My first Chino XL cover!!!!

Open Mic Night at Bogo Biri: "Ghetto Vampire" and "Riiiot"

If you are looking for some entertainment on a thursday night in Lagos city, Nigeria, bring yourself over to Bogo Biri (website HERE), which is a Boutique hotel with restaurants, a bar, art exhibits, and best of all, "Open Mic Night" on thursday evenings where they play host to musicians, comedians, and poets.

I've been meaning to perform "Riiiot" by Chino XL and Ras Kass for a while now and finally got my opportunity last thursday, july 31st. In my opinion, it's one of the most impressive lyrical collaborations in rap music. The folks at Rap Genius did a great job adding the lyrics to their website and you can check it out right HERE. You can also listen to the full song HERE

I had a blast doing this and look forward to doing other songs from my favorite artists. I got my eye on "Water" by Aesop Rock which is as TOUGH as it gets!!

My "Love is" Poem for Smooth 98.1 FM

A short poem I wrote and performed for Smooth 98.1 FM Radio Station in Lagos. The beat is from a single of the same name ("Love Is") on rapper Common's 2005 album "Be." It was produced by legendary Detroit producer J.Dilla who is sadly no longer with us. He passed away at the young age of 32 from a rare blood disorder. You can listen to his original version HERE. He sampled "God Is Love" by Marvin Gaye for the beat and the website "Who Sampled" has a post with a side by side comparison of both songs which you can listen to HERE.

Alrighty then, here are the lyrics to my short, poetic version;

Love is us, jogging in the rain

The rhythmic motion of your delightful calf muscles calling my name

Love is the whirlwind romance of courtship, the roller coaster, merry-go-round

Your soft touch on the couch on friday night, listening to Motown

Love is space exploration of the furthest boundaries of the galaxy of affection 

our journey is not yet done

Love is you, and I, and Smooth 98.1

The wedding, on our (my) terms

If it is to be believed that all humans are created equal

Then the wedding should be planned by the participants: both people

I want a wedding in a Tree house, a wedding in a sand castle

A wedding on a butterfly farm with 17 guests to avoid the hassle

I attended a wedding once, it was at City Hall

it was overcrowded like a construction site with not enough portable bathroom stalls

The surrounding neighbors were frustrated - they cried: "Why do you irk us?"

Why would you turn your Holy Matrimony into a great big circus?

I know why, it's because you wanna be seen

Your wedding became your manifestation of your materialistic dream

Your friends and family flipping through your photos in Ovation Magazine

Not I, my ceremony will be on a submarine

That sailed around the world sharing recipes for the Navarin

With everything captured on a little camcorder LCD screen

Picture perfect, my wedding is for my memory

For the MC I'll time travel to the 90s and bring back Bill Bellamy

I'm a health nut, so the wedding menu might be ice tea and celery

All in my mind, this is how I planned it

If I had the oxygen capacity I'd get married on a different planet

Maybe Saturn, because she wanted a big ring

But I'll have 50% of the decision of which extraterrestrial band that sings

The Pastor? I like the French, so he could be Sylvain Wiltord

The ring would be delivered by a 3-legged Alligator in a Bart Simpson mask on a skateboard

Yes it all sounds strange, but this is the path I am treading

Because at the end of the day, it is my wedding

Marvin's (weight) Room

♫ The woman that I would try, is happy with a fat guy

But I’ve been lifting so much, that I’mma call her anyway and say ♫

♫ F*ck that hippoooo that you love so baaaad,

I know you still think about my lack of flaaaab ♫

♫ I say f*ck that rhino that you think you fooound

Your head on my shoulder, muscular and round ♫

♫ Ohhh ohh ohhhh ♫

‘’Are you pumped right now?’’

♫ I’m just saying you could do better

Holding hands, we’ll jog together ♫

A Conversation with Freddy

Are you still in the doghouse, Freddy?

Did you get your wife the manni and peddi?

Along with the great big fluffy white Teddy?

From the Lion King gift store designed like the Serengeti?

I was at the hospital a week ago, I spoke with your boy Lenny

Said if it wasn't for the anti-venom after stepping on the Gaboon Viper, the results would have been deadly

Early hospital discharge? Doctor said he wasn't ready.

Until the antibiotics circulated his bloodstream he couldn't leave until his heart rate became steady

Then he met a black nurse named Betty

Voluptuous young thing, and she was extra friendly

He didn't eat hospital food, she got him home cooked spaghetti

He said after exchanging BBM pins and a FB friendship they'd head to his place for a sexual medley

And then they got married! Confetti!

The Future

Mind communication, telekinesis

I'm chewing on a Reese's Pieces while dropping crumbs on my poetic thesis

Entitled .......

"The philosophical thoughts of Plato"

about the futility of religious scripture to bring peace to the world like Nato

a cryogenic think tank in the Texas city of Laredo 

filled with scientists with more tarnished social reputations than Jose Canseco

What are they building .....?

Space pods powered by multivitamins

Hawk eye Cider Inns

Smoke plumes from digital recycle bins

Android Swordfish with fluorescent lighter fins

Space travel, about which I'm obsessed

The love of my life alien species levitates above your conventional thought process

A thought process that gets worse as it gets older

exemplified by the typical Nigerian thinking about their first Range Rover

Like John McEnroe I'm screaming "YOU CANNOT BE SERIOUS!"

Teleportation of matter, about this are you not curious?

Everything I speak of is manifested in the new movie "Prometheus"

The beginning of life in a pregnant earth, viewed through a technological sonogram

And you won't believe in the future until Tupac performs at Freedom Hall in a 3-D hologram

One wish - the creation of life in a petri dish

In an underground Nova Scotia laboratory by an evolutionary biologist

And the villagers asked how

I pointed to my temple and said: "In here, the future is now" 

Handstand: Immemorial

If looks could fill, my eyes would regurgitate images that had my vision bursting at the seams

Desirable athleticism in shorts on a beach, the stuff of dreams

She looked like a superhero pushing Earth back into its orbit after the asteroid attack

Then stood upright to see every man between 18 and 45 waiting to rub suntan lotion on her back

Onlookers envied the portion of the shore upon which her palms rest

"With gravity defying colors" is how they described her passing the fitness test

Figures like her's part clouds, let the sun shine and push back the storm

Witness how the Yacht, waves, and horizon stare longingly at her impeccable form

Everything that's right within this world that exists for no reason at all encapsulated within a single picture
Inspiration of biblical proportions the type of which is recited by theists in scripture

The attempt is futile to argue against her twitter handle that contains the slang "swag"
Your gaze gets in the cockpit, flies around her numerous curves, then passes out from jet lag

What she exudes I'd hawk with infomercial enthusiasm and the humility of a street panhandler
You tell me looking at her doesn't get you singing a rendition of "Golden Brown" by the Stranglers

In a single word.....amazing.

Online Fatal Attraction

Originally published on Wednesday, May 13, 2009, on facebook.

So whatchu talkin 'bout..."I need to get to know you"?

My whole life is online, no privacy, it's see-through

Got a thousand friends, more popular than Skywalker

So 4 weeks on your profile page doesn't make me a stalker

I'm scratching my head, honestly I don't get it

We're the picture perfect couple, so what's there to edit?

You've seen my photos so you know what I look like

My profile's got my address, I'm 10 minutes from the Turnpike

You know my opinions, I tagged you in all my notes

You even know my favorite songs from my status update quotes

So I'm sitting here like, whadaya mean we just met?

We've been friends for 2 months, I coulda sworn we were all set

You've seen my family pictures, plus shots of all my relatives

You know where I stand on social drug use and and anti-depressant sedatives

You know my future plans, I wrote on your wall about Grad school

You wrote back, saying something like "good job, that's cool."

Really though, what more can I do or say?

I was the first person at 12 midnight to wish you a happy birthday!

When I log on, all I wish to do is seek thee

When your profile picture changes, so does the wallpaper on my p.c

Listen, I got the ring in my pocket, you know where this is heading

We got 75 mutual friends, they can all come to the wedding

Wait! What? What do you mean "restraining order"?

I think of you time-after-time like my name was Cyndi Lauper

Wait! Stop! Why are you running away?

My love is how-to-save-a-life so don't resist the Fray

We were made for each other since you first clicked that mouse

I even tagged myself in all your pics where you wore a low cut blouse

Stop! Come back here.............!!!

I wrote it all on the back of a napkin

One day while at the office, my colleague walked in wearing an ensemble similar to Olivia Munn pictured above. I was having lunch at my desk, and decided to scribble down on a napkin how nice she looked.

I wrote it all on the back of a napkin .... (the beginning)

Hey you, tall, graceful, living, breathing affirmation of your own aesthetic appeal as fact,

You with the grey skirt and pink shirt with the buttons down the back

Stunning visuals + your scent of a woman throws an observer's thought process off track

Watch them lay down their backpacks, trying to find the words to express which they lack

Physically you're like a deck of cards - stacked!

Images stayed with fans overnight till dawn cracked

Even illuminating the previous night when it was pitch black

In your presence, suitors sing "Killing Me Softly" by Roberta Flack

And what about the rumors that staring at you cures cataracts?

"IT WAS LIKE WINNING THE LOTTERY!!" he screamed, when all he did with you was interact

Reality Tv: "The Uber eligible Bachelorette." - Watch how savagely the competitors attack

..... several napkins (the end)

An Imagination (Mine)

Think of an imagination lost in a sea of simpletons, rationing flares

Occupying a void recently vacated by the second cousin of Steven Spielberg's nose hairs

An imagination wondering what life would be like 5 billion years from now in the Sun's final life cycle, a Red Giant

A destructive force, all consuming with a voracious appetite not seen since the divorce lawyers of Vanessa Bryant

An imagination that celebrates the interracial union of a round hole and a square peg

Then tells its children scary bedtime stories of Obasanjo as a Komodo Dragon that eats bunnies and Quail eggs

An imagination that understands the cheating spouse of a headless horseman justifying her actions with tales of cunninglingus frustration

Then gets divorced and remarries conjoined siamese twins: elation!

This imagination is wild - how wild?

The emperor's new clothes had a ketchup stain so he decapitated his dry cleaner and with his widow had his 17th child

This imagination gets no sleep, it wades in shallow pools in a thought process that's deep

Thinking about starting a weave business with inventory from the wool of sheep

Some say the imagination is insane, but it's magical and gave birth to David Blaine

And if we're not careful we might never see an imagination like this again