It’s funny cause I never saw this video before I came up with the ‘Fantastic‘ strip (I actually wrote it in like 2008). But this is pretty much where I was going with that strip, and I really hope you guys got it. I kinda like J. Cole, but I personally am a little off-put by his harsh language. After ‘Lights Please‘, I thought that he was gonna go in that “who we really are” direction…but I guess we’ll have to see.

Baatin, left, for instance, seemed to have a strong connection with 'that space sh**'.

Okay, so here’s a thought: When people die, especially loved ones, we always have the tendency to attach the ‘rest in peace’ phrase to that person’s legacy. However, it occurs to me that, considering the physical and mental state of being that each of us is currently in, there must not be a lot of ‘resting’ going on at all once someone passes on.

If a dog is chained up in the back yard all its life, never having seen the outside world beyond that yard, when the dog is finally set free from the chain, you can imagine the dog would like to roam (that’s where the expression ‘let a dog roam’ comes from). Just the same, we have to realize that we are spiritual beings chained to a human experience. This physical world is very much limited in scope, as far as what we can do and where we can go. Many of us believe that, spiritually, there are entirely different laws of physics (for lack of a better description) that allow us to travel through space-time to locations we would never be able to reach in our lifetimes. I guess that’s just a supposition, but a good example of what I’m trying to say is the Tower of Babel.

I had a conversation with my dad the other day about this story, and it kinda struck me: Man couldn’t have actually gotten to Heaven just by building upwards. There’s no air up there, and there’s just space to be explored, no Heaven. No physical Heaven, anyway. Heaven is a place that you can only arrive at once you’ve shed your physical being (and in the case of some apparitions, your worldly attachments). Obviously there’s more to it in the Christian version than that, but you get the gist. Besides, we’ve already gotten there anyway, even AFTER we were disseminated by language and/or disposition.

So travelling through the cosmos takes more than just building a rocket. One can’t imagine that you die and just hang around Earth kicking rocks. I know I wouldn’t. And at least in physical terms, whatever method of travel you utilize as an ethereal being would seem to be the opposite of resting (getting back to the general idea of this post). A ‘dead’ soul would probably be so invigorated after shedding this entire dimension of stress, heartache, separation, individualism, and overwhelming disability (can’t fly, using 10% of brain, can only see in the ‘visible’ spectrum of light, about a 0.1% chance of telepathic abilities, etc.) that it would probably go frolicking in the wilderness of whatever’s out there to frolic in. Like a dog.

Again, there are biblical explanations for what happens when you die, but as you might have gleaned from at least this blog post by now, I’m a newborn skeptic. Newborn, meaning there’s still some things i’m wary about being skeptical about. But that’s an entirely different post altogether.

Either way, we shouldn’t necessarily wish someone rest when they pass on, but instead wish them a full new life with new experiences and complete freedom.

Enjoy.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Lyrics:

In the pursuit of tryina make myself relevant/
I’m like ‘forget it, all I wanna do is really vent’/
Everything I want from out this world is at my fingertips/
But when I wake up in the afternoon it seems I forget that
I’m the illest cat from Indiana to grip a pen/
Stone’s throw from Chi-town, hop-skip from Michigan/
Not representin’ it, not influencin’ it/
Only returned once to the place my tuition went/
Ever since I graduated, now I’m out in Cali homes/
Diggin out my dreams from the post-grad catacombs/
I’m sure I’m not alone, this is where you go to live ‘em/
All this opportunity, still I’ve come to no decision/
I could rattle off about a hundred things that I can do/
If I wanna master one, 99 I’ll have to boot/
‘99 was rapping two, years and plus eleven more/
Longest thing I did besides, eating-breathing-sleeping or/
Playing video games, questioning the universe/
I’ve been called a nerd, cause to popular I’m too adverse/
Now you see I’m doing Earth-Tones tryina paint a picture/
Of the way I see the culture (plus!) high school is like a fixture/
Of the times we’re living in I figure when I blow up It’ll start making some dividends/
Then I’ll present my ends/
To, each other introduce them you know what I mean/
First thing I buy with a lotta money’s a lotta bling/
Thousand-dollar jeans, cars with a lotta screens/
Iono, a hockey team/
Whatever’s hot it seems costs a lotta green, I’ma pay off my debt first/
Open up a business where my people can network…/
Cause I’m bad at, staying in touch/
And uh, they must be too cause we don’t talk too much/
So here’s to 2010 gettin it in and tryina cover ground/
Thank You to this instrumental I’m presently done with, now.

…

This is a new decade, time for new methods/
Time for new quests and time for new questions/
I’m not one for reso-lutions for the new year/
But who here is sick of s***?/
Okay, who here got everything they ever imagined as a Christmas gift?/
I know somebody wished for world peace; the point is/
We’ve got a ways to go–/
The devil is the only one with whom we should be, con-frontational/
And, no matter your religion, there is a devil in it/
An entity that’s tempting you to be like ‘just forget it’/
But whatever is your mission, you should be relentless/
And don’t forget to remember what the value of a friend is/
See, I’m just a penman, captain of this ship I got/
Floatin on the ocean with the motions of the hippest-hop/
Last time I asked you and you didn’t wanna listen ahk/
I am gonna end it here so let the instrumental stop!

I’m just wondering, cause I watch a lot of NBA highlights, and they always seem to have some pretty distinctive beats. Some jazzy, most hip-hop-esque. I’m more wondering cause I wanna know how that person got the job…or even, who the person is that decided to get these kinds of beats on NBA highlights. See below for the kind of beats in question. Not that they’re that great, but still…