Charles Hamilton wasn’t just pretending to be crazy

"Between you and me, uh, she might have been fifteen, but when you get that little red beaver right up there in front of you, I don't think it's crazy at all and I don't think you do either."
--Jack Nicholson in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Damn, so Charles Hamilton was crazy all along. I never could tell.

I mean, I knew he kept doing crazy shit, over and over again, to the point where, at a certain point, it became difficult for me to document it all, between scouring the Internets for pictures of especially beautiful women, for my Tumblr, making sure I didn't go for too long without putting on a drunk, taking the occasional nap, so on and so forth. Keeping up with Charles Hamilton's wacky antics was like a part-time job. And I already had a part-time job, at the BGM.

Then it all came to an end. There was that time he named the late, great (regardless of what RapPravda says) J Dilla executive producer of his album on Interscope, which didn't come out anyway, one of my favorite Charles Hamilton stunts of all time, and that was it. The next thing you, he'd disappeared from the Internets: stopped updating his Twitter (nhjic), stopped posting pictures of Sonic the Hedgehog on his blog, stopped putting out a new mixtape every three days or so. He just kinda up and disappeared.

The rumor at the time was that the seance with J Dilla's corpse was the last straw for Interscope, which dropped him like a bad habit and hence permanently shelved his album. He was taking some time off to reflect on how he'd gone, seemingly overnight, from being a high priority artist at one of the top labels in all of hip-hop to being the laughing stock of the Internets, and to plot a new course for his career, so to speak. It seemed to make sense: all of his problems had to do with him spending too much time on the Internets. He needed to fall back for a minute. If only this had occurred to him before he claimed that Dilla had been giving him tips on how to get the right sound from his snare drum, via mind bullets.

That's telekinesis, Kyle.

A message went up on his blog that there wasn't anything wrong with him, he was just taking some time off. In retrospect, this was clearly proof that there was indeed something wrong with him, as if the video of him getting cold cocked by his would be baby's mother wasn't enough. No one takes to the Internets to announce that there's nothing wrong with them, they're just taking some time off, unless there really is something wrong with them, let alone has someone else take to the Internets to announce that there's nothing wrong with them, they're just taking some time off. If there wasn't anything wrong with him, how come he couldn't have told us himself?

Whenever I'm gone from the Internets for a few days in a row, I hope people realize that I'm working like a hebrew slave in one of my series of minimum wage jobs, or I'm afraid that my free, serendipitous BangBros password will expire before I download these last three pages or so of updates from AssParade, and I'd hate to have to actually pay the $30 or whatever it costs to finish downloading them, because obviously you don't get that close to the end of the race without crossing the finish line, as it were, or something to that effect. The only time you have to worry is when there's a post here by my mom explaining that, no, I didn't get busted by Chris Hansen going to meet a girl I met on Facebook, who claimed to be a big fan of my post the other day on women treating men as if they were objects/women, I'm just taking some time to finish up my book.

Charles Hamilton must have been in a state where he couldn't even fix his fingers to type that there wasn't anything wrong with him. Either he was in a straight jacket, and they didn't want to take it off, for fear that he might choke the shit out of somebody, like Jack Nicholson after Nurse Ratched busted in on Brad Dourif trying to get some stank on his hanglow, or his hands were free, but he had no idea where he was or what the fuck anyone was talking about. In this interview (or whatever the fuck it's supposed to be) with Bossip, he admits that he could no longer carry on a regular conversation with people without breaking into song, presumably songs like the ones on Kool Keith's Dr. Dooom album.

Wasn't Kool Keith once in a looney bin? His career rebounded, albeit temporarily. If and when Charles Hamilton is deemed safe to walk the streets, he should attempt a comeback similar to Kool Keith's late '90s-era career renaissance. He might even consider doing a cover of the album Matthew, similar to Fashawn's version of Illmatic. "FUMF" would obviously be dedicated to Brianna a/k/a Knuckles.