Welcome to Loc’d and Coded (The Publication)
I treat this like my thesis
Well-written topic, broken down into pieces
I introduce then produce, words so profuse
It’s abuse how I juice up this beat, like I’m deuce.
- “Final Hour” by Lauryn Hill.
I’ve heard this verse an unimaginable number of times, and it still reads and sounds like poetry to me. I spend a lot of time in general just listening to music and analyzing verses. There are very few things that excite me as much as hearing a complex and and intricate verse. Catching the rhyme scheme, listening to the artist riding over a beat, finding a pocket, cleverly hiding double, even triple entendres behind a clever punchline. Clearly this is something I geek out over. This, technology, and other conversations that make me want to sit and think about life. Normally when I get super excited about a verse or some new piece of tech, I tell my close friends about it. And what starts off as a haphazardly written paragraph quickly turns into a carefully thought out essay with links, sources, and quotes. Last week, that’s exactly what happened when I was writing about a concert I went to. My friends read it and urged me to start some kind of blog or place to hold these pieces. Although I agreed, I was hesitant to do so. Does the world really need another blog on music and tech? Does what I have to say even matter to anyone? Those aren’t rhetorical questions, but I was quickly reminded that my Twitter account is essentially already a music and tech blog. So today, I bit the bullet.
The name Loc’d and Coded comes from a TEDxBrandeisUniversity talk I gave in August about respectability politics, dreadlocks, and the coded language behind it all. It also happens that I’m a software engineer, so nice double entendre.
So what’s the point of all this? Why the publication? I wanted to create a space for me to write about music, tech, people and other musings of the mind. There are so many things I want to write about and engage with people on that this seemed like one of the best mediums (no pun intended) to do so. So, like Lauryn in her aforementioned quote, I hope to treat this like my thesis with well-written topics broken down into pieces.
Enjoy,
R Matthews
