PEN & PIXEL ART SCOPED THRU ROSE-TINTED STUNNA SHADES

BILL COSBY INNOCENT !!!!!!!!!! - Kanye West

They say Bill Cosby rapin' people / Not the Jell-O man! - Boosie Badazz

In spite of the premise that rap forgets its history, the genre increasingly shows reverence for its past in the form of Cash Money (and No Limit) homages. The shortlist: Bankroll Fresh's "Hot Boy," Nef The Pharoah's "Big Tymin," Jacquees's "Like Baby," "Get It How U Live" by Zoe Realla & Baton Rouge's freshmen class*, and 23.7% of Lil B's catalog. Future retooled "Ha" on Beast Mode. Kodak Black owes outstanding debt to the estates of Juvenile and Soulja Slim. This month Boosie threw his rag in the ring with "BG Shit," while Shady Nate and Lil Blood flip "400 Degreez" on the Bitches On Dope collaboration. Both are somewhat easier to explain than some of the trend's more mystical entrants. Bitches on Dope is a collection of new takes on old standards, and BG is Boosie's peer, roughly—a real person, not a play-actor in a multimedia Southern rap ideal. Trickles in a groundswell, maybe, but what does it all mean?

A pinkied-up treatise on nostalgia is not hip-hop, so we ain't about to prance down that lane. Suffice it to say that while nostalgia is a trap, it's a shot of Botox that not every moment in time enjoys. It might devour songs good and bad, but it doesn't happen without reason and cause. The Cash Money homages wouldn't exist if they didn't satisfy a common demand. Kanye West, a man obsessed with his own place in history, borrows the ándale and E.I. from Nelly's 2000 hit on "30 Hours"—a campy tip o' the hat in a song engaging directly with the past. It's a blatant act of Millenial pandering from the guy who invented Millenials, and one not likely to take root as anything more than another ironic swatch in the great Post Malone patchwork. In 2016, Cash Money is cool and Nelly is not, except maybe in some inverted way. Yet Nelly was more popular than any Cash Money artist, and the "E.I." and "Hot In Herre" callbacks will inspire winces of recognition from everyone who had them play soundtrack to the erectile mishaps of 7th grade slow dances. Which begs the question: is nostalgia more about self-love or self-loathing, or does it operate on a sliding scale?

All these Cash Money homages, and Meek Mill still won't release the unabridged "Ha." Ya boy still tryna process The Life Of Pablo over the din of a thousand white bloggers typing with reckless fury. For a son of College Dropout, there's no exercise in nostalgia like wallowing in an album where levels of Old and New Kanye fluctuate like the balance of urine and water in a kiddie-pool. Sustained by the search for truth and a big box of porn, this is RAP MUSIC HYSTERIA! signing off from the darkest corner of your public library.

* Credit: Hotbox

SMOKE TILL MY EYES DEVELOP EPICANTHAL FOLDS

As far as media representations go, AZNs been takin it on the nose for a long time. The Mickster rocked yellowface so egregiously in Breakfast At Tiffany's ya boy was spittin out his egg roll. More recently, Long Duk Dong became the Stepin Fetchit of '80s teen flicks, while Matthew Moy is somehow allowed to continue mincing and jiving on the Goebbelsian laffer Two Broke Girls.

Then again, Tom Cruise got to be The Last Samurai, so maybe dubious acknowledgements are better than no mention at all. Rap has its fair share. We all know about "Black Korea," and Bun B's unsatisfactory transaction with a store clerk of Chinese origin. Buzzfeed recently did a list, but the choices were tame and entry level. As good as the Ego Trip list is, it's time for an update. Here are some of my personal favorites.

"THE HOOD" - DRAG-ON, ET AL. (1999)
You know how may chinks and Jews / Drag done dragged out / On a cash route?

In addition to resuscitating the spirit of Charlie Chan for the Great Yellow Hope's "Learn Chinese," Ruff Ryders allowed Drag-On to rap about murdering "chinks and Jews" on their first comp. You were dragging out Chinese-Americans on a cash route, Drag-On.

"COLD COLD CAPPER, PART 4" - MAC DRE & COOLIO DA' UNDA' DOGG (1994?)
You half breed, Korean and black / Is your mom in the kitchen cookin dog and cat?

"Cold Cold Capper, Pt. 4" deserves laurels in at least three categories. Not just a great "Genius Of Love" flip, it also features some of the most vicious and most racist lines ever committed to wax. In the same breath that Mac Drevious refers to Bruce's Korean mom as a chink, he speculates that she was knocked up by a hit-and-run serviceman in the Vietnam War. Thomas Dolby blinded y'all with science, Mac Dre disrespected Bruce with geography. The Chosin Reservoir of rap disses.

"DISCOMBOBULATORBUBALATOR" - MC BREEZE (1986) 
He said, "Oh my Buddha, I apologize!" / Tears were coming from the Chinese eyes / I said, "Look you chink, your damn food stink..."

The classic. Breeze is meticulous with the stereotypes, but it's his screeching Chinaman impression that really stops the show. You'd be offended if you could stop ya ass from shaking. Racism never sounded so funky!

"SKRILLA" - KODAK BLACK (2014)
And my diamonds come from Tokyo / Yoi yoi yoi / Power high (?) come from Tokyo / I call em Ching Choi

"Skrilla" is "Cold Cold Capper" without the teeth. In the span of two bars, Kodak confuses three distinct nationalities. Gotta take off my coolie hat for that kind of absurdist racial insensitivity.

"DIRTY WORLD" - HOT BOYS (1997)
Them bitches got a nigga trapped / They ain't givin us shit / But they'll give it to them Japs / They buy property and don't even pay no tax

Juvie's point on the lack of black-owned business in predominantly black neighborhoods is valid. His statistics are not. Because the Census website is a nightmare of bureaucratic incompetence, I'll have to work with a data set on minority-owned business from 1997 against data from the 2000 Census. In 2000, African-Americans accounted for 67.9% (329,171) of New Orleans's population, whereas Asians made up 2.5% (12,212). On the breakdown, the Census switches its number to 10,972 Asians; Vietnamese were the majority (7,118, or 1.5% of total population), Japanese the minority (283, .01% total pop).

In 1997, New Orleans had a total of 98,166 businesses; 17,777 were minority-owned. There were 9,747 black-owned businesses compared to 3,210 owned by Asians. Of those, Vietnamese owned the vast majority (1,757) compared to 64 in Japanese hands. It is statistically improbable that Japs were benefiting from preferential mortgages and loans to any appreciable extent.

Notwithstanding its cultural imprecision, Juvenile's criticism checks out. At the turn of the century, New Orleans was overwhelmingly black, yet black-owned businesses accounted for less than 10% of all businesses. Relative to their population, Asians - primarily Vietnamese - wielded disproportionate economic power. At the end of the day, however, it was white people killin the game on some Mafia shit. Don't know if Japs were living tax free, but somehow I doubt it.  Although back-owned businesses increased to 28.9% of the total market by 2007, the stats remain skewed - less reflective of social progress, perhaps, than the economic devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina.

This post been borought you to by Texaco. Texaco: we ain't THAT racist no more! FIolow me onTwitter hoes

A RAPPER, A GANGSTER, AND A FLO RIDA WALK INTO A LOW BUDGET VIDEO

From a young age I been burdened with hiphopcephalus, so I ain't immune to tha drippiness that afflicts so many lovers of the genre.  But I'm about tha weird shit as much as the good shit.  While the MSM bugs out over KANYE's collaboration with PAUL MCCARTHY, I find more titillation in the subtler left-field pairings that make you go, "Damn, they usin the same eggs, they in the same kitchen, but those ain't the same omelets."  An otherwise forgettable mediocrity, "How Much" pits together occupants of vastly different worlds of tha rap ecosystem.  We have a legit OG in JUVENILE, a literal gangsta rapper in REDD EYEZZ, and the being known as FLO RIDA.

What is FLO RIDA?  He ain't a rapper.  I ain't even sure he's a natural organism.  His face look CGI, his hair and beard seem to be made of Play Doh, and his body looks like someone sculpted the human clay with a homoerotic action figure as they model.  Although he dominates Zumba playlists and raucous evenings at TGI Fridays, FLO RIDA is essentially a pariah within his own genre.  Tha peanut gallery hates on him the most, but no one's really callin upon him for guest verses or mixtape drops either.  How can a commercial powerhouse also be a nonentity?  It's not accurate to call him a sellout cause he never fronted like he had integrity.  He came out the gate as a schlockmeister, an audaciously commercial rapper whose sole aim was to become your mother's favorite rapper.  His music is a neutered revision of hip-hop, bowdlerized of its roughest edges yet retaining enough bawdiness that when it comes on at an office party Mabel from accounting all fanning herself like, "Oh, that FLO RIDA is something else!"

That kind of brash cynicism kinda makes me love the dude.  FLO RIDA knows who he is, never tried to "spit bars" or be taken seriously as an "artist."  From a technical standpoint he ain't even that bad: a little NELLY, some TWISTA fast-rappin mixed wit BONE THUGS sing-rappin.  He just chooses to make the corniest shit imaginable and takes it to the bank.  More power to him.  You can't eat prestige.

So here he is appearing with JUVE THE GREAT and original ZOE POUND goon REDD EYEZZ. Over a chintzy mid-'00s ATL-style stripclub banger, amidst gyrations of booty, the trio make concessions to everyone while appealing to no one.  JUVE tosses off a forgettable rap for the aficionados, REDD EYEZZ growls a bunch of generic sub-T.I. posturing for dudes who only watched the first half of Scarface, then FLO RIDA comes out of fuckin nowhere with his weirdly grating melodic hiccups, totally hijacking the song like that Michael Bolton SNL joint from back in the day.  It's terrible and it's great.  Bonus points for the video's opening segment, featuring a cheeky young man who could learn a thing or two about the insidious evil of catcalling.