This is the first song released with my vocals in 2021. It wasn’t planned, but it’s very fitting. I’ve recorded a few other features this year but this is the first one that’s been released. It’s a feature on a song by my friend Chris Carroll, who I’ve known for a very long time. I first met Chris when he was in high school, just starting to do poetry with Youth Speaks Seattle, a beloved organization where I mentored for many years and with whom I taught regular classes with all around the city, shoutouts to El Dia!
One day Chris mentioned he was starting to experiment with making beats. We were talking about sampling, and I asked him if he had a turntable. He said he didn’t, so I ended up giving him one I wasn’t using, and I remember telling him he’s gonna get the best samples if he starts digging through old records. Fast-forward to almost 20 years later… just a few months ago, as I’m packing up after my radio show and The Morning Show is playing overhead, John Richards plays this infectious song from a local artist with a voice and sound that felt like he just stepped out of a time machine. I check the playlist to find out it’s Chris Carrol, the same kid I gave a turntable to all those years ago! I ended up diving into all the music Chris has released this year and just fell in love with his sound.
In Chris’s words:
This song was written in honor of all those we have lost especially during these last few years, and to all those we've become estranged from. Let your peeps know you love em. Tomorrow is fleeting.
This year and the last have been non-stop. In the time since I wrote on Substack last, I lost 2 more friends. Rest In Peace to Rasar and Luvva J. I was thinking of Rahwa when I wrote these bars for BLUE. Earlier this year we lost Wundrkut and Baba Zumbi on the same day. I’m still reeling from the loss of Ty last year. Lucia Leandro. Gift of Gab. We’ve lost mentors in our community like Lee Maracle and Shock G.
Couldn’t really think of a more fitting song for 2021.
I find myself often looking for hopeful words to share about grief lately, but it’s hard. I just know we have to be kind and gentle with our own processes, and I know we have to allow ourselves the space to grieve, with no judgement. Writing has always been a way for me to process grief, and I know from experience that not writing about the thing that’s troubling you the most can make everything else feel like a lie. It’s why there was such a pause in my output before being able to write History Rhymes If It Doesn’t Repeat (A Southend Healing Ritual).
That being said, sometimes it feels like a lot, and I don’t want to flood your inboxes with sad stories. I paused on the Substack these last few months because almost everything I wanted to write was about the loss of another friend. Once you skip a few posts, it starts to feel like a habit. And then I start missing days to write about the good stuff in life too. So I’m gonna try to get back on it here.
If there is anything you’d like to see me writing about here, please let me know!
This is all an experiment to get back into a regular habit of writing, and sharing some stories that might not have a platform other places.
If you’ve made it this far, thank you.
While we’re on the subject of Blue, I want to highlight two more collaborations with people that have passed away in recent months. One way that I process loss is by celebrating the friendship, who the person was, and what they meant. In that way I hope a piece of them lives forever in the people they touched, and that we can live our best lives in their honor.
Produced by Wundrkut.
KEXP’s Tia Ho recently did a deep dive with Kimmortal and myself on the lyrics of “Solidarity”, just a few months before our brother who produced the song, Wundrkut passed away. No one’s ever done this much of a deep dive into the lyrics of a single track that I’ve been a part of (we talked for over an hour) and it means so much that it was the one Wundrkut produced. You can read the whole piece (and listen) here:
“A World Where Many Worlds Fit”: Kimmortal and Gabriel Teodros on Black and Asian Solidarity by Tia Ho, for KEXP
In Kimmortal’s words:
“my heart is broken from the loss of this hip hop legend eric cardeno dj wundrkut. i wanna honor the core fam of eric who are hurting deeply. i feel you and think of you every morning i wake up.
eric was my first filipino dj friend who gave me pride in being from surrey.
the first time i performed with him was for a surrey hip hop fest called the bridge - the organizers were not from surrey and asked eric for help in connecting them with surrey bred emcees. eric was prompt in providing a long list of surrey cats that he loved. he helped me in building my set with a list of golden era tracks he thought i’d flow good over.
later that year he dj’d for my 1st ever album release party for Sincerity. That show was all fam! in the audience to the stage: purple hearts social club, sol diana, to missy d! he dj’d my first animated music video release party in the late Heartwood cafe, and the last time i saw him was at the first ever pinoy potluck where i was in awe seeing kaya spin and the love of his life niki, the ultimate crew.
i am honored to be on a track he produced that talks about black and asian solidarity which gabriel teodros released. he said he wanted to string snippets of Public Enemy to make the track more intentional. He was formative in making me believe in myself as an artist.
my fondest memory of eric was when he drove out from surrey to my place to download a copped version of ableton on my laptop. at the time i couldn’t afford ableton and he was doing this for so many artists around him who wanted to make beats. He always made time to share what he knew, nodding his head with a smile of encouragement.
he was a fan of everyone around him just as we were fans of him. i am moved by his humbleness and the deep reverence he had for the portal of hip hop and our ancient filipinx roots that i didn’t hear him speak of but that i felt and witnessed, that spiritual zone he encompassed, when he scratched, when he listened.
he is in spirit world now, everywhere. and as long as our music flows we hold him in our hearts as community, interdependent, heart beating. wundrkut forever.”- Kimmortal
"...Roseville's sultan
Sacramento's 2nd Black mayor
negating haters
basically a straight up innovator..."
- Rasar Amani (formerly known as Random Abiladeze)
I met Rasar in 2008 at UC Davis. He was a student then, and he opened up for Toni Hill and myself at the end of a string of dates we had in the Bay Area, which included that Zion I show at UC Berkeley I was telling y'all about recently (on IG). We were so impressed not just by his presence on the mic, but who he was off the mic as well. We always kept in touch since that first show, and I ended up collaborating with him on this song for his album in 2011. Little did I know then, that this song would include a third verse from Uptown Swuite, who I didn't know at the time, but I ended up becoming a huge fan of (and we ended up collaborating again years later). Getting introduced to Uptown's work was how I was also introduced to SoulChef, so when SoulChef hit me up out of the blue to do a collaboration, I didn't hesitate. Our first collaboration was one of my favorite songs still to this day, "Black Love", which led to one of the most important albums of my career, Evidence Of Things Not Seen.
Through all of this I stayed in touch with Rasar. It was a show in 2011, I think the release party for his Indubitably LP in Sacramento where I first met and heard Ruby Ibarra and Butterscotch. Rasar hosted what I think was the first CopperWire show ever, in Davis. The last time we saw each other in person was early 2018, here in Seattle, his band The Lique played a show at Seamonster. There's a video from that night of us freestyling on stage together somewhere. And the last time we texted was 2 weeks ago. Always love. A few times a year we would chop it up on the phone for hours. Rasar was a rap scientist. A connector. A technician and forever a student of the craft, and the culture. I'm going to miss this brother. I'm sad I never got to see one of his Vinyl Say events in Las Vegas. Sending so much love to all of his family, friends, and our shared communities.
Rasar Amani, forever.
Give your people their flowers while they can still smell em y’all… you just never know. Sending love and more love to everyone who lost someone these last few years.
You are not alone.