ON MEMPHIS RAP AND THE SONG OF THE SUMMER

For a complex of obvious reasons, Memphis rap fetishism has long been the province of art degenerates, edgelord punx, and non-racist metalheads, which is why I've always been gun shy about stanning for the venerable likes of DJ Squeeky and M.C. Mack.

What's that you say about the penultimate post? Allow me to remove my clip-on mohawk. Meant nothing, bought it from a costume store. I'll just put on the vintage FUBU jersey I usually wear. Yes, some say it's cyan, others say it's sky blue. You never know until you study color theory!

Post Lamone, you say? Never heard of her. No, mine isn't vintage in that sense, I've been wearing it since '97, it's vintage in the sense of age not provenance.

This FUBU jersey is so comfortable. When I put it on I feel at ease with the world, unlike the semiotically confused palefaces who stand behind their merch tables proffering harsh noise cassettes and Tommy Wright III shirts. Is it any wonder SpaceGhostPurrp can't stand the Yacubian devil? His old MuneyJordan YouTube channel, with its carefully curated underground Memphis playlists, gave birth to the Lil Ugly Manes and Sucide Men of the world. Memphis makes, the world takes and remakes.

Which is why I was surprised to hear Pretty Tony & 38 Slug's "Summer Drama" step away from the gothic and headbussa cliches of so much Memphian random-rap, giving us a summer song encompassing the minor glories and bullshit of a dog day's scene, underscored by the warm piano chords that made the "Player's Ball" reprise/remix so ineffably poignant (no homo).

Perhaps Schopenhauer said it best when he wrote, "The inexpressible depth of all music, by virtue of which it floats past us as a paradise quite familiar and yet eternally remote, and is so easy to understand and yet so inexplicable, is due to the fact that it reproduces all the emotions of our innermost being, but entirely without reality and remote from its pain. And that Pretty Tony & 38 Slug shit? It makes a Krautta like me feel a certain kinda way.

"You know how Shaggy 2 Dope and Violent J are always going on about the 'wicked shit' to describe Esham and whomever? I get it, local pride and all, but it's better applied to the Memphis underground, and 'Summer Drama' somehow weds the wicked shit with cookout music. It's apropos when you consider the whole of summer: you're out grilling schnitzel with your Krauttas as the murder rate rises."

I couldn't have said it better, Art.