Featuring alternative artwork and analog fuzz to provide as much warmth as you need, come these rarities from the Estate of the Lord Chocolate in collaboration with P.O.W. Recordings: cassette tapes of Rhys Langston's album and multimedia project "Language Arts Unit."
Includes unlimited streaming of Language Arts Unit
via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
ships out within 3 days
Purchasable with gift card
$11USDor more
Book/Magazine
"Language Arts Unit: A Rap Textbook" is an exploration of rap as theory and praxis, race as form and content, music as social mobilizer and opiate. In a winding, discursive prefatory note Rhys Langston (Podell) utilizes a biting, absurdist humor to seriously appraise the power of words, music, and all manner of extra-lingual connotations in the age of rapid-transit information technologies. As the written half of a multimedia project, what follows are the lyrics from his long play album, written as poems with the clever enjambment of his characteristically idiosyncratic wordplay.
[Rhys Langston]:
eyes dyed in saturated retinas
eyes dyed in saturated
eyes dyed in saturated retinas
eyes dyed in saturated
eyes dyed in saturated retinas
eyes dyed in saturated
eyes dyed in saturated retinas
eyes dyed in saturated
eyes dyed in saturated retinas
eyes dyed in saturated
eyes dyed in saturated retinas
eyes dyed in saturated
eyes dyed in saturated retinas,
blue light of instruments
came from Texas,
it’s said that great change to
spawn from the elections,
but sitting on electric fences
don’t feel much like a welcome—
head, shoulders, knees, toes
head, shoulders, knees, toes
head, shoulders, knees, toes
my brother’s colonists with a candid photo
wading in the water of the
soup of the metrics,
skin tone as an as-needed
hat trick,
family from the old and the new
world ghettos, oppression olympics
medaled in
mementos
my man Solar said we the splash on the canvas,
pilgrim in the freight car bellowing “so it goes,”
up on the pedestal with a brushstroke,
so I guess I’m the kosher Black gesso then—
(eyes dyed in saturated retinas
eyes dyed in saturated)
still to rise,
staid in waiting for the moment
that I blow,
etched a selfie on the front
of the claymore,
combust a musty gesture
of drawings of past pentimentos
I don’t see
how I should pay for
this wall that hinders me,
respectfully gone deep in their
non-binary pussy,
I was a drawbridge before
now nondisclosure to agree
still to rise,
staid in waiting for the moment to
hold all the smoke,
alone in two-way mirrors
to share and self-promote,
thinking in an outside voice,
a skinny hunk of flesh of
outside jokes
I don’t see
this prescription of ethics over
this lamb over rice,
rationalizing never done saying
the same thing twice,
piecing a detritus self back
for Jamal Khashogghi
I am not the Michael Jordan
of Delaware,
(eyes dyed in saturated retinas)
might be a partial jurist,
(eyes dyed in saturated retinas)
I am unenthused to be looking
laissez-faire in that vanity mirror,
(eyes dyed in saturated retinas)
when it comes to
miscegenating between art forms
(eyes dyed)
I’m a purist
[Chester Watson]:
Move like a genie in smoke,
Nipsey and Ras G in my toast,
and 2019 been a coaster,
think of my mortality as I coast
and lately been channeling ancestors
so forgive if you see me with ghosts
me and Rhys, LSD, and some doja,
all the times that I been to the ocean
and still haven't smoked weed on a boat
I need property with a moat
on some king shit,
never vibed with the mean kids,
OGs like "what you mean kid?"
guess I'm too far out towards the deep end,
but far enough where I'd sink in,
let it sink in,
your world could change as you're blinking—
[Rhys Langston]:
eyes dyed in saturated retinas
eyes dyed in saturated
eyes dyed in saturated retinas
eyes dyed in saturated
eyes dyed in saturated retinas
eyes dyed in saturated
eyes dyed in saturated retinas
eyes dyed in saturated
______________________
light-skinned n[]gg[] on the dark web,
GoPro on the pole arm,
megapixel minuscule,
refracting the side arm
in portrait mode
punch a crypto-fascist
in the throat,
esophageal armistice in silo,
bleach blonde endangered rhino
memes on the radio,
gruel in my cup,
double styrofoam half-life
of a video star
binged, upchucked
this that art rock with a
ransom note
through a corner office window
I want all the fire, and the brimstone,
and the fucking smoke
credits
from Language Arts Unit,
released February 26, 2020
written/performed by Rhys Langston, featuring Chester Watson
the definition of idiosyncratic; a beautiful, raw odyssey through depersonalization and free association against the canon and toward a new one Rhys Langston
