Usually when I write, I listen to Halcyon On and On – on repeat.  It helps me to focus, and it drowns out distractions.

Biggie asked / demanded I listen to something HE wrote, which makes sense because Orbital is not really in line with Biggie’s energy.

Besides, as he pointed out, I’ve not spent NEARLY enough time listening to his music!  If you want to listen to, here’s the theme of this post:

 

AD’s Question:

embraced his bills, eh? i think i need more on this. i understand that every time i write my rent check or insurance check that the money is affording me something to be very grateful for – like a home, or an office or health insurance – and i am grateful – yet it feels so burdensome (mo money, mo problems). i prefer to blame “the system” for my stress, but is this where i should be changing my OWN energy? did bigggie go into the studio with the idea that 10% of his time creating radio hits will generate 80% of his income, or is that just how things shook out? side note: about a year ago you did a reading with my 2 cats, 1 of whom you identified as being psychic. she kept saying she didn’t understand why we worried about money so much. ha!

Biggie:

Yeah, “Mo Problems,” those are the words of a broke-ass bitch.  Why’d you want more money, you think it gives you more problems.  I wouldn’t give you mo money, who ever loves you wouldn’t give you mo money to give you problems. 

You look at it this way: you think paying your rent is a problem, you ask some (dude) living in a box how much of a problem that’d be for him, you understand?

I like the 3-g’s  (He’s referring the the typo in your comment “bigggie”).  I’m gonna use that.  Bigggie 3-G, solid gold.

Listen to the song: condo paid for, no car payments.  That’s rich, when you got what you need, that’s rich. 

Maybe your rent is too high, maybe you need to move.  (Shows me the contrast between my last two Toronto apartments, which is reversing the meaning of the words, or flipping the words around.)

Kate:

Okay, let me paraphrase why Biggie is showing the difference between two Toronto apartments.  I stayed in this one apartment on Sherbourne St., next to the Phoenix night club.  People would have sex behind the dumpsters (we’d clap afterwards).  We heard gunfire sometimes, and homeless people did die in the park just across the street, and just beyond that park is the infamous “Hooker Harveys” (a purely Canadian gem, I assure you.)  The building was infested with roaches and mice, and one day, the people on the first floor started complaining about bed bugs.

For some reason, the bed bugs was the last straw.  I thought this place was the best I could afford, but I managed to make room in my budget (I can’t even say how) and I moved to a place I could barely afford.

The funny thing about that place was, as soon as I moved so many things in my life started falling together.  I stayed there only nine months before Sweetie & I decided to move out West.  So Biggie was showing the contrast of being in this terrible apartment and staying because I thought I couldn’t afford better, and then moving and then seeing so many new options once I’d left that neighbourhood.

Did I get that, Biggie?

Biggie:

Yeah, sort of. 

Kate:  Oh wait, Mo money, Mo problems is a song!  OMG, I had to stop here for about 30 minutes to watch / listen to youtube videos because apparently I’m “Embarassing myself!”

Here’s the one AD’s talking about:

 

Okay, here’s what I’m getting while watching this video (which is effing funny! I really do need more Biggie in my life.)

Biggie:

You’d like my pop songs.  (Biggie interjects, like, I wouldn’t like all of his stuff, and so he’s pointing me towards the stuff I would / could understand.  This reminds me of when Kurt pointed me towards the *only* acoustic album they had.  It’s a gateway drug, these accessible songs.)

You, your celebrity posts, they’re the gateway drug to the afterlife.  It’s like, people don’t think about talking to their dead (friends) their dead (parents).  But some psychic is like, “Yo, I got this dead celebrity,” people will click on that shit.  So here I am.  I’m fuckin’ still here (being a badass / authentic / creating.)  And this is something people need to understand, you don’t end when you die.  You don’t end when you die.

Anyway, stay fresh, (what’s stay fresh?  it has something to do with my pink hoodie) Back to the song. 

You girl, (AD) you ain’t got “too much money” problems, you got “flat-ass broke!” problems!  Which would you rather have!?  I’d rather have mo money problems, if you ask me.

Mo Money problems, it’s like, people feel entitled to shit that you’ve earned.  They’re like, “Man, you can’t USE all that money!  So give some to me!”

And sometimes you do, and you’re sorry you did when they use it to hurt themselves, or they don’t change the things they’d said they could change if you just helped them out.

So it’s tough, you know, the responsibility of making a difference, of handling all that power.  And people give you negativity just because you made it.  They don’t see it’s that attitude that’s keepin’ them down.

Yeah, I like to be funny.  (He says this completely dead-pan.)

Kate:

Woah, I just heard the lyrics in “Juicy” “Blow up like the world trade.”  I asked send this question mark to Biggie.

Biggie:

Yeah.  I didn’t see that, like, know it would happen at the time. (911, which just passed recently.)  But I saw it in my mind, all this money blowing up.  I was surprised (when it happened) and how it didn’t really shut down (the world economy).  It showed how money is invincible.  It just changes hands.  It just moves around. 

(I looked it up on Wiki later and apparently the lyric was a reference to a 1993 trade center bombing.)

 

Kate:

I go back to AD’s question and ask Biggie about the “Blaming the system” part.

Biggie:

Yeah, mmmm.  Yeah.  If you’re fighting the system, you’re always fighting the system.  Sometimes you can try and go around, you know?  Ask for permission later.  You go to jail, you are really IN THE SYSTEM.  You can’t do anything with your life.  So don’t let the system get the better of you, you’ve got to be smart.  As long as you’re angry at the system and feeling helpless, the system has a hold of you. 

I’m not tellin you to let go of that anger.  Just don’t let it make you helpless, don’t get paralyzed.  You pay your taxes, pay your taxes. 

Yeah, that’s how I did it.  (10% of his time on the pop hits.)  Yeah, I MADE those pop songs to get me in the door, to show (the producers? the record companies?) I was valuable, I could produce.  I unlocked the rhyme, I knew how to seduce the ear, you know?  I knew how to make people feel good, to be that drug they’d keep comin’ back to .  I understand people.

So yeah, I promised myself that I’d make pop hits, and that I’d talk about the things that were important to me, to my community, once I had that ear.  But you gotta get that ear.  And that’s why people were like, nasty about my success, sayin’ I was a sell out, saying all kinds of shit. 

They’re just pissed they couldn’t do it themselves.  Rather than figure out what they could do better than me, they just spent all their time being pissed.  (Drunk / high and angry.)

Next.