses or safety. Just Chalk.

Most people don’t want to talk about dying, but it is going to happen to all of us. So be remembered for helping others, treating others with respect, and doing the ethically and morally right thing to do. And smile. A lot.

At What Price: Playing With Injury by Spencer Mumford.

At What Price: Playing with Injury

So this is a long time coming. I created this documentary my senior year at Rollins College 15'. My major was Critical Media and Cultural Studies with an emphasis in sports culture.

I can't tell you how long this video took. The process started in January 2015 but the idea started a year before that. I worked very hard on this and I'm extremely proud. I used Auto-Ethnography as my research tool to make this documentary. A year later there are things I would have changed and done differently. This was an extremely emotional project at an emotional time (playing my last year of college baseball, family, and re-examining a lot of emotions from when I was a kid).

I am challenging the professionalization of youth sports and how the media portrays unrealistic expectations when playing with injuries to our youth. For those who don't know I had Labrum Surgery as a 16 year old. I also had another labrum surgery at 18 after re-tearing it. I played with a lot of pain as kid and it was not because of my parents. I did not want to be viewed as a "girl" or "wussy" in my teammates or coaches eyes. The culture of sports taught me to suck it up and keep playing, which is necessary when it is your job, but maybe not when I was 14 years old and couldn't pick up my shoulder after pitching.

I ask parents and coaches to examine the media being pushed across to your kids and the culture that surrounds them.

Thank you to Peter Nicoletto and Gabi Viljoen for being vulnerable and allowing your self to be shown on camera. Both of these people are amazing and do not blame their parents. Thank you for using story telling to help push my point across.
Enjoy.

My 1st post.... People would have thought sports if you knew me. But No! Its about the Marvel Comics Universe

Marvel Movies and Characters: MCU

                I recently just watched Captain America: Civil War. It was fantasticalious. Since about 2012, I have gotten really into the Marvel franchise. I am going to give my opinion on some of the characters and movies. Now listen, I don’t read the comics, so this is all based off of movies.

 

Captain America:             Marvel picked an amazing actor to portray Captain America. Chris Evans has a likeability to him that is hard to explain. All I know is, I want to be friends with Captain America because of Chris Evans. I love how ethical and morally right Captain America is and Evans comes across the screen as super genuine which is a reason why I love watching him in Marvel movies. Also the guy is completely yacked.

Iron Man:                            Iron Man is definitely likeable but in the sarcastic, cocky, a**hole kind of way. Lol. We all know what I’m talking about. Robert Downey Jr. plays this role so well in a lot of movies but in Marvel he is perfect. The best role that Downey ever played though was obviously Kirk Lazarus from Tropic Thunder. “I know who I am! I’m a dude, playing a dude, disguised as another dude.”

                                                In my opinion, Downey did his best acting as Iron Man in Civil War. Tony Stark is in a dark place in this movie and Downey is able to show that emotion very well. Though Stark does not come off as likeable as he usually is, the acting Downey does in this movie is amazing. I could feel the hatred in his eyes. I could feel his inner struggle. I was impressed watching him. He definitely brought Civil War to the next level.

Thor:                                     When I saw Thor- the first movie, I’m pretty sure I fell in love with Chris Hemsworth just like every other female that saw Thor (I’m a man) lol. Seriously though Hemsworth kills it as Thor. From seeing the comic book pictures of him, they look very similar. I think what makes Thor so awesome is Hemsworth’s deep voice. Like Captain America, I love how ethically right Thor is. What separates them his that deep thunderous voice, which life has taught us to be “powerful.” (That’s why police officers and people in charge usually deepen their voice when giving direction) And the fact that Thor is a god. I actually saw The Avengers before I saw the first Thor movie. After watching The Avengers I was like, “ohh this Thor guy is a badass.” I enjoyed the first Thor movie because Thor had to humble himself and become a great leader before being able to yield the power of the hammer. I loved the message the movie sent. Muy Bueno.  

Ant-Man:                            I’m gunna tell you right now, that Ant-Man may be my favorite character. Everyone’s first reaction to Ant-man was: “It looks stupid. A guy who controls ants?” “I just can’t picture Paul Rudd as a superhero.”

                                                Paul Rudd is my boiiiii (think of Flavor Flav when reading that). I think Rudd is perfect for this role and in Civil War he was hilarious, also he kicks some ass. I love Rudd’s comedic timing. His disinterested facial expressions are one of a kind (I really don’t know how else to explain it). He is another one of those likeable a**holes. However, the difference between him and IronMan is how humble Ant-Man is. He seems more relatable to fans because he doesn’t have a gazillion dollars. In Civil War it is funny to see how other super heroes react to his abilities. I thought all the actors and actresses in Civil War had great dialogue and timing with Ant-Man’s humor. He added a needed comedic part to this movie as well as Spiderman (who was hilarious).

Black Panther:                   Chadwick Boseman is phenomenal actor. His role as Jackie Robinson and James Brown, were absolutely fantastic. I loved the James Brown movie he did, there were parts where I cried in that movie, especially the ending. Marvel nailed it with choosing him as Black Panther. His role isn’t very talkative and for the people who don’t read the comic books we don’t know a lot about him. What we do know is his suit is made out of that vibranium stuff and dats pretty cool. And that he is going to play a big role from here on out. Because the secret avengers are hiding out in Wakanda.

Spider-Man:                      Tom Holland was hilarious. I am really excited to see his movie as spider-man coming out in 2017. His dialogue was well written and his necessity to please IronMan was a great addition to the movie. Even for the short amount of time he was in Civil War, I have already decided that I liked him better than Toby Maguire and the other guy from “The Social Network” lol.

Black Widow:                    I feel like I don’t need to say much. Dat gurl Scarlett Johannsen is one fine piece of ash (think of Chris Farley in Billy Madison pleaseee) lol. Besides how cool and good looking she is, her acting skillz are crazy good (notice that I put a z on skill, because she is that good). I especially love when Black Widow plays mind games with people to get information. Her manipulating people is so well written into the movies. Johannsen as an actress portrays so much emotion through her eyes. She doesn’t need a lot of facial expressions for the audience to feel her emotion.

Hawkeye:                           Jeremy Renner is awesome. Hawkeye as a character is awesome. That is all. Jeremy Renner is awesome, one more time. Just in case if you didn’t get the point.

Vision:                                  Vision is cool. You figure that Thanos will take the Mind Stone so darn. The best part about Vision is that Paul Bettany plays him (however I don’t know if he has a gender, but because Bettany is male, I will call Vision a he). The reason Paul Bettany is the best part is because of “A Knight’s Tale.” Rest in peace Mr. Ledger. Bettany plays a character named Geoffrey Chaucer and to me it is legendary. *Video*

 

Falcon:                                 Anthony Mackie’s best parts as Falcon are when he is showing undying allegiance to Captain America because well everyone loves Captain America. And secondly when he is arguing with or battling with Ant-Man. They have a funny relationship because in Ant-Man the movie, Falcon gets “beat” by the little guy. Also, Mackie has an awesome background. He studied at Julliard. Dat man can act.

Marvel as a company and the directors have chosen great actors and actresses to fill the roles these super heroes. I am beyond excited for The Avengers: Infinity part 1. I didn’t even talk about Guardians of The Galaxy and my love for Chris Pratt. Or Zoe <3.