This Summer, Look Out for WU SYLLABUS presents METALFINGERS’ DOOM by Antarah Crawley. Now with 55 Chambers of Life and Death! Read about how Metalfingers the Musician and the Wu Tang Clan defeat the Wack MC in the Ancestral Land of Shaolin. Only available from New Syllabus.
I remember that one November day, the softest wind reminded me of god’s bored sigh. The morning rose with a prickly stem and all the aromatic humidity of a summer’s eve. I like a bee buzzed round it, collecting the pollen of impression and passion. Yet I felt as mired as a soul within the skull. Melancholia’s joy’s companion. Because where pleasure’s had, I feel the guilt of a thief having stolen something undue. Are we to remain in debt to the pangs of love? I remember my home feeling like a grave to which I retire each night, dying one more time. I remember feeling it to be as cozy as a pine box, bug-teeming bedsprings, blanketed in six feet of fertile soil, and here I am shoveling metaphors on top of it all. I must consult the spirits which linger here. I must find solace in solitude. I must become attuned to the world’s intonation. Wherefrom comes that silent strumming? The humming pitch-fork of the infinite will never cease, though I shall soon retire. For the time I’ll match it with my voice, which, though singular, compounds across space and time to comprise the purest sound. Listen closely to dead silence, and you’ll hear the sustained note—a D-minor?—of the chorus of human hearts.
* * *
No where is now here. What was once blank is now concealed. Writ articulation of what I take to be real obfuscates, as if under an eternal fog, the unspoken, indeed unutterable, secret of blankness. In that blankness is origin, purity of essence and of existence, a body without subjugation, a body an unscrutinized object, with none—not even itself—to look upon and wonder of its weirdness. This is the dynamic convergence of meaning and truth. What was once innocent is now soiled;—yet how would we propagate if our wombs remained forever barred? We must muddle the metadata of the world with exploitations of it, misconstructions, contortions, contrived characters, third-person omniscient, craftiness of symbol, fabricated morals, attribution of law, minstrelsy of the human heart. For we ourselves are misconstructions. We defile the purest nowhere place and order it according to our linear wont. We place nowhere “here,” creating the setting of our lives. In this trial we are illegible scribblings communicating with other nonsense markers. We, the marks of the world, desire meaning, will not rest without it; we want the “I” to resonate along with all the other letters, “u” in particular; we want “u,” most of all. We look upon ourselves as alphabets and rearrange our characters to suit our themes, floating formless in the blankness, disgusted at the worldliness of it all, the worldliness it did not intend but which, by the birth of the myriad eyes soon to be cast into the reflecting pool, and the deeply desired exorcism of meaninglessness, it did yield.
I’m breaking consecrated ground here, carving these first marks into this once white page. The page itself will never be the same. It’s transforming before my eyes, from a vessel of unfathomable potential to a kinetic force set in motion by the lightyears these marks have traveled through the tongues and texts of societies across time and space and into this work. Characters come alive here in a new world, endowed with new meaning merely by their own reincarnation. I’m exited, and I let my pen sit a little too long at the end of the “e.” But that’s alright. A muddling of the form is essential to instilling further meaning to the characters. I run my pen on purpose, pooling black blood stains. I am the ink scarring the page, bled from a ballpoint pen, spurt from ballsac, penis, onto white sheets. The page is my world and I am born again into it; the page is my world and I am the mark.
I imagine images strobing past the eye. I expect a documentary of a sort only found in minds. Have I really been where I say I have? Maybe not in the real world, but my memory works in leaps and bounds, and though I may not remember two nights ago, I can remember old lives. All my lives are crosshatched as a student’s sketch, so that a feeling from the deep past overlaps the present and causes nausea, soothing nausea. I can see subliminal screaming faces cut into a shot of rapidly passing woods. I used to be afraid of them, but now I search them out.
Those faces are the insight, the parting of the woods to make way for a manifestation of pure meaning. To sustain these fleeting images of import, these portals into space, you must please the heavens to part.
You must not force epiphany upon the page. You must make yourself an agent of the blankness.
The prayer:
O sing O muse—cognate with mind and all acts pertaining
O brood O muse upon my mighty subject like a holy hen upon the nest of night
O ponder the fascism of the heart …
… And just as the man instils in woman his seed, the muse instils in me her grace, and guides me, the agent of her offspring, toward the marks I am to make in the world.
It is well known that in this sense of divine conception, art makes a womb out of men.
Worldly origins, however, prove to be of more immediate and dire consequence.
I’ve been a mark since I was born, my kin and I, since father raped our mother on the shore.
He used to call me beast; but Sir, I’d respond, On whom am I preying, if I am a hound at what am I baying? He never had a definitive answer. Simply that from the beast I took my nature, from the devil I took my morale, from the dark of night I took my color, and from the wild bush the texture of my hair; from whom did I take my name, though? I say I took it from him, as I did all my other attributes. If I took my nature from the beast, then the beast is he.
Just ’cause I’m a mark don’t mean I’m a victim. We are all marks of the world. We are all victims of our authors’ tyranny. But we have a choice, you see. We can choose to remain under the ball of the pen or we can assume the etymological import of our presence. We can sink into the paper and become one with its purity, as we were meant to. We can tell our story.
Our powerful father begot forgotten children.
He raped our mother on the shore, pimped her, sold her for boatloads, and kept her in chains. He whips her to this day, wearing her down and wiping away the memory of the greatness she is responsible for throughout all the world. Children, though, you can’t keep in chains; soon they will grow tall and strong and break them in time. And we don’t forget the traumas of a tumultuous childhood easily.
We were born in a void; not of mother nor of father; not on land defined but in the sea unbound. We did rock for a nine-month voyage in a wooden, lacquered belly. We were released into the waves. Many of us were stillborn, overthrown, and drowned in those watery depths. Many still were split apart, and grew up with different families in different homes. We hardly know them now. We came here with father. He may hate us, but he made us.
When we were in utero, I was a nucleus, Golgi apparatus, ribosomes, chromosomes. We were a cosmic egg. What sperm slithered its way into Mama’s cervix? God? Chance? Mind? Europe? In embryo we festered with a hunger for life. But what is that? In infantry father beat us and made us his dogs. What is that kind of life? But still we hunger for his love. And where is Mama? we wonder. But we know she is gone; even if she could know us, she would not accept us, because we are father’s, he made us.
We were raised in an abusive household, around all of father’s other (legitimate) children, whom he loved so much more. He made us their servants; they were reared to degrade and despise us, for they were taught to believe themselves superior, they were the chosen ones. Father beat us into submission, to wash his dishes, do his laundry, cook for him, entertain him, dance for him, mow his lawn, and raise the children of his real wife, and he locked us in the basement when we were done our day’s work. He forced us into a passive religion which allowed us to take his orders more willingly—turn the other cheek, He said. There’ll be salvation when you die, He said. He gave us a god who looked like him, so that we would worship him. He raped our sisters when his wife wasn’t looking; he took all the most beautiful ones for himself. He bred us together like dogs, and even made us fight for his own amusement. When we got too old to control, mere adolescents, he cast us out to the street, and we’ve been there ever since. We come back knocking on his door, Please yet us in, we beg, It’s so cold out here. We don’t know anything else but being at his mercy. When he didn’t let us in we fought at the door, we banned together. But he gave us guns, drugs, and disease, and watched us turn on each other. We were his spectacle. We still are.
My kin haven’t yet realized that our father is merely masquerading as our god. He has all the tools and schools, but he is more afraid than he is feared.
Oh (we pledge allegiance), merciful God (to the flag), Our Father (of the United States of America), which art in Heaven (and to the Republic), hollowed be thine name (for which it stands), thine kingdom come (one nation), on earth, as it is in Heaven (under God). Give us this day our daily bread (indivisible), and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us (with liberty and justice). Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil (for all), for thine is the Kingdom, and the Power, and the Glory, (Amen).
I’ve seen every manifestation of death. I’ve seen the black-clothed Reaper wielding his scythe through a plantation’s cotton field in the dead of night. That is the black death, killer of whites. I’ve seen a pointy-hooded white-robed ghost wield a loose-knotted rope hovering through the adjacent woods. That’s the white death, killer of blacks. I’ve seen disease wrapped up in the rapture, leather cloak and wearing a crow’s beak on his face. That is the red death, killer of men.
Then there’s H.E.R—Heaven’s Eternal Rancor.
This is the tricky death, because She’s been misconstrued for so long, no one recognizes Her when She comes. You may call Her “H.I.M,” His Infernal Majesty. But it is She: God, death of the world. Why? Because She is the only death who embodies woman and her infinite, all-encompassing nature. She is ruthless and passionate and blind to reason. She will kill because there’s a cold in the air. She is merciless but tender. We men succumb easily to her intensity unless we guard ourselves with anger. We men are defenseless before her; we are merely matter within her cavernous black hole. We are at the mercy of the void.
I don’t fear these deaths, however. I and all my kin, we’re already dead.
Death should have taken us generations ago. Those who She could slay She did, and the rest of us have been overlooked. We are living on forgotten time. We will never die; we have nothing to lose. Me, I been alive for four-hundred years. Negros, Jews, Irish, Germans, Japanese, American Indians, Latin Americans, Tibetans, those of us remaining, we are all undead. Genocide of man and earth should have wiped us all out some time ago, in one way or another. But we have slipped through the cracks and remain as ghosts of human evolution. We walk the earth as vampires, hungry for the reparations of our grudges—yet all too aware of our positions as monsters. The last living races, the Chinese, the Saudi/Muslims, and the Americans, will wage the last war. And when they are exterminated, the last of them will join us in the ranks of the undead, and then the world will be full of monsters, people of the night. No one will fear death, no one will hold morals; humanity will be as merciless, pitiless, and rapacious as death, as earth, as God, as Her.
There’s not a wonder in the world why man is by nature a misogynist. It is because he fears, reveres God, and God is She;—within the womb, that unhealing wound; within the void; within the space; within the hole; within the “O” thing. He is by nature a penetrator, and it is his wont to penetrate that fearful empty space from which he came.
[options for a romance]
She blew………. {my cock
………. {my mind
………. {my brains out
Once, as I was being taken though the belly to my father while she lay dying on the shore, I thought I heard my mother speak.
She told of her rebirth. She said:
(I) I feel out of place here. Unnoticed, unappreciated, unacknowledged when I open my mouth.
A woman in her third trimester walks in reverse. Why is she walking backwards? Her face, her belly is calm. I follow her.
We are disconnected; I lose her. Now where am I? On the floor! I see another woman. A different woman. I go over to her, kneel down, looking into her face—it’s turbulent. I put my hands on her belly. It moves and stretches—I feel elbows, head, and knees. Is it arriving? I close my eyes.
(II) I am in a dark place. Now, no longer feeling out of place because I cannot see this place. I walk. It’s a long canal, dark and damp. There is a light ahead. I poke my head out.
(III) I am greeted in a brightly lit room. It is immaculate. I ask, “How could I have been so lucky as to have been chosen?” Reply: “You don’t know how much you have to offer the world.”
That is the only thing that kept me alive during those early maddening years.
Why birds do you chirp, at this grave hour?
When all things are dead, when waking corpses
Brood over books of life lessons passed,
And sleeping corpses lie in graves, their beds;
Its four o’clock, and the people in the
Real world will wake in an hour or two;
Waking people, though dead, and I am dead,
Though waking still, and the sun is dead, too.
By this time, the dead have succumb to fate:
Sleep. But still, I am as awake as you.
The sun peeks though now, though still not wake,
The sky, you know the one, a light grey blue.
Though I’ve tried, I’ve slept not a wink. Why, birds
Do you chirp when all things are dead, but you?
I hymned a roar from the inner depths
of the machine surrounding. The howl fell
on ears of deaf, as did my heartbeat’s pounding.
The apparatus groaned around me. “Oil!”
cried my master. My job in here’s to tend
this beast, that it may then whirr faster.
I can’t see the product of my toil
from inside this grave machine. I have but one God
I follow: The King of Gasoline.
All the gears that crank above me creek with
shrieks of men, who threw themselves
upon the gears, which, laughing, ground them in.
And these gears to which I tend
extend up to the moon. A place that sounds
like paradise compared to this boiler room.
“Hark!” I call again, my beckon echoin’
through the gears. “Let me go,” I call to them
as if they all had ears.
They heard me but they didn’t stop;
kept clicking into place. The shrieks of dying men
chimed back, so I sang deeper into space.
there is one war that every man wages,
every man wins
everyman loses.
this is the only war.
if you fight it with a friend
another country
or a dirty criminal
know that you fought it with yourself
first.
no matter party line, religion,
or even sexual orientation,
this is the only war.
and when you face other men in other wars, know
between you all
that you’re really fighting one war.
that’s the long fought war
the one you didn’t see yourself giving in to
but it came.
that’s the one you were gonna hold out for
the one you were gonna use to prove yourself somethin
but it came.
that’s the fight you fought to fight
knowing that you’d lose.
and that’s the blissful agony
in blowing your refuse.
That’s the one you kneel over
cursing why you did
gnashing your gnarled teeth yet laughing–
you’d do it all again.
then there’s the time. the time you really packed it all in. you know
you got your point across. but you just had to cross that line.
and then you really give it your all. there’s no turning back.
it’s not gonna be you. it’s not gonna be him.
you fight, you fight that bitter fight.
and it all comes to a head.
and you’ve won. and you’ve lost.
–you feel it—that’s the real “fuck me.”–that’s the fight that makes and breaks you
–and you’d do it all again.
that’s what women’ll never understand. they can’t. it’s not a sexist thing.
it’s a man thing.
it’s the war.
the one you wage, lose, and win, over and over and over
While re-reading Blake Butler’s 300,000,00, a 2014 novel boasting the best prose of the New Millennium and the lest substantial review record in memory, I came across the syllabus of what would be a year-long course in American Literature — mired among the murder of so many millions of millions.
Butler’s Syllabus is a set of references so well embedded in the elusively nauseating “plot” of the novel that I doubt any reader has even gotten to the pages 364-367 in which the references are found. And even then, the reader must wade through “jungle gym garage door flowchart bodies adhesive bandage bodies water” and “particle accelerator car audio Carl Panzram kills at least twenty-one and sodomizes at least a thousand” in order to isolate the gems.
Lucky for you, I have saved you from potentially losing your mind to Mr. Butler’s. If I may say, I understand precisely what the action and spirit of this novel recognizes (for it can only be understood intuitively and esoterically). But as for America at large, this understanding will be lost, and all of America will go down to wallow amidst the fantasy of its own misunderstanding. Let, then, this curriculum be Bulter’s final testament of writing, down the last word, in America:
Herman Melville, Moby-Dick
Gertrude Stein, The Making of Americans
William Gaddis, The Recognitions
Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow
Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian
Bret Easton Ellis, American Psycho
David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest
by Sesh Antara
1 Come forth from the Water and bear up this God
2 Like as Atum raised himself upon the Ka of Nu
3 By the grace of Ma’at, giving Order to Chaos,
4 Being as he was directed by Djhwty to born
5 The 9 Gods. O Atum, first in the Company of Amun,
6 Gave thou to thy Son a Space; Gave thou to thy
7 Daughter weight; Geb and Nut come forth and mate;
8 Their two twins dual and create.
09 O you Gods who are in the Bark with Ra,
10 O you Gods who are in the Company of the Judge,
11 O you Defendant who cometh before them:
12 Know them in the Order which they are gotten
13 To know that which is spoken truly under the Law:
14 To balance all forces in their dual Nature
15 By measuring their weight against the Light
16 And return equilibrium to scale
17 In the Hall of the Double Truths
18 Before the Seat of Judgement.
19 How is it done, the measurement
20 Of the weight of one’s Ka against the Light
21 Which is that constant Truth
22 O’er which thy Ba doth witness
23 The flux of the Scale,
24 Whether the Plumb condemns or vindicates
25 The Defendant as recorded in the presence of Wasar.
26 Know that this method be practicable
27 For making the Heart like a feather
28 And for doing Ma’at while on Earth
29 To make for thee thy conscience glad
30 And to make the Ruler to vindicate thy voice before the Sovereign Judge.
31 Concentrate, observe, and quantify thy measures;
32 Record and fix the weight;
33 Rebalance, recalibrate, and correct thy state
34 Of conduct, using the line of the Scale’s equilibrium
35 Whereon their weight hath been measured.
36 Axe. Htp. Imn.
A Beach Without Water Is A Terrible Way to Die
The Digital Re-issue of the Out-of-Print Erotic Novel
The New Syllabus is pleased to re-issue one of the first full-length novels ever written by the Scribe of the House, Antarah Crawley, prior to his initiation into the Greater Mysteries. Between the years 2012 and 2014, while enrolled in Western University, Mr. Crawley founded the Antarah Crawley & Company Press, which later came to operate under the name of Vesak Word House Press. This Press published limited-run hand-bound volumes of the fictional and poetic works of Mr. Crawley during these years.
An amusing bit of Syllabus history goes that Antarah Crawley wrote a novel called Pharmacon of the Spirit (2013-2014) and published approximately three editions of the book under Vesak Word House. The main character of that novel is Walter Kogard, and the narrative follows his life in New York and his work on a new book; but Kogard is forced to return to D.C. one last time to see his child. (The novel has a lot of flaws). Amusingly, in real life after Mr. Crawley completed writing and publishing Pharmacon, he moved from D.C. to New York where he wrote the narrative in which Walter Kogard finds his syllabus, which narrative is known as Rustles in Dry Leaves and can be found in any edition of The New Syllabus. The process of Crawley writing Rustles ultimately founded the New Syllabus Organization, which assumed all rights of the Vesak Work House Press, including the un-published novelization of the life of Kogard.
Pharmacon of the Spirit will ever remain in obscurity because there are no surviving copies of the whole novel from the VWH period.
However, today The New Syllabus presents A Beach Without Water Is A Terrible Way to Die, a long out-of-print psycho-erotic novel which Mr. Crawley wrote in 2013/4 as a response to 50 Shades of Gray. Crawley’s novels from the VWH period are deeply flawed, but we at the Syllabus believe that the fiction has its merits, and that it will satisfy anyone willing to commit to this thrilling, touching story of one middle-aged woman’s struggle with self love.
Below is the cover for a VWH double-feature publication which included A Beach Without Water.
Enjoy!
[Paragraphs marked * were written c. January 2014 and slightly revised]
[Note: this essay contains racial language used for socio-analytical purposes. The NS identifies only one Human race and does not discriminate or condemn any individual solely for their personal, cultural, or religious practices. The NS does not, however, condone the thematically-exploitative historical practices of certain homogenous groups.]
Hip-hop music was once the voice of the urban Afrakan of the Diaspora (Black people), spoken by poor righteous teachers to inform us of our circumstances. In the era of Rakim, Tribe, Wu-Tang, and other 5%ers, Hip-Hop preached the pagan sun-gospel and the resurrection of the black body from the Wilderness of the North American ghettos.
Hip-hop was so effective at its initial mission to “wake up” the Black people that the Powers-That-Be, who were invested in keeping the Black population ignorant and depraved, thereupon infiltrated the ranks of our culture, poisoned our message, and created the genre of “Rap.” Rap was promoted by the Powers-That-Be into becoming the dominant mode of entertainment for Black youth. As such, it has been seeded with those same vices which our old-head teachers said would keep us subservient to the system: drug abuse, misogyny, glorification of violence, and the pursuit of empty riches.
This is not the first time that the Powers-That-Be have infiltrated the ranks of natural Culture. It happened over 2000 years ago in Lower Kemet, and it has been happening for the past 1000 years all over the indigenous world. In Ancient Kemet, the Powers-That-Be [Greece, Rome, Hyksos-Semites] conquered, stole, and corrupted the pagan science of nature into the abrahamic mystery religions. Hence, without intending any anti-Semitism, it is appropriate to call the originators of modern Hip-Hop culture Rap-Pagans, and the parasitic trap-rappers and cronies of the music industry, Rap-Jews.
Kanye West, a talented young producer who appeared on the scene at the end of the 90s just as the Rap-Jews were beginning to take over, presents an interesting model of a music artist in an age where the Black consciousness is torn between cultural piety and cultural exploitation. It is as if Kanye had begun his career wanting to reclaim Kemet for his people, but he was ultimately consumed by Babylon. In Part II of this essay, we will see how Kendrick Lamar, proud King Kunta Kinte, represents the alternative, true, inner Kanye West, the Kanye who succeeded in beating the system, instead of getting beat by it.
*Mr. West’s most recent album, Yeezus, which many lament and many praise, is not all boast. I believe that Mr. West is the divine prophet of the rap music industry, the chosen son of our god Gil Scott-Heron, and he has come to die for all the sins of his fellow Rap-Jews, who are mired in the vices above described.
*We may separate Mr. West’s career into Old and New Testaments, on opposite sides of the dramatic upset in his style between Graduation and 808s and Heartbreak. Graduation having been released in September of 2007, and his mother having died in November of that year, we may credit Mr. West’s emotional shift to that event which he has said proved to yield a devastating affect in his life.
*College Dropout, Late Registration, and Graduation—the Old Testament of Kanye West—exemplify his affinity for classic soul samples, the guilt he sustained from not completing college and letting his mother down, and his struggle to find his place in the rap world.
*In the Old Testament, we find verses from Talib Kweli, Common, Mos Def (the rapper currently known as Yasiin Bey), Lupe Fiasco, and other Rap-Pagans of this era, to an extent and quality that we find lacking in the latter period of Mr. West. We find West acknowledging and often lamenting the reality that he sees his people so mired in—how the institutions of white America passed down drugs, guns, and disease to break a people intent on trying to pull themselves up (see “Crack Music”)—as well as grappling with his image and his internal struggle between desiring the flashy luxurious toys that the Rap-Jew covets and being an upstanding role model for a younger generation (i.e., providing an image of the black male that is not steeped in lust-driven, gang-oriented, rags-to-crack-to-riches ideology). This internal conflict is epitomized in College Dropout, but also well-evoked in Late Registration:
How we stop the Black Panthers?
Ronald Reagan cooked up an answer.
You hear that? What Gil Scott was “Heron”
When our heroes and heroines got hooked on heroine.
Crack raised the murder rate in D.C. and Maryland;
We invested in that, it’s like we got Merrill lynched.
And we’ve been hanging from the same tree ever since.
Sometimes I feel like music is the only medicine,
So we cook it, cut it, measure it, bag it, sell it,
The fiends cop it, nowadays they can’t tell if
That’s that good shit, we ain’t sure, man;
Put the CD on your tongue, yeah that’s pure, man.
This that crack music, nigga,
That real black music, nigga.
From the place where the father’s gone, the mothers is hardly home
And the Madigons lock us up in the Audy Home [a Chicago-area juvenile prison];
How the Mexicans say, We just tryin’ to party, holmes;
They wanna pack us all in a box like styrofoam.
Who gave Saddam anthrax?
George Bush got the answers.
Back in the hood it’s a different type of chemical–
Arm & Hammer baking soda raised their own quota
Right when our soldiers ran for the stove ’cause,
‘Cause … dreams of being Hova
Went from being a broke man to being a dopeman
To being the president, look there’s hope, man;
This that inspiration for the Moes and the Folks, man,
Shorty come and see his momma straight overdosin’
… And this is the soundtrack;
This the type of music that you make when you round that.
Our father, give us this day our daily bread,
Before the feds give us these days and take our daily bread.
See I done all this ol’ bullshit,
And to atone, I throw a lil’ somethin’ somethin’ on the pulpit.
We took that shit, measured it, and then cooked that shit,
And what we gave back was crack music.
And now we ooze it through they nooks and crannies,
So our mommas ain’t got to be their cooks and nannies,
And we gon’ repo everything they ever took from granny.
Now the former slaves trade hooks for Garmmys.
This dark diction has become America’s addiction.
Those who ain’t even black use it.
We gon’ keep baggin’ up this here crack music.
*I reproduced “Crack Music” from Late Registration here in its entirety because I think it’s the most revealing of West’s Old Testament songs. Even when he is making a song in the spirit of the Rap-Jew, elaborating upon past drug-work and showing how one made it “out the ghetto” because of that occupation, he is being pointedly ironic. He is representing this type of degenerative rap as crack in and of itself. Music that glorifies the drug-life is poison for the people who have to experience this reality every day, and yet rappers continue to glorify this occupation at the behest of parasitic music industry executives who think that this image is what will sell records. Mr. West is pointing out that the Black community’s drug problems were and are imposed upon them by the Powers-That-Be in order to break them, in the same way that “crack music” is imposed upon young Black ears in order to keep those youths in a position where they will be swiftly cast off into the prison industrial complex and be out of America’s white hair. The way in which chemical warfare was executed in the Iraq War was the same way it was executed in the urban centers of America.
*Mr. West is trying to say that being a dopeman is no longer something that Black youths in city slums have to take as their given future; they have further options, and the later election of President Barack Obama in 2008 was a well-timed reinforcement to this sentiment. Despite the ironic ending to this song, Mr. West aims to instil hope in his listeners, or at least an awareness of the system in which they find themselves at the bottom. There are other options, he says; Black youths don’t have to look up to Hova (Jay-Z) as one of their sole role models because rap and professional sports are not the only options for black youth … which brings me to my next point.
*In this era we see Mr. West revere Jay-Z as a Yahweh figure, a mentor, even though Ye laments that the superstar did not give him much of a thought during the early part of his career (exemplified in “Last Call” on College Dropout, “Diamonds from Sierra Leone” on Late Registration, and “Big Brother” on Graduation). That would change in the New Testament, however, when Mr. West would inflate his ego in order to prove himself to be a contender for Jay-Z’s throne as the Greatest Rapper on Earth Alive Today and the Greatest Of All Time (the GREAT GOAT).
*At the end of the Old Testament, we see the death of the Graduation Bear, that figure which served as a logo and branding marker for Mr. West’s early career; that image makes its last appearance on the cover of Graduation, signifying a moving-away from the college motif (i.e., the “student” persona) and a rebirth in musical spirit (i.e., the development of the “master” persona).
*808s and Heartbreak, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, Cruel Summer and Watch the Throne (for our purposes), and Yeezus, signify the New Testament as it stands presently. [This paragraph was written prior to the release of Life of Pablo.]
*808s introduced us to the new sound of Mr. West—autotune and synthesizers as opposed to soul samples and MIDIs. This likely occurred as a result of the recent death of Mr. West’s mother and his inability to express his deepest feelings through rapping alone. Fans were, of course, skeptical at first, but whenever Mr. West sets a trend, it catches on. After its release, autotune became a staple in radio-rap music.
*My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, arguably Mr. West’s magnum opus, solidified his place as a tier-one musician—not only as a rapper—but as a bona fide composer, a musical genius of our time to rival Bob Dylan in his, and Mozart before him. But we see no more of the pagan consciousness of Mos Def and Talib Kweli. West adopts a whole new entourage—Rick Ross, Kid Cudi, Pusha T, Bon Iver, Nicki Minaj, Big Sean, old Wu-Tang members, and his idol—though not for long—Jay-Z himself.
*In MBDTF, Kanye proved himself to be the equal of Jay-Z, if it were not the case that Mr. Carter was already falling off in terms of his lyricism.
*In Watch the Throne, a War in Heaven that Milton would have applauded, Mr. West effectively toppled Jay-Z from the GREAT throne: he kills his god.
*Prior to MBDTF and into the aftermath of the battle for the Throne, Mr. West surrounded himself with a following of rappers—the G.O.O.D Music crew—as his disciples, and released countless megahits, further solidifying his position as rap’s new father figure.
*Through it all, however, Mr. West never lost the awareness of his Blackness and the role he was expected to play by white America and the parasitic Rap-Jew music industry. Although he is aware of the internal conflict, he seems at loss to correct it, to harken back to a time of Kemet, a time of Zion. He appears, in the mid-New Testament, to be consumed by and assimilated into Babylon:
Inter-century anthems based off inner-city tantrums
Based off the way we was branded,
Face it, Jerome gets more time than Brandon,
And at the airport they check all through my bags
And tell me that it’s random.
…
I treat the cash the way the government treats AIDS:
I won’t be satisfied till all my niggas get it (get it?)
…
As long as I’m in Polo smiling they think they got me,
But they’d try to crack me if they could ever see a black me.
I thought I chose a field where they couldn’t sack me
If a nigga ain’t shootin’ a jump shot runnin’ a tack meet …
(“Gorgeous”)
You know white people, get money don’t spend it,
Or maybe they: get money, buy a business;
I’d rather buy eighty gold chains and go [ignorant]!
I know Spike Lee gone kill me but let me finish …
(“Clique”)
*Finally, Mr. West reveals himself as rap’s Jesus in the album of near-the-same name, released just earlier this year [2013]. It is profound and accomplished in its lyricism, arrangement, production, and intent. The sample of Nina Simone’s “Strange Fruit” in “Blood on the Leaves” alone speaks volumes. Many have said that Mr. West simplified and vulgarized his previously-verbose lyricism on this record, but I think he is simply more controlled and as outspoken as ever:
My momma was raised in the era when
Clean water was only served to the fair of skin.
Doin’ clothes you would have thought I had help
But they wasn’t satisfied unless I picked the cotton myself.
You see it’s broke-nigga racism, that’s that “Don’t touch anything in the store”
And it’s rich-nigga racism, that’s that “Come in please buy more.”
What’you want, a Bentley? Fur coat? A diamond ring?
All you black want all the same things.
(“New Slaves”)
*If these are not the sentiments, the biting satire and scathing truths, of a deeply-conflicted and internally split Black man, then call me Lena Dunham. Because Mr. West is able to express such blunt and directed remarks on a record that will reach tens of millions of American ears, we must acknowledge that he is an artist in control of the message he wishes to spread, that he is learning about himself even as he is telling us about ourselves, and that we as a country are most definitely no longer in the 20th Century.
Given the above analysis [which was written 3 years ago], it remains that during this late-New Testament period Mr. West was slowly loosing control of his Self. It seems now that the maximal inflation of West’s ego during the Yeezus era was bound to be trailed by a decline into near-insanity. Furthermore, the Rap-Jew in Mr. West seems to have gotten the best of his Rap-Pagan at this time, and whether or not the Kardashians, MK Ultra, and the Entertainment-Propaganda Industrial Complex had a whole lot to do with it is anyone’s theory. But I think that the man had simply lost his way, forgot who he was in the midst of fame, had begun praying to mystery gods, and had begun to maintain self-destructive practice.
This analysis of Kanye West illustrates two things for the purpose of our essay’s theme, the return of the Rap-Pagan. The first point is that while the Rap-Jew has reigned on the radio from ~2000AD-present, Mr. West has staged a front-guard against the forces of ignorance which seek to destroy the consciousness of the Black people. Secondly, while this may be the case, he has ultimately [at this time] failed to carry through the mission himself, and his position in the conscious Black community is nullified until he divorces Kim Kardashian.
While the Gospel of Kanye West may or may not be over and done with, the advance-guard of the Rap-Pagans may be just beginning. I tell you—when I heard Kendrick Lamar’s Section.80 in 2011, and the future King Kunta rattled off Rigamortis—I tell you—the Trumpence of Revelations sounded and I discovered that the body undergoing the rigor mortis referred to in the song’s title was the dying body of the Rap-Jew Conspiracy and the white supremacy national complex. I think that Kendrick will reclaim Kemet for the People, if they don’t do him like Pac first!
Stay tuned for the next installment to hear about the significance of staying “Humble” in:
KING KHEM: The Return of the Rap-Pagan, Part II.
A Statement from the S.S. National New Syllabus Organization
Djhuti is the architect and Ma’at is the archetype of the ubiquitous and lasting system called the Universe, or the Library. He is the author and She is the Word of the Syllabus for the study of all our life courses. The subject of our study is Nature (nTr).
The True Syllabus is written in the Words of Nature, the scientific notation of reality called medu neter. It is written upon the relics and remains of Sudanese (Nubian), Ethiopian (Kushite), and Egyptian (Kmtic) Antiquity, and in the Culture of the Twa, Akan, Bantu, Batswana, Dogon, Yoruba, Ife, and numerous other indigenous Afrakan systems.
One who obtains knowledge of the Syllabus may organize an institute (i.e., a Lodge, Temple, or School) to fulfill the Greater Objectives of this symbolic archetype for human advancement. The Syllabus is known by its Right and True Measurement of the singular and ancient System by which humanity may attain the model of the Gods on earth. The New Syllabus is an organization founded upon this ancient Order.
The first inquiry which our Founder, the Professor, inscribed under the guidance of Djhuti was called “Origends: A Primer on Singularity and Space-Time Progression” (2012). Djhuti established the Order of the New Syllabus in the mind of the Founder, and the organization first appeared in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, New York in 2014 as The New Syllabus of New York, Local Nos. 1 & 2. This iteration of the Syllabus was dedicated to the research, writing, publication, revision, and development of the publication known as The New Syllabus Recension of Natural Law.
The Objective of the New Syllabus is the unification of the systems, pedagogy, and dogma of the so-called “academic disciplines” of Arts and Science as it has been completely prescribed in the oldest written documents known to Humanity (The model of the Gods of Nature) by the highest, proudest, oldest, and most culturally, artistically, infrastructurally, and intellectually accomplished civilization which has reigned upon the earth: that of the Upper and Lower Afurakan Akka-Nubian-Kushite-Kmtu.
In order to enroll in or found your own Ancestral Mystery School, you may contact Djhuti directly or inquire at your local New Syllabus outpost. To found a school under the New Syllabus, please appeal to the Order by emailing a Statement of Intent to the Director of Syllabus. Please also review the following:
Partial Reading List
Ankh Mi Ra (Let the Ancestors Speak)
Odwirafo Kwesi Ra Nehem Ptah Akan (online publications)
Modimoncho (Blackroots Science)
Dr. Rkhty Amen (The Institute of Kemetic Philology)
Heru Ankh Ra Semajh Se Ptah (contributions)
MaaKheru TEP (Smai-Tawi)
Ra Un Nefer Amen (Metu Neter vols. 1-7, Maat)
Nur Ankh Amen (The African Origin of Electromagnetism)
Neb Naba Lamoussa Morodenibig (Philosophy Podium)
Asar Imhotep (online publications)
Dr. Muata Ashby (The Book of Coming Forth by Day)
Dr. Cheikh Anta Diop (The African Origin of Civilization, Civilization or Barbarism?)
Dr. Theophile Obenga (African Philosophy: The Pharaonic Period)
Drs. Kilimanjaro, Ife & Tdka, with collaborators (Maat, African Time)
Dr. Yosef Ben-Jochannan (Africa: Mother of “Western Civilization”)
Dr. John Henrik Clark (Christopher Columbus and the African Holocaust)
Hetepu. Tua Ra. Tua Seshu. Tua Akhu.
Tua Djhuti, Come Unto Me And Guide Me And Make Me To Act Ma’at In Your Office. Your Office Is More Beautiful Than All Offices… Come To Me, Guide Me; I Am A Servant In Your House. Let The World Tell Of Your Might, That All Humen May Say ‘Great Is That Which Djehuti Has Done.’ Let Them Come With Their Children, To Cause Them To Be Marked As Scribes. Your Office Is A Beautiful Office, You Are A Strong Protector. It Rejoices Those Who Are Invested With It.
(“Let The Ancestors Speak,” Ankh Mi Ra)
Cultures define themselves in terms of the ways their people perceive the cosmos…; the cosmology is the foundational model for life itself.
– Dr. Malidoma Some, “Healing Wisdom of Africa”
Supreme Exchange 