milk bar, sf :: photo by suzy salazar

live via harlem.

the world is different than it was before i left for tour.  when i was last in oakland just 3 weeks ago, it was still a mystery as to who would be our next president.  queer folks had the right to marry in california.  the weather was warm.  lil wayne’s mixtape hadn’t dropped.  SO many things were different about the world, and in mine i had no clue how anyone was going to react to ill-lit’s full transformation into a musical entity.

at times i’m apprehensive about sharing my feelings about the significance of my own art, because i’m worried about coming off as arrogant.  one thing that i’ve learned from the obama campaign is how vital it is for people to be open about their own importance.  but as an artist, what are you trying to do if not to change the world?

almost 3 years ago to the date, ill-lit gathered in a bar in paris called le tourville where we laid out the blueprint for what we were going to do for the rest of the foreseeable future.  the thing about it was, we were spoken word artists, wanted to do spoken word, but spoken word didn’t go as far as we wanted to.  because we wanted to travel the world, and make people dance, and rock out, and not that you can’t do any of those things as a spoken word artist, but just not in the way that we wanted it.

a year ago after one of our first band rehearsals with the hi-lifes, we huddled in oj’s suv, lit the swisher and pumped funkadelic’s “maggot brain” while questionig, did bands like this, and the beatles and outkast actually decide that they were going to intentionally change the way that the world listens to music, or did it just happen?  back at le tourville we had certainly decided that we were going to change the way that we saw ourselves in the realms of spoken word…at the time we were still rookies, names that fell deaf to the ears of people in the spoken word scene (and probably names that still do), but we confronted the fact that this is art.  and whether vet or rookie, the forefront is never out of bounds.

so what is my reaction to all this now that i’m a musician…a role that i yearned for like some unattainable status setting just a year and a half ago?  i just started trying to sing a year ago.  i’ve picked the keys up casually, and am toying with the idea of learning the trumpet.  but i’m definitely a newbie.  so last night, while driving to syracuse for the last show of our first musical tour, almost 3 years from the date that we decided to change the way people listen to spoken word, we decided to change the way people listen to music.

i admit that it’s a huge task, and there has to be a healthy amount of arrogance for a group of ragtag poets to be eyeing radiohead status.

a few weeks ago i had to break the news to dahlak that the renaissance–the pending title to his album that he’s been planning since he dropped his last album–is also the name of q-tip’s upcoming joint.  we mourned the invalidating moment together, and tried to think of another word that could capture the energy and possibility and historic significance of today’s social, political, and artistic climate that’s in renaissance.  and we couldn’t.

during the course of the tour, “ill-literacy, obama, and the renaissance” became one of the soundbites that was tossed around from mouth to ear to mouth.  we haven’t completely figured out what that means yet, but it involves a lot of personal transformation.  and it involves the perpetuation of a worldwide movement that affects positive change in art and politics.  and it involves us kickin it with barack.  basically, we’ve gotten somewhat bigheaded and have decided to try to change the world.  it’s a loose-leaf plan that will find its realization as it comes, but like the rest of the loose-leaf plans that have constructed ill-lit’s history, it’ll definitely happen.

sitting here on a couch in harlem, eyes burning from complete and utter sleepiness, i’m very inspired.  i’m not completely sure where to direct all this energy yet, but all i can say is that i am thrilled to be a part of an effort to write history.  will you join me?

[DOWNLOAD: Sly & the Family Stone - Everybody is a Star]