My Quiet Life

This February, hip-hop lost one of its truly original voices — J-Dilla. A lot of people probably don’t know his name, but just about everyone has heard his work. Even the most far-removed from the world of hip-hop have: Slum Village’s “Get Dis Money” was a highlight of the Office Space soundtrack, introducing JD’s wizardry to many, whether they know his name, or even Slum VIllage, or not.

I’ve been immersed in a drawn-out eulogy for JD purely via my musical taste. First is an actual eulogy, “Can’t Stop This”, on the new Roots album (which is pretty awesome, but that’s another review), which is a tribute to the influence he had on .. well, just about everyone.

(The Roots - Can’t Stop This)

But I’ve grabbed two albums that serve, sadly, as capstones to his career, and had some time to really process them.. Donuts, the first, was an album that DIlla made literally from a hospital bed and wheelchair, released only 3 days before his death. It’s the album that has drawn the most focus as his last work — odd, since it’s really not. And I’m glad it’s not, because to be honest, it’s not really that good. It’s not cohesive, or really that listenable. That’s not to say it doesn’t reflect Dilla’s talent — it definitely does. Each track is a brief snippet of samples and beats — some of which are used elsewhere, including “Time: The Donut of the Heart”, which provides the basis for the aforementioned Roots’ tribute.

The second album is “The Shining”, which was around 3/4 done when he died, and post-humously finished and released. This is actually a real, cohesive album, and is a better testament to what his talent could yield at its best: matching JD’s amazing production and beats to talented voices. After a throwaway track with Busta Rhymes (who long ago stopped being interesting to me), E=MC2 opens the album with a great, bubbley track that perfectly matches the flow of Common, the featured vocalist.

(J-Dilla Featuring Common - E=MC2)

(J-Dilla Featuring Pharoahe Monch - Love)

“Love”, featuring Pharoahe Monch, is another great one that matches Monch’s style almost perfectly. My favorite though is the last track “Won’t Do”. It closes the album with perfection: a solid, driving beat and Dilla taking the mic for a change. It’s the perfect closer for his career, for me — JD spent the bulk of his career in the shadow of other artists, and this album is no different. But on this track, he takes the spotlight, and closes it out in fine shape. I’ve listened to it over and over — it’s beautiful.

(J-Dilla - Won’t Do)

So, although “Donuts” seems to be getting the attention as JD’s final, truncated masterpiece, it’s really not. It’s more like getting a glimpse at an artist’s pallet. Check out “The Shining” if you really want to see the artist at work on a masterpiece.

(See the original of this picture)

I have been playing with this image enhancement software called Shadow Illuminator. It appears to use a process to automatically raise the levels of shadows “intelligently” in photos. The results appear similar to what you get from various tonemapping algorithms, except much, much better. I have to say I am blown away. I went through my flickrset and found good candidates to run through — you can see the results (including the one above) here, along with links to the originals for comparison.

They have a free online demo right now, for images up to 1.5MB. I’m assuming this is just to drum up publicity for the technology before they close off the online demo and start selling actual software. So, get it while the gettin’s good!

Speaking of capitalism, while talking with Kleinheider last night, we talked about how amazing it was that some people find the time to blog so prolifically, and I shook my head and said “yeah, I have no idea”. And then I remembered: wait, yes I do. I used to do it all the time. I had a job where I basically did nothing all day (never again), and so I blogged all day. And it struck me: the existence of the blogosphere at all is evidence of a serious market failure.

Discuss.

Last night Amanda, Scott and I went to Wolfy’s for a WKRN blogger event. I wasn’t clear on what it was for, originally, beyond Amanda Congdon being in Nashville. I didn’t really have any idea who she was, and I confided as much to her friend Emily, who was quite nice. Apparently her being in Nashville justified a party, and hey, who am I to argue? As far as blogger events go, it was pretty par for the course: butt-grabbing, boob-grabbing, dirty sanchez (and cleveland steamer) discussion, and so forth. The usual.

Blake Wylie interviewed me with one of the WKRN VJs, and I am pretty sure I elaborated on how all the local news stations were going to go out of business in the next couple of years. Except WKRN, of course. Blake also got a promo bump from Congdon for the nashvillefiles video blog. No bump requested from me, though. What am I, chopped liver? I’m an internet celebrity too, you know. My blog is the first hit on google for “chris wage” and “was beethoven black”.

The reigning theme of the evening for my discussions with everyone else was “hey, remember when you used to blog?” Yes. Yes, I do. It’ll be back soon, once I get rich and retire. Capitalism is hard.

So, I had an idea yesterday that I have always wanted a radio scanner — for emergencies and also just for following fire/police bands for goings-on. I impulse-bought one from Radio Shack — the PRO-94 scanner.

I wish when I had impulse-bought that I had realized that Nashville’s public safety services use APCO 25, which is all digital. The cheapest scanner that can pick that up I found was Radio Shack’s PRO-96, which is $500. So much for that idea.

In other news, we went camping at Fall Creek Falls this weekend, where I took a crapload of pictures. Finally, I found a use for my wide lens that yielded some results I was happy with. Although this one seems to be the most popular, I liked this one a lot:

The weather was beautiful all weekend until Saturday night. We had been getting little squalls blowing past here and there all day, and then a dark cloud moved in — another little storm that I was sure would blow over. Well, it did blow over. 13 hours later. One thing that would be nice to have in the woods is radar.

Remember when I had a blog? Good times. I tend to have these little lulls from time to time, when real life interjects. Don’t pretend it hasn’t happened before.

Hi. So metro councilman Eric Crafton has this proposal to legislate English as our official language. It’s really popular in the anti-Mexican anti-immigrant circles. Just ask Kay Brooks (who has a good summary of the legislation, by the way):

I understand that there is tension between our society’s heart to extend hospitality and essential services in emergency situations and the practicals of how much and at what cost? The more we try and accommodate various languages the more expensive our government gets and the less new immigrants will assimilate.

or Donna Locke, in the comments:

Immigrants are supposed to be learning English. Our traditional assimilation model has been defeated — the loss of English as our common language is the canary in the mine — because we are taking in more immigrants annually than we ever did before the changes in our immigration policy a few decades ago.

Man, it sounds like things are pretty bad, huh? It won’t be long until the U.S. succumbs to invading hordes and is reclaimed for Aztlan.

I hate to be the one to rain on a parade of endless debate by injecting actual facts. After all, Donna’s point would be a pretty good one — if it were true. It’s true, right? Sadly, no. As I’ve pointed out time and time again, language (and cultural) rates of immigrant assimilation are higher than ever:

The vast majority of first-generation immigrants who come to the US as children speak English well. Among first-generation Mexican children, 21 percent do not speak English well; among first-generation Chinese children, the comparable figure is 12 percent. In other words, 79 percent of first-generation Mexican children and 88 percent of Chinese speak English well (or very well).

Bilingualism is common among second-generation children. Most children who grow up in immigrant households speak an immigrant language at home, but almost all are proficient in English.

English-only is the predominant pattern by the third generation. These children speak only English at home, making it highly unlikely they will be bilingual as adults.

High immigration levels of the 1990s do not appear to have weakened the forces of linguistic assimilation. In other words, the incentives to convert to English monolingualism by the third generation do not seem to have changed. Mexicans, by far the largest immigrant group during the 1990s, provide a compelling example. In 1990, 64 percent of third-generation Mexican-American children spoke only English at home. In 2000, the equivalent figure had risen to 71 percent.

So wait, you mean our culture isn’t under siege by immigrants threatening to destroy our way of life? Huh. So that would make this entire debate a pointless exercise in hysteria, wouldn’t it?

Remember, everyone: tomorrow is “Punch Anyone That Talks Like a Pirate Day”!

Mark Rose thinks that if you’re from Africa or Asia (the approximate range of the non-feral camel), you’re a terrorist. Or something.

Or maybe he thinks the US Camel Corps was a terrorist organization which has now gone underground.

Who can say?