Get all 11 Youngblood Brass Band releases available on Bandcamp and save 25%.
Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality downloads of Pax Instrumentals EP, Covers 1, 20 Years Young, RIP Arian Macklin, Pax Volumi, Riot Instrumentals EP, Is That A Riot?, Live. Places., and 3 more.
1. |
To Come Together...
00:32
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slice our tongues / and let the rhymes drip down / to stain the swords soft
crush my feet / in this mindless stampede / to stay stupid on the ground
tear out a floating heart / and squeeze the juice over / party-purchased plastic flowers
because everyone needs to grow green / and dry their eyes of shame
and we are the twice-striking lightning / beating the drum
that brings the rain
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2. |
Round One
05:25
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3. |
culture:envy:war
04:19
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culture envy culture war
culture envy culture war
culture envy culture war
count your dead
kill your poor
what are we looking to find here? absolution / attainment / atonement / justification
all priced to move / you standing like it's action / bide time with bought rhymes
high five to nine for naught / joke with misdirected lies
who the fuck aren't you kidding?
i knew you back in school / when there less actors to look up to
studying simplicity / we still meant the laughter
if you could love yourself the way you do them
there'd be a life after / the playwrights lowered their guns
there's peace pieces to pick up again / you used to build
mind your pen / remind your pen
i'm sick of the video you've rewound us in / the headaches:
still shots taken in sequence / hung over old dreams to dry
and develop moldy cultures / still:
all this sun and you're sleeping in the dark room
waiting on a film caked thick within / cleaned stained windowsills
instead of taking panes / out of eyes (i'm out of rhymes)
colorless you / hid behind heavy lids / eating surface shit
somewhere deep you swear respect exists (exits upstage right)
tragedy: infinitely more down than a kiss
the assumed and the actual are both a sad performance
an audience will answer if you question them correct
you don't see the bloody entertainers you're trying to resurrect
not knowing you're looking / is atonement cash or check?
absolved and justified / create an ego to protect
center level center roar
center level center roar
center level center roar
is an army
is a form
culture envy culture war
culture envy culture war
culture envy culture war
count your blessings
kill your poor
culture envy world over / respect drunk war sober
i'll fight for no flag and battle all devices
old men divide soil spoils for us to toil indecisive
over whose music's origins are righteous or damned
or if one is the same can both be wrought with your hands
we've wrung out all lands and brought
bought life back to life
only this time we'll go ahead and say the origins were white
heads in the sand that kept us warm from
the rhythms of the night
you'd think history would give fair warning
but it doesn't make for good sales or stories
and don't think we're done stealing the past
or telling it to you second-hand
while tipping the hour glass
and tilting our hats one third cock eyed / now dance.
i remember when the beat moved itself
through sacred trees and ceremonies
a hapless heiroglyph soul-branded
on the open spaces of consciousness
and we are all con-script scrawled across the middle canvas
draw fast + answer nothing
there's no question they've been here
glyph lock pick pockets patrolling the selling block
for cheap/easy targets
the dueling heretics of a new religion
doodling death wish on a fluttery paper soul / draw fast
black canvas impervious to shades' shame
paint the world lovely with indecipherable song
plant the flag of the insane in land unsold
forego the envious and warring to play the unknown
what is culture but the gift of dream
what is life but to sing sleep unseen
center level center roar
center level center roar
center level center roar
in an end many more
culture envy culture war
culture envy culture war
culture envy culture war
count your dead
kill your poor
by now you should've died twice
we're not communicating one line at a time
or a vision of a dying woman on my doorstep
fading fast the second time around
what's inside these sounds you mouth
did you hear the call from across the ages
the sea takes us back too quickly
and i'm far from grounded
now's the time to sail / before the last tree falls
i'm seeing my mentors sage-less / casting outside their realm
ex-spelling p.g. concepts to conjure self
i'm seeing priests prostrate to prophecy / praying in the wrong room
count your blessings / and sell the difference
i'm seeing indifferent souls in different cells
spilling blood like wine just to know they've been here
hold your pitcher / kill your pour
try to clip these wings / still we soar
frantically flapping the face of (not) our kids
heading south to sea too soon to say 'stay - i've seen'
nothing but envy for the green / war for the greed
innumerable dead blessings / and your poor peaceful resting
culture envy culture war
culture envy culture war
culture envy culture war
count your blessings
kill your poor
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4. |
Brooklyn
06:51
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5. |
Diaspora
03:53
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o siri jogou jogou
o siri chamou chamou
o siri tocou tocou
foi para jogar
la-la-e la-e-la-e-la-la
capoeira, ladainha
la-la-e la-e-la-e-la-la
sangue novo, sangue joven
then:
i saw senegalese shaman spinning seance spirituals
where the gods sat back and smiled at their singing child
i heard century-old griots disclose millennia-old secrets
to sleeping capoeiristas under metropolitan trees
i tasted goat's blood gumbo up in congo square cook-offs
in front of armstrong's bell and knew it was worth the wait
i inhaled government-manufactured crack / stacked skyscraper wax
counted the rings on records / passed peyote to the grand canyon
and called it hip-hop
consoling with consonance / remote-controlled confidence
its roots in a continent assumed life-incompetent
that's a hell of a sentence / and a sentence to hell
in the noise of the now i'm too deafened to tell
shango said we fake his dance very well
but the anger is remembered and amends are hard to come by
gazing second-hand at glory blurry
bolstered by their minds' wine and pelvic thrust sustenance
oshun sent her smell bedside / now i'm d.u.i of ancestry
and what's not quite guilt / more like regret
it's not my fight but i act like a vet
then obatala awoke / advising truth and rest
so here we float between decent prose and the present's constant wind
waxing nonchalant on misappropriated dark continents
wondering why two great human abnormalities are compassion and common sense
throwing secret new orleans/yoruba signs while scholars condescend
the spirits have left the room and i'm left to write their scent
despite aforementioned salvation
the pen cannot repent
now:
calm encased in cadence / la bateria playing fourteen times nameless
righteous revelers pounding dry pavement
to hear the earth answer back rocks that beat
jones-ing elves and metro-gnomes summon sleeping giants
living crowds coalesce and explode
lifting the shroud of death from wrecked homes
and wave my writes like an eternally burning flag
always fire-colored and -covered
coveted summer cavorting with lovers too loud for flesh
the type i haven't met yet but i'm sure you're becoming
after us, nothing / before screams, humming
dream something and we'll play it / next melody drifting downriver
sun-dressed and -kissed and -shone for new b-boys
no one ever dies / not in my sky
we are soaring so simply it's missed by reason and exists as silent song
artists wake up human to put attitude and violence on / put off tomorrow
what say we say what we mean to feel more often?
i'm real sure i'm less shot
i steal words from hip-hop like 'what' / but i love it like you
don't you love it when it's like you?
and we say 'that's my jam' because it is
because it's like that when it likes you
giving group affirmation like 'yes y'all' / and it goes on
because you don't stop / because if you did
the world would fall apart and these beats would return to the womb
of the universe where they'd wait another six billion years
for life to sound like 'boom-bap' again
so move
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6. |
Human Nature Pt. 2
05:10
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7. |
Thursday
02:24
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blow out the candles
tonight i don't want any light wasted
film americana fills my mouth
but even light doesn't taste good
that's why emcee's spit out
faced with conversative complacence
we turn away to rinse with acts
still this selfish plaque lingers
like twelve years of drum disease
mix black, white, new orleans, new york, and gargle twice daily
drops of art's saline
what we saw clearly in the womb most won't know at thirty
it's a thursday and i sit at home
worried of soul hygiene
like nat used all the trane-ing visine
d-finding literally what it is to be a mic fiend
we smoke away our pipe dreams
yellow teeth decay and fall out
we stay all out
in all ways
all out
wondering what hole this hell crawled out
if it's us it's god's mouth
if it's they call saul's house
we till the earth with our plow
'til the earth's scars heal
resurrect the stars' tao
pierce the night with large howls
piece ripe walls with shit like 'revolution right now'
square off with sons of darkness in night rounds
circle daughters of light
wearing bright crowns
i'm life-bound to free death
mics drowned in d's breath
smite crowds and need rest
i frown and detest white power and regress
to a beat down for these heads
and this mic ain't going nowhere
until i brush my teeth with justice leagues
and trust my beats to put me down
for another night
blow out the candles
and get some rest
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8. |
The Movement
07:21
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ours 'fight fire and become fire / any man that fights me fights the sun' (ben okri - the famished road)
it's always on
born marching to the beat of infinity's drum with similes sung / your songs sound off
we're writing a history wherein evil eventually lost
and still writing bad checks for what freedom's memory cost
calling it a good war like we should be sentimentally soft
naked emperors decree you turn the other cheek and essentially cough
lonely brides cry crystal tears over open veins
hope remains toxic / we're dying for a reason
for dying / for rhyming
go against the grain of greed and all soul sorcery
we fell off the tree disorderly
them seeing the fruits of slave labor are soon to see the orchard bleed
i can't get it out fast enough but i can afford to eat
last week i must've ingested like forty feet
but we'll get it right, and they'll hear it
and they'll pay and pay and pay
until it sounds like a movement again
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9. |
Avalanche
04:09
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we necromance dead crowds to grab a dance
clap their hands / b-boy stance / wack bands don't have a chance
savage plans to launch official spittle missiles
rattles riddles / battles little rappers' dribble / double wishful
thoughts of meeting the chief-ing chieftains speaking frequent
pursuing dreams and meanings with zeke and solomon brown
skills abound / still the sound fills your town
spilling down million pound avalanches of nouns
rap tantric / i'm sick of pop star antics
like kids throwing tantrums through hip-hop semantics
anthems are repeated / seriously candid
i don't leave impressions on cats / i leave them branded
most are underhanded / overstate their understanding
stanzas so bland we're demanding disbanding of your clan
so cold i should be spitting with mittens
while you're sitting with kittens / dissing missions with beats bitten
listen: to innovate you gotta be different
progress comes of struggle not of talking shit while lifted
you all play the misfits but you could rock the gifted
d-ciph avalanching to get the power balance shifted
'that's all fine and good kid but how're we supposed to win it'
community organizations / grassroots foundations
ending gentrifications / ghetto beautification
it's in our hands we're the hip-hop generation
avalanche – it's the force bombing from up north
veteran horns settling scores / better in wars than you and yours
the underground torch / shine bright enough to blind
here to move your feet, your mind, and your behind
avalanche – we're that force bombing from up north
militant prose / elevate shows / opening lore's musical doors
the underground torch / shine bright enough to blind
here to move your feet, your mind, and your behind
my band will turn those fresh beats rancid
if you're not buying the album you'd best be dancing
projecting thoughts like ender's ansible / intangible through mandibles
graffiti vandals exposed / government scandals exposed
war propaganda goes 'you're an army of one'
cats dwell in darkness / they aren't harming my sun
disarm with spit guns as we farm the fit young
endless toil / tarnished soil / inner-city alarmists
weed out generations / we replant in the basement
leave fans in contemplation / seeking inspiration
i speak out til my face bend with psalms to disgraced men
2 4 6 8 10 we tackle talk in twos
battle faulty crews / promptly rattle off the news
still ignore the signs as vital organs die
brain; leader / heart; artist / feet; worker / eyes; writer
as an MC are you the mouth or the liver? get live-r
destroy both but it's hard to repeat like toy boat
annoy folks? I hope / employ flow til joy grows
'that boy's croned' / eyes open / even sober so determined
to deter men to defer when a lone soul can't take the burden
word wardens warding weaves to keep grand wizards from our sermons
we're fervent with unlearning / hip-hop disperse the hurting
sixth verse inversion / urban rhapsodies from gershwin
we're back to these analogies / banal MCs rap fallacy
without a plea / no self-pity / even god is doubting me
make them listen when we shout I'm free
avalanche – just the force bombing from up north
selling them relevant etiquette / better than cheddar shit / pedal to metal retorts
the underground torch / shine bright enough to blind
here to move your feet, your mind, and your behind
avalanche – the force coming from up north
scoping smoking skogen showing shogun spoken from the source
underground torch / shine bright enough to blind
here to move your feet, your mind, and your behind
my band will turn your fresh beats rancid
if you're not buying the album you'd best be dancing
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10. |
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11. |
Camouflage
04:54
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12. |
Is An Elegy
05:38
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I'm sorry is easy to say when you've got arms to find solace in and lips to get drunk on
I remain ink-stained disdain ingrained / are you feeling entertained?
used to wonder what the pain was like when my father's heart exploded
common art sold it but this won't settle for silence / now i'm volatile with self-violence
trust me even patience wouldn't try this venerable eye-sense
since I found a beat left dying on the street and took her home to pen-stitch the bleeding rhythm
she'd been selling ism and we shared stories of correlating detonated coronaries
it's beyond scary but fear is the little death and I'm no Maud'dib
you colonized my Arrakis / helpless melange addict with the right tactic and the wrong practice
faulty emotional stillsuit left me dehydrated and rap-less
let the desert have me I didn't know it was the last kiss
you never told me it was the last kiss
so now you're gone
I'll play the solo solar soldier that's internally ignited / now where's your coal
to hell in an old soul / it can't burn like this
trial by nostalgia / like it's all love all over or all just
I guess I'm all folding god knows I can't deal holding sold trust
thought I was quicksilver but his gold rush / beat my cold crush to the promised land
took a last stand before that promise banned
tried to show promise jazz but he wandered past my thumb
and I hitched a ride alone to strife's home
a microphone a pen and bad company to keep
some things seem to seep out your pores / imbedded too deep to be indebted to speak
I'll be better next week / in the bed where you freak / I'm dead as text / believe me it's not the sex
no pity please / no patronizing subtlety suffering me / or irony laughing
publicly comedy tragically badgering my process of not mastering loss yet
game set to match light
at least give me enough cash to get back right / airport sadness indeed
and I train MCs sub-ways of emitting verbal rays
but this shit's got me busted like mass transience
or transcendence / because we all gotta transcend
gotta transcend
better my brother than my father / at least you kept it in the family
I shouldn't have assumed / that as moons rise only astute eyes
see my mind-scape's tenements bathed in light
project-laden fright / night is the time
I place self-wrought wooden dowels between street signs
so as to build thought-ladders / the rungs
my lungs exhale into you / admittedly codependent
what makes it worse are the love locks in front of the gateway
each day I add another / but your skeleton key
sees through it all with three words / so why keep building
if distance is the answer I can fake and call it ascension
aka not giving attention to how I really feel
I don't even know what rung that is
my greatest regret was not making this ladder/letter for two
I am what I write and I wrote this all about you
I'm all about you
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13. |
Under Your Influence
04:20
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short-armed and under your influence / tonight i go boxing with words
in a dark proud stance / nose dripping sweat / there's sprays a mess of life from my bloody lips
blindly swinging at shadows / flaying the flesh of us both / people hurry by / eyes downcast
fraying the line between maker and made / all white-knuckled ideas and exhausted tears
still the effort pools at my feet / and i stomp and i scream and i punch like i dream
with more abandon than perseverance / and for a pacifist i sure want to beat the shit out of the unseen
my so-called soldiers are too busy making a scene / so i call on death
and we become an unholy tag-team / undercutting rap dreams and spirit-slamming unbelievers
yeah / me and death stomping creation in the streets / bellowing our crazed anthems
with glorious fists like verbs / landing now on noun-nuns dave-dazed
firing our mouth-guns into the skulls of walk-less talkies like rahhhhhhh!
like Ra / head like 'so raw' / raw as vocal cords snapping / raw as our hands' skin drum-boxing the pseudo-enlightened
resurrecting executed slaves to proclaim right crosses / burning through the immortal melee
laughing with jabs / even eternal when slain
death was dealing himself thin / so i tagged in and began round two:
howl move burn change sing reach dance teach
grow play scream give read live write die
love cry cast fly guess wish ask train
do act will make bleed march need start
now black enters the fray and white tries to act gray
i've stopped bleeding as death becomes sane and slowly retreats appalled
at how much we're begging his favor / and twelve-year-olds afraid they won't
get to use their gun before sunrise
now the words dribble / stuttering incoherent / even rafis ferdinand has slumped himself home
and i'm alone on the corner again / mumbling to nobody
one solo backward is half-marching symphonic stub sickle
shivering timbers intended to save backward solo one
friends, country, justice / these are sounds quick forgotten
by street fighters alpha / just aimless concepts
like high schooling / my dueling / mc's spewing death standing next to death
like 'you gonna eat that?'
fuck / the world is spinning colors over my eyes
and somewhere there's a gutter to kiss
cats are pillars of static / i'm on some butterfly shit
meta-morphing back into a warrior ablaze inside a fire
inside a fire / feeding the sun's nuclear engine love / and one
suddenly the block's deserted and buildings pretend to be trees
we can't fight in the jungle of steel stolen screams
i pick up a syllable scythe and slice my way to round three:
ingest/embrace/inform/incite/ignite/encode/entrap/escape
exude/instill/inspire/imbue/entail/intend/expound/infuse
i enter a ring surrounded by everything and display my gloves to hoots and hollers
'audience!' i cry, 'it's time we let these words think for themselves.'
the sun replies / washing my face / and i'm content to bask for a second...
now bathed and solar-winded i turn center and see seven million objectives
one by one they fall / risen / and smiling something wonderful
for the sun has given daylight over to the stars to be on my side
i look over and kill my senses / it's on / we are so on
with fission psalms and diction bombs fixing throngs / eclipsing strong
but not us who find all inherent all
the sun's been here all along chilling with death and me
and these battles will forever not be fought by us
but the things we do without rallying the troops / plan / free
that's an order / tall and strutting his self-righteous ass on corners, open mics, and the same tired discussion
wake up to us / here's to shutting up and his followers in a glass box smoke-filled and falling
our squad is too much / catching the earth stalling
death and me and the sun makes three / answering the calling
rhyme:
coalesce. confiscate. activate. sacrifice. specify. teleport. captivate. catapult.
exercise. advocate. disavow. saturate. culminate. cultivate. sensitize. occupy.
remember.
embody.
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14. |
V. I. P.
06:39
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15. |
...And Leave Alone
03:39
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you try to tell your feet to stay put
bu the sky keeps reining you in / stretching air thin
so float / cloud-charged over the dead city
where steel people throw their hands up for what weather might bring
and we are the twice-striking lightning
fighting for a return to flesh mode
without the culture-biting whitening
flying past the easy anomaly
that traps most seekers with thoughts of colorblind teachers
and infinitely attentive students: analogy
it's not that simple / it's more simple and human
than numbers and tones
people live in binary code
and never get to three
there's no eye left to see
i'm living post-free, post-me, sending unmarked gifts care of your ears, packaged-pre
catch us in a child's cheek as smiles wrinkle time in hell
and thrice we come crashing down in thunderous ovations of our own making
- little kids covering their ears because the truth is a loud foreign noise bad men telling good boys about the dangers of kite-flying on a night such as this so they leave copper keys locked in hearts forbade exposure lest another male sense sensitivity on such an epic level -
a feminine step / fairies skip between our heavens lost in unburdened bliss
not until you're dead though and ready to scorch the earth you made your immoral bed on these past decades
blind the blind before they fall in skip
bleed for me and we'll consider the application
hurt like her and we'll acknowledge the fire
die like this, this, and this here
love learns to live burns and mistrust brief judgment from the sky
it's round as it seems / to drop a metaphor supreme
and the whole world a simile for dream
meant to get foggy / shunning mental memory / too short-lived for what our bodies recall
and what spirits are (still) called
- it's waiting somewhere for all of us converting stuck feet to static charges in the stratosphere against the greater necropolitan area - a forward march - an all-out attack with war drums and battle lightnings storming globalized gates and stock-optioned automatons to win back young minds that have no idea of the power inside the space we're spread amongst -
slice my tongue
and let the rhymes drop down
to stain the swords soft
crush my feet
in this mindless stampede
to stay stupid on the ground
tear out a floating heart
and squeeze the juice
over party-purchased plastic flowers
because everyone needs to grow green
and dry their eyes of shame
and we are the twice-striking lightning
beating the drum
that brings
the rain
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Youngblood Brass Band Madison, Wisconsin
Original riot jazz crew, wrecking stages everywhere all the time since 1997. New EP 'Pax Instrumentals’ out now. Members are available for online lessons, commissions, arrangements, and custom studio work as well. Thanks for listening.
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