ten other things martin luther king said

From Jay Smooth's the Ill Doctrine:

mayda del valle

Just the other day I was in a music store and came across The Best of the Roots. There was no way my conscience was going to let me pay $17 get the CD since I already had the first six Roots albums, but one track which definitely intrigued me was a version of (Hip-Hop is the) Love of my Life featuring Mayda del Valle. (At least for now, the track seems to be available on her myspace page) I've mentioned her in passing before but for those that don't know, she is an amazing Puerto Rican spoken word artist, originally from the southside of Chicago. When I was at the National Poetry Slam a couple of years back, she was the only performer who actually made me feel starstruck when I would see them walking down the street.

She has a lot of different "ethnic" pieces which are amazing (I think "Descendancy" is my favorite) but I just happened across some of her other pieces which are pretty powerful too. First is "To all the boys I loved before" which is obviously a relationship piece...



And then there is "The Gift" which starts off as a why-I-write type of poem but also dips into relationship territory (Like she says, "my poems go off on tangents.")



I think that both poems should inspire any male to be the kind of man she says she deserves.