"This Ain't No McDonalds!!!!"

    So the other night I rode around with a couple of girlfriends for a little “spring air” taken from the rich streets of Meridian.  Meridian is the main north-south street in Indianapolis.  Traveling south will take you right into the heart of not only downtown, but the poor, the gentrified and the homeless.  North bound increases in cash flow from the point of 38th and upwards.  The houses get bigger, the cars are fancier and the street lights decrease, are in sync and happy to allow you to cruise out of the inner-city and head to into the land of the carefree (depending on who they invest with).  Needless to say, we went north.  Top back, music playing and doing a little bit of tree climbing.  On our way towards the smell Louboutin shoe closets and expensive BMW’s, my friend Blondie* says to me “Have you heard the FLoacist’s cd?” 
“Yeah, i replied.  It’s cool but I like Marsha Ambrosius’ cd better.  It gets more rotation!” I went on to talk about how I bought both her and the Floacist’s cd at the same time and how I’d only listened to the Floacist’s cd once but gave her former partner’s cd the business.  And that is the truth.  I have listened to Late Night, Early Mornings so much that I honestly believe I know the words to every song.  It was in my car until Adele came along.  I think I may have mentioned that as well.  But the Floacist’s cd just didn’t really resonate with me.  It had some jams, don’t get me wrong.  But I wasn’t compelled to carry it with me back and forth from the house to the car, as in the case with LNEM. 
Blondie proceeds to turn on the cd.  We were all feeling as good as the 60* breeze that massaged our shoulders and scratched our scalps.  The first song came on and I sat 50 ft high listening, arms in the air, jamming!  Loved it!  Next song, same thing.  Third song hit me hard.  As with the fifth.  Hell, I’m not even sure there was a fifth song playing.  Our ride was about 20 minutes or so, so I imagine there could have been time for fifth song.  Lets just say, I heard a lot of the cd.  And it was just as great as Marsha’s.  As we circled our way back south towards the poverty stricken south end, I had an epiphany.  I started naming my epiphanies awhile back because they come so often.  This one I think I will call “The Drive By Epiphany”.  Marsha Ambrosious and Natalie “The Floacist” Stewart once made up a beautiful group of musically driven poetry by the name of Floetry.  After the first cd, I was an avid fan and by the time the second cd dropped, I was waiting on the tour.  But their sudden breakup led to a loss for me and I am a music head to the 1000th power.  Not a hip hop head.  Not a R&B groupie.  I am a MUSIC fan.  Once I am a FAN of yours, you are almost a part of my life as if we know each other.  Your music becomes the way we find friendship.  Our conversations are on wax and I love it when I find a person or a group who’s conversations I don’t have to skip past.  FLoetry was like that for me.  Virtually two flawless cds.  But there season, as they say, ended.  And they went on to do separate solo careers.  I’m not even sure when The FLoacist’s cd was released, but I know after the anticipation I had built up for the more heavily promoted R&B cd, LNEM, it was a great pleasure to find out that I could buy them both at the same time.  It was almost like I was reconstructing the group. 

The first few times I talked about having them both, I stated that I had purchased the new Floetry CD.  Almost like a double release.  I listened to The Floacist first and felt decent about the result, then I listened to LNEM and was instantly attracted to it like a bee to a rose.  I never gave the Floacist cd another chance.  It has sat in the same place I left it nearly two months ago.  But now, I am ready to pull it out, put it in the player and give it its proper rotation.  So the Drive By Epiphany winds up being, when groups break up, let them be broken.  It happened for a reason.  Don’t try to make to churn it your way and recreate the past.  YO\ou will be disappointed.  I tried recreating Floetry by buying both solo cds at once and not being fully able to give them each the deserving chance.  It wasn’t a Floetry cd.  So it didn’t sound like Floetry.  It didn’t feel like Floetry.  And for that, I think it’s possible, I went with what had the more instantly appealing tracks.  For me it was Marsha. 
But that night, as we pulled up to my house and I hopped out the ride just before southbound got crossed 38th and right around the end of possibilities, I was ready and willing to give The Floacist her right chance to form a solo friendship with me.   Ironically, she is the spoken word half of the former group.  And I was more eager to hear her cd because I am still in the process of finishing mine and thought listening to her could give me great inspiration.  But I got lost in the shuffle between hers and her Marsha’s.   In the end, she did just that.  I realized I shouldn’t have bought them both at the same time.  I actually started not to, but I had a great deal at Best Buy and who doesn’t love a deal?Or maybe not so much bought them both and more i shouldn’t have tried to force them back into a group.  In other words, instead of playing them back to hope and looking for the #Win, I should have picked one, listened to it, enjoyed it and then allowed my ears and consciousness to rest.  THEN I should have listened to the other.   But at least I already own them.  Because I KNEW Marsha’s cd was spectacular.  Now I KNOW The Floacist’s is too! And I can easily listen to them both.

~Your not supposed to judge a book by it’s cover.
~But I think you also shouldn’t judge a solo artist, by their past group.

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