Thursday, June 30, 2005

Music


this past weekend was my first Father's Day!!! to be honest i never thought it would happen, well not never, but i was pretty much beginning to think it was never gonna happen. after 12 yrs of marriage and no children one would start to wonder. but God blessed us with a boy this feburary and here we are. it was a good day. woke up to two nice cards from the wifey, one was from jr to daddy (aawww). got some new aftershave and sports body wash and a book called "God is in the Small Stuff and it all matters." Looks like a very good book and hopefully i'll have the energy to read some on the train on the way home tonight.



i've been listening to alot of music that for me is uplifting. just last year a friend of mine turned me on to The Cross Movement. basically since then i've been searching for more music like that. i didn't even know this genre existed. well i did but, what i heard back in the day was corny. corny beats and flows and the lyrics weren't all that great. now to be fair i only heard a few people and didn't give the genre much of a chance. but at any rate things have changed! i've found quite a few artists on sounclick.com and on the artists websites. i used to spend way too much time surfing the web looking at stuff that it wasn't worth spending all that time looking at. pretty much from then on i started surfing for new music, even if it was new to just me. i used to love hip hop/rap, then around the time public enemy came out, the game done changed. lots of swearing on the albums. and i'm not saying it was public enemy specifically that brought it about, its just thats when i remember noticing it. and i guess i could kinda deal with that, but you could see that rap was gonna be different from then on. as much as i love rap, i couldn't buy too many cd's cuz there was just too much cursing for me.



flash ahead to now and the message is the same in just about all the hotest artist cd's. money, sex, drugs, violence. i know it doesn't seem like it, but isn't there more to life than that? the message by grandmaster flash showed that. public enemy showed that, nwa showed that too. grant it there was alot of violence in their message but they were letting the world know what their world was like, what life was like on their side of the tracks. i loved rap from when it first hit the scene! i could listen to it on the radio but once the message changed, having that kinda music fill my home, nope couldn't do it.



whether or not people want to believe it, music does have a strong influence on the listener. no point in trying to argue that. if anyone doesn't believe that they're denying the truth. yes, its ultimately up to the listener, but some listeners are weak minded. and music videos don't help.
anyway, enuff on that. its hard to find good music and people who even know what good music is nowadays. not just in the rap genre. and speaking of genres, i was listening to music when it was just music, there were no labels on music.



so, being a bit of an old school hip hop head, in the sense of being someone who's listened to it from the days of grand master flash and the furious five, run dmc, ll cool j, krs-1 till today, it was good to find quality Christian rap/Gospel rap/Holy Hip Hop, whatever you wanna call it that in my opinion rivals and outshines the music that is out now. and sometimes i have a short attention span with music in the sense that once i've played the heck out of a cd or a song, i'm ready for the newest joint.



here are some of the artists i'm feelin, and actually the list is growing each day. there is definetly what you'd call a revolution going on, even if its more "underground" now, i don't think it can be ignored for long. and even if it doesn't reach the status of secular music, i believe it's true purpose will be served.



there are more, maybe i'll list them later. but their music has touched me and encouraged me in my walk with God. if cats like them can do it...know what i'm sayin? and you can tell they don't spit just to spit, there is a message, a mission behind what they're doing. cuz they could easily get their foot in the secular door, but they choose not to. and i know there are people who wouldn't believe it, but what i've heard from them has helped with my hunger for knowing the Word.
enuff for now!! whew!!

Thursday, June 16, 2005

A Relationship...


with God. that is what i'm trying to have. i've been a Christian for a long time and for most of that time i didn't live or behave like a Christian should. i didn't think like one should either. this past summer i had an issue at work that was very upsetting and it brought me back to church and i took it to the altar. a former co-worker brought to my attention that other cows (co-workers) were making racial jokes behind my back. now they weren't picking on me necessarily but it was inapropriate for work. they're equal opportunity haters and think they're pretty funny. it turned into a HR thing and was quickly resolved. but at any rate it got me back in church. sometimes i start to wonder why, but i know i was very upset and surprised by what i found out. i don't think they really meant any harm, but they just act like idiots and don't think. but i brought it to the Lord and at the same time, my heart was aching for a true relationship with Him. i was tired of feeding on "milk" and living and thinking like one who did. i believe i expressed that in my prayer and wouldn't you know...a friend of mine who had helped me thru some other difficulties in the past was at the altar praying with/for me. and we talked about my desire to have a true relationship with God. we talked about meeting on a regular basis and it actually happened. alot has happened since then and its hard to deny that God didn't have His hands in it. so that's where i am now. this blog is a place for me to kinda journal about seeking that relationship. at times i'm very frustated and feel like this. its a process and something i finished reading yesterday was encouraging. but i know there'll be times when i'll be frustrated and it will be more with myself than anything. this blog is a big step for me. putting these kinds of feelings out in a public forum. but i think i wanna "meet" others who share in the struggle.

"God, i say you're the greatest light of my life
the cross, the greatest sight of my life
when i believed, the greatest night of my life
since then, its the greatest fight of my life, to get at You" - the cross movement.

that's how it feels sometimes. but i do believe it's true that the more you earnestly seek Him out, you will find Him, and you do feel closer and more like you're doing what He wants. i could go on but i'll stop here. cuz i can be pretty long winded at times.

right now i'm very frustrated with the fact that it appears my host doesn't support php. and even with the html version of radioblog i still can't get it to work. hopefully i can work something out. i have a friend who may be willing to host this blog on his server, we'll see. but i'm gonna hunt for some free hosting in the meantime. arrrgghh.

Wednesday, June 08, 2005

Someone's at the door



i think this is a great cartoon and i'm gonna comment on it later. i'm still tweaking the page a little. this is a new template and i'm seeing what i want to change.