NINJA PLEASE

What can be said about NINJA PLEASE? There are so many layers to this (pun intended). This work originally spawned from my love of the Hip-Hop community and in part Old School Rapping. In many of these now older rap tracks, the frequency of use of the "N" word, was something of legend; it was everywhere. It's a word that, as a white person I should not, do not, and will never utter in my entire life. That being said, whenever I hear these songs from time-to-time, I've figured out a way to keep rapping with the tune without staying silent. Replace the "N" word with another "N" word...NINJA. So this sparked the genesis of this journey and I happened to be watching one of my favorite Japanese animation movies of all time, AKIRA (1988). It's widely known by anyone who knows me that I love all things Japan. The food, the culture, the history, the architecture, the artists...OMG the artists! On Kawara, Yoko Ono, Isamu Noguchi, Yayoi Kusama, Takashi Murakami, and so many, many, many more. So we have this love of Hip-Hop and being a Japanophile, how do we decipher this work? We use these concepts in concert with each other by layering the text and making anagrams of the word PLEASE/ELAPSE/ASLEEP and then making an anagram of NINJA PLEASE/EN JAPAN ISLE. One aspect of this particular work that I keep coming back to is how some of the lines in-between PLEASE/ELAPSE/ASLEEP quasi-resemble Japanese kanji characters. By creating all these layers and lines it gives off almost a pagoda (a tiered tower with multiple eaves common to Asia) vibe.