IN WHICH DRAG-ON RAPS ABOUT A HATE CRIME

 

Wan gwan rap music enthusiasts?  RAP MUSIC HYSTERIA comin correct wit da content dat keeps da fiends fiendin!  So yo, back in the day RUFF RYDERS was the clique.  Don't tell me otherwise!  Heads had posters of Flesh Of My Flesh, Blood Of My Blood hanging over their virginal four-poster beds (no homo).  Don't know about y'all, but I stayed bumpin Ruff Ryders Vol. 1 on my Sony Discman, escapin from da oppressive confines of middle school into a thugged-out wonder world of sweaty shirtless men, steroid abuse, and crotch rockets (no homo).  I was so into the Double-R that I was anticipating the YUNG WUN album that never came out; I didn't even skip da song by those wack DRU HILL wannabes, PARLE!  Dat's how thoro I kepts it.

So when DRAG-ON came out, you best believe I was jockin.  Sheeit, "Down Bottom," "Niggaz Die For Me," and "Spit These Bars" was fresh to death on the strength of those tinny early SWIZZ BEATZ beats alone.  When I heard "Niggaz Die For Me" on the radio it was nearly unintelligible (too many N-words). I was hooked.  He and DMX even dressed adorably like firemen for the video (RUFF RYDERS loved gimmicks and costumes almost as much as motorcycles and male camaraderie).

So picture my disappointment when I listened closely to the lyrics on "The Hood."  DRAG-ON asks, and I quote, "You know how many chinks and Jews / Drag's done dragged out / On a cash route?"  Well, none I hope, but I suppose the implied answer is "a lot?"  My rainbow coalition heart was broken.  DRAG-ON revealed himself to be little more than Goebbels in a durag.

I thought RUFF RYDERS were a social movement where men could be men, lift weights without shirts in the presence of other men, ride fast motorcycles with other men, dress up identically to other men, and basically just enjoy the company of other men whilst doing manly things men like to do (token female EVE notwithstanding [no homo]).  But DRAG-ON ruined my utopian dream with his words of hate.  I quickly defected to THE ROC and STATE PROPERTY.  Although they had less of the welcoming YMCA vibe I so dug in RUFF RYDERS, at least they didn't rap about murdering Chinese folks and the Chosen People.

ON THE DIVINITY OF DMX'S "WHAT'S MY NAME"

 

Ominous piano chords pierce the white noise of your complacent existence.  A gravel voiced DMX addresses "half-rappin ass motherfuckers" rhetorically: "You think it's a game? You think it's a fuckin' game?"  We know the answer.  These unnamed amateurs believe that "it" - whatever it is - is a game.

The DMX figure is hardened and amoral, calloused by the tumult and hypocrisy that burdens his lungs like water.  He has no friends.  He sheds blood, has no compunction about making others shed the very same substance.  He is a dog, forced to develop a predatory, survival-by-any-means mentality in the Darwinian world he inhabits; whether this is a matter of reality or distorted perception is unclear, yet the distinction is unimportant.  What reality is there outside of perception?  We can trust the DMX figure.  Though we may not like him or his actions, grizzled and world-weary, he maintains a code-of-ethics in the sneering face of moral anarchy.

He's not a nice person; he admits it, he is honest, and that's far more than can be said for the fraudulence that is unaccountably given a pass in these confused times.  Is he crazy?  Has he lost his mind?  Perhaps he has.  But can we blame him when he occupies a world of dubious value, a world whose standards and moorings are not observed?  What does it really mean to be insane in such a world?