four musings on 9/11

I worship the late prophet, the great Mohamed / Omar Atta, for his courage behind the wheel of the plane / Remind me when I was dealin’ the ‘caine.

1)

that same weekend i saw the snow globes. snow globes that said “never forget”. i was with my mom and dad outside century 21, right across from ground zero. they already had merch. t shirts i could see, screen printing seems easy enough but the snow globes... that’s what stuck out to me. i don’t even remember what we bought that day to be honest with you.

2)

every morning i went through times square to transfer to the 1 train to go to high school. as i walked through the tunnel i saw them. the national guard running up and down the corridor. guns at the ready in case anything happened. it became the usual, it became something i was accustomed to, but it never became normal. it was threat level red. it was always red in new york. ironically this is what it took to make us “safe” enough for the rest of america. just two years ago we were commie puerto rican jew homos who wanted your kids and now they brought us to their bosom because our shirt was bloodied. we got knocked out and you looted our house and had the nerve to say we didn’t have what you wanted.

3)

the protests were just an excuse to cut. at least on weekdays. on the weekends i saw giant buses go down to dc, full of people desperate to let bush know what they really thought of his war. not that you heard about it on the news. you might have heard some comedians imply that he had something to do with 9/11. or you might have heard kiss(top 5 dead or alive) outright say it on the radio, risking the ire of the falafel maven bill o reilly as he reaches to keep his two bit schtick going. but a few years later even after katrina even after iraq and afghanistan were depleted even after the millions of dollars of books and t shirts with pictures of bush as a monkey or as hitler find their way to some accursed eternal fire 50 miles from accra you will see a getty photo of one of the worst war criminals in american history(which is truly an accomplishment) giving an old man candy to michelle obama and your heart will melt. yours will, anyway.

4)

g unit and dipset could have only been big then. the flashy operators and mercenaries who wore kevlar vests through southside queens juxtaposed against the newer and scrappier blood sets that popped up like spores throughout new york in the wake of giuliani. the militarization in 50’s presentation was anything but subtle. the dog tags, calling his team a “gorilla unit”. even his tactics versus the accursed ja rule(i’m not even joking here im not a fan), jadakiss, fat joe and former ally nas(another take from us foreign policy) are emblematic of shock and awe.

as far as cam’ron and them go the comparisons to al qaeda and the taliban were apropos. they were a set of cells: dipset, purple city, the senate and so on. a reflection of the corporate style organizations and kingpins of the 80s falling apart and giving way to localized insurgencies that found their banners behind the bandanas and beads of the west. funny how fallujah and fosterville both became victims of western influence isn’t it?

i like a lot of fifs music from that run. he’s maybe one of the best hook writers of all time and legitimately a great songwriter from a technical standpoint. but my favorite(not necessarily the best the best is hov) rapper of all time is cam. i’ve said that my all time favorite run is wha he was doing around this time. he’s technically brilliant, he’s funny, he’s telling great stories and he’s... personable! he takes l’s despite everything. truth be told the reason i love billy woods now is because he does a lot of the same stuff cam was doing at this time in that regard. especially the adlibs.

if 50 was the image of new york that bloomberg projected to the world then cam was the actual city in all of its imperfections and flaws. a true populist hero fighting in his own way against america as it encroached upon us.