Positivity

The Grand Reopening of Texas Toli remix of Positivity by Prince and The Governors...

Prince:

Positivity (Yes)
Have you had your plus sign today?

Item:

And we had the best Covid results we've ever had all through May and the beginning of June, I mean positivity was low, the cases were low.

— Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida May 26 2020

Dig:

On this day of The Grand Reopening of Texas, it gives me no joy to note that, of the four countries my life's journey has taken in, Ghana is probably managing this covidious challenge the best even with the greatest constraints (closely followed by France - the less said about the UK and US responses, the better).

— The Grand Reopening of Texas, Chief Toli Monger May 4 2020

Prince:

Positivity (Yes)

Item:

"Fewer Texans test positive for COVID-19 than residents of any large state in the United States. — Greg Abbott (June 19 2020)"...

We rate this claim False.

— Fact-checking Gov. Greg Abbott on coronavirus in Texas The Statesman June 19 2020

Prince:

Do we mark you present, or do we mark you late?

Dig:

Texas didn’t meet the guidelines laid out by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in May before moving to a phased reopening.

— Austin has nation’s highest 7-day metro positivity rate of coronavirus tests June 27 2020

Prince:

Is that a good man?
Walking down that street with that money in his hand
Is that a good man?

[Chorus]
Positivity (Yes)
Have you had your plus sign today?
Positivity (Yes)
Do we mark you present, or do we mark you late?

Item:

Gov. Greg Abbott continued to tout Texas's hospital capacity as plentiful Tuesday as hospitalizations due to the new coronavirus hit new highs and the state presses forward with business reopenings.

Abbott, speaking during a news conference in Austin, called the state’s capacity “abundant” and said officials are “laser-focused” on maintaining that level.

— Gov. Greg Abbott points to “abundant” hospital capacity as Texas continues with business reopenings June 16 2020

Prince:

Is that all your gold?
Where did it come from?
What did you have to do?
(did you have to do?)

Can you sleep nights?
Do you dream straight up?

Item:

Just nine days ago, Abbott touted the state's "abundant" hospital capacity as the numbers of cases in the state were rising quickly.

— Texas Governor Hits 'Pause' On Further Reopening Amid COVID-19 Surge June 25 2020

Prince:

Or do you dream in W's?

Item:

"Hospitals have a lot of capacity...

So we are very well positioned to be able to handle what comes down the pike

— Florida Governor Ron DeSantis: "We're not going back, closing things" press conference Anderson Cooper 360 June 30 2020

Prince:

Positivity (Yes)
Have you had your plus sign today?

Item:

Randy Kaye (CNN): You heard there him say that the positivity rate in Florda is 10 to 15 percent. Anderson, that is just not true. In Lee County where Fort Myers is, they've seen a positivity rate of 20 percent, that's up from 13 percent. And in Miami-Dade county, the positivity rate for the last two weeks has averaged more than 17 percent. The county itself says it would like to be around 10 percent. And just finally, the hospitals, he says, he said today that the hospitals have plenty of capacity. Again Anderson, not true. The mayor of Miami, on CNN just last night, saying that some hospitals in Miami are either at or close to capacity, Anderson.

Anderson Cooper: Hmm.

— Anderson Cooper 360 June 30 2020

Prince:

Shall the court sing together?
"In every man's life there will be a hang-up
A whirlwind designed to slow you down
It cuts like a knife, it tries to get in you
This Spooky Electric sound
Give up if you want to and all is lost
Spooky Electric will be your boss"

Item:

Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick faced a backlash Tuesday for suggesting that fellow seniors should risk their health for the sake of the economy during the COVID-19 pandemic.

— Sacrifice the old to help the economy? Texas official’s remark prompts backlash March 24 2020

Prince:

Call People magazine, Rolling Stone
Call your next of kin, cause your ass is gone
He's got a 57 mag with the price tag still on the side
Cussing when Spooky say dead, you better say died

Dig:

Every life is valuable, but 500 people out of 29 million and we’re locked down, and we’re crushing the average worker. We’re crushing small business. We’re crushing the markets. We’re crushing this country. There are more important things than living

— Texas Lt. Gov Dan Patrick: ‘There are more important things than living’ during pandemic April 22 2020

Prince:

Don't kiss the beast

Dig:

“And I don’t want to die, nobody wants to die, but man, we got to take some risks and get back in the game, and get this country back up and running."

— Texas' Dan Patrick: 'There are more important things than living' April 22 2020

Prince:

We need love and honesty
Peace and harmony
Positivity

Item:

The bloc will allow visitors from 15 countries, but the United States, Brazil and Russia were among the notable absences from the safe list.

E.U. Formalizes Reopening, Barring Travelers From U.S. June 30 2020

Prince:

Love and honesty
Peace and harmony

Dig:

“In my view, the worst thing we can do is to lock down Texas again. That’s not what Gov. Abbott wants. That’s not what I want,” he said. “But we need help from the young people out there to help bring these number of cases down and free up hospital beds.”

— Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick says Dr. Anthony Fauci “doesn’t know what he’s talking about” July 1 2020

Prince:

I said, hold on to your soul

Item:

Texas reported its latest record-breaking daily increase in cases of the novel coronavirus on Tuesday, with 6,975 new infections identified. The number surpassed Italy's highest single-day jump in virus cases to date

— Texas Daily COVID-19 Cases Top Italy's Record When It Was Global Epicenter June 30 2020

Prince:

You got a long way to go

Dig:

"Italy saw its highest single-day increase in cases of the novel virus on March 21, with 6,557 new diagnoses. Texas and Italy reported similar weekly average increases in cases surrounding their respective peaks, with both identifying at least 3,500 new infections per day. Italy's record increase came roughly two weeks into the country's national lockdown, which Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte originally implemented March 9. The country continued to diagnose several thousand new cases daily until early May

— Texas Daily COVID-19 Cases Top Italy's Record When It Was Global Epicenter June 30 2020

Prince:

Hold on to your soul

Item:

Abbott's order marks a major reversal. For over two months, he ignored calls by the Democratic leaders of Texas' metropolitan areas to mandate mask wearing.

He refused to allow leaders in Houston to enforce their own face-covering mandate with penalties, undercutting their ability to slow the spread of the virus. Hospital officials in Houston have said intensive care beds there are now in short supply.

Prince:

We got a long way to go

— American Exceptionalism on the Virus June 29 2020

Prince:

Hold on to your soul

Fade out with increasingly stark Linn drum breakbeat...

II. Positivity Reprise (Some Covidious Poetry)

Positivity (Yes)

Amateur epidemiology (Yes)
Profit mythology (Yes)
Faulty biology (Yes)
B-movie theory (Yes)
Capital monopoly (Yes)
Black Gold ideology (Yes)
Wicked wizardry (Yes)
"We are crushing the economy." (Yes)
"Hospitals have a lot of capacity." (Yes)
"I don't take responsibility" (Yes)
"Reopen the economy" (Yes)
Let's ignore Doctor Fauci (Yes)

Positivity (Yes)

Cowboy tomfoolery (Yes)
Shameless mimicry (Yes)
Constitutional lootery (Yes)
Delay-Deny policy (Yes)
Dereliction of duty (Yes)
Entitled supremacy (Yes)
Sense of superiority (Yes)
Assumed invincibility (Yes)
Disgraceful poverty (Yes)
Unvarnished sociopathy (Yes)
Unbridled pathology (Yes)

Positivity (Yes)

Buyer's remorse suddenly (Yes)
Selective amnesia mentality (Yes)
In search of herd immunity (Yes)

Positivity (Yes)

The phantom thread of greed lies at the heart of the matter
Their liability certificates are being served on a platter
Calls for sacrifice while seeking to avoid blame
America's real herd immunity is to shame

Positivity (Yes)

See also:

• Herd Immuity
• Shell Games (Part I. Shame Cultures)

Soundtrack for this note

Hearing the afrofuturist demo of Positivity has made my day, month and year. Youtube is the gift that keeps on giving and this time we have 5 different versions of the track. The album version gets the glossy sheen of the Lovesexy production to distinguish it from the Black album era, the others are minimalist funk masterpieces. There's also a live version with Patti Labelle and Mavis Staples's cover from The Voice.

Positivity, A Playlist

I did a quick juxtaposition of photos from the last time we saw Prince live, three weeks before our first child was born. The Welcome 2 America tour was a return to form, Larry Graham, Santana and Sheila E were in the house. He even did a cover of Amel Larrieux's No one Else. What more could one want. We'll see if the Prince estate allows this adaptation to live on, I suspect the Spooky Electric covidious implication might be a bridge too far. Hold on to your soul, we've got a long way to go.

[Update] January 2021 - my video remix was removed by the copyright police although, interestingly, 5 other uploads are still available on Youtube. Oh well...

Previously in the same vein

• Off the Hook
• Bullet from a Gun
• Angola

File under: remix, adaptation, coronavirus, pandemic, disaster, rogues, culture, hubris, huhudious, USA, politics, hatchet job, Prince, humour, satire, observation, perception, neocons, poetry, toli

Bullet From A Gun

I give you the Toli Remix of Derek B's Bullet From a Gun, a hip-hop photo essay in the vein of South London's vibe. Part II of the London's Got Soul Trilogy.

• South London Brew
• Bullet From A Gun

South London Brew

I lived in North London for 5 years in the late 80s and early 90s joining my mother during her 18 year stretch of exile from the insanity of Jerry Rawlings' Ghana. More precisely we lived in the "civilized" part of London, that's the Hampstead, Golders Green, Hendon and Brent Cross Axis of Civility. Throughout that time, I only made occasional forays into South and East London. It all seemed strangely alien to me: all hustle and bustle, poorly served by public transport, schools and local governments in disarray etc. Certain parts seemed more like Accra, Karachi or Lagos, in a word: messy. As an example, in all my time in North London I never walked into an argy-bargy (pub brawl) or got harassed by roving youths at night. Since I've left though, I've come to think of those parts of London as more interesting and certainly more vibrant even if they are indeed more difficult to live in. A lot of the cultural energy of the city comes from these less telegenic parts.

Thus I give you a photo essay on South London, This time however, your narrator will be Derek B who was there at the False Dawn of UK Hip Hop in the 1980s. Derek B truly is a Bad Young Brother with braggadocio and inventiveness to spare as you'll see from his wordplay. As a rapper he had impeccable taste, for example sampling the Oh Yeah bit from Prince's Sign O' the Times recognizing its importance long before others. The music scene in England at that time had a lot of soul (artists like Mica Paris, Omar, Neneh Cherry, Soul II Soul and Loose Ends), jazz funk and rare groove (Paul Laurence, Courtney Pine) from which the Acid Jazz movement emerged, as well as the beginnings the house and rave scene. DJs like Pete Tong and Westwood kept things moving. There was a lot of cross-pollination and the music produced had a multi-faceted sensibility. Other notables on the hip-hop side of things include Monie Love (Monie in the Middle and It's a Shame being the standouts) and the much-overlooked Cookie Crew who really put it on the line with I Got To Keep On, that hyperactive Old School joint.

Give them the proof that
We're down by the South Side
So you can confide
In the Cookie Crew

I got to keep on
I can't sleep on
Gaining respect
With a cool british dialect

Bad Young Brother is Derek B's most popular song, a fiercesome groove as befits the title; it even crossed over to this side of the Atlantic. For me however, Bullet From a Gun, the title track of his debut album, made a greater impression. It is a song firmly in the vein of Kool Moe Dee's Wild Wild West or great posse cuts like The Juice Crew's The Symphony. Its lyrics threw down a witty and theatrical challenge to the rest of the world affirming the existence of a soulful vibe in London. There is a direct line from Derek B to influential groups like Massive Attack or Portishead and latter-day poets like The Streets and Dizzee Rascal. He speaks to a youth culture that continues to make London the most exciting city in Europe. Although he is an East Londoner, we'll relocate him to Catford for the purposes of this post.

[Update May 2020, I've made video version you can find on Youtube]

For the musically inclined, you can sample the song here. I'll leave the mp3 up for a few days before slipping it back into the Long Tail of music and file sharing networks. Allow me then to do what the Cookie Crew suggested and

Grab the mic tightly
Serve the crowd rightly
Cause we were born
To keep it on

South London style.

Bullet From A Gun

Narrator: First There Was A Dream...

Narrator: Now there is reality...

[Sound Of Footsteps]

"My Name Is Q. Easy Q"
"Who is Number One?"
"I Am Number One"

[snippet of James Bond theme, Bullets fire and ominous break beat begins]

James Bond 007
Licensed to kill
Easy Q, Derek B
Licensed to ill

On Her Majesty's Secret Service of rap
America, you're under attack
From the Crown Prince of poetry
The Man With The Golden Mic is me

You thought you'd never hear
Anybody with the gall
But Easy Q and Derek B
Got Thunderballs

I'll Never Say
Never Say Never Again
I'm not Russia With Love
You see I'm from England

I'll Live And Let You Die
Your soul will get cold
Your body paralyzed
As my rhyme unfolds

A billion dollar brain
Ticking inside my head
Like Diamonds are Forever
And I've got street cred

From the East End
Always say it loud
Def B-Boy
Black and proud

I'm a warrior
Like Attila the Hun
That's why my posse call me
Bullet From A Gun

(South London Chorus)
"Who's Number One?"
"Bullet From A Gun"
"My Posse Having Fun?"
"Yeah Bullet From A Gun"
"You're Sure Gonna Get Some"

East London Posse
Raving all over town
Not invited to the party
We break the door down

Cooling with my homeboys
To a real lame beat
As the girlies stand around
About to fall asleep

16 Strong, my posse takes over
D on the decks, Easy Q mic controller

All of the sudden the party starts to rock
To the def beats and sounds of my hip-hop

The volume increases
Your ears wanna bleed

B-boys going crazy
Suckers doing speed

Fight breaks out
Place gets wrecked
Don't bother me boy
You'll only get decked

Out
at the speed of light
We came to party
Not to fight

So the fridge gets raided
Brew and Tennent's gone.

The quiet start rocking
The sensi smells strong

Shuffling and shaking
Speakers start to pump
The amps overload
The party's gotta stop

A roar from the posse
With the gold around the neck

Each one against the wall
With the girlie in check

Mate
The game's over and won
We're out of here
Like a Bullet From A Gun

South London Chorus (x2)
"Who's Number One?"
"Bullet From A Gun"
"My posse having fun?"
"Yeah Bullet From A Gun"
"You're sure gonna get some"

Word

Take a trip through a park
To see an mc battle

Hot sunny day
Skeezers like cattle

The E.L. Posse
All over the place
Like government agents
No time to waste

Standing in the corner
With my arms crossed
Laughing at the rapper
Who just lost

Sucker taken out
And I guess it's kind of funny
'Cos he's rapping for nothing
While I'm making the money

Now he comes over and asks me what
He has to do to get all the way to the top
I said, "I'm a funky junky of the hip hop sound
I take this shit serious, no messing around"

"My rhyme's like a bull
And oh so strong
I wear the freshest clothes
Like Louis Vuitton"

"I get to jams early,
You get there late.
Then set up cold ambush
On the 808"

"I'm a Pro, Bro
And when it's time to go,
I make sure I'll let the people
Know who's running the show"

"When out on the mic
I make sure I rock the night"

"Make the girlies go crazy
Throw their panties on stage"

"One more thing
While you're listening son
Make sure the rap's delivered
Like a bullet from a gun"

"Who's Number One?"
"Bullet From A Gun"
"My posse having fun?"
"Yeah Bullet From A Gun"
"You're sure gonna get some".

That's right I am Number One
And I'm here to stay.
I ain't going no place no way

One more time

South London Chorus
"Who's Number One?"
"Bullet From A Gun"
"My posse having fun?"
"Yeah Bullet From A Gun"
"You're sure gonna get some"

That sounds right to me. You like that?
"Yeah!"
OK let's chill

[bullet fires]

Fade out with breakbeat.

---

See also: Catford Bridge and London's Got Soul.

Bullet From A Gun - photoset

Derek B - Bullet From A Gun on Youtube

My man Derek B passed away in 2009. I am priviledged to know that he approved of my toli tribute. Rest in peace, soul brother

File under: London, Derek B, travel, journalism, whimsy, life, photo, essay, culture, music, fun, hip-hop, observation, perception, South London, art, collage, hubris, soul, hustle, flow, remix, toli