Reconciling Ozzy’s Legacy

Ozzy Osbourne was never meant to be a saint. He bit the head off a bat and dove, survived decades of drug abuse, tried to kill his wife (while under the influence of drugs), and still made his way into a global icon. Like many public figures though — especially from his generation — he carried contradictions. And lately, one of those contradictions has come under fire: his support for Zionism.

As someone who grew up worshipping Sabbath and Ozzy, I’ve been struggling to reconcile my love for his legacy with my politics. I’m anti-Zionist. I believe in the liberation of Palestine and the end of apartheid. And Ozzy’s apparent support for Israel during a time of intense suffering in Gaza felt like a gut punch.

But then came his farewell show: Back to the Beginning. A titanic goodbye organize by none other than Tom Morello: guitar god, anti-Zionist activist, and arguably one of the most politically consistent artists of our time. Morello curated the whole event, helped raise nearly $200 million for Parkinson’s and children’s hospitals, and sat side-by-side with Ozzy to send him off.

So what the hell do I do with that?

Do I cancel Ozzy? Do I cancel Morello for working with him? Do I cancel myself for loving them both?

No. I sit with the contradictions. Because real politics aren’t clean. They’re messy, emotional, and riddled with human inconsistency.

Ozzy supported Black Lives Matter. He stood up for the LGBTQ+. He raised a staggering amount of money for causes that matter. He was also, like many aging boomers, wildly out of his depth when it came to the geopolitics of Israel and Palestine. That doesn’t excuse it, but it does contextualize it, especially considering his declining health and the heavy medications he was on during his final years.

Morello’s participation doesn’t “excuse” Ozzy either, but it does suggest that celebrating someone’s musical legacy doesn’t always mean endorsing their politics. That nuance is lost in today’s discourse, which often demands total purity or total exile. But art, like people, is rarely so simple.

I can love “Mr. Crowley” and still rage against apartheid. I can blast “War Pigs” and say Ozzy got it wrong. And I can respect the farewell show while also wishing that one of the final statements of a metal god hadn’t included a blind spot so many in the West still carry.

Again, rest in power, Ozzy. And may the rest of us keep pushing — louder, harder, and more unapologetically — for a world where all people live free from occupation and oppression.

Free Palestine.

More Than an Album: What Ozzy Meant to Me

I know I listed my top ten albums, and with my last post being about Ozzy, you may be wondering “Why didn’t you list an Ozzy album?” I think Ozzy deserves another post of his own. My mom was never too strict with what I read. I could read virtually anything and she didn’t mind. She wasn’t really strict with what I listened to, either, but she was wary at times. She knew Ozzy’s reputation more than his music. Thankfully, she warmed up to him (and later to other musicians I listened to.)

One of my cousins gave me his copy of Ozzy’s No Rest for the Wicked. Like I said in my last post, I was a weird kid. I was obsessed with serial killers, Columbine, and the like. So when I heard “Bloodbath in Paradise” by Ozzy, there was an immediate connection. A song about Charles Manson and “the Family.” Someone was into the same stuff I was into? I found someone finally!

I had a friend make me a couple of mix tapes of Ozzy’s music and Marilyn Manson’s music: two artists who were no-no’s in my Southern Baptist home. They were both rebellion, bottled and distorted. They were both weirdos like me. I found people who understood me and accepted me for me.

Ozzy was the gateway. Not just into heavier music, but into embracing the strange and the dark instead of running from it. He didn’t glamorize evil, he mocked it, played with it, stared it in the eyes and laughed. For a kid growing up in a world full of fire-and-brimstone warnings, that was liberating. He was spooky but silly, demonic but theatrical, dangerous but oddly comforting.

And more than anything, Ozzy made it okay to be an outcast. He wasn’t some polished idol or untouchable god; he was a mess. He was raw and flawed and still somehow larger than life. That spoke to me more than anything.

I didn’t know it then, but those tapes, those lyrics, that chaos, it helped me survive. It helped me find a voice, even if I was just screaming it in my bedroom with headphones on. Ozzy was more than music. He was a lifeline.

So no, I didn’t list an Ozzy album in my top ten. He’s not just an album to me. He’s a whole era of my life.

And with his passing, it feels like the era’s closed. But the weird kid he helped carry through the dark? He’s still here. Still weird. Still grateful.

My Dedication to Ozzy Osbourne

Today is a sad day for the metal world and for me as a metal fan. I was hit with four messages on Facebook “Ozzy died.” It wasn’t surprising. What’s surprising is that he lived this long, but still it’s left a hole. There are three bands/musicians that turned me onto metal and those are Metallica, Pantera, and Ozzy Osbourne. Their music and Ozzy himself made me feel less like a misfit. I felt that I belonged somewhere.

My first concert ever was Ozzfest 2002. I begged and begged my mom to let me go with friend, my girlfriend at the time, and my girlfriend’s dad. We finally compromised when she said, “You can go, but you have to go to church first.”

Southern Baptist upbringing, remember?

I was blown away. All the bands, the entire metal community. I felt welcome. I felt like I had a place in the world. I felt at home. I got in the mosh pit without even thinking about it. I just felt the urge to truly experience my first ever concert by doing everything concerts have to offer … except the booze and the drugs because I was still a 15-year-old Southern Baptist boy.

When Ozzy finally took the stage that night, I was in awe. One of my metal heroes, the godfather of heavy metal. We connected that night. I didn’t want the night to end. Nothing else mattered in that moment. I felt like I was at peace with all the other people there. I had found my place in the world. As someone who was always “the weird kid” in school I felt like I finally belonged. No one was judging me. No one was making fun of me. We were all outcasts and misfits, but we were outcasts and misfits together and Ozzy had brought us together. I felt a community.

I’m sad that I never got to see Black Sabbath live, but I can say that I at least got to see Ozzy live which is sad for future metalheads because they don’t know what it’ll be like to not have the godfather of metal to be there for them when they feel the world is against them, but they’ll find their own place with another band at some point in time. I’m just happy I got to experience the original and nothing can take that away from me.

Rest in power, Ozzy. You’ll be missed.

Ten Albums that Shaped My Inner Apocalypse

Music isn’t just background noise. It’s scaffolding for survival, especially when the world feels like it’s rotting from the inside out. These ten albums didn’t just soundtrack my life; they rewired the way I experience rage, grief, absurdity, and beauty. They remind me that chaos can be crafted, and pain can be poetic. Here they are, in no particular order, because the human psyche isn’t linear and neither is this list.

Tom Waits – Rain Dogs

The sound of a broken-down carnival running on whiskey and cigarette ash. Waits turns gutter poetry into gospel. Rain Dogs is a celebration of the unwanted — junkies, drunks, and dreamers — and it feels like a lullaby for a world in freefall. Every barked lyric and percussive clang is a reminder that beauty can grow in the cracks.

Rage Against the Machine – Rage Against the Machine

This album is a pipe bomb with guitar strings. Rage didn’t ask for change, they demanded it. Backed by riffs that hit like police batons and lyrics that make the politicians sweat. It’s the soundtrack to smashing glass, flipping tables, and refusing to sit quietly in a burning house.

Tool – Ænima

This is what a spiritual crisis sounds like when it’s fed through distortion pedals. This album is part meditation, part meltdown. It dares you to grow your shadow self and laugh as L.A. sinks into the ocean. For anyone who’s stared too long at the void and found it blinking back with sarcasm … this album understands.

Tool – Lateralus

Where Ænima screams, Lateralus ascends. It’s less a rock album and more a sacred geometry ritual. You don’t listen to it — you enter it. This is the sound of evolving through pain, or spiraling upward while dragging your doubt behind you like a corpse made of clay and ego.

Metallica – Master of Puppets

This is thrash metal perfection: raw, relentless, and razor-sharp. It isn’t just heavy; it’s controlled chaos, like a surgical strike on the soul. Every riff is a warning shot, every lyric a grim prophecy about addiction, war, and control. Still undefeated.

Primus – Pork Soda

Unhinged, grotesque, and funky. Pork Soda is what happens when circus clowns do too much meth and pick up instruments. Les Claypool turns absurdity into an art form, and this album is the musical equivalent of wearing a gas mask to a dinner party. It’s genius wrapped in psychosis.

Alice In Chains – Dirt

This album doesn’t just talk about pain, it becomes pain. It is heroin withdrawal set to power chords. Layne Staley’s voice feels like a man clawing out of his own grave, and somehow making it sound beautiful. It’s one of the most brutally honest records about addiction ever made.

Pantera – Vulgar Display of Power

This isn’t music, it’s a punch to the chest. Pantera strips away pretense and goes straight for the jugular. It’s rage, distilled. It’s the kind of album you throw on when words fail and you need to feel like you could take on the entire system with your bare fists.

Prince – Purple Rain

I know this seems out of place, but if I did a top 20 then you’d have a lot of stuff you wouldn’t expect: Eagles, Fleetwood Mac, Stevie Nicks, etc. I mean, even the apocalypse needs sex and style. Prince doesn’t just perform, he bleeds charisma. This album is lush, emotional, and impossibly cool. It’s the beautiful foil to all the pain and grit in the rest of the list. It’s proof that vulnerability can be just as revolutionary as rage.

Marilyn Manson – Antichrist Superstar

Theatrical, terrifying, and somehow prophetic, this album is a descent into self-destruction as performance art. Manson weaponized his alienation and made it impossible to ignore. It’s a grotesque mirror held up to American culture and the reflection is still disturbingly accurate.

Honorable mention: Nine Inch Nails – The Fragile

If Nine Inch Nails’ album The Downward Spiral is the collapse, The Fragile is what comes after: the slow, surgical dissection of what’s left. It’s sprawling, brutal, and achingly gorgeous — a wasteland cathedral built from shattered circuits and whispered regrets. Trent Reznor doesn’t just scream here; he broods, builds, and breaks in ways that feel devastatingly human.

These albums are more than sound. They’re survival strategies. They taught me that pain isn’t just something to endure; it’s something to sculpt, amplify, and scream through a wall of noise. If the world insists on being ugly, at least let the soundtrack be brilliant.

Does Socialism Stifle Creativity?

One of the oldest, dustiest arguments against socialism and communism is that they supposedly stifle individuality and creativity. No more artists, no more inventors, no more rebels, just gray uniforms, gray buildings, and gray minds.

This idea gets dragged out every time someone suggests workers deserve rights or billionaires shouldn’t exist. But here’s the truth:

This claim is propaganda and it’s tired.

Yes, in some authoritarian regimes that simply called themselves communist (Stalin’s USSR or Mao’s China), artistic and intellectual repression happened. That’s real. But equating all socialism with state authoritarianism is like saying all capitalism is just Enron and child labor in sweatshops.

Authoritarianism stifles creativity. Not socialism.

Let’s flip the script.

Capitalism loves to parade around as the champion of individuality. But unless your creativity makes more money? It’s worthless.

Under capitalism:

If your art doesn’t sell, it doesn’t matter.
If your innovation can’t be patented or monetized, tough luck.
If you’re too exhausted from your soul-crushing job to create? Oh well.

Creativity under capitalism is only celebrated if it turns a profit. Everything else? It gets buried.

Socialism doesn’t kill creativity. It frees it.

Under democratic socialism or libertarian socialism or anarcho-communism, creativity can actually flourish. Why?

Basic needs are met. You’re not working three jobs just to survive. You have time to think and make things.

Your worth isn’t tied to profit. You don’t need your poem to be a product. Your band doesn’t have to blow up on Spotify to matter.

Community matters. Creativity isn’t just for clout, it’s for connection.

Imagine millions of people who are free to paint, code, write, build, and dream — not because it’s marketable, but because it’s meaningful.

Let’s talk about some actual socialists:

George Orwell wrote 1984 and Animal Farm as a democratic socialist.

Albert Camus was anti-authoritarian, anti-capitalist, and deeply creative.

Nina Simone was a radical, a revolutionary, and raw.

Kurt Vonnegut was openly socialist and still endlessly imaginative.

Entire movements — Soviet avant-garde, worker theatre, Cuban film collectives, Indigenous co-ops — were built on socialist principles.

And let’s not forget that Marx and Kropotkin were writing philosophy and science, not just manifestos.

Bottom line: if communism killed creativity, we wouldn’t have all the radical art, music, theory, and rebellion.

If capitalism encouraged creativity, you wouldn’t be drowning in Marvel sequels, AI sludge, and corporate TikToks trying to go viral by pretending to be relatable.

So no. Socialism doesn’t stifle creativity. Capitalism just wants you to believe that so you don’t imagine something better.

36 Chambers and a Molotov Cocktail

I’ve been to a lot of rock and metal shows. I’ve seen every one from Elton John to the Eagles, to Primus, to Tool, to Metallica, to Pantera, to Breaking Benjamin, to Alice In Chains, to Korn, to Ozzy. Never got to see Black Sabbath though and that still bums me out.

Tonight though I witnessed my first rap/hip-hop concert. The audience felt less like an audience and more like a movement. It wasn’t just a concert, it was a rite of passage — my first rap show — and I didn’t ease into it. I dove headfirst into the deep end with Wu-Tang Clan and Run the Jewels: two of the most politically charged, lyrically lethal acts in hip-hop, sharing one stage. I went in a fan and I came out changed.

Run the Jewels opened with a set that hit like a riot in real time. Killer Mike’s voice boomed like a preacher with nothing left to lose, and El-P brought the anarchic genius that turns every line into a Molotov. They didn’t warm the crowd up — the lit the fuse. Songs like “Close Your Eyes (And Count to Fuck)” didn’t just make people jump, they made people feel. Rage, solidarity, defiance. Their set felt like a call to arms disguised as a beat drop.

And then came Wu-Tang. The entire clan minus ODB took the stage like gods descending from Olympus, if Olympus was built from turntables and graffiti. Although ODB wasn’t there, his spirit was in the form of his son, Young Dirty Bastard, who tore through “Shimmy Shimmy Ya” with his dad’s chaotic energy and then some. The crowd went berserk.

They performed the hits: “C.R.E.A.M.,” Protect Ya Neck,” “Triumph,” but it was more than nostalgia. These songs still hit, still reflect the system’s cracks, still speak for the voiceless. You don’t watch Wu-Tang, you join Wu-Tang, even if just for a night. Every shout of, “Wu-Tang Clan Ain’t Nothin to Fuck Wit!” felt like a rejection of everything fake, shallow, and manufactured in the world we’re stuck in.

This wasn’t just music. It was a resistance. It was survival. It was Black art as both celebration and protest, and I felt lucky just to be in the room.

And now? I’m wired. I’m sore, but wired. I want to do something with the fire they handed me. Whether it’s writing, organizing, protesting, or just refusing to shut up … something.

Music can do that. The right music, anyway. Not the algorithm-filled garbage designed to numb us, but the raw stuff that tells the truth, names the enemy, and makes you want to burn something down.

Tonight reminded me: art matters. Culture matters. Resistance has rhythm. And sometimes the most radical thing you can do is turn the volume up until the walls start shaking.

Wu-Tang is for the children. RTJ is for the revolution. And I’m just getting started.