favorite things

max!

Warm UP

Things got hard but I knew. You couldn’t tell me shit. Yeah I’m broke, true. I have a degree, true. All my friends have jobs and I don’t. But I still know where I’m going to be. This is what kept me going: In my mind, I was always just one step away. Always so close even though I was actually really far. For the past three years, I’ve been thinking it was a month away. Every month. There never came a point where I thought it wasn’t. When you know you’re going to make it, when you know you’re destined for something and you believe in yourself, you have to keep telling yourself it’s coming. Or else you’ll start to doubt. – J. Cole, the first signee to Jay-Z’s Roc Nation Label, from The Follow Up

Read J. Cole’s First Interview with LJEC.

The Follow Up Coming Soon, The Warm Up Coming Soon

J. Cole – Grown Simba

George Lois: The Esquire Covers

Went to the MoMA last week and really enjoyed George Lois: The Esquire Covers exhibit. Defines a time in magazine culture where creative freedom existed.

From 1962 to 1972, George Lois changed the face of magazine design with his ninety-two covers for Esquire magazine. He stripped the cover down to a graphically concise yet conceptually potent image that ventured beyond the mere illustration of a feature article. Lois exploited the communicative power of the mass-circulated front page to stimulate and provoke the public into debate, pressing Americans to confront controversial issues like racism, feminism, and the Vietnam War. Viewed as a collection, the covers serve as a visual timeline and a window onto the turbulent events of the 1960s. Initially received as jarring and prescient statements of their time, the covers have since become essential to the iconography of American culture.

“A good magazine cover, like a strong package design, should memorably dramatize what’s inside.” – George Lois

MoMA Info

L’Étranger

took me a while to warm up to this absurd novel. but i made it through. a good look at existentialism.

hangover

“What sells, as always has been the case, are little acts of inspiration that turn into enthusiasm and then passion. Congress could not have designed the iPod or the iPhone; it couldn’t have mandated the algorithm that led to Google. And at a time when what the autos and much of American industry need is the thing that nobody thought of yet, some quirky idea that turns into a movement.” – from David Granger’s Editor’s Letter in Esquire

PHOTO CRY 5.5

Photos by Rahan Cotterel

“And I would absolutely have to thank my photographer, because without him, the camera is all lies of a different sort. I mean, look at the pictures. That takes a lot of work.”

Q&A

I wish I could share with all of you how good it feels. How good it felt. How when I wrote his name down for the first time, the letters leaked ink so easy all over the paper. I’m usually driving someone’s car, running red lights, riding over the speed limit to get to him. Usually late, but always glad when I arrive. He is usually there, with some expression, leading me to say something kind of awkward. I’m not entirely sure how to express myself. So I’ll say something awkward like “were you sleeping?” Instead of saying hi. Of course, it had to be him. Someone who has been after me for years. My girls and I used to laugh at him, about him; we had jokes for days about his infatuation with me. Now when we talk about him, we speak carefully with slick grins because the power table has been flipped. I am always smiling around him, about him. And when we’re kissing and when we’re touching, I am touching. I am touching and thinking that this should never end. I do not want this to end. And when he’s inside of me. I’m lifted to heights I’ve never been. So high. I haven’t been down since he first took me on this trip. So beautiful and so perfect. So soft and so firm. Gripping his body, gripping his waist. He fits me and it’s like, here I am, in the arms of a man that I’ve physically described as what I’ve wanted for so long. I think what I really want to share is – my inability to stop smiling feels so damn good. I can’t stop thinking about that night at the club when he held my hand. Or how we kissed by the door before I left. And how this may be the most superficial most official affair I’ve had in my life. I sat down with another writer and asked him, how do you get over the best you’ve ever had?

He said, “You don’t.”

frank

Intro / Stronger Than Me

You should be stronger than me
You been here seven years longer than me
Don’t you know you supposed to be the man?
Not pale in comparison to who you think I am
You always wanna talk it through
I don’t care
I always have to comfort you
When I’m there
But that’s what I need you to do
Stroke my hair

i enjoyed this

starting at the 5:01 mark.

“I’m not into casual anything.”

ESQUIRE: What do you want to achieve? Do you want to be as big as Gwen Stefani? As big as Madonna? Bigger?

KATY PERRY: I’d like to say I’d like to be as big as a Gwen or a Madonna, but I think those days of achieving that level are over. The media is bringing everybody down.

ESQUIRE: Sorry about that.

via esq.

on losing weight

You lost a lot of weight. How’d you do it?

I only loss about 20 pounds. Just keep having sex three hours at a time.

- The Dream, via Rap Radar

another self portrait.

also a card i just slipped in the mail.