I am so excited!

New Wu!

Whoo!

Watch this shit, Raekwon is now grumpier than U God, it’s great.

“You aint never seen a motherfucker kill a motherfucker like a motherfucking nigga named Game motherfucker.”
The Game

So, I got a new favourite rap website. Allhiphop has nothing worth reading save the rumours on it. XXL is looking old, and Bol fell off harder than Mef. Spine is just ugly. Nope, it is all about HipHopDX.com. It has the best audio section of any website I have seen. it gives equal import to Atmosphere, Lil Wayne AND Crooked I.

It’s news section is great too. You hear the one about Jay Z nicking his rap persona off of Brooklyn OG Calvin “Klein” Bacote? Dude is out of prison now, and somewhat irked.

“In the 80’s … Jay was not trying to be a drug dealer, he was trying to be a rapper,” quoth Klein. “In order for him to transcend himself into this hell of a dude, he had to take characters of guys from the 80’s; one being myself… I mean I give him 10% of his life he talked about … He’s from Brooklyn. He lived in Marcy Projects. His name was Shawn Carter. He got that right”

Oooooooh, damn! This after Pimp C on that Atlantan radio station calling out Young Jeezy and a host of unnamed rappers (TI! Leetle Wayne!) for bullshitting about being coke dealers. Are the walls coming down?

I mean, it is a tricky one. Ice Cube rapped about his acquaintances lives as if they were his. He was doing an architecture degree when he was writing that first NWA album. But it was important that he said that stuff, because he said it right. You can’t leave that stuff to some illiterate D boy. The D boy’s too busy being a D boy anyway. Ya diiiig? Give a fuck. You think Johnny Cash ever shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die? Hell naw.

Oh, here’s Beanie Sigel sticking his tongue in Peedi Crack’s ear. Same Beenie who was complaining about Kanye dressing gay. Figga please! Take your high-ass tongue out of Peedi’s ear and chill on them there D-rugz sonny pie, maybe then we chat about who’s got a big ole pair of dick sucking lips and who does not!

Speaking of which, you hear the one about Jay-Z fucking over Joe Budden?

These “crop circles” turned up in Ashbury on July 16th. The farmer who owns the land is annoyed. Forthwith:

“As the farmer of the land near Ashbury where the butterfly appeared at the weekend, I would politely ask you to tell your members that there is strictly no access to the circle. The circle can clearly be seen from the footpath and there is no need to enter the field. Obviously the people I had to ask to leave today don’t conform to your protocols, so if further trespass occurs the circle will be cut with a mower before the field is due to be harvested. I would appreciate your swift co-operation.”

Damn homie! You got a pretty butterfly in your feild! Be happy!

Me, I know very little about crop circles, but Susan Joy Rennison says they’re communication about upcoming events, like the readjusting of the earth’s electromagnetic field, and our “upgrade”. Rocks are growing hair you know. Weird shit abounds.

So, we saw Gruff Rhys at Koko last night. He was great. He jammed for a bit with some crazy Brazilian dude who banged out cheap beats from a home-made electronic guitar thingy, in seeming tribute to John Ottway and Wild Willy Barret, then he sat his ass down on a chair and played a lot of Candylion, which was great. I have, incidentally, sampled the title track from that record for my next mixtape.

Tonight we are making a bookcase, of sorts. This is very exciting. I bought a saw today. You know how much saws cost? Five pounds. Crazy, right?

Oh, speaking of which, Adam Ant is back. Sort of. He’s making a live appearance in London in September, in which he’ll read from his autobiography, and play some acoustic songs. My old man told me about this. “Are you gonna go?” I asked him.

“No chance,” came the reply. “I want to remember him in his full piratical/red indian tribal drumming glory singing dog eat dog, leap frog the dog and brush me daddio!”

Which is a good point.

So, we saw Transformers on Friday - damn that shit bangs! What a great movie! Basically some Saturday afternoon, Christmas day, 9 years old male wish fulfilment fantasy shit. Boy gets car, car turns into giant fuck off robot, car helps boy save world and get girl. Incidentally, as we were watching that movie, Wade was at some wrap party with Megan Fox, its female lead. Wade says she is super hot, but tragically, going out with someone from 90210, of all things.

“but!” writes Wade. “i gets better

i met the DUDE

as in the DUDE

LEBOWSKI

jeff bridges

and guess what we talked about

RUNES

viking RUNES

and hitler

so bizarre

anyway”

Anyway indeed. A whole bunch of us are getting super-excited about the imminent release of the new Wu-Tang Clan LP, 8 Diagrams. Urb magazine has a brilliant article about the thing here. And if you thought my experience with Interscope was dodgy, go read about Raekwon’s. He can’t even get a meeting with Jimmy. I had three, and I thought that was bullshit. Damn homie!

In other news , The Svenhunter has another podcast up. Bitch is getting them out quicker than me. I’m doing my one this afternoon. Rah. Anyway, Ali’s has got various guest presenters, including The PPF, and is playing songs by Bill Drummond, Ghostface, Chrome Hoof, The Only Ones, Dizzee rascal, and more!

Oh, that lovely and scary picture of me up there was drawn by Endre from Norway. Nice one Endre!

I got lots of nice emails when I was in jail hospital. Like this one:

Dude,

Your Friend,
Sleek Mouse

Which is good to know. My old man came to visit me the other day and he said he cried when he read all the nice messages you’d left me. He said when he was young all he wanted out of life was for someone to miss him when he went. Well, I’ll miss him. He is a funny old sod and no mistake. Jeres will miss him too. So he’s doing better than Lonely Blair already. Nobody misses him.

I got some perplexing messages too. Like this one:

how’s it goin’ akira? I need some advice. What should I do? I have a girlfriend here in oregon and I’m going back to tennesee in a week. I don’t feel as though I want to be with her anymore but I don’t want to hurt her feelings. What should I do?

Robert
16
SPRING HILL, TENNESSEE

Like, who am I, Mystic Meg? Dear Deidre? Simon Cowel? I am not, obviously. I am also not fully recovered, so my mental faculties may not be blasting at full velocity. But still. What I think, Robert, after all my years of foolishness, is that the worst thing a boy can do to a girl is deceive her. And the best thing a boy can do for a girl is be be real with her. Anyway, my American geography is bad, but I suspect Oregon is far enough from Tennessee to make a relationship difficult, even if you were really bothered. So say goodbye, in a nice way - talk of the things you’ve experienced and learnt together, thank her for the good times, and wish her well. Then ride off into the sunset on a white horse with a blood red cloak draped over your shoulders, whistling that Andrew WK song about not going to bed.

Alternately, lie, tell her you’re moving to Spain to live with your sick father, and borrow her credit card to buy Smiths albums and chicken, which is what I did when I was your age. The adverse karma, however, is still fucking with me. So maybe don’t bother.

So! Did you see that Amish inspired video for Kanye’s brillaint ‘Can’t Tell Me Nothing’? it’s got Will Oldham in it. On a tractor. I think it’s beautiful. Speaking ow which, Wes Anderson’s got a new joint on the way called The Darjeeling Limited. Trailer here. RAH!

Oh, look down the bottom left of the page, and you’ll notice the announcement of three gigs.

Over and out.

Sorry about the lack of updates - I am back in London and PlayLouder haven’t sorted my broadband yet. I am in an internet cafe on Upper Clapton Road that doesn’t let me download things. So you’ll have to wait a few days for another hospital diary. Boo hoo.

Anyway, Lethal Bizzle’s album is out this week, so you should all go cop that, as I produced three of the tracks - Babylon, Police On My Back, and Reminiscing. Some of the other stuff on there is awesome too, I especially like Selfridges Girl Not On MySpace.

Apparently I am supposed to be not doing anything, but I have completed my drugs course, so I think it is OK for me to be doing a Crimea remix this afternoon. Getting better is totally ace. I am looking forward to a nice bike ride.

Saturday July 14th

I was cheered on Friday by Conrad Black’s guilty verdict and Boris Johnson’s mayoral bid. When one realises that politics is run by big business, and that it is all a farce, one expects interesting players at the very least. Boris makes me laugh which is more than I can say for most of the drab cast of “Real” Politik 2007. I can’t wait to see his funny face plastered all over London.

Lights go out at 11, I think it is. I have a curtain drawn around my maneuverable bed. Anyway. Lights go out, and the man in the bed next to me lets out a mighty, squeaky fart. Nobody else laughs but me.

I wake up at 3am soaking wet with sweat, freezing cold, and feverish. Someone has taken my tubes out of me. I feel weird without my tubes. Eventually I fall asleep in my wet, shivering.

At 5am my bed is suddenly a hive of activity. All AK systems are go - doctors and nurses swarm about me filling me with tubes and drugs and all manner of exotic weirdness. By 7am there us utterly no more sleep allowed, and I am assigned yet another short chubby Jamaican nurse. This one is called Janet. She is nice to me.

At about 9 a lady comes to take some blood out of me. Amidst doing so she somehow manages to stab herself in the finger with the needle. She totally freaks out. I might have AIDS, you see.

Very soon a number of serious people visit me to enquire about my sexual history and ask if I mind being tested for The Dreaded AIDS and The Hepatitis and all that. Of course I don’t! I have been meaning to for ages anyway.

Opposite me there is a Vietnamese man (I think he’s Vietnamese, Janet thinks he’s Chinese) who was bought in last night and speaks no English. Nobody has been able to communicate with him, which seems silly to me - are there not interpreters in London? Surely this sort of thing happens all the time? Now he seems to be in great pain. “Ooh! Ooh!” he cries, lying in an exaggerated foetal position on his bed like a big monkey, clawing at his back. He sicks up the drugs they give him, and emits the first English I have heard from him in the 17 hours we have spent in the same room - “No good!” he whimpers, sadly, before savagely beating his own back. “No good! No good!”

We exchange understanding glances. He has really nice shoes.

Around lunchtime, my television, which costs £5 a day and has nothing on it, tells me that Spar is 50. Wow! 50 years of Spar! I did my first shoplifting in Spar, when I was 8. I feel a song coming on, then the feeling goes. Hospitals aren’t good for creative people. The food is too upsetting.

Suddenly, in the early afternoon, I am moved to another ward - out of the constant surveillance one, that’s full of shrieking weirdoes, into a normal one, called Lloyd Ward. My universe has changed. I no longer have a window bed.

My new, immediate neighbours seem a little less crazy than the last lot (bearing in mind my last lot included a mad old grey man who looked like a ghost, invaded my bed area scarily and often, and on my first night in hospital, woke me up at 3am when he exploded in a wet shower of shit). They number a small club footed old white man who likes to wear big suede boots in bed and makes weird hacking noises, a seven foot bright pink giant of a man with black features, huge mangled toes and a huge, similarly mangled family, and a nice quiet old black gentleman with an absolutely lovely wife who says hello and goodbye to me twice a day. And she tips her hat to me. More people should be tipping their hats.

In the beginning, God created the earth, and he looked upon it in His cosmic loneliness.

The Books Of Bokonon, Verses 2-4

One of the great things about being ill was that I got to read some books. The best book I read was Neil Gaiman’s Stardust - a beautiful tale of magic and humanity, that kind of came off like a grown-up, religion-free Narnia.

Unsurprisingly, I discover today they’ve made a movie of it, which is out in a month or something, and has Robert de Niro in it. And Claire Danes as The Star. And Michelle Pheiffer as The Witch. And Peter O Toole as the Kind of Stormhold! I hope it’s good - the book was very visual in my brain, so it was. I don’t want it ruined.

I also read Roald Dahl’s Boy, which was interesting, and, given it’s an autobiography, strikingly similar to many of his fictions, what with all the tales of violent headmasters, bosomy, child-hating matrons, scary old women and the leaving of dead mice in jars of gobstoppers. Roald Dah’s father died of pneumonia in his early forties, so I should count myself lucky to have been born in the age of antibiotics, no matter how dreadful modern hospital food might be.

I also re-read Cat’s Cradle, which I still think is one of the best books I have ever read. I suppose it is fictionalised philosophy, but then the best stuff always is. Also, I really couldn’t ever see anyone making even a half-decent film of it. It’s too good, and its ideas too cerebral. I might be wrong - but I really don’t think we need to SEE Bokonon. He works perfectly in one’s mind.

“If you’re looking
You will find it
Be a happy girl
In a mad world
If you want it
Go and get it
Be a happy girl in a mad world”
Madison

If I was a 14 year old girl Madison would be my hero, and as a 27 year old manboy, she still comes close. Just before i got ill I found this song she sent me a little while back called ‘Happy Girl’, and I played it about seven times in a row as I tried to make some sense of my new room.

(Incidentally, after moving house over a fortnight ago, I have managed to sleep there once)

Anyway. You can all hear the song now, by clicking here. I think it is a great song, and I am going to remix it. I did a remix of another one of her songs already - I’ll be putting that on the next ATD mixtape, which will be coming sooner than you might imagine.

A boy called Barry hit me up on Facebook earlier.

“I’m going to click the ‘add as friends’ button as yours is the only album I’ve legally purchased this year. F.A.C.T.,” wrote he. “Incidentally that was only because no one had put it out on torrentspy. Lazy bitches. Ra. My droog…”

The music industry is so fucked. I have been suggesting viable alternatives since ‘99. Would they listen to me? Nooooo. “Sue 12 year olds,” they said. “That’ll save us.” Fools.

I still haven’t found a scanner to get you hospital diary parts, but I will.

Oh, and I am going to do some gigs in August. London, Gloucestershire, Dublin looking likely. I might get a drummer. Anyone know any safe drummers? How about a firebreathing contortionist? Hmm?

So, I was catching up on my correspondence today, and convalescing, which I rather like, and I found out where The Bees have gone.

What it was, was my old pal Saam, who took those iconic photos of my moustache in LA a few years ago, was telling me about the “incredible” summer they’re having over on the West coast of Yanksville.

What is this “incredible?” I asked.

“Let me put it to you this way…” wrote Saam. “It’s about 1PM in the afternoon and I’m going sailing- we’re shutting down the studio for the rest of the day. It’s been absolutely glorious.

Attached: A swarm of bees set up a hive on the studio rooftop and instead of killing them, we suggested moving them. When the beekeeper came I asked if he had an extra suit… and sure enough he did.

Maybe that will be your outfit for the next shoot.”

Which, I thought, would be fitting.

Hello. They let me out of hospital last night. Cool huh? Yes cool. Out onto the street I went, it’s nuts outside, huh? Full of people. Noisy buggers. Still, it’s better than hospital. and hospital food. Groo. Stupid hospital. Stupid pneumonia. I will have no more of it. Pah! Anyway. I am out now and wading through emails. Thank you for all your messages and your positive niceness, I am sure it was fuly helpful in averting my DEATH. Safe.

I’m at my Mam’s now, with a big bag of drugs and young Zef and GTA to keep me company. I’ll be posting some extracts from my hospital diaries over the next few days to keep you entertained. In the meanwhile, Lethal Bizzle’s new me-produced single is out this week (cheers for the shout on Zane Lowe last night droog) - if you missed it, the video is live, above, and very cool. You can get it at all the usual retailers, and I advise you to check out the Gallows remix, which is mega bad-ass.

Peace to all.

He is currently in hospital, being treated for pneumonia and will hopefully be leaving on Thursday. He greatly appreciates all of the well wishers and comments received.

Just to let you all know, our good friend Akira has a kidney infection at the moment, and will continue all correspondence as soon as he can. May he get well soon! x

I saw the Wu-Tang Clan.

I saw the Wu-Tang Clan.

I saw the Wu-Tang Clan.

I saw the Wu-Tang Clan.

When I walked in, and saw Ghostface, IN REAL LIFE, my tummy did summersaults.

I saw the Wu-Tang Clan.

I saw the Wu-Tang Clan.

I saw the Wu-Tang Clan.

I saw the Wu-Tang Clan.

Mef is such a rockstar.

I saw the Wu-Tang Clan.

I saw the Wu-Tang Clan.

I saw the Wu-Tang Clan.

I saw the Wu-Tang Clan.

Rae was so drunk. U God was so grumpy and ole. Deck was so fly.

I saw the Wu-Tang Clan.

I saw the Wu-Tang Clan.

I saw the Wu-Tang Clan.

I saw the Wu-Tang Clan.

GZA sort of hung around the back, he smiled at me.

I saw the Wu-Tang Clan.

I saw the Wu-Tang Clan.

Masta Killa is well small.

I saw the Wu-Tang Clan.

I saw the Wu-Tang Clan.

It was RZA and Deck’s birthdays.

I saw the Wu-Tang Clan.

I saw the Wu-Tang Clan.

What the fuck was Streetlife doing there?!

I saw the Wu-Tang Clan.

I saw the Wu-Tang Clan.

I saw the Wu-Tang Clan.

I saw the Wu-Tang Clan.

Suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu!

I see that the evil spam bots have started to sidestep the clever “type goose” mechanism. Swine!

Ah vey. Zef will no doubt suss it, he’s clever. Anyway - I have moved house again so shall be reassembling Don Studios over the next few days. I shall also not have any internet, so don’t expect much here for a few days, but then don’t be surprised if there IS something, etc!

Oh, and we’re moving to a new server also. Dunno what will entail. Fun, prolly.

In the meanwhile, check out the video for the me Produced and Featuring Babylon’s Burning The Ghetto, by Dr Lethal Bizzle. YouTube below, high quality Windows Media link here.

PAAAAAAAX!