JD Salinger Rap

Download MP3 here: http://mattswriting.com/music/

DJ Matt Werner's JD Salinger rap. Filled with literary references and allusions.

Mixed with samples from "We Come One" by Faithless.

The Lyrics:

DJ Matt Werner 'yall
They call me the white Eminem
I'm like Oakland's Nas
(but not really quite that good).

I was a studio gangsta; a complacent gringo.//
I was just fine 'til the Bush administration co-opted my lingo://
"Mission Accomplished." "Shock and Awe."//
I tried to look up habeas corpus, but couldnt find it under Law.//
Bush, Cheney: 'Yall neither chill with me, nor my homies//
'Yall be what Joyce and Salinger call "Philistines" and "Phonies"//
So I find solace with hipsters who quote Franny and Zoey//
And I bring Gandhian nonviolent tactics to ciphers to not be lonely.//

Born in 1984—some say my style's Orwelian//
No, I prefer Talib Kwelian.//

I'm Le Petit Prince, standing starboard//
'The best minds of my generation,' were rejected from Harvard.//

Never had dreams of be'n a Biggie, Pac, or Fifty//
Most rappers today live in a dream like Walter Mitty.//

While some get greedy, and try to out-do me,//
I live happy DJing in my room and translating Rumi.//

-T.S. Eliot CHORUS-
"But / O O O O that Shakespeherian Rag — / Its so elegant / So intelligent."//

I sling puns like gangstas sling guns.//

'Yall best listen up—meaning is about to pick up//
I'm 'bout to go with 'Crazy Jane and talk to the Bishop.'//
What, 'yall no longer wanna come near me?//
I'll Interpret your Maladies like Jhumpa Lahiri//
Knowing 'only the absoluteness of conscience is the antithesis to tyranny.'//

Like the Last Emperor, you can't define me—I'm an oddity//
Like Boethius, there's no Consolation to my Philosophy.//

Some days I play a Maude Gonne in a world where God's gone.//

Other days my mind opens, 'slouching towards Oakland'//
And Innisfree becomes my Alameda.//
I hear J-Scrilla beatboxin' and bass lines from Jo Ishida.//

Most radio tracks are about the manifestly violent or quotidian//
Diddy rap'n some'n conscious would take a Year of Magical Thinking like Joan Didion//
Bush and Condi are more likely to follow Gandhi and bring peace to Palestinians//
Or me convince a Creationist of Stephen Jay Gould's Punctuated Equilibrium//

-T.S. Eliot CHORUS-

But all I hear is "Compton," and talk of pop, lock, and drop'n//
So I busy myself with meditation and Gerard Manley Hopkins.//

While some listen to Keak da Sneak rap, "Fast like a NASCAR, NASCAR,"//
I reminisce of the days of little league and snack bars//
Where fetching a foul ball would earn me a popsicle//
But now I'm headed to the Highland[s], like the hospital.//

But we live in a world not too different from Spiegelman's Maus,//
Where housing hamlets turn into Hamlet's house.//

In hockey, my 'free checking' earned me the nickname WaMu.//
Raised on poetry workshops by Paul Flores and Bamu;//
Interned at Youth Speaks for 102 weeks.//
Me and a book, you couldn't get between me//
Brought up on the Believer Magazine and McSweeney's//

My wit is seco//
My cholo friends affectionately call me 'gringo bendejo'//
They say it means Matt.//
Most my ex-girlfriends have an unhealthy fix[i]ation on Sylvia Plath.//

-T.S. Eliot CHORUS-

I used to take groceries to people on welfare.//
Some call me the lyrical David Elsewhere://
'Out of the cradle endlessly' pop and locking//
Come'n with a style, that if you tried for a while,//
You could probably copy.//
Dont 'call me Ishamel,' and dont call me honkey,//
And American people, please dont try to stop me//
Like Bush go'n to war quick://
Barbara Lee cried wolf fo' real, and Colbert played Yorick,//
But here we are bored sick, mired in hopelessness and ennui//
Looking to Barack Obama for the guidance of King and Gandhi//

You couldn't pay me to sell out, unless you paid me a lot.//
I'll make u look like a fool and not press charges, like that dude that Cheney shot.//

MC white and nerdy from South-East Berkeley.//
Some call me Smohalla: The Truth Speaker.//
Others say I look like Paulie Bleeker.//

My only homies are hipsters who quote Franny and Zoey//
Always on the lookout for Philistines and Phonies.//

Peace, I'm out.

Category:

Music

Tags:

• Come
• Faithless
• JD
• One
• Salinger
• We
• literary
• rap
• william
• butler
• yeats

[rhowcow]

"you're lucky if you get time to sneeze in this goddam phenomenal world"

[ficklefun]

Love the allusions! Nice work.

[joliezolie]

Crazy Jane, dope. Big ups Yeats!

[Danieletvs]

This is fun esoterical artistic expression.  thanks