NEWSLETTER

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Not a lot of people know this, but Non Phixion actually got their name from their prominence in the literary world. Each member of the group is an emeritus scholar, and together they have given conferences in several universities and hosted seminars on literacy in colleges across the country. Amidst all of this the Brooklyn natives also found time to record the best rap album of the year. Musically, The Future Is Now is a tour de force, the first album since Illmatic to feature production from DJ Premier, Pete Rock, and Large Professor. Lyrically, Non Phixion’s formula is a brilliant composite of righteous spirituality, substance-induced debauchery, criminalarama, and rock n’ roll references. As a guide to Non Phixion-ian hermeneutics, here are this semester’s recommended readings courtesy of the Uncle Howie faculty.


Strange Universe
Sabac Red on: Conversations With God: An Uncommon Dialogue, by Neale Donald Walsch (Putnam, 1996).

This book doesn’t talk about any organized religion, it just talks about God. God that exists outside of you, and God that exists within you, and within everybody, and within everything around us. There’s no distance between you and God, and God created us in the image of God, so how could we not be God? Not saying that we’re this ultimate powerful being or spirit, but we are God in many ways. The way this guy wrote the book is, basically, one day he sat down and started writing. He was about to put his pen down and then a question came to his mind and he wrote it. Before you knew it, his pen just started writing down the answers and it was just like God was writing through him. So a lot of people think he’s a little weird for that, but I’m kind of feeling it, you know what I mean?


Cult Leader
Goretex on: The Family: The Story of Charles Manson’s Dune Buggy Attack Battalion, by Ed Sanders (E P Dutton, 1971).

First of all, the amount of drugs that they were doing back then was obscene. And at that time Charles Manson was actually hanging out with the Beach Boys. The Beach Boys were pieces of shit, you know, at least several members of them were. So this cat Manson, he’s like chilling out with this drummer from The Beach Boys. The drummer you know, he’s supposed to be this rock musician. Like, he gets pussy but he sees that Manson always has fifty chicks with him. So he’s like, “Yo, you got game. How could you hook me up?” and Manson’s like, “You know what? Let me just crash at your pad and we’ll see what’s up.” So this dude moves in with him and starts writing songs for the Beach Boys! Then when he doesn’t get royalty checks he flips out. What most people don’t know is that Manson is a musician. No one’s to say if the man is great at anything but he can play an instrument, he was able to jam. He actually hung out with people, like he knew Neil Young. He just didn’t get much respect at the time, like he was thugged-out but a lot of people didn’t really know what he was really planning.

The CIA Is Trying to Kill Me
DJ Eclipse on: Man of Honor, by Joseph T. Bonanno (Buccaneer Books, 1998).

Joseph Bonanno is one of the original five family leaders of the Mafia here in New York. So in this book, you’re hearing it first- person from someone who was there throughout the whole thing, just talking about the early days. There was one episode where Bonanno was kidnapped by his uncle Steven Magadino, who was a godfather from his own family in Buffalo. Supposedly, he wasn’t too happy with how popular Joseph Bonnano was getting so he kidnapped him and had him upstate for a while. People were saying that it was a setup for Bonanno to get out of the public view, because at that particular time he was under a lot of heat from all the other Mafia heads and the government was just getting ready to nail him. I think he did everything in a way that was pretty much honorable. He played by the rules and wasn’t a scumbag.


Rock Stars
ILL BiLL on: Kiss and Make-Up, by Gene Simmons (Crown Publishing, 2001).

Basically, this guy is the reason why I’m in the music business. Like my parents, he’s from Israel. The book basically explains him first coming to America with his mother. They had no money and didn’t know a word of English. For him to be able to rise to such fame and fortune, it really hit close to home. It’s also hilarious to see him shit on Ace and Peter. Him and Paul were like brothers and they saw things eye to eye, whereas Ace and Peter were always on drugs. They would miss rehearsals and were just major-league fuck-ups. He rips them to shreds. You know, he never did any drugs and he always talks about living life to the fullest because of his mother’s experience in the concentration camps during the Holocaust. Non Phixion has a similar point of view when we say “There is no future, the future is now.” Enjoy today, enjoy the moment, live. A lot of Jewish people in the entertainment world try to sweep their Jewishness under the rug but he’s very upfront about it. He wears it on his sleeve. That’s what makes him a Super-Jew, on top of being the king of the goons.

BUSTA NUT

The Future Is Now is out on Uncle Howie Records/Landspeed.

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