Let it Bleed into my Sexorcism
I see this work evolving, naturally, but by proxy things are being lost and becoming irrelevant. To pay respect to that which began the essay, I still want to include them. It came out of necessity. When I first moved to the new apartment I was in a weird spot. My job in the shop was still new, but now older than my home. The limbic state of disarray that was our collection of stuff, coalesced with the new commute, darker shorter days, and the icy Chicago winter. I found a wealth of new music abound. I think most of the year was encapsulated that way, but this felt more impactful. 2019 was bizarre in its echoes: on the cusp of my ‘first’ decade, I started to think about the compartmentalization of time more intensely. I started to develop a groove at work, and feeling the rewards of my time spent. Recovering an old mp3 from high school I was able to JAM while running files and prepping metal, since my busted phone couldn’t accept headphone jacks any longer. I quickly fell back in love with some of the songs I used to dig, though most of those albums came with me to the aforementioned phone so there were few new-oldies. So I downloaded(pirated) a few(13) of my immediate obsessions onto the little black brick(dick). Think the first batch was some Kate Bush, this new Bush-esque lady, and a couple Kimbra bops. But after listening to “Wuthering Heights” for several hours in a row while sanding a hard coated foam dog, I decided to download some more.
Enter Qveen Herby, King Princess, and Dorian Electra… and many others.
These 3 were added en masse along with a few one offs by some scattered artists. Several tracks a piece, a little bloated album of selected songs. T’was my mixtape. Needless to say for this portion of the writing I have had Herby, and now, Princess playing, I can feel the dark mornings and the rubber of my respirator. One of the early moments of this essay was found in a lyrical mirror between “Gucci Gucci” by Kreayshawn, and “BDE” by Qveen Herby. Around the same time this Rolling Stone essay came out for the 50th anniversary of Let It Bleed. The three started to layer and blend in peculiar ways. The article illustrates the context around the release of The Rolling Stones album Let It Bleed: what 1969 looked like, the events unfolding both locally and globally, and the death of Brian Jones. Diet backstory, I grew up with The Rolling Stones as an important aspect of my childhood: my mom considers them her favorite band, yet I never specifically knew Let It Bleed. Many of the songs from it I was familiar with, yet their origin was mostly the blur that is an artist’s canon. Years back, while dodging a Chicago snowstorm in Nicaragua, my mom and I saw a documentary on the Stones on the tiny hotel tv. The only thing I retained of it though was my mom telling me, in a VH1-factoid kinda way, that “ya know, they’re all alive, except for the one that’s dead”. The stupidity of that line has long been a family quote. Yet, I never knew that one was Brian Jones. Apologies.
An assertion was made that catalyzed this essay for still unknown reasons. For the first time in my life, I think I have a thesis, but jesus it is so slippery that I can’t be sure. Regardless, for months I have been urged, so I guess I wanna pay back that energy. “Gucci Gucci” was introduced to me by my sister, I loved it while I hated it, but nonetheless I took it with me while I grew up. It came out in 2011, so I was 13, huh. It has changed tremendously through the years, and how I hear it now being older and being in 2019, well… 2020. A brilliant buzz of a song encapsulated in a rap/pop comedy, delivering blows of tragedy in an acceptance of its own decay. To this song I have given up, while walking with a new found swagger. From the start I loved the meows and valley girl impressions of the intro, Kreayshawn’s rap verse still impresses me: simply exciting in word choice and pacing. It kids, it’s harsh, it’s bleak. “Gucci Gucci” is pissy, a stench in the streets that I heard as a kid. While most turned away, I wanted to appreciate the unique aroma and notes of its refusal. Launched from my bed through the dark cold corridor to work, I became locked in with these songs, using them as a guiding light through the day. They began to bubble and blur. While this Rolling Stone piece posited how fitting the doom of Let It Bleed is to 2019, as it was for ‘69; I started to wonder if I ‘agreed’ so to speak. What was the effect of 2019? How did I feel, how will I remember it, and what is the impact? What does this apocalypse sound like?
What was originally so alluring about the Kreayshawn bop as a budding bud, was its dismissal of that which was just starting to come on my radar as ‘cool’. I was still pretty out of the loop too, I remember showing a friend the song and having to ask what half the lyrics meant-because they were brand names I didn’t know. But it stood nonetheless, acutely against normative modes of valuing. It was an obvious anthem for the underclass, the appreciation of selfhood first, and in direct response to the bulk of rap and pop music. And yet years later I find myself listening to it alongside Qveen Herby which is almost exclusively name drops. Song titles, aesthetic, and entire bars dedicated to naming names of the big namey names. Though seemingly in contrast to each other I found myself making threads. “Busta Rhymes” and “BDE” served as a hard smack to the face to remind me who I’m dealing with. While songs like “Gucci” feel more built and gamey, these two are a chest puffing assertion. Herby’s confidence and pride burst from “Busta Rhymes”, while “BDE” serves as the pinnacle of her work to illustrate the power of women. I find that through Qveen Herby’s use of brand iconography she upends the format to demo her worthiness to be clad in Gucci and drive Teslas, not due to it. This is a queen: sexy, clever, and talented; she deserves this, rather than the tag making her great. “I’m the type of girl you call wifey,” you want a piece of this because she is power. I turn to the drunken melancholy of “1950”. While Kreayshawn and Herby build the backbone of the confidence and swagger of my newly dawning self, King Princess calcifies a sweet, solemn queerness. As my life takes some of its most radical changes, I feel compelled to both reconcile the past in addition to set forward intentions for the future. This essay grew between the cracks of these songs and artists, the margins between years, decades, the overlaps. Taking root in “I’m dressed like a fucking queen” sung by the King.
Rolling Stone made the claim that now more than ever Let it Bleed illustrates the social unrest and trauma that lie across the country in 2019 as it had in 69. I don’t disagree with this, I just think it needn’t be said. We’ve been in an apocalypse since 69, or rather even before. We are consistently complicit in a violence and destruction, the decay of the world has been in process. The apocalypse is not simply a momentous day when the sky opens, it is an ongoing degradation we are in the midst of. The apocalypse is not a male orgasm, it is not building to a singular climatic point with immediate drop off. The apocalypse is the sexual fluidity and waves that rock the queer and feminine body. This essay too, isn’t a structured, goal oriented male ejaculation, it is a dark sultry masturbation in itself- the desire is not to claim assertion, but building a space to step into, live in. In this vein the work has led me back to Brooke Candy, as I finally dive into her latest release Sexorcism. Candy is the voice of this apocalypse. She is the sound of the decay we are aware of in 2019, and now 2020. While the Stones worked in 69 to capture the dark sorrow that was sweeping the cultural zeitgeist, there are underlying facets that stand in stark opposition of our current destruction. Or rather, our responses to the destruction. Let it Bleed stood as a swan song for a decade that didn’t pan out as expected, shot forth the anguish of failed liberation. The dread of ‘69 hasn’t gone anywhere, nor has the sex. In much the same way ‘19 has had some serious work to do: suddenly we were in a place that we are accountable for, but want nothing to do with. The most striking difference between these two armageddons is a type of agency.
I have to be fair to Let it Bleed. It is a good album, and it still does hold up. After a particularly rough day at work and getting roped into Saturday overtime, “Gimme Shelter” ushered in a blues melancholy that lasted for nights. Upon properly listening to the album in full for several days, I realized that it is just as horny as Sexorcism and the likes of apocalypse jams. However, there is a distinction of affect. Where Let it Bleed is a lamentation, Sexorcism is a conjuring. It puts forth itself. Throughout Let it Bleed, the various Stones illustrate their own lack of agency. “Country Honk,” sees Mick meeting his southern match, “Let It Bleed” explicitly embodies this exhaustion with defeat and surrender. Regardless of how much I love “Can’t Always Get What You Want” it closes out an album and a decade with a message that Sexorcism directly opposes. The article posits Let it Bleed as an apocalypse, a headstone on the grave of the 60’s. But to link 2019 and 1969 through the modern relevance of the Stones’ album, turns it into a coffin for 2020. While the darks and woes are similar, I think we are in a very different apocalypse than we were 50 years ago. Where Let It Bleed whines and dances in its stuffy sultry stupor; Sexorcism prophecizes and awakens.
“R.I.P.” is an important one I wanna zero in on. On my way back to Chicago, with a horrendous combination of food and drink turning my stomach into something likening a volcano, and my ass crack a bayou; I set to listening and writing. What is funny about this song is how it has grown on me. Like lichen. It has an undeniably terrible chorus line, in the pitchy whine of “R.I.PPP.” itself. It made me first question if this is the worst song on Sexorcism. Don’t worry it’s not. Rather, it marks a very significant edge in the shaping of this apocalypse: death. “R.I.P.” establishes that we aren’t meant to survive this transformation. It’s bouncy and spooky, but “R.I.P.”’s punch is in Ashnikko’s bar, steeped in creepy bloody swagger, it sneaks in and hits hard. Bringing my horniness to a cultish altar, this sex finishes you. This song reminded me while working, and traveling, shopping, writing; that this sex that I immortalize, kills, actually. However, it validates that death and decay. The whole album is dark and deranged, but “R.I.P.” projects it forward, makes it true. It’s a song from the point of view of a villain, the song itself is an antagonist. And we need that. The wholeness of sexuality, and identity. As things become slick, self and other naturally overlap and lead into this sexual bacchanal. “This is solo, no duet” the eroticism performed is masturbatory, it basks in itself and the theatre of it all. In “Tool For You” the fetish of self is put on display; the eroticization, the performance, through the act. This masturbation is a running theme across these tracks binding this apocalyptic playlist with the 5-minute epoxy of a hot load. The queering phantom limb of “BDE” is a mirror to my inappropriate grinding at work to “Tia Tamera”. I don’t even need to ‘get’ the thing I want, I want it and that is having it. Let that rhyme skirt the line, let the reference point to itself, let your cock swing, let your pussy reek, suck on those tits. This apocalypse is one I may survive. One I may thrive in.
“Make Me Feel” like a “Musical Genius”.
The cloud cover we’re flying through makes the whole world outside this plane white light. Soft yet painfully bright. I have tons of ways to spend this flight time, but I can’t help but listen to apocalypse jams. I keep contemplating this work, what I want of it, what it needs to be for me. I feel a new emotion, a new color. It landed here on an iridescent record. I’m feeling hard work for the first time in my life. Beat knuckles, dusty boots, sore necks. The dangerous flirtation of Brooke’s breathy analingus turns this coach compartment into a very different space. This work blends. It bleeds, it sweats, it cums. Sex and kink laid bare, taken close to the chest with confidence and swagger, an adoration of one’s self. Sub and dom flipping in the same bar, would make your head spin if you weren’t this horny. With “Drip” playing I’m reminded of an evening when Chicago thawed and there were puddles everywhere. She was so wet, and everything was dripping. Cum running down the building walls. Constant Climax. Shifting into “Man to Man,” remember: this deep eroticism is raw; an uninterrupted theme through these artists is vulnerability. We open up: spread your legs and lower that guard. Illustrated from Electra to Princess, but nonetheless a constant beat that can be traced through Lizzo, Doja Cat, and Monaé. There is no shame nor shade. Be open sexually and emotionally. The notions of self love are expressed through masturbation, confidence, and a willingness to be vulnerable.
These artists are queering concepts of sex and gender, of domination and submission, of pussy and cock, of life and death, fear and comfort, pain and pleasure, fast and slow, of swagger and vulnerability. A walking eroticism where a cis straight adherence to language ceases to exist. And they aren’t taking these qualia and switching them around, the music literally suspends the notion that these concepts are solid, singular, and mutually exclusive. Not only can we now step into the space where Candy shoves me down and queens me, but while I’m down there I’m to suck her cock and be a bee in her butt crack. Across the same artist, song, line, one can plainly see this intentional slipping of positions, and genders. Multiple things at once getting fucked and doin’ the fuckin’. Domination while being dominated. Flipping the record from “Q.U.E.E.N.” to Qveen actively trying not to shit myself in the final 30 minutes of this flight, “Vitamins” acts as the recipe behind this sexy queering success. Being honest, vulnerable, and prioritizing yourself. That’s how you get a eulogy into your booty hole. It’s not about escaping the pain through rough sex and music. It’s about exo/ercising it, sitting with it, fucking with it. A multiplicity beyond duality, it’s a pleasure in pain I haven’t yet experienced. An exhaustion of titillating horniness: “the window was so hot”. All dripping with sweat as it performs its various sexualities. Flipfucking and code switching through eroticisms laid bare, at work, on the street. A grand illustration of how sex and identity can operate.
By dumb luck, we are quite honestly in the midst of an apocalypse, I can’t decide if I wish this were already finished or if it had to be made as we all burn down. Regardless here we are. The irony for me, is that as this musical apocalypse was reaching its sweltering climax, things like distancing and shelter-in-place became legitimate tags, and quarantine sunk in as an actual fact of life. I had my panics, and my day off of work, and now I’m just listening to “Drip”. The streets have been gorgeously vacant and new sounds emerge in the silence. I fear I love the end of the world more than before. There is a certain blunt honesty to all of this, no longer are little mistakes worth sweating over, save that sweat sexy. Ugh, I am so horny today. These songs double as both a staunch to the pain and salt in the wound of this time. Sexorcism is the wickedly penetrative, sexual, club anthem in the face of apocalyptic isolation. While I am legally expected to stay away I can’t help but wanna lick it. Haha, eat my ass.
At a point in time, history, my life; when we are furthest apart, and completely baffled by what each new day brings, these songs are an usher to a point of rebirth. Let them in through your ears and let these artists mutate you. Let the apocalypse change you, not for better, nor worse, just new. This apocalypse, this year, is a portal, crossing over. This album was a sexual and identity rabbit-hole that has brought us to a global pandemic, confusion and fear are rampant, and in the face of it I can’t help but smell my pits. As we crossed the threshold several things revealed themselves to us: the change had begun long ago, there is no binary as it presupposes two distinct properties, and that love is the way through.
At the core of the playlist, the deep core, is love. It’s about respecting and caring for oneself, and being raw and open with how we love each other. Songs like “Screwed” become supercharged by the context of a city full of people forced apart. This essay began from a point of honoring the context which charges a song. The experience of listening to “Tool for You” while working with power tools, “Pynk” after a chain of pink sightings, “Swing”’s ridiculous Italian intro after moving to Chicago’s Heart of Italy neighborhood. But the ultimate contextual aid for this work is that the world quite literally has ended. I don’t see this as something we recover or return from, change has happened. The question is when does the post-apocalypse begin? So often in media we see the beginning of the end, or the blighted wasteland of aftermath; but what does during look like? What do you watch and listen to during an ongoing end of days, living decay?
Considering we are gripped by something so global, and yet that it is just one of many ways we’re all about to die, I’ve started to think about everything on a much broader scale: what you want to do with your life is both very pressing and completely arbitrary when you face the facts. Cosmically, there isn’t good, or right and wrong. Just is. Who would you be in the apocalypse? Would you be okay with it, and take some cyanide with your partner? One last gorgeous home cooked meal, fennel and pomegranate seeds? Would you be a straight guy in a movie, grab a gun and a backpack? What would your survival look like? Somewhat humorously I drew a caricature for my thrival through the apocalypse several years ago. Layering up with coats, sentimentality, and as many bags and pockets as possible. A nomad with a phonograph strapped to his back, an mp3 player charged by kinetic energy generation from a clever motor in his shoes. His constant walking fueled by his dancing; and keeping his music going, charging up along the way. He skips one track to find “Electric Lady” and he grooves across the barren wasteland before him. We’re here electric ladies and gentlemen, the apocalypse is here: global infection, climate fallout, societal collapse; let’s fucking dance.