this music is the culmination of my fourth year of digital music production. though i had been rapping long before i picked up an instrument, and strumming guitars and basses a few years before getting hooked on software, it is the ability to make music on computers that has spurred my creativity and drawn me deeper into music, into technology, into education. the seductive power of sampled and synthesized music has made me a better musician, not to mention a better listener. where drum breaks and strange melodies on record once caught my ear, spinning themselves into new hip-hop-based patterns, now the refrigerator buzz, the swimming pool, and the voices of friends and strangers tempt me with rhythms and timbres i might not otherwise imagine. by using more sound from my own environment in my music, i feel like i can express my world in a unique and evocative manner. like matmos, i like to hear the small made large. music is in the details. such a mode of listening and creation reminds me to note the music and the beauty around me and thus cultivate a deeper, more sustained appreciation for being alive.

as a reflection and expression of the last year, this album has a few dominant themes. one is the focus on my most recent vocation: working as a substitute teacher in the cambridge public schools. i figured that, while gearing up for dissertation research in jamaica and continuing to produce my music, working on a limited basis in the schools would be a good way to earn a little money and throw some curveballs at students. it's been a mixed bag: at times frustrating and a bit depressing, at other times filled with wonderful moments. i do find myself laughing a lot, which is certainly a good sign. my friend, bob, a sub in cambridge for thirty years, says that kids look to their teachers for warmth and truth. i did my best to bring these to the classroom, and usually kids responded (and often they took advantage). i was lucky enough to catch some of these brilliant little classroom moments, which thematically weave the tracks on this album together. other songs reflect on my role as a teacher, but i attempt to avoid didacticism. i try not to take myself too seriously, as way too many rappers--not to mention artists and academics--so often do. hence humor is another dominant strain here. sometimes, as screwed up as the world seems, we have to laugh at the things we do to ourselves. i often find myself shaking my head upon learning or realizing something crazy about the world, but also grinning if not laughing, and pronouncing to myself, "man, that's some fucked-up shit." one of my favorite examples on this album is the double-irony-elvis-inspired line: "admit it's frightenin' that white men dye their hair to look like black men tryna look like white men--but it's also funny." it is important to recognize and meditate on the fucked-upness of something like race in america but one should not let it destroy one's love for humanity. humor helps. i almost called this album, but it's also funny.

from a musical standpoint, the use of sampled sounds from my own environment provides me with a much wider sonic palette from which to draw. my sense of rhythm and form have been significantly influenced by my study of jamaican music and my experience this summer in kingston's recording studios, particularly my collaboration with makonnen blake-hannah and multicast. if i were to identify the greatest musical lesson i have learned this year, however, it would be the simple but profound importance of mixing, of getting levels right, of working the volume knob.