Quickly, Before Santa Comes

I’m still awake so it’s still technically Christmas Eve for me and I just wanted to put some well wishes here for anyone who might find themselves reading through my thoughts. I hope you are surrounded by love and warmth and smiles this holiday season, whether that means your family, your friends, or anyone else. I hope you get what you want, presents or in life, and I hope you find yourself in a moment where you’re able to appreciate the time and experiences you’ve had up to this point. I’ll try to do the same.

-J.P.

Life is Really Sucky Right Now

Direct quote from my dad. Mom says we need a good sitcom that you can giggle at. I agree. Most all the media I see or hear is really depressing. Given the opportunity I would like to do something opposite of that, in hopes of restoring a little bit of balance. I’ve probably said it before. I’ll say it again. It feels like people are afraid to do something different than what they know is going to work. Gross.

In other news, it’s Christmas time! Happy holidays.

-J.P.

Gotta Fly

Another year in LA in the books. Time to wrap up. I’ll think a little more on it while I’m on the plane. We’ve done a lot this year, and sometimes it feels like we didn’t do anything. That’s a weird feeling to understand. There’s a couple things I wanna talk about here before I finish but I’ve got some packing and things to do, so we’ll talk soon.

-J.P.

So Close…

You know the rest. Today is another one of those days that feel further than closer. It’s ok. I don’t know that they’ll ever feel any different. But today’s it’s raining on top of the fact that I put my shampoo on my scrubber by accident and the roof might be leaking and the sink is definitely leaking. Gonna try to just keep my head down. Keep going.

-J.P.

Say It Loud/By Design

“Say It Loud” is a song by The Corner Store that came out a little while ago and it flew under the radar. Truthfully that happened because I let it happen. My three pronged plan has proven pretty ineffective, but we’ll save the reviews for later.

Say It Loud was one of the first songs we recorded in 2022, and it served to start us down a new stretch of our musical journey. Understanding came into an MPC and had spent a lot of time making beats and it had been a really long time since I had rapped. We tracked this before we even had the idea for The Corner Store, but the attitude that exists in the track became one of the foundational pieces for building out the world of 1000Kicks and MadUrthur.

Un really let it rip on this one if you ask me, so I tried to stay out of the way as much as possible and let him vibe. The beat is one of my favorites he’s ever made.

The newest release from The Corner Store is called “By Design”, which came out last Friday (on my mom’s birthday). Now that I think about it, the demo version of this song was done way before even Say It Loud was, so we really had no idea what we were making when we started it. It’s one of my favorite verses to do and one of the most fun songs I’ve made.

I think that was a big part of what made The Corner Store so appealing to me. It really became the outlet for the songs that I considered to be the most fun and the most free in creation. Sometimes the other acts feel like they have a certain pressure on them to be something specific. Working on The Corner Store essentially amounted to just locking in and trying to write the best raps I could.

That being the case, it’s disappointing to look back on the lack of reach the music had this year. I consider that a personal failure. The silver lining for me though, is that I think the world of 1000Kicks and MadUrthur has a lot of potential to be further developed and we have an idea we’re working on behind the scenes. Hopefully if we realize that potential we can give the music a second chance to find its audience.

We’ll see how all that plays out in the time to come. For now though, I just want to say thank you on behalf of The Corner Store, for listening to our music, and we hope that it served you well.

Peace.

-J.P.

Changing Perspectives… Again

A day late and a dollar short is early to the next sale.

-J.P.

Shhh

I don’t know why people feel the need to say something when they’ve got nothing to say. Then again, I post here just about every day. I don’t always have something to say. Maybe we’re all practicing being interesting, hoping it will pay off in the future.

In other news, today is my mom’s birthday! Happy birthday mom, I love you very much, and I could never thank you enough for everything you’ve done to provide me the life and opportunity I have to follow my dreams. Hope you had a wonderful day.

Tomorrow I’ll talk about The Corner Store a little bit. G’night!

-J.P.

Board Games

I love a good board game. It’s nice to sit around the table with a group of people and pass some time in a simple way. One day, I’d like to create our own board game. Put it on the list.

-J.P.

Give & Take

I used to talk about balance a lot at the beginning of the year. I still think about it the same amount, I just talk about it less. Maybe that’s not true. Maybe I don’t think about it more. Maybe I’ve lost my balance or maybe I’m more balanced, because I’m not thinking about it so much. Who knows?

Reading all this philosophy lately has made for some conversations around the dinner table at the house. One of the ideas we were talking about which was presented in the book was essentially the idea that the best life is lived by amassing the most experience possible. Quantity over quality, in other words, is the key to living the best life.

Now, it wasn’t presented so simply in the book, but I’m not sure if I agree with the general idea. There’s a way of looking that could equate amassing experience to taking from the world around you if your actions are self-serving. In that way I think it’s important to give through your actions too. If anything, I think maybe I’d like to give a little more than I take, if that’s possible. I’m going to try to be more generous.

-J.P.