“Keep the most #genuine people around, only a few. Don’t let too many in the circle that wasn’t there since day one and don’t understand who you truly are and only see you as a dollar figure. Genuine people, keep those types of people around you.” — @kendricklamar ✚✚✚✚ @katch1 @losfeofaces.elpaso #qouteoftheday

STORMY: “Around here—corruption is so casual because it’s not seen as illegal cause of the lack of oversight. It’s quieter, normalized by a favor. A job. Looking the other way. Staying silent at a meeting. Pretending not to hear something. Pretending not to notice who got protected and who is isolated. That’s why Native crime cinema would move differently. Not a bunch of Glonnies driving in their fathers’ trucks. Because the violence isn’t always physical first; it’s social. Sometimes people disappear socially before they disappear physically and unlike Hollywood gangster movies, you can’t just ‘leave the life’. Your grandma still lives there. Your clans still connect you. Your language is still here, ceremonies, the dead after a pandemic; anchored to red dirt. …..That’s what makes it tragic. That’s why Native crime cinema probably shouldn’t feel like action movies. Killers of the Flower” brushing and caresses that mood—but it’s from a non-native lens. But that’s because of the academic writer's point of view, you would think we, as storytellers would hit the nail on the head exactly, right? That’s why it should feel like a memory. Paranoia. Oral history mixed with paperwork, politics, and Jinī. Half the tension should come from people reading the room instead of pulling guns. The smiles, handshakes through Ké. Sometimes the scariest person in the room ain’t the loudest one. It’s the one smiling. The one acting helpful. The one saying ‘we’re family’. …just ain’t called it a genre yet.”

STORMY: “The thing about Navajo cinema —or Indigenous crime cinema in gen —it never gets treated like crime cinema. It gets reduced to alcoholism, trauma, poverty, or ‘rez struggle’ stories. Meh. It’s mid-story telling. Even when there’s violence, politickin’, power, fear, loyalty, silence, hustlin’, family pressure, land, money, or institutional corruption underneath it…Hollywood or indie filmmakers frame our realities as social case studies, rather than people navigating systems the same way everybody else does. That’s why I fucks with Infernal Affairs or The Departed shit hit different when you start thinking and flipping it with Navajo government, small-town politics, chapter politics, township structures, agencies, cousins, clans, favors, silence, and reputation in your community. Not because it’s ‘mob movies’ in the stereotypical sense but cause those films understand that institutions survive through narrative control. Through people staying quiet —shutting up. Through selective truths. That’s where a Native crime cinema could become its own genre—not biting Scorsese. Not copying and pasting Hong Kong cinema like Tarantino. Something slower. More relational. Maybe even spiritual, political. Less about kingpins and more about pressure. Obligation. Kinship. Ké. Shame. Community memory. The fact that everybody knows everybody. The fact that there’s no clean separation between family, governance, work, ceremony, politics, and personal history. ….That’s what makes the tension heavier. A character doesn’t just ‘betray the organization.’ He betrays his cousins. Clans. Community trust and his identity—in an attempt to be some type of wanna be Aimster but they're just another scout to their own people. You know? A leader isn’t only protecting power —sometimes they’re protecting the illusion that things are still holding together. Ya know? …That’s scarier than movie gangsters sometimes.”

Recently, @iratherknot sent me a video of a verse he just recorded, which reminded me of my time in the Pacific Northwest. I miss all my old belongings and clothing that my ex probably took and gave away to her husband. It also makes me chuckle because one of the farm board members says that I’m not a heartbreaker; I’m a homewrecker, since I tend to date people who are married. However, I must object to that label because I never know if they’re married or still involved in another relationship. They often act as if they’re single and independent. Anyway, I miss my clothing, the gym, being able to walk, and occasionally, I even miss the rain. I also miss my favorite jacket and all my shoes and pants. It reminds me of that line AFrado wrote the other day about why they always take our clothing when we break up. I lost everything, but I gained a lot of peace. Here’s to two years ago, and I’m sharing a face pic because I know you guys like that typa shit. But I guess the new rez Bahe look is cool too but I can't dress how I want to out on the Navajo Nation.

Easy Work. #Argentina #argentina🇦🇷 #art #argentinetango #argentine

MAHI: “Everybody always wants to know how I got into farming and cultural preservation work on the Navajo Nation. ….Truthfully there’s another side to that story. Before higher education, before government work, before consulting and farm boards, my skills were once being used for something completely different during the prohibition era before legalization changed everything. And no, I didn’t want to just stay some kid nickel-and-diming life away forever. Back then a lot of us had huge aspirations and dreams bigger than the environments we came from. …A lot of people didn’t survive that era. Some disappeared. Some got buried. Some became ghosts. …and honestly some of us had to become ghosts ourselves for a while just to survive. People look at these photos now and only see plants, but before legalization there were entire underground economies, risks, politics, survival systems, and environmental knowledge tied into all of it. Maybe my music and art career suffered because of that lifestyle. But in the long run I got lucky enough to live a second life. A lot of people, like in the movie Heat, never really walk away once they’re fully inside certain lifestyles. I’m one of the lucky ones.”

Around 2019–2020 one of my pieces ended up in the Winter Show at Loom Indigenous Art Gallery ( @loomindigenousart ) This Yé’ii-inspired figure was built entirely out of plastic cups, lids, straws, and fast-food waste connected to my caffeine addiction at the time. The idea came from thinking about how our ancestors once used every part of the environment around them compared to what surrounds us now: 1 plastic, 2 processed food, 3 disposable culture, 4 convenience stores, 5 energy drinks, 6 petroleum products. …..The Holy People depicted through modern waste….. …..That contrast was intentional….. Around this period I started thinking less like strictly a graffiti or music artist and more like an exhibition artist after being around Indigenous academics, professors, and artists from different nations. I wanted to make something that spoke about Navajo culture surviving inside an altered environment rather than pretending nothing changed. ….Tradition meeting consumerism under artificial light. Most people probably don’t even know I make visual art because I rarely post it. ….Maybe I should start.

Sometime around January 9th or 10th, 2018, after a LOSFEOFACES show and a Ceschi Ramos set, somebody caught this photo of Ceschi and my son, Seven, backstage. Seven had just turned 11 a couple of weeks earlier, born December 25, 2006. Crazy seeing this now because a couple months back somebody newer to the independent promotion/hip-hop world had the nerve to say nobody heard of me until recently. That’s funny considering before this photo even existed, I got videos somewhere of Seven as a newborn with Ceschi and his brother David on a merry-go-round back in the day. These weren’t internet friendships. These relationships were built over years, touring, real life, struggle, growth, and surviving different eras together. One thing I’ll always respect about Ceschi is that he encouraged me a lot to be a better father. Even when things between Seven’s mother and me were complicated and messy, I still showed up. I was there when my son was born. That mattered more than trying to look important in scenes. That’s probably why my path ended up different from some people’s. I became a father, went back to higher education, worked behind the scenes helping others build, got into IT, community work, and political commentary while still staying connected to music in different ways. A lot of people only understand visibility. They don’t understand groundwork or background roles because they mistake silence for absence. There are a lot of new faces around now. Some solid, some temporary. But hearing people speak confidently about histories they were never present for will always be funny to me. Anyways, this photo felt worth posting: Ceschi Ramos and my son Seven backstage in 2018.

SOL: “Do you like anything other than computers? Do you touch grass or spend time outside other than being alone? What were you like before? What was your life like before working with Homeland Security and the Tribal Government in IT?”

Narrator (V.O.) “From ages 5 to 17, my brother and I navigated the Los Angeles system, even being sent to San Diego, Hawaii, Texas, and the Inland Empire. Eventually, we reached our limit and became adult offenders. So, new names and personalities for whoever and whatever environments suited it. It was easy to disappear.”

WAITRESS: “Burn anything, lately?” She smiles as braces shine like a grill for unstructured teeth.

PAT BLACKHAT: “You had a premonition —you saw it happen because time isn’t a reality, and causality isn’t static. ‘Language Relativity’ allows you to view outside of temporality, much like staring down at a record — or making a beat using non-linear editing tools through a lens where time is fluid. That’s why your brain flags it as a paradox but the past, present, and future are a cube —a fixed path. Observation depends on your postion —time is a westernized perspective —not a feature of reality itself. Those who do not understand call those who reach this stand; ‘witchcraft.’ or ‘mystic thinking’”