In the Face of No Agreement (ITFONA)

How you gonna relate?

I’m living life without a second to waste

these dreams I gotta chase

spent enough years running in place

consequences I faced

I spit out the bitter taste

and on the other side of suffering I found God’s grace

sprayed like a can of mace in my life

and owned the fact that most the time, I created my strife

realization pain sharp like the tip of knife

like suddenly being thawed from being frozen in ice

forget the roll of dice

it’s a choice that I made

to never ever go back to that place where I stayed

statistically, I shoulda never seen this year

so realistically, I’m only moving forward from here

cuz it’s a gift to me that I can even breathe this air

here’s my gift to you, I hope that you’re receiving this prayer

and I ain’t holding back nothing

half of ya’ll that say you with me really need to stop frontin’

and if you with me then stand tall

otherwise don’t stand at all – come on

Hook:

In the Face of No Agreement

staying focused on what I believe in

at times I feel like I’m losing

I gotta keep moving – keep moving on

my aim’s to put a stain in the depths of your brain

so next time, instead of pulling that trigger, you act sane

I speak truth, get looks of disdain

cuz the facts are unsightly like piss-stains

they spit game

most of these kats, (yo) they spit lame

I’m tryna get your soul unchained

and that’s church

most people on earth try to prove they self-worth

not realizing they’re no better or worse

and that hurts

to an ego that’s designed to protect the self

but self-worth is a myth, that represses the self

thru hip hop I’m expressing myself

just professing the wealth

that God gave me

it’s not all gravy

most human beings are intellectually lazy

and wonder why life seems crazy

ya’ll amaze me

a moment of clarity like Jay-Z

or alcoholics when the past is ghost like rap clichés

we create life today, that’s what we say

so ya’ll can get with that, or get off the freeway

Hook:

In the Face of No Agreement

staying focused on what I believe in

at times I feel like I’m losing

I gotta keep moving – keep moving on

in the face of no agreement

feel like I’m bobbing and weaving

from deceiving thoughts and demons

staying focused on what I believe in

through the seasons I stay true my vision without a reason

thieving heathens try obstructing my path, I’m still breathing

the only real obstacles I face are in my own mind

externally the world is my oyster, a gold-mine

we can be run by it or own time

and Noyz came at the right time for this rhyme

so sublime

years past since smoking a dime – my mind’s clear

I ain’t running from nothing – I stand to face fear

world’s been waiting for me to appear, now I’m here

hip hop’s train of thought, yo I had to commandeer

I just peddle on this bike of life and God steers

eyes wide and I’m listening close with both ears

before I put pen to pad or I pick up the mic

I stay conscious of the fact that I’m reppin for life

you may or not think that’s significant

but my prolificness when I’m spittin it is strictly magnificent

we can create a future ya’ll can see with me

word is bond, whether or not you agree with me

Hook:

In the Face of No Agreement

staying focused on what I believe in

at times I feel like I’m losing

I gotta keep moving – keep moving on

From Where I Came

If you knew what I went through in my formative years

you wouldn’t question my integrity, I’m more than sincere

from where I came: a life riddled with fear

not recognizing my own face when I looked in the mirror

drown my pain with the beer

more than likely drinking the straight liquor

quicker just to make my skin thicker, killing my liver

just so I could be confident enough to deliver

myself unto the world, I was born to be a giver

swimming against the river, so cold I’d start to shiver

shake quiver from withdrawals, I’d fall and try to figure

why some people got the whole pie and I can’t see a sliver

vision skewed, feeling blind

struggling to find, peace of mind

started giving them a piece of my mind

thesis reaching without preaching, teaching, featuring I’m

speaking in the nick of time, amongst the greatest of crimes

is self-repression, here’s the lesson, if you seek you will find

HOOK:

It’s not life if we only exist

what we spend our time resisting is bound to persist

there’s no mystery it’s

what I’ve learned from the strain and the pain

we make our rules or we play somebody else’s game

I’ve given up keeping score because nothing is fair

and despite that I had to find the reasons to care

because selfishness was loneliness that drove me insane

now I can never go back to the place from which I came

My awareness of the world was painful

knowing what I did and not acting was shameful

not being thankful

although I was eating, had shoes on my feet’n

there’s people starving in the streets’n their bellies ain’t full

lacking perspective I was also lacking clarity

focused on my pain, thinking no-one could compare to me

tried to numb it with the herbs and rum

drinking straight Appleton

and smoking blunts that changed the colour of my lungs

standing in front this ladder, staring at the bottom rung

with every step I fell 2 steps back, was feeling dumb

even worse, started thinking that my life wasn’t vital

like a curse, losing hope, started feeling suicidal

crushed by my depression, distrust like and infection

that was spreading through my system

fucked up beyond recognition

I thank God every day that I overcame that position

‘cause death of my old self meant that I gained a mission

HOOK:

It’s not life if we only exist

what we spend our time resisting is bound to persist

there’s no mystery it’s

what I’ve learned from the strain and the pain

we make our rules or we play somebody else’s game

I’ve given up keeping score because nothing is fair

and despite that I had to find the reasons to care

because selfishness was loneliness that drove me insane

now I can never go back to the place from which I came

Regardless of the circumstances we’ve got choices to make

the way I see it, I can choose either to give or to take

in every single situation, I can build and create

or I can destroy and employ mechanics of hate

where I was in my past, I didn't know that it could be

a different way because I just couldn’t see

I didn’t know I could be me

I didn’t know that I could choose to believe

a different life – nowadays I’m a different kind of free

I used to think in black and white, but I know that wasn’t right

because the world lives in shades of gray

that compose our everyday

I heard ‘em say: “perspective ain’t everything,” but it’s close so

we can either grow or decay

you see I had to stop burning all the herb and tobacco

put the plug in the jug so I could break my mental shackles

now I earnestly believe there’s no problem I can’t tackle

there’s no war anymore, because I won the only battle

HOOK:

It’s not life if we only exist

what we spend our time resisting is bound to persist

there’s no mystery it’s

what I’ve learned from the strain and the pain

we make our rules or we play somebody else’s game

I’ve given up keeping score because nothing is fair

and despite that I had to find the reasons to care

because selfishness was loneliness that drove me insane

now I can never go back to the place from which I came

60 Bars (You Ain't Hip Hop)

You ain’t hip hop

You ain’t a rap-star

I see these specimens up close in a glass-jar

Ya’ll can fall back now, ya’ll can back off

half of ya’ll say you grinding, really just slack off

I make love to the beat – you suckas jack off

bust on the track like I’m busting a hymen

what you say you represent, most of ya’ll lying

I’m on some Yoda-Jedi-Zen shit, stop trying

Do or not, otherwise make excuses, I’m ruthless

and I’m a bad dentist to these cavity rappers

which means that I’ma leave ya’ll toothless

the booth is a sacred place that you can’t desecrate

emulate, what you see on TV then you hesitate

when it comes to surfaces I penetrate through lyricism

got my artistry way beyond empiricism

suckas MCs huddling, in a fear-position

rappers spit clichés about how they keep it real

but the fact is they only as authentic as the feel

that’s some wackness, my word is my bond – my integrity

while kats give their word like they’re drunk off the Hennessy

and forget what they said so it’s easily revealed

that their word don’t mean shit – splattered like bugs on windshields

rapper voodoo dolls: tell me how these pins-feel

claiming true but ya’ll never been-real

doing what ya massa-chooses/Massachusetts like you grew up in Springfield

that ain’t racial-epithet, your masta is your mental-set

that you don’t even know you have, hidden in the context

best that you consider this a bomb-threat

cuz ticking in the brain’s pain stuck without a faucet

people more repressed than gays in the closet

I hit ‘em, they like “yo FUBB stop it

you exposing way too much about how to make a profit”

like Black Thought said,

“rappers spittin nails into their own coffins”

in the danger zone now it’s too late for caution

fuck rappers claiming that they be the bosses

obviously bullshit, that’s what they facade is

I see their inauthenticities like blips on the radar

I choke ‘em from afar, similar to Darth Vader

breathing hard, they got the fear of man instead of God

like they bluffing on the river just praying for that card

to show up, I can’t front, sometimes life is hard

but we always got a choice of how we gonna respond

face it with a sober mind or choose to face it with the chron

despite, what’s going on

we create, right and wrong

our fates, are not drawn

we say, what’s true law

we pray, to the Koran

or with a bible recital or psalm

speak directly to God when I compose a song

that’s just the type of shit I’m on

love it or hate it I still state it

I already made it

motherfuckers tried to shit on my grave and desecrate it

I took the environment I found myself in and elevated

high pitched on the mic you can find me in the treble

people hate, but water tends to seek its own level

I keep climbing higher and some heads left to settle

though I offer metamorphosis to all these walking corpses-es

my third eye see walking dead, sixth sense reports the shit

blessed with perspective, through raps I portion it

instead of forcing my hand like an extortionist

fuck where your Porsches is

raw? of course it is

slaughter all these false prophets

leave this rap game looking like an orphanage

Book Review: A Year of Misanthropic Confessions by Andy Carrington

Get the book HERE.

Reaching a level of content drunkenness, by myself, and writing about my day-to-day experiences is an attempt to calm my hatred after my late shifts have finished. It’s not really working in that sense, but it is at least a method for recollecting my thoughts. It allows me to scrape by in life with a small amount of dignity intact, despite belonging to the same group of species as a majority of the KNOB JOCKEYS currently living on this planet. –Andy Carrington, A Year of Misanthropic Confessions (pg. 21)

This being the second review I’m writing for Mr. Carrington, and seeing the title and cover of this book, I had a sense of what to expect before reading. Carrington’s writing may be hard to swallow for some, as it can be raw, crass, and at times unsparing in the use of “offensive” language. What makes his writing bearable and at times downright brilliant, however, is his keen sense of social insight and ability to explain his perspectives with the use of various literal and figurative devices.

The Introduction section of the book, aptly titled The Reason I Don’t Want to Get to Know You, displays the author’s ability to perceive and analyze social situations around him. Ultimately, his analyses leave him feeling more justified in being an introverted, self-proclaimed “recluse.” There is a strong cynical tone to Carrington’s writing, likely due to an unwavering sense of moral conviction within himself, coupled with a seeming inability to accept those around him who don’t meet his standards of moral conduct. As I read through this book, however, I began to wonder how much Carrington actually holds true to his own sense of morality, and how much he uses his self-righteousness to cover up his own social ineptitude and as an excuse for what seems to be untreated alcoholism. Regardless of what is actually going on within the psyche of the author, it makes for some bloody interesting reading.

In the first chapter, Hometowns Suck (The Pontefract Experience), Carrington beautifully articulates what “many might say” is “the root of [his] ‘problem’” (pg. 7). He explains the rampant alcohol abuse and violence in his hometown, where inflated egos abound and vagrancy is commonplace. While judging his environment harshly, Carrington admits that “most who know me may be saying that I’m hardly a sober, level-headed individual at the best (and worst) of times, but at least I do it within the confinement of my own home” (pg. 9). From the author’s perspective, he is entitled to self-righteousness because he limits the destructive capability of his own internal demons. While he may be prone to the same alcoholic tendencies as the people in his own community, Carrington seems to sublimate his rage into his writing, which may be what prevents him from going out and joining the masses in their raucous behaviours.

In subsequent chapters, Carrington touches on the topics of superficial relationships (Chapter 2), dealing with employment agencies/being unemployed and in poor health (Chapter 3), the butchering of the English language by modern-aged “text-speak” (Chapter 4), working as a bartender (Chapter 5), his hatred for non-drinkers (Chapter 7) and idiotic bar clichés by patrons (Chapter 9 – great chapter), relationships, intimacy, suffering, illness, betrayal and heartbreak (Chapter 10), covert racism (Chapter 11), hatred of “Eminem Fanboys” (Chapter 12 – kudos for the hip hop culture acknowledgement!), big chain coffee companies (Chapter 13) and “Star Wars Fanboys” (Chapter 14 – the original three ARE pretty good, Andy…haha…), to the difficulties he faces due to his anti-social and harshly judgmental tendencies in everyday life (Chapter 15).

Part of the reason that Carrington’s writing is so inflammatory may be that he doesn’t consider it particularly safe to be vocally self-expressed in his everyday life. As he writes in Chapter 5: “I sacrifice my freedom of speech by remaining silent in my line of work and supplying these people with what they need at the time of asking just so that I am able to get by on a week-to-week basis” (pg. 16).

A major strength of Carrington’s writing is his self-awareness of what many would consider subtle choices that actually have a huge impact on his life. In order to hold his job as a bartender and “get by” in society, he knows he can’t be a loose-cannon and express his thoughts openly. As a result, he takes his frustration out by drinking and writing. Carrington also infuses his writing with an abundance of dry humour and wit, for example: “But people are people; they’re everywhere I go. Aside from them, I actually quite like my job” (pg. 21). While appearing to loathe most people around him, not to mention his belief that the majority of human beings are “fucking PATHETIC” (pg. 17), the author at times conveys what fringes on an affinity for his knowledge of human nature, even if he has contempt for the dark sides of human nature itself.

Being a poet who writes largely in stream-of-consciousness, there are some hidden gems of great poetry within A Year of Misanthropic Confessions. When describing his experience of betrayal and heartbreak while at the same time suffering near-death encounters with Crohn’s Disease in Chapter 10, his poignant words shine through: “I just deteriorated into a shell” (pg. 26). Again, his sharp sense of self-awareness as to the formative experiences that helped shape his current perspectives is evident when he writes how the betrayal of a lover he trusted was “one of my main catalysts for now hating and distrusting a majority of the people whom I come into contact with on a daily basis” (pg. 27).

There’s no shortage of UK slang and curse-words in this book, many of which are quite amusing. Some notable, personal favourites are: “fuckwit” (pg. 10), “scrote” (pg. 8), “toffee-nosed twats” (pg. 16), and “knob jockeys” (pg. 21). One complaint I have about Carrington’s writing is the frequent use of the CAPS LOCK. While it may be effective if used infrequently, words and phrases being completely CAPS LOCKED occur often enough to become a little distracting and annoying to the reader. His words and tone would come across just as loud and perhaps clearer sans CAPS LOCK (we get it Andy…you’re PISSED OFF!).

While this is a review of the author’s work, I find it hard not to express my own opinions about the author himself, in an attempt to provide some context for readers and possibly even make a difference for Mr. Carrington. For all of Carrington’s intelligence, wit, and social insight, it’s evident from his writing that he has a few major failings. He is unforgiving of himself and others, causing tremendous resentments and hatred to build up inside him. He refuses to take responsibility for his alcoholism, thus preventing him from dealing with his underlying emotional/spiritual issues. Finally, and most obviously, he chooses mostly to focus on all that is wrong in the world around him, rather than actively seeking solutions to societal ills. Let me be clear: Carrington’s writing is in itself a great contribution to the world. He sheds light on a lot of the darkness in the world that people don’t want to look or at the very least are ignorant of. Awareness is the first step towards being able to address any issue. I would love to see him take a step further, and provide some of ideas in his writing as to how to remedy the problems he sees and create change in the world. It’s my personal belief, however, that these insights will not be forthcoming as long as he refuses to confront and take responsibility for his own personal demons.

I’d like to end this review with my favourite quote from the entire book (from Chapter 8: Big-Chain-Coffee-House-Drinkers). If you agree with me that this is brilliant writing, or if it even amuses you in the slightest, I highly recommend you go check out Andy Carrington’s entire repertoire and dish out the couple of dollars necessary to buy his books and support this writer (not mention there's some free downloads!):

“Yes, with their fake smiles and big cups containing the BLOOD OF A THOUSAND AFRICAN CHILDREN, you’ll find them in there at lunchtime and then again around five-ish discussing the best way of EATING THEIR BOSS’S DICK in a bid to get higher up the food chain” (pg. 31).

Intertwined

I want to take another breath

of your soul,

I want you to take

all you want of mine.

I want to wash away the dust,

the shadows that get our eyes

so covered and misguided,

to wipe away the pain

that I caused,

that you caused,

that the world causes.

I envision:

you and me,

walking on a beach

of powder-white sand,

hand in hand, fingers intertwined,

your hair brushing

against my face,

where our greatest worry

is the setting of the sun.

Looking into your eyes

I see an entire world.

compassion and wonder,

love and tenderness,

fiery excitement and icy slumber.

I tell myself not to,

but I keep going back.

I keep going back to those nights,

our nights,

when there was no telling

where your body ended

and mine began,

where the colours of our skin mixed

to form a chocolate too sweet

for any woman or man to taste.

In my loneliest nights,

I still feel you here,

my breath on your neck;

your breath on mine.

Our souls forever intertwined

in a mortal dance,

in a love

that surpasses the flesh.

Quality Control

A verse I just wrote for a collaborative track I'm doing with my homie Crossword and an artist named L...check it:

we coming like Talib with that Quality

check my thoughts, you can twitter follow me

rather that you walk with me, talk with me

collaborate possibly

I’m interested in what you stand for philosophically

would you compromise the art for a profit, B?

or represent the culture and get off it, B?

tell lies to the kids or, educate the youth like Socrates

and risk your whole life in the process, see

this is who I am, I can’t make it a mockery

quality music, definitely there’s a paucity

most what’s coming out is a monstrosity

up late writing rhymes awesomely

midnight oil burning caustically

sleep is what it’s costing me

but I would sacrifice nearly all

for this music, stakes is high - the writing on the wall

saying now or never, for forever where I’m living

giving this for you and yours, your parents and your children