My Time With Speed Mack

 

Yo, hold up! Time to go back, way back into time! Pronto!

No, I’m just kidding. But I can tell you that it’s time to check out. Yet another tribute to a friend of mine who went to C-Tran and is also the Lawrence’s finest rap star. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you, the one the only…

Speed Mack!

Speech! 🎤. Here’s my story dedicated to him. We both met at the beginning of the second year of C-Tran and he was really nice to meet me for the very first time. Before Speed Mack and I hung out, we came up with our own rap group for school. It was called ‘Straight Up! Crew’. It was something that we came up together once we came up with some underground hip hop music. The first thing we did in music was a demo tape featuring a couple of freestyles, and did a remix of Jenny Rovel Jones’ cover of Dido’s song ‘Life For Rent’. He started free-styling with his own lyrics to the beat. Word up! I remember that time I was coming up with some artwork for the C-Tran hip hop group. As a picked the artwork with the girl in a gothic theme, it was kinda the thing that Jeremiah wasn’t feeling. So we had to change that so it wasn’t inappropriate to see. I guess I should’ve picked artwork from Justin Bua. It was for the first demo EP we made up titled ‘Without Permission’. Oh well.

After that, we recorded new songs for the next EP titled ‘Escape Phenomenon’. We’ve done at least eight tracks for this second EP. I remember doing the song ‘Party ‘Til 2 A.M.’ with him, the intro was really vintage and we sampled the song “4 A.M.” by Nite Flyte. He really liked it because it had a smooth acid jazz feel to the song. I would say that this track we did was off the ‘heezy’. Awesome! The next song we did was ‘Disconnected’ because we jammed to the song sampled by Plastikman. We even sampled opera vocals in that song. That song was like the sound of minimal techno music and upright bass combining at the same time. It kinda made me feel like I’m soothed into silence over white noise. I don’t know, maybe it’s techno music. The other song I did was ‘Caught Me In The Blink of an Eye’. I sampled the color sphere music from The Magic School Bus CD-ROM game for PC because it reminded me of the spheres that make music in this game. The ambient experimental music was really good though. Even if the sounds and the synth bass was a bit minimal. Others were ‘Wild Tracks’, ‘Real Emcee, Real Lyrics’, ‘Get Up Get Out’, ‘Gotta Get ‘Em’, and ‘The Hard Tracks’. And speaking of that, we both remember ‘The Hard Tracks’ because I loved the part where I did samples of The Hard Facts from Multiplication Rap. We also can’t forget the time I imported the sampled of Arnold Jackson’s catchphrase.

That was really funny to hear in a rap song.

That next album we did was ‘Reality Check When Things Can Happen’. We did a total of thirteen songs in one digital album. The song that we did was the track we also did for a music video called “Moon Light City Block”. We did that music video a long time ago when we were in downtown Lawrence hanging out. We were outside the  library as I did some video shooting in the first scene. Next, we did some video shooting here inside the Riverfront Plaza where the mall used to be and Speed Mack was dancing on the promo shoot of ‘Power’, a show that used to be on Starz which I don’t even watch. Then I saw him dancing when going up and down the stairs. It was really cool watching him dancing at the plaza. We even did some scenes for the music video outside the Riverfront Plaza at the balcony and right at the Lawrence Amtrak too. We also did some time lapse footage outside my house and did some blue screen effects for this video. It was fresh and he loved it a lot.

We had a lot of fun shooting this video and putting it all on YouTube, and it was awesome! 🤩 This album featured plenty of samples he thought of such as Samurai Champloo, J Dilla, and many others including bump music from [adult swim].

We also did another digital album titled ‘Video Game Fantasy’. It contains fifteen tracks all in one album. We did the track sampling Charlie Sheen and the dialogue saying “JUST DO IT!”.

That actor is Shia LaBeouf.

(just to be sure.) on track 7.

Before ‘Never Stop Winning’, the song for track 6 was “Let’s Dance” because we sampled the original song by David Bowie. It was nostalgia especially with the Pac-Man sounds.

The 12th track has the song "Something In The Air" because it's the original song my friend came up with on our own.

The second track has the song titled "All You Gotta Do Is Believe" which contained a sample of the Super Mario World's 'Game Over' sting in it. We think it's really nostalgic to remind us all about the video games we love playing in the good old days. And if you’re wondering where the game is from including this sound, it’s from Super Mario World.

It goes like this. Click on this picture.

I helped him out with the samples in the songs we recorded and it was excellent.

Here’s to you as a shout out to my friend I met from C-Tran.

Now here’s something that I remember doing when C-Tran visited Americana Music Academy to record a song. It sampled the song “Flashlight” by Parliament and other beats made. Unfortunately, I didn’t let my dad know earlier about us recording that song. I guess we completely forgot about that in the first place. But at least he liked that track Speed Mack and I made ourselves. Maybe next time I’m at Americana maybe we can do something recording with him and his crew. That would be really cool, and I’d bet my dad will be so proud.

Anyway after our recording session, we checked out the Scuba Shack to learn a lot more about scuba diving. I’ve heard about that once from my parents once when they visited Aruba for Spring Break. Heck, maybe I wanna learn how to do that.

Just hope that I don’t choke out on this one. ☝️ 

Moving on. We got to do a little open mic here in South Park. And just as we suspected, we got on stage and we rocked out to the underground sounds of hip hop music from Speed Mack. It was me, Jeremiah Sharp, and Speed Mack together on stage. We were all rocking the mic with this C-Tran demo tape we made and the fans went crazy! CRAZY! It went very well when we were jamming out in South Park. My friend Lois really loved our hip hop demo of Straight Up! Crew.

“Word to ya mutha!”  - Vanilla Ice

We had a lot of fun during my year in C-Tran. Like that time we both got to hang out and make up our own music right at home in my room together every Friday.

He and I would hang out, watch some TV, music videos, go out to eat, have some pizza, and just goof off for a while. I know one time I sent him a painting of him and a Mint Condition poster to his house. And I gotta tell you, he really loved it.

Now when I finally come back to Lawrence to live here, I’ll help him and his crew out on some new music for them. I’m sure that they’ll appreciate it a lot once I get things set up. And I’ve came up with another cool idea for another music video. And this time, not just green screen and emcee scenes. What if we get somebody to do an animated music video for the song “All I Gotta Do Is Believe”. We’re gonna need somebody who can help us out with the animation and the green screen effects. It’ll be just like an homage to Super Mario Bros games. Cool, huh!

Another idea for the next music would be one for “Let’s Dance”. It’ll be a special homage to Pac-Man and 1980s dance movies. It can also be a special dedication to the loving memory of the legendary David Bowie. This music video will also have puppetry too, and it’ll also be really funny. What do you say to that? I’ll bet he’ll love it, as always! We’ll need someplace where we can shoot the video like the Granada, The Bottleneck, or the Replay Lounge. We’ll see what we can find.

Anyway to continue. I remember that year in 2022, I got to meet up with Speed Mack once again while I was visiting Lawrence Kansas for vacation, and boy was he happy to see me again.

We got together and we got to meet up with Yung CavageBoi Nox along with Tom Maniac and Mister Wonduh. We all got together and did a little recording session here in the studio at the library. We were really doing some hard word here with their music. We listened to their new songs and we recorded a couple demos. It was really fun! We even got together with Nox for some lunch at Pepperjax Grill, home of the famous Phillies.

I’ll also never forget the time we both got together for dinner at The Casa Grande. We love a little Mexican food for our appetite.

And after dinner, we went to the Jayhawk Sampler and guess what he got me.

(As a special gift!) Thanks, bro!

Yo, Speed Mack! Thanks for the good times we’ve had together and for helping me out with some new music of your own. Hey, let’s hope we’ll do that again sometime once I finally move back to Lawrence. As always, I’ll know for sure.

Anyway, hope you’re doing well my friend and catch you on the flip side. I’ll be coming up and brainstorming on some new music for you and your rap group. You’ll be really surprised to hear this.

That’s all for this special tribute. If you like my blog entry, let me know on the comments and we’ll talk more about some new ideas and stories too. Check back later for more to come on the next Lawrence Kansas Monthly Blog.

Peace out and have a great day.

P.S. Here’s a look at some new artwork for the Speed Mack album “Video Game Fantasy”. I made it myself on NightCafe. Hope you like it.