Music Dude presents: Twistinado's return

Magic came back. Jordan came back. Sugar Ray came back. Ali came back. Jay-Z came back. Rakin came back. Travolta came back. Prince came back. Bobby Brown came back. Hubie Brown came back. Marion Barry came back. FDR came came back. my old boss Van came back. "Chill" never left, but "fresh" came back. tight jeans came back.

...and Twistinado is coming back, too. Not for long. This is a one-n-done thing. One verse, probably one of my patented 64-bar specialties...and then I'm out like shout.

Why? That's what some of my niggas may be asking. Why one last verse, Twist? Well, quite simply, it's because of a dream (a dream, Vince? you on that again?). But there's a longer story here and I'm gonna tell it.

Note: some of you, especially post-2000 Twist aquaintances won't care about the novel-blog contents below. But for my niggas, read on...

As most of you know, I was an ill emcee back in the day. I started rhymin when I was 10, got good by the time I was 12 and was an outright maniac by the time i was about 15 0r 16, reaching a pennacle in my late teens.

This is no joke. If you don't, then somebody shouldve told you.

I had my two compadres: Tony, aka Fella Mics; and Ab, aka Prince of Persia. We were fire. We never had any dreams of becoming rap stars. That was silly. We just did it because we loved the music and love the artistry of being an emcee. And we were dope at it.

Tony and I used to rhyme on window seals at school. Or skip classes and rhyme in the lockerroom. We battled seniors when were 12 and we blugeoned them.

Ab and I used to buy fifths of SoCo and rhyme on the Humboldt bridge at night. We rhymed on local mixtapes.

I rhymed on my cousins LP.

That track, "Statistics", was the last time I ever wrote a rhyme. My cousin Digga was puttin together an album and he wanted me to do a solo track. I told him I wasnt really feelin it, since I was trying to distance myself from the music (like I'm about to do in 2006) and just wasn't really writing like that anymore. It was the Spring of 2000, a couple months before I moved to DC. My nigga Tony was at Howard. My nigga ab was in NYC at Bethel. I just wasn't on it like that anymore. But I aquiesced after I heard the beat Digga produced. So I took the instrumental home and banged out two verses in a couple days...

Note: all this garbage about how niggas walk up in studios and bang out verses in 15 minutes without writing anything down is 1) baloney and 2) somewhat true and part of the reason all these wack hop verses sound so elementary and preschoolish. no thought is put into em.

But when I walked into the studio that Saturday afternoon, with my ryhmebook and my 22 oz. heinekhen, I told Digga that after I spit this, I was retiring. I know, I know, I know..."retiring? nigga, you ain't some nationally recorded artist." You're right, but that's just how emcees think. In your self-absorbed world, you're the baddest mofo ever. so an announcement like, "I'm retiring" is just a pompous way to say, "these are the last verses I'll ever write or spit again."

Digga looked at me and said, "You trippin dude. But I'm glad I got em on my album. make sure u go out in a blaze baby."

He knew I wasnt tryin to make a career out of it, although I'm sure I couldve, and he also knew I was trying to get my head on straight as I left for DC and hiphop can murk things up...thats for my 2006 "I'm Threw With the Hop" blog, though.

Anyways, I dumbed out on the track. My last words on my last verse of my emcee days was,

Outta ten times I rhyme
Nine'll be divine
The other supernatural
Actual miraculous
Lyrically smashin six,
cabbages disastrous
thoughts bless
innocent targets in progress.

I'm sorry, but that's a Source hiphop quotable.

That was June 2000 and didnt write not a blessed word in a notebook since. I didnt even freestyle. which was crazy, because that's what me and my crew did. whenever we gt together, it was freestyle time. On our way to Toronto? pop in the instrumental start the cypher. In they ard at Howard Homecoming? freestyle time. -10 degrees outside in Buff? Kop $13 Elvin Jones, one swig and pass, start the cypher.

But no more for me. I can remember me and my DC crew being at Republic Gardens for a party my girl Nabila threw. Her brother and my boys started freestyling and my man Chuck came up to me like, "Yo, Twist...I know u gona bless the cypher!" No go.

My nigga Tone wrote an absolutely ridiculous verse back in 2002...a joint that wouldve usually sent me back to the lab to write something so we could them together, but I was done. He was dissapointed, but I was done.

Which brings me to now...recently...let's say, over the past two years...I started listening to more hiphop. My reaquaintance with my first love was because of two things, my lax stance on keeping my mind free of the taint and my lax standards for the music. I quit ryhmin in 2000, but I quit listenin to hiphop all together in 2001, partly because I thought it was influencing the way I thought too much, partly because I was beginning to expand my personal jazz collection and partly because after 2000 (Ghostface's "Spremem Clientele", Slum Village's "Fantastic", Dead Prez' "Let's Get Free" Wyclef's joint and the DeLa joint...oh an Refelction Eternal...they all dropped in 2G) hiphop got so wack that I wished it were a person so I could beat it to near death and piss on its wounds. I was still expecting hop to be 1993-4, 1998 and 2000. But it wasnt...in a real bad way.

four years later and I'm a jazz man. that's my sustenance. if i cant get it from jazz, then i dig in my crates and do the knowledge on some curtis mayfield. or I go get to know radiohead. or i go give spacek a pound. or say wuddup to Musiq or Badu. Hiphop is like the clown of the bunch to me. And as that clown, it makes me laugh. it entertains me and sometimes it actually nourishes me, like this last Kweli piece, which me and Vino banged like a cheap whore in Miami.

I say all this to say, that I found myself freestyling under my breath this past year or so. Always wack rhymes that I felt ashamed coming from the mouth of a dude that once wrote,

Niggas bitin this get tooth decay
or mononucleosis
I wrote this,
niggas quote this
ferocious
anecodote via cerebellum
swellin your dome as i explore like Magellan

(I was 15 when I wrote that by the way and the flipped that verse over the "Mass Appeal" beat on Digga's "Diggin For Gold" mixtape)

Anyways, recently I started thinking to myself..."can I still do it?"

Remember that episode of Martin where he takes off his ring and heads to the club to show Tommy and Cole that he could still pull a chick if he wanted to?

Well I had this dream where some young-buck wack nigga was challenging me on some ol', "Yo, this old nigga can't touch me. he probably rhyme like Melly-Mel or some s***. You don't want it nigga."

And he got to me. Usually, in those dreams I'd just let the young kid big his britches and go on about my biz. But my boys were here this time, like "Yo Twist, slay that kid. I know you not ganna let this wack nigga son you like that!"

What's this degenerate
little kid
gettin big
in his britches fo
didnt know that twist is visceral
spittin this
gettin his
since befo
this misfit get his first pubical
you know the ritual
this is gist the usual
dome top, chrome pop
technique
respect V
even though the said is not mutual.

I SWEAR THIS CAME IS A DREAM. and i remembered it. i have no idea what came after that. but the crazy thing is that i remember that right there and everything after that ryhming and being ridiculous. and i woke up thinking "yo, u spit a hot verse in your sleep. which is off the top of your dome."

So I decided, I needed one more verse to take with me to my hiphop grave.

So this is the plan. I'm gonna select some hot beat that's out right now. Go back to the lab, pen one last criminal, nasty, despicable, unfathomably dope verse and then post it on the blog when I post my novel-blog on why I'm divorcing the hop for the final time.

stay tuned...