Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} Three Seconds to Sunrise by Nelly B. Jones Three Seconds to Sunrise by Nelly B. Jones. Completing the CAPTCHA proves you are a human and gives you temporary access to the web property. What can I do to prevent this in the future? If you are on a personal connection, like at home, you can run an anti-virus scan on your device to make sure it is not infected with malware. If you are at an office or shared network, you can ask the network administrator to run a scan across the network looking for misconfigured or infected devices. Another way to prevent getting this page in the future is to use Privacy Pass. You may need to download version 2.0 now from the Chrome Web Store. Cloudflare Ray ID: 660e6000be981f21 • Your IP : 116.202.236.252 • Performance & security by Cloudflare. Three Seconds to Sunrise by Nelly B. Jones. We rarely recognize a great work of art when we see it for the first time. For instance, Moby Dick was published in 1851, but it took more than half a century for critics to realize that the novel is a literary masterpiece. In the same way, it’s taken me 21 years of my life to realize that I fucking love Nelly. My love for him started with an ironic enjoyment of “Ride Wit Me”, but the more I thought about him, the more I realized that Nelly is severely under-appreciated. I discover so many new things — about Nelly, about the world, about myself — each time I listen to his radio hits. By now, I’ve come up with so many thinkpiece ideas on Nelly’s artistry that I couldn’t possibly have the time to write them all. Thus, I’ve decided to do what a real journalist would do: toss all these ideas into a blender and write one, sprawling, unorganized listacle. Here we go. Here are a bunch of reasons for why Nelly is a bit of a genius. 1. Nelly’s technical influence is massively underrated. He is the first artist to have perfected the sing-rapping technique, which is super popular in hip-hop these days. 808s-era Kanye West, Drake, Ty Dolla $ign, Fetty Wap, Kid Cudi — would we have any of these important artists without “Ride Wit Me”? 2. You could say that these artists were not thinking about Nelly. You might object and say that their sing-raps were direct responses to the auto- tuned club songs of T-Pain, who is also a sing-rapper — an especially controversial sing-rapper. Kanye’s autotuned R&B on 808s is a blatant reaction to T-Pain’s trashy club music. It makes sense because Kanye was T-Pain’s contemporary on the Billboard charts circa 2005. But Nelly’s first album, the landmark Country Grammar , predates “I’m Sprung” by five years. 3. S o, without Kanye, we wouldn’t have had Drake, Fetty, Kid Cudi, and the list can go on. But we wouldn’t have post-808s Kanye without T- Pain, and we wouldn’t have T-Pain if Nelly never started sing-rapping. We can thank Nelly for songs such as “Blood on the Leaves,” “Marvin’s Room” and “Trap Queen”. 4. Fetty Wap seems to be a direct descendent of Nelly. “679” — that massive club beat is SUCH a Nelly beat. Also, Fetty Wap’s endearing camaraderie with Remy Boyz is reminiscent of Nelly’s camaraderie with St. Lunatics. Even though Fetty Wap and Nelly have both found massive pop success, they try to share their fame with their boys from back home. 5. In the middle of “Ride Wit Me”, which is ostensibly a party song, Nelly says something surprisingly profound: “It feels strange now — making money off my brain instead of ‘cain now.” Wow! You go Nelly. I’m glad that Nelly can take a breath from the freewheeling celebration of “Ride Wit Me” so that he can ponder and appreciate his success. 6. It reminds me of Jay-Z’s famous couplet: “If you had holes in your zapatos / you would celebrate the minute you was having dough.” But Nelly’s version is less preachy and more humble. Nelly is so much more approachable. 7. Oh, and can we all agree that “Ride Wit Me” is the most important road trip song of all time? Those first chords bottle up the splendor of a sunrise into three seconds. It makes me feel like I live in a world of hopes and possibilities. In the same way that “Ignition (Remix)” is essential to any good party, “Ride Wit Me” is essential to any good road trip. In fact, if you are ever in the car for more than half an hour, you just need to play “Ride Wit Me.” Trust me. 8. And I can go on about “Ride Wit Me,” which is arguably Nelly’s masterpiece, if not “Tip Drill” (more on “Tip Drill” later). “Ride Wit Me” is amazingly nuanced for a pop song. 9. First of all, Nelly is such a great guy. “Ride Wit Me”? It’s an invitation! Nelly wants to share his success with everyone. 10. The chorus goes, “Why must I live this way? (Ay! Must be the money!)” That line is so complex! You can read its ambiguous tone in so many ways. Nelly seems tinged with regret. He seems tired of a certain lifestyle of partying and excess. In a way, he is playing a reiteration of Jay Gatsby. 11. Then again, he could just be sarcastic. He sounds like he’s having a pretty good time. But, is there a sincere emotional crisis underneath that irony? Maybe he is using the sarcasm to bury a certain pain. Oh, so many ways to read this song! Before, on this list, I established that he’s humble. He is celebratory yet meditative. Now we can add “sarcastic” and “regretful”, maybe even nostalgic, to the list. Nelly contains multitudes. 12. I could write a billion more things about “Ride Wit Me,” but I should probably shut up and move on. We have a lot of ground to cover. 13. He is probably the most famous hip-hop artist to ever emerge from St. Louis, Missouri. Nelly innovated hip-hop by introducing his unique, Missouri vernacular to the scene. In fact, you can tell he had this project in mind, because his first album is called Country Grammar . I’m always grateful to hear language in a way that I haven’t heard before, so I thank Nelly for teaching me what, exactly, a Missouri twang sounds like. He revolutionizes hip-hop with his regional dialect in the same way that important writers such as Mark Twain and Zora Neale Hurston write in certain dialects. These innovations in language are always celebrated in the study of literature. Why don’t we shower Nelly with the same acclaim? He challenges our sensibilities by writing poetry in a low-brow register, a “hick” type of language — kind of like Chaucer. 14. Every line of his is super dense with slang. I can’t tell if it’s slang specific to Missouri or just slang that was popular in the year 2000. Either way, I appreciate how bizarre and hard-to-understand his lines can be, as a result. “We 3-wheelin’ in a fo’ with the gold Ds” You’re going to need a lot of annotations just to understand what’s happening in one line. A fo’ is a ‘64 Chevy Impala. Gold Ds are gold Dayton rims. Apparently, people in the year 2000 liked to lift one of their wheels with hydraulics and ride with three wheels. See? I needed to solve so many riddles to just understand one sentence. You need someone to hold your hand as you read Nelly’s lyrics, almost like you’re reading Ulysses . 15. Just a side note, I love all of these internal off-rhymes in “Country Grammar”: “ Smoking on dubs in clubs, blowing up like Cocoa Puffs / Sipping bub, getting perved and getting dubbed / Daps and hugs, mean mugs and shoulder shrugs.” He just keeps going!. It’s admirable. Also, the internal rhymes double as onomatopoeia. The sounds of the club come alive. It’s very fun to read. Once again, it reminds me of reading Ulysses out loud. 16. “Tip Drill” shocks me and amazes me because everything about it is so extremely gratuitous. It is the sound of ludicrous excess. It breaks pop conventions because there is no “verse” or “chorus” or “bridge.” It is literally the same hook — “tip drill!” repeated 66 times. So, it’s amazing and hilarious that Nelly decided that this song — out of all songs — needed to be over 6 minutes long. That’s an insane amount of time to be dancing to such a mind-numbing club hit. What’s even more impressive is that he keeps my attention the entire time. It is a 6-minute song that feels like a 3- minute song, and I’m left wanting more. 17. 6 minutes is not a length of time for a typical hip-hop club song — or any pop song, for that matter. Usually, when I think of songs over 6 minutes, I think of a rock anthem such as “November Rain” or a Bob Dylan ballad. In a way, Nelly’s “Tip Drill” synthesizes a high-brow, epic musical form with the low-brow hip-hop club song. Great art is often the result of a surprising synthesis of high-brow and low-brow genres. Think of Andy Warhol’s pop art movement, or the French New Wave’s obsession with trashy film noirs. Think of James Joyce’s fart jokes. Nelly has achieved the same, eye-opening type of synthesis in “Tip Drill.” It’s not just the length of time, either. There is a catchy-as-fuck guitar riff in the background, as if Nelly were inspired by rock epics. (Here’s a Youtube video for “Tip Drill.” I’d link you to the actual music video, but it is extremely NSFW.) 18. The film critic Pauline Kael once said that “great movies are rarely perfect movies.” That’s how I feel about “Tip Drill.” There are so many reasons why it should be considered a bad piece of art. Even its music video is utterly crass and tasteless. It is six minutes of naked women rubbing their butts against one another, and the premise is juvenile. But it is these flaws that show Nelly’s idiosyncratic genius. Nelly is smart enough to know that the lyrics are as dumb as they can be, yet he still went ahead with making “Tip Drill”, which turned out to be awesome. His bravado is strangely admirable. I am too timid of a person to go where Nelly has gone. This epic club song is the work of an ambitious madman who has no regard for logical boundaries. Then again, if it were at all logical, it wouldn’t be art. Jason Chen is the arts & entertainment editor. Contact him at [email protected] . About this blog. Whether it's new music release announcements, previews of art events or musings on the latest entertainment news, Culture Shot is the spot to find out what's going on in the world of Arts & Entertainment, Bay Area and beyond. Three Seconds to Sunrise. Beautiful Books is a writerly blog linkup event, focused on NaNoWriMo novels. Go here to find out more about Beautiful Books! 1. How did you come up with the idea for your novel, and how long have you had the idea? Hmm, the story is about certain events of my past, mixed up and altered a bit to fit the story, and I’ve always wanted to write about it in one way or another so. 2. Why are you excited to write this novel? Because I get to rewrite my own history, so to speak. Some things will be different from my life. They’ll be how I wanted them to be. And it’s contemporary, which is actually pretty new to me since my previous projects were always fantasy. 3. What is your novel about, and what is the title? The title is Three Seconds to Sunrise (which can change in the future) and it’s about a boy who one day finds the diary of his best friend’s sister, Emma. He’s noticed her before and the sad look in her eyes and he’s curious as to what causes her to look that way. So he becomes more and more aware of her and decides to read her diary, against his better judgement. From there on their friendship and relationship start just when her life seems to fall apart. It’s my story, but through someone else’s eyes. 4. Sum up your characters in one word each. (Feel free to add pictures!) Hmm… I’m just going to do this for the two main characters, alright? Ryan: Adorkable (see picture with next question) Emma: Me. 5. Which character(s) do you think will be your favorite to write? Tell us about them! I think the protagonist, Ryan. He’s a combination of 3 or 4 guys from my past and present and actually my dream guy, haha. It’ll be fun to write my story through his eyes! Though also kind of hard at times. He’s kind of a huge dork and not a very social guy, but he’s really cute. He’s a very talented musician with an amazing voice, but he has stage fright. He loves video games, anime and marvel movies. I just love adorkable guys! Ryan kind of looks like Andrew Garfield in the Spiderman movies but with Jacob Artist’s singing voice. Emma looks like me, obviously, but I get Lea Michele’s singing voice. Cause in real life, I can’t sing one bit, but I wish I could. (Those two songs I linked play an important role in the book!) 6. What is your protagonist’s goal, and what stands in the way? Ryan’s “goal” is to get to know Emma. He wants to know why she’s so sad all the time. What stands in his way is Emma herself. She doesn’t trust easily and shuts herself out, builds a wall around her. He’s also shy and not very sociable, so their relationship starts off… with a lot of awkward conversations. 7. Where is your novel set? (Show us pictures if you have them!) Probably in a small fictional town. That’s the easiest for me, haha. xD Gives me a lot of creative freedom! 8. What is the most important relationship your character has? Hmm… For Ryan I think it’s the one with his best friend, Emma’s brother. It’s also his only friend since he’s a pretty shy guy, haha. For Emma, it’s her relationship with her grandmother. 9. How does your protagonist change by the end of the novel? This is strange, since Ryan is the one who tells the story, but it’s actually really about Emma, so… Ryan & Emma both learn to open themselves up to others and to feel good about themselves. Emma is very much broken when we meet her in the book and by the end, hopefully she won’t be. But you’ll have to read to find out. 10. What themes are in your book? How do you want your readers to feel when the story is over? Themes, huh. Losing a loved one, bullying, depression, friendship, learning to love & trust others as well as yourself. How do I want my readers to feel? Hmm, hopefully happy and maybe a little better about themselves? BONUS! Tell us your 3 best pieces of advice for others trying to write a book in a month. Hah, I’m horrible at advice. I’d say, write… write… and write some more. Let the story and the characters take you where they want to go, if that makes sense. And never be afraid to ask for help! March Edition – Meet Eli James! Beautiful People is a linkup hosted by Sky @ Further Up and Further In and Paper Fury! It’s aimed at writers so they can answer the questions about their characters and their books. This March edition will be the last one in which I talk about Three Seconds to Sunrise because it’s finished and I’m moving on to a new project. HUZZAH! Happy day! Thus, for the last time, I’m talking about Three Seconds to Sunrise’s main character: Eli James. What first inspired this character? Is there a person/actor you based them off? Eli was first inspired by one of my High School friends, also called Eli. He’s always been like a brother to me and though we lost touch a bit in the last few years, I still see him as my friend. And so I asked him if I could use his name for my main character and he said yes, so yay! Eli’s looks are based on him too and singer Matt McAndrew, who you can see in this video. He has the tattoos & guitar & curly hair and everything. Only thing that he misses is Eli’s fedora. This video of him singing took my breath away and I knew: That’s Eli! Listen, and enjoy! Describe their daily routine. Eli used to help out at his dad’s bakery, so he’d get up early and work the morning shift until noon and then he’d hang out with his friends and play music and all that good stuff. After he quit, he spent most of his days playing music, writing songs and hanging out with Will, duhh, until he starts college in the Fall. If they joined your local high school, what clique would they fit into? Eli is very hard to fit into one category, but they always put him with the nerds. Even though he’s really cool. Write a list of things they merely tolerate. Ex: certain people, foods, circumstances in their lives… Merely tolerates, huh? Hmm… Narrow-minded people Singers that set a bad example (HI MILEY CYRUS) Salads (I mean, he’s not a rabbit…) When people tell him music is a horrible carreer choice His dad. How do they react in awkward silences? He probably starts singing or whistling. That, or he sneaks out of the room. Mostly the latter. He feels very uncomfortable in awkward silences so he’ll probably make up a horrible excuse and leave. Can they swim? If so, how did they learn? Yes, he can. He learned in Kindergarten. What is one major event that helped shape who they are? His grandmother’s death. He finally started being himself and not let other people influence his life. GO ELI! What things do they value most in life? Will. His music. Cake, probably. His friends. Will. Do they believe in giving other people second chances? Yes, he does! But not more than that. People get 2 chances with him, and that’s it. Do they have any trust issues? Sometimes, yes. He trusts his friends without question, but new people… It might take a while. Your character is having a rough day…what things do they do to make them happy again? Is there anyone they talk/interact with to get in a better mood? OH OH! When Eli has a rough day, he goes to his studio, where Will finds him and cheers him up. Because he has telepathic powers that only work on Eli. Sort of. He just knows Eli very well. And there we go! Eli is my munchkin and I’ll miss having his voice in my head constantly. Of course I’ll see him again when I start edits on Three Seconds and he appears in the companion novel about his brother Shatter This Starless Night, but still. I love him dearly and I hope you guys ever get the chance to fall in love with him & Will too. March Edition. Beautiful People is a linkup hosted by Sky @ Further Up and Further In and Paper Fury! It’s aimed at writers so they can answer the questions about their characters and their books. This March edition will be the last one in which I talk about Three Seconds to Sunrise because it’s finished and I’m moving on to a new project. HUZZAH! Happy day! Thus, for the last time, I’m talking about Three Seconds to Sunrise’s main character: Eli James. What first inspired this character? Is there a person/actor you based them off? Eli was first inspired by one of my High School friends, also called Eli. He’s always been like a brother to me and though we lost touch a bit in the last few years, I still see him as my friend. And so I asked him if I could use his name for my main character and he said yes, so yay! Eli’s looks are based on him too and singer Matt McAndrew, who you can see in this video. He has the tattoos & guitar & curly hair and everything. Only thing that he misses is Eli’s fedora. This video of him singing took my breath away and I knew: That’s Eli! Listen, and enjoy! Describe their daily routine. Eli used to help out at his dad’s bakery, so he’d get up early and work the morning shift until noon and then he’d hang out with his friends and play music and all that good stuff. After he quit, he spent most of his days playing music, writing songs and hanging out with Will, duhh, until he starts college in the Fall. If they joined your local high school, what clique would they fit into? Eli is very hard to fit into one category, but they always put him with the nerds. Even though he’s really cool. Write a list of things they merely tolerate. Ex: certain people, foods, circumstances in their lives… Merely tolerates, huh? Hmm… Narrow-minded people Singers that set a bad example (HI MILEY CYRUS) Salads (I mean, he’s not a rabbit…) When people tell him music is a horrible carreer choice His dad. How do they react in awkward silences? He probably starts singing or whistling. That, or he sneaks out of the room. Mostly the latter. He feels very uncomfortable in awkward silences so he’ll probably make up a horrible excuse and leave. Can they swim? If so, how did they learn? Yes, he can. He learned in Kindergarten. What is one major event that helped shape who they are? His grandmother’s death. He finally started being himself and not let other people influence his life. GO ELI! What things do they value most in life? Will. His music. Cake, probably. His friends. Will. Do they believe in giving other people second chances? Yes, he does! But not more than that. People get 2 chances with him, and that’s it. Do they have any trust issues? Sometimes, yes. He trusts his friends without question, but new people… It might take a while. Your character is having a rough day…what things do they do to make them happy again? Is there anyone they talk/interact with to get in a better mood? OH OH! When Eli has a rough day, he goes to his studio, where Will finds him and cheers him up. Because he has telepathic powers that only work on Eli. Sort of. He just knows Eli very well. And there we go! Eli is my munchkin and I’ll miss having his voice in my head constantly. Of course I’ll see him again when I start edits on Three Seconds and he appears in the companion novel about his brother Shatter This Starless Night, but still. I love him dearly and I hope you guys ever get the chance to fall in love with him & Will too.