Wuz Up?!

What do Becky G, Dr. Seuss, Method Man, Rebel Wilson, Jon Bon Jovi, Daniel Craig, Ben Roethlisberger and Rizm all have in common? That's right you incredibly smart people. We share the same birthday, which gave birth to inspiration leading me to post at this time. There will be a more detailed/personal account of exactly how I was inspired on  my RaisingRizm blog, so stay tuned in to check that out in upcoming post.

Ya'll know who it is! Rizm! But ya'll don't know where I've been. Let me do you a quick catch-up. I been grinding like crazy to say the least. A lot of people be posting bout how they always grindin'. I  myself am guilty of using the slogan as brief explanatory summary for work I'm currently engaged in but don't have the luxury of going into any further details about at the time. 

My personal philosophy is that I'm actually too damn busy to spend time "telling" anybody, "Hey, look at me, l'm busy." If you always advertising how busy you are (#Grinding), is it really cause you ain't got nothing better to do than try to convince us? Just asking? Then again, it could just be that I'm not a good multi-tasker.  Lol.

Since we last spoke,  I released the 1st  Official Music Video, for "SugarCoatedShhh", the 1st hot new single following the "7/30 album", on the RizmMusic YouTube channel.

*For this video we had locations varying from the lots of abandoned buildings (We didn't have to "give it" a grimy feel, it was grimy enough all by itself. Lol), to landmarks containing historic memorabilia representing past events, sites that played a part in the history of this country, to a place with graffiti so colorful if you stare at it long enough you can almost forget what you actually standing in the middle of. I said, "Almost". Ya'll know my paranoid ass ain't tryna' get caught slipping! Lol, but For Real for real.

*All of the scene locations chosen, as well as the entire blueprint for making the video was due to the brilliant work of none other than....... Nah, not Rizm, not on this one, but that was a good guess. I like how you think. Lol

*Actually, the credit for plan execution goes to the Award nominated Critically acclaimed Movie Directer/Producer Poetic Lace. Having a more "close-up" veiw of what goes on behind the scenes has given me a totally different perspective, as well as a new found respect for the crazy work ethic this Brother has displayed. It's one thing to have talents, gifts, and a great skill set, but to successfully manage all these things into an efficiently working machine that's effective is another, but that's exactly what he does. It would amaze you to see what all actually goes into producing just 4 or 5 minutes of quality content and that's with everything going according to plan.

*90% of the time, things "do not" go according to plan. This is like one of those law's of nature, similar to gravity. I can't explain it. I don't fully understand it, but if you go into it starting off armed with this pre- knowledge and remember to remain flexible in how you accomplish your goals.....I'm not saying it won't be stressful, but you'll be able to handle it in a way in which the stress doesn't drive you cray cray. Lol, but for real. For example, small stuff like when I saw all the trash scattered about the ground it "looked" great scene wise but when I actually began performing while trying to stay looking in the camera instead of down on the ground where I really wanted to divert my attention because this wasn't just "regular" trash. 

With a quick closer scan of things I had already peeped a couple of used syringes on the ground. The 1st one was one too many for me, so from that point on in my overactive mind you couldn't tell me that there wasn't a syringe everywhere I stepped just waiting to stab me in the foot and give me something worse than a bumbump and I can't let my facial expression on camera reflect all the crazy thoughts going through my head while I'm trying to perform and remain professional. Another thing was the scene on the steps. It looked great, thanks again to the editing genius of Poetic Lace, but anybody who really knows me knows how clumsy and uncoordinated I can be at times. It takes work to make me look cool cause I'm just not that guy. Lol.

I've been know to have trouble walking and chewing gum at the same time so you might be able to imagine how challenging it was for me to go up, down, and all around the steps while trying to perform the song without breaking my ankles or trippin, fallin, and busting my head wide open. So yeah, all the unpretty stuff got cut, of course. Like I said, I now have a new found respect, so shout out to Beyonce (Do people still say, "shout out"?)and all the other greats that have taken a nosedive or 2 throughout their careers. We still love you and I, I mean we understand. To think about it, I had combat boots on for the scene, but Queen Bey does her thang in high heels for the most part. 

That's not a goal I'm trying to reach, but I am impressed with the fact that she can do it. She has a pretty good not falling to falling ratio. Lol. We overcame other obstacles we don't have the time to discuss in just this one blog post, but I will say this one last thing, "Mosquitoes!" I know right now you're probably thinking that complaining about mosquitos doesn't make me look very manly or thugged out. Whatever! Lol. These was like, Ninja Warrior Mosquitoes! I'm for real, they were on a mission, cause it's one thing to land on me and bite me. They had my whole entire body as a landing pad. Pick a spot, bite me and be gone, right? Nooooooo! They wanna go right in my eyeball! They was buzzing all in my ears.(If you've ever had a mosquito buzzing in your ear and you slapped yourself so hard in the face that you cause deffness in that ear cause you were convinced that the mosqito was trying to lay an egg in your brain, then you know what I'm talking about.) All up my nose! 

You try to concentrate on keeping your facial composure and perform while the camera is filming you with this going on. The mosqito click had a kamikaze gnat they sent in as a final attack. When it flew into my mouth and hit the back of my throat all my rapping was gone with the wind and that's when I knew it was time to cut. I couldn't even get the word "cut" out. All that came out was this crazy hiss of death as I tried to cough, clear my throat of the dead gnat body, spit, remember not to swallow and for some reason I was holding my breath all at the same time. 

Like I said, I couldn't actually get the words to cut out but I guess the director knew that part of the performance wasn't in the script. He did a quick check to make sure I wasn't dying for real, then went to packing up equipment with the rest of the production crew. Yeah, we all knew it was a wrap at that point. We all had to get over hurdles both personally and collectively to see the video shoot through to completion, but of course, but I have the same perspective now as I did then, which is that it was more than worth it! #1) Selfishly, yeah, even though it's alot harder to live your dreams in reality than people think, being able to do what I love for a living is nothing short of an absolute blessing. #2) Message. This song had one or two or three. Not all my songs do. I know, shocker right?! My job as an artist is simply to make good music and entertain you for 3:30-5 minutes/duration of the song. So although, oh yeah, I'm making a statement/saying something in every song, thus lyrics, but all statements ain't messages , feel me. 

*In this song, I touched on some really obvious issues from a simpler less complicated veiwpoint like when I rap--"All lives matter, if you're human should be no Distinction"--"But faces that mirror my own are the verge of Extinction"....... It's a national problem but this is how it affects me as an individual. I can't be selfish to the point where I'm only concerned with me cause as I go on to say in the song, I have a son to think about and it would be crazy for me to hope for the world to be a "perfect" place, but when it is time for me to leave this planet I do hope that it's a "better" one, in which my son is blessed with the opportunity to live out his life's journey in peace, love, and happiness. 

I don't think that's asking for too much at all. I hit on some other subjects going on across the globe as well. What I wanted to point out is simply that, as human beings, we can't afford to not care about each other even on a global level. We can't so easily turn a blind eye to atrocities in other parts of the world now that some of those same atrocities are showing up over here, right in our own backyards. We're not as far from being a 3rd world country as you think and again I got kids to raise up in this world, so yeah, I'm concerned, As a Parent, cause before I'm any of this other stuff having to do with business, my number one priority #1 My Son. My #1 job is being his dad. 

Ok. Let me stop right here cause I forgot about the music for a minute and went into Daddy mode thinking bout my son. For a closer look at me in "Daddy mode", check out RaisingRizm blogspot where you can have a more intimate view at my humanness.

*Thank you to all those supporting the RizmMusic YouTube channel. I appreciate you connecting with me on IG/ all social media @OfficialRizm.
*You're gonna wanna stay tuned in to OfficialRizmMusic blogspot for more music, Hot new video premiers, and behind the scenes exclusives you'll only find here.
*Peace and Blessings to the Universe.✌

The Pink Princess Part 1

"The Pink Princess"

By Rizm

The Pink Princess is a true story based on one of my many countless escapades detailing just one of my multiple addictions.  This one in particular was a pill I nicknamed "Pink Princess", obviously.  One for her pink color and two because it had me feeling like it was more of a person than a pill.  We had an abusive relationship to which I found myself to be an even more torturous form of slavery, than the pain I experience in the belly of the physical prison I was residing.  Until late one night when He found me in the darkness, lifted me up out the pig pen like the Prodigal Son, and brought me back home to the remembrance that He's Bigger Than any giant I face. 

BIGGER THAN

"I'm going through so many things
don't know what to do
My head is spinning 
tryna figure out what to do
Thought I had a grip on life
In spite of it
On the real God
I can't handle it
I'm grown up, so I ain't a little boy no more
Won a few battles, but I'm so tired of loosing this war
I ain't big enough, for the biggest One I wrote this song
Run to throne, not the phone"

It's ironic how different the circumstances of my life are right now, as I listen to these words, in comparison to where I was physically, mentally, emotionally, and even spiritually when the words were first written on paper.

Amazement of another form begins to cover me.  How unfamiliar the voice of the artist sounds, even though, because I know the heart of the source from which the words flow, I know the voice is my own.  The man who wrote the words was a prisoner, but the man singing the words is free, yet they are one in the same.  That God could find some good use for a dirty, broken and worn out vessel like me.  Yeah! You got it.  Amazing!

I wrote "Bigger Than" at three something in the morning sitting on the cold back stall of the prison bathroom.  A place where birthday's, Thanksgiving and even Christmas do not serve as celebratory markers in time.  I'm sitting on a galvanized steel clone toilet in the back stall of the institutions dorm C.  The cold steel has no respect for the material of my government issued pants and shows it by stretching its reach all the way to the marrow of my femur (ya'll know that big bone in ya thigh).
I tolerate the uncomfortable feeling because it's not life threatening and there is a "Bigger" giant that needs to be slayed.

As I sit, I'm staring not at, but into the small pink pill, being embraced by my thumb and pointer finger.  The pill should have been in my mouth swallowed, partially digested and beginning to enter my blood stream and do it's cause and effect thing to my bodily functions, but instead it's between my fingers.  Not even in my hand, because the outer capsule is so sensitive that the heat my own body generated would melt it.

Normally, I don't take the time to look at it before I "pop off".  The pill that is, but this time I did stop to glance at it and the glance turned into a gaze and the gaze turned into a "moment of reflection". I stared into this little pink pill, that under normal circumstances I consume. It sucked me in and consumed me.  Predator has just become prey.  I saw myself.  Not the dude sitting on the toilet in the back stall holding the little pink pill.  Not even who I could be, but who I really am without the pill in my hand.

I see myself before I ever met the "Pink Princess."  Her elegance and beauty are mere deceptions to blind me of the fact that she's killing me from the inside out, spiritually, physically, mentally, and emotionally.  But before I die, she has predestined me to be her slave for what remains of my life.  I'm lost in the abyss of my thoughts and drowning in the memories of my true self like quick sand.  I remember that it's going on year number eight and some change for me in this hell hole.

These last eight years, I've earned my respect in this place but "The Pink Princess" has no respect for me.  She's made me lose respect for myself and it's blatant.  Everyone get respect just on GP until you give me a reason not to respect you and then it might take you a lifetime to earn it back.  I originally thought this was the experience of my scenario with the "pink princess."  I thought she would respect me, who I was, what I had been through, my strength, reputation, and the stripes I've earned.  I thought wrong.  She ain't see none of that.  She never respected me.  Not even at the beginning.  Here mere introduction into my life directly disrespected and violated the very core of who I am and my character.

I recall being up late one night, which isn't out of the ordinary for me.  I'm on the top bunk, headphones on riding out.  It's about 2 something in the morning.  Me and the "pink princess" have been dancing all night, but we so caught up in the extra additional experience of the feelings music brings into our already highly intoxicating situation, that we have cease to care about the pain of our feet hurting.  Her presence numbs me to the pain, but the fact that for even one second I took my focus off the music and payed attention to the thought of feeling the pain was a reminder to me that slowly but surely we were descending from the clouds, our high coming down with us and by the time we've hit the ground it won't be "we" it'll be just "me."  Me in the lonely bottomless pit that is myself.

This also reminds me that if I don't want to crash, I need to refuel my jet and pop a couple few more pills.  After grabbing the pink princess from her designated hiding spot in the crease cuffed fold of my military style bed make up. I could just "pop-off" and take the pills right here without ever leaving the bunk.  It's as dark as its gonna get and "almost" everyone is sleeping aside from the true Night Owls like myself scattered throughout the dorm.  None close enough to be able to detect what I'm doing through the shadows of darkness and I can swallow the pills without water no problem, but popping the "pink princess" always makes me extra paranoid.

The paranoia she brings is an animal of a different breed.  I feel intense shame when I pop off in front of people.  When I first started, like almost everything else I did, I was shamefully unashamed.  "You do you, cause fa sho I'ma do me, close your eyes, is all I can tell ya, if you don't like what you see," is the line I would spit expressing how I felt, but I had a couple of my close homies tell me how I changed and transformed into someone they've never met or seen, when I pop off and not in a good way.  But like the way a crack-head transforms after he's hit the pipe.  There are two types of crackheads: functional and dysfunctional.  A functional crackhead is somebody that do they "thing" but they're still somehow able to live a "normal" life, even being capable of having a successful career.

Indulgence in the "pink princess" leads me to fall in the latter of the two crackhead categories causing me to display the character of one who is utterly controlled, ruled by and enslaved to "junkie behavior."  I felt unimaginably good feelings with her, but she had me acting all out my character. When I found the "pink princess" I lost respect for myself.

After grabbing my date I began to slowly climb down from off top of the off balanced bunk showing
as much respect for my sleeping bunkie below as possible.  I began to make my way to the bathroom, but on the way I stop off to the water fountain next to the officer station.  Yep, asleep as usual.  I take big gulps of water.  Normally I don't drink this much water, but because I haven't eaten in a few days, not because I couldn't, my locker filled, but I don't like nothing else being in my system, when "pink princess" is in my system.  She's jealous, demanding to have me all to herself, so inspite of hunger pains and feeling the direct effects of the physical damage being done to my body by her cause and effect of ignored warnings against taking her without food on the stomach, I take off.  I'm caught in her web like prey in the silky chains of a black widow.  Her venom numbs me to the pain her poison is inflicting on me.

In true junkie fashion I'd rather get high than eat and float away to my demise on a ignorant cloud of bliss.  Maybe I ignore it because the pain I was trying to escape seemed so much bigger than any pain I thought she could ever cause me.  A lot of times, I don't even drink water because I don't want to dilute her before she enters my blood stream.  Like I said its been awhile since I've eaten or drank anything, so I drink water so I don't go into dehydration not cause I'm so concerned about my own health but because if I get sick or pass out from dehydration it'll blow my high.  Simple logic people.  I don't want to get fucked up and die not cause I'm worried about dying, but I seriously feel like dying would put obstacles in the way of me continuing to get high, that to say the least present themselves as challenging.  "I don't want to get that high, it kinda defeats the whole purpose, don't you think?"  Is what I used to say.  Looking back in hindsight  I realize how retarded my mind frame was at the time.
I had the 3rd gulp from the water fountain in my mouth without swallowing and continuing making my way to the bathroom. I pass all of the front stalls and straight to the back I go and plant my "flag" which is a role of toilet paper with about 6 or 7 squares unrolled signaling to any travelers starting to wonder far back here in this kut, not to.  Anybody see it knows that it's somebody already back here handling some business that's none of their own.


Edited by Candace Smith

 *******TO BE CONTINUED*******

                                             

STAY TUNED

*Disclaimer- Due to the nature of this story some events, names, locations, dates, and details have been altered.  This story is for entertainment purposes only.

NEW BLOG POST EVERY TUESDAY

                                       

Rizm- Trippin'

Rizm- I.D. (Show Me Yours)

PISSED OFF SNIPPET

Rizm 7 30 acappella version

RAISING RIZM FT. TREY

I put together this little picture collage of me and my son.  I want to cherish every moment we have together especially his first ones because I realize that they are fleeting.  He won't remember them but I always will.

Check out more of my thoughts on my other blog raising rizm at raisingrizm.blogspot.com.

BOGO PROMO

Stick around for more deals and specials.  You can always check out my website www.rizmredtearz.com for more specials and for the latest updates.  You can also visit my other blog raisingrizm.blogspot.com.

BIGGER THAN PERFORMANCE @ MARY M SINGLETON APRIL 14 2012

Check out one of my earlier performances.  I appreciate these times.  I was released from prison five years ago and I was so hungry and thirsty for God's will for my life.  I thank God for the words he gave me to this song "Bigger Than".  It is a personal testimony for me.

I would like to encourage everyone that will read this and watch this video that God is "Bigger Than" any obstacle you may face in your life.

Rizm

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BLOOPERS VIDEO 1

I thank God that He has allowed me to do his will and still have fun.  Watch these bloopers as I try to shoot one of my first commercials for my website www.rizmredtearz.com.  It had me laughing and I hope you will get a good laugh as well.