ZENtheRapper 02/24/25

“Focus on ya form / They told me GO AND GET IT”

Today’s Word of The Day is:

Confer:

(1) V: to discuss something with somebody, in order to exchange opinions or get advice

(2) V: to give somebody an award, a university degree or a particular honour or right

Definitions from Oxford Learner’s Dictionary.

My new song is now available on all (most — I rushed the distribution button on this one lol) streaming services! When releasing new music, there’s a million things I could talk about, but I’m going to take a cue from the performers I saw at Fire Doll Studios last weekend, and use this space and time to tell you about the things that inspired me while crafting this thang.

While helping a friend at the library… during a break, we took a walk around to window shop the aisles of books. Eventually, we came upon this one that caught my eye:

Table of Contents:

1. Creation
2. Earth
3. The Moon
4. The Sun
5. The Structure of The Universe
6. Planets and Moons
7. Constellations, The Zodiac, and The Milky Way
8. Eclipses and Transits
9. Comets and Meteors
10. Auroras and Atmospheric Phenomenon

What really moved me about this book was the dazzling, full-color illustrations adorning each chapter. In this incredible view-book, Michael Benson scours the world’s art history and science history archives to show and compare how leading thinkers have depicted different facets of the universe from the human perspective.

With this study, Benson shows how picturing the universe was an ambitious, risky, courageous task filled much guess-work and many beefs. You see, when you tell people, for instance, that the sun is at the center of the universe, as opposed to the Earth, it is destructive for their human-centered theologies; unfathomable was it that Providence might provide for us to be a cosmic accident in the grand scheme of things.

This book, Cosmigraphics: Picturing Space Through Time, inspired me to speak (rap) bravely about the things I know, to have faith in the principle of truth prevailing, and to not be afraid to be ahead of my time.

That last point is an important one. I’m not exactly sure who the audience for this track is. Well, I have ideas, only problem is those ideas exclude many of the people I interact with on a daily basis. Digital strategies can feel so dehumanizing and alienating, and while most of my friends seem to respect my music, they don’t seem interested in it as listeners. When I sent this track in to my friends at HY-C Media, for example, they butchered the pronunciation of the name, and then made no comments about the lyrics of the song at all after listening.

Sometime around January, I started reading this book called Masks of The Universe: A Physicist’s Search For Meaning In The Universe. The ideas in this book (with considerably less pictures) coalesce beautifully with the ideas in that (newer to me) Cosmigraphics book.

Table of Contents (for the part I read)

Part 1: Worlds in The Making

1. The Magic Universe
2. The Mythic Universe
3. The Geometric Universe
4. The Medieval Universe
5. The Infinite Universe
6. The Mechanistic Universe

Whereas Cosmigraphics focused on the physical ways that universes were depicted — as in how they were drawn/painted/constructed onto physical maps — in Masks, Harrison focuses on the leading ideas or paradigms that have informed people’s religious, philosophical, and scientific beliefs — peoples worldviews — over the course of history (even speculating on pre-historic times). What are the grand cosmic pictures (pictures here as in ideas) that have organized Human’s understanding of the world around them, and how have these shifted through time? He is careful not to fall into the narrativizing model that depicts former worldviews as irrational, and current worldviews as the pinnacle of progress.

As a thinker, this book inspired me to consider the ways in which my world — my society’s universe — conceptualizes itself. In The Information Age, time moves much faster than our clocks can account for, but still — what are some things that are relatively stable about the world since I’ve been a part of it (1997)?

In what ways could the break-neck speed of The Information Age violate this model of the adoption and evolution of Big Ideas? How might our postmodern intellectual climate allow for a wide divergence of Big Ideas, while retaining conceptual unity, and what could that mean for human unity, for community, for international relations?

As always, the questions are far more important than the answers.

Lastly, I have a friend at work… who I’ve been connecting with over old school hip hop. She’s a newer hall monitor, but comes from a previous generation, and when I rapped for her in the hallways one day, she gave me positive energy. It was energy that told me she understood my music in a way a listener might, in a way my friends generally have not. But it was when I showed all my coworkers my Smile Politely Article that she came up to me and revealed herself to be a hiphophead.

Anyways, I love Golden Age Hip Hop, but only as someone who has attempted to go back through the archives after the fact. She is someone who lived through it, and continues to make life through listening to it. So she’s been putting me on to some acts that I could take cues from like Roxanne Shante, Chief Rocka, Ice Cube, Digable Planets, and The Pharcyde.

It’s dope because I’ve been telling her some of the things I’m trying to do with my sound as an artist, and she’s been directing me to these “all-time” great examples of that particular sound profile or sound ambition to study and consider. Mrs. K, if you’re reading this — thank you for being my curator for golden rap sounds.

This intervention of inspiration mirrors the way I approach reading literature for my lyricism; I’m listening to these legendary emcees not only for inspiration, but for affirmation as well. See, this New-School BoomBap thing I’m doing with my music, it can leave me feeling pretty alone as a creator. Most of my collaborators have entirely different sonic ambitions than I do. Listening to some kindred spirits singing from the recent past… it’s affirming for the groovy, mystical, cosmic, learned style I’m trying to step behind.

When you play “Copernicus,” I want you to be thinking with me. You may identify with me as a cosmic thinker who feels somewhat marginalized. You may be able to feed off the infectious bounce and confident energy infused throughout the song. Hopefully, the lyrics will cause you to stop, to wonder, to consider, and to reconsider. They are generally coded for ambition in truth and knowledge. My favorite line in the song… “I’m ova heeeaaadss / That’s how I’m ducking all da turbulence.”

As you might imagine, there are many more interactions, readings, and conferrings that have inspired the creation of this track. But this is plenty to share for now… enjoy the music!

ZENtheRapper – Copernicus on Spotify

ZENtheRapper ☀️♾️