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Bee Ess

@beast_out_76

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Kids. Friends. Words. Music. Coffee. Movies. Podcasts. An extra in the movie adaptation of the sequel to my life.

POSTS STORIES REELS TAGGED

01. Writer: Brian Stout
02. Theme: Balance
03. Music Inspiration: Atmosphere: God Loves Ugly
wordsandmusic.club/balance-brian-stout
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I moved to Ypsilanti for school in summer 2002. I rented one-bedroom apartment on the wrong side of the tracks of the city that’s on the wrong side of the tracks. Arriving fresh from Flint and being a broke student, I blended. I reveled in the low thump of my neighbors bumping Jay-Z and the contact buzz of my GN’F’N’R-loving neighbor who always blasted those hockey games a little too loud. Poor. Ugly. Happy. Just like the Avail t-shirt. A last blast before adulthood set in.
A few months earlier, I’d discovered that there was a whole world of hip hop talking about more than cars and girls and money. I became obsessed. The message wasn’t all that different from my punk rock and emo favorites from the preceding few years, but somehow it sounded more empowering when rapped. I felt a confidence emanating from it where I thought my indie rock heroes were commiserating and I was encouraged to continue to stare at my belly button. Sean Daley, El-P, Aesop Rock, and peers seemed to say, “Yeah, I’m messed up. What of it? Still got a life to live,” instead of “I’m so sad. Guess I’ll LiveJournal or hunker down in my apartment.”
Nevertheless, my neck was still sore from gazing at my navel. I moped out to Ryan Adams, Interpol, and Jets to Brazil just like any card-carrying mid-twenties indie rocker did. And I latched onto the relentlessly downbeat one-liners in Control. The influence of Americana seeped in further after 9/11. For most of my friends, the closest we came to patriotism reborn was discovering protest songs from earlier times and bumping “Makeshift Patriot” by Sage Francis.
The CD burning parties started as soon as I hooked up with a couple friends who had also moved to the area from Flint. All of us broke students. All of us music lovers. No Spotify or bargain subscription services to satisfy our need to discover new music.
But we did have computers with CD burners (paid that extra $150 to get that standard on my Dell desktop), and CD-Rs were a bargain at 25 for $25.00. When we were particularly broke, we would even share t

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