WHAT WAS THE EARLIEST USAGE OF FUCKBOY?

Earlier this year I declared a moratorium on the word fuckboy.  That still stands, but I'm temporarily suspending it for the purpose of academic inquiry: finding fuckboy's earliest usage.

I originally assumed it was a product of the early '00s, a milder derivative of the common "fuck nigga" epithet.  Disco Rick, however, uses both terms on the anti-curly-perm anthem "Don't Do It Nut" from 1990's The Negro's Back.

Wait hold up! I should be slappin
You in the mouth, and in your face
Fuckboy, get out the damn way!

So help me out, Internet.  What is the earliest recorded evidence of fuckboy's existence?

IF U DONT LIKE POISON CLAN UR TOO DUMB TO GET IT! ALSO, THINK OF THE CHILDREN!

Remember when people were shocked and outraged by artistic content?  The same stewards of good taste still exist, but now they put their energy into tar-and-feathering offensive simpletons on Twitter.   The Innanet expanded the accessibility of controversial media exponentially, but it's obvs had a numbing effect on peeps.  How we 'posed to be shocked by anything when we watched videos of dudes cuttin off their ding dongs as 12 year-olds?

Back in the day, NWA and Chronic Sick were household names to millions of middle American kids trying to piss off moms and pops.  There isn't really an equivalent anymore.  Run The Jewels are preaching to the converted.  Odd Future made a little noise with their kill people burn shit fuck school sloganeering and rape fixation, but that juvenile stupidity can't compare to a line like "If smoking crack makes you feel good, DO IT!" delivered by an artist whose community was destroyed by the drug.  There's a world of implication when Debonaire tells kids to drop out of school and start a career in larceny, but dumb people can only see the political when they're being told to fight the power.

We're gonna miss the Tipper Gores of the world when they're gone, cause the way artists chafed at her moral grandstanding produced some great dirty records.  At least she started a conversation on art and free speech, 'cause nowadays it's just crusades against straw men and a next-day mea culpa on Twitter.  My mans Bill O'Reilly tried takin it back to the Morton Downey Jr. era with Cam (and Ludacris, bizarrely), but everyone just yawned and made a meme.  Anyone with an Internet connection can download bukkake flicks till the cows come home, but you can just as easily ignore that and look at pictures of cats instead.  Da web takes you world wide, but you can make ya own world as small and personalized as you want it.  Like that bitch in Gatsby said, "I love big Freakniks.  They so intimate and shit."

My boys in Poison Clan were rebelling against moral standards that no longer apply.  I guess that means we're more sophisticated now, but it's also resulted in blander music.  Have we reached the limits of bad taste?  I hope not.  Luke and GG didn't fight the culture wars so we could listen to...IDK, whatever indie band is popular with the kidz.  With that in mind, I officially reverse my stance on Chief Keef.

DO REAL HIP-HOP HEADS DREAM OF JAY ELECTRONIC SHEEP?

Ladies and gentlemen, that publicity shot has not been Photoshopped.  He really is holding a fucking censer in front of a rustic mountain scene, probably dropping an "Ommmm" or two for max godliness.  Who created this monster?  Soundbombing nostalgists?  The same peeps who pushed Saigon's Greatest Story Never Released as the next Illmatic?  The hippie who pays for his weed and ponytail ties sellin spiritual books on the street?

"San Pellegrino With Lemon" and "Dear Moleskine" are two of the corniest titles in rap history, but I gave Jay Downbeat a pass when he dropped that "Exhibit C" fire.  I guess he ran out of Deep Thoughts soon after, cause he took his Moleskine home and floated off into Salingerland.   Like Andre 3000, he's spent over half a decade diddling himself on a bed of laurels.  Except he hasn't earned it. Andre has more classic verses in his catalog than this thrift-store shaman has words.

Part of me hopes he's pulling some highly advanced pompousness-as-performance-art type shit, but there aren't enough punchlines for that to be true.  Doesn't he have any friends to pull him aside and say, "Who the fuck you think you is, Father Yod?  Write some raps!  How you tryin to be Sun Ra when you ain't even got an album out?"  Or do they consider it a privilege just to lick this bogus guru's backpack straps?



"Road To Perdition," released telepathically via ectoplasm, "features" Jay-Z in the same way "Otis" featured Otis Redding.  Guess they're trying to make hubris the new 30, but it just comes off like they're givin 'emselves blowies (I bet Jay Electroclash can do that because he is probably a master at tantric yoga, and also I heard his dick doubles as a hoverboard).  His fans been waiting 47 lunar phases for some new heat and all he has is some played-out punning on Big Daddy Kane and Cain and Abel?  Yo, I also thought that "Grindin" line was hot--when it came out like 15 sun-earth orbital cycles ago.  Arm legga legga...

Jay-Z is the classic chump to fall for a charismatic charlatan like Jay IDM: rich, vapid, and willing to part with his money for the greater cause.  Shouts to L. Ron, I see you Kirtanananda Swami.  Even as I write this, I'm sure Jay Dubstep is in a meditation chamber he built with Roc Nation money, desperately trying to levitate and laughing at how easily he swindled America's favorite hustler.  Watch for Jay Drum 'n' Bass's Electric Circus in 2025.

It's painfully transparent that Jay Electronica is trying to cultivate a reclusive genius aura, but I have no respect for that racket.  I give it to artists who put in the work and manage to produce more than one or two puffed-up event singles a year.  These are rap tunes, not scriptures.  This dude might sip on organic Micronesian breast milk, but he gets rid of it the same way we mere mortals do.  [Ed. note: Jay's reps are telling us he actually gets rid of waste through a sustainable system of suction cups, pulleys, and glitter.  We regret the mistake.]

THE HORRORCORE OF GUCCI MANE

Pimp C claimed Jeezy used to run around with a backpack and rolled-up pant leg on his Hot 107.9 rant, but what was Gucci doing at the time?  If his rather sizable horrorcore catalog is any indication, he might have been one of the few people fuckin with the Flatlinerz.



He already did a "Vampire" with Trina, but it doesn't hold a candle to the "Monster Mash" goofiness of this new version.  Backed by a Mustard beat that would kill at a New Age yoga retreat,  Gucci croons about an Elvira-type broad he met in the graveyard.  Hanging out in graveyards is always a good look.  Gucci's song concepts always demonstrated his knack for the surreal and absurd, but "Vampire" really foregrounds the campiness of his work.  Gucci gonna be a gay icon soon.

What else?  There's the album cover where he's Photoshopped onto Freddy Krueger's body and the grindhouse blood-and-bondage aesthetic of the "Crazy" video.  Then there's "Poltergeist" with Talib Kweli(!) and "Haunted House" and "Horror Flick" and "Trick Or Treat" and "Feed Me."  Someone get this man a Fangoria subscription!

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YELAWOLF VENTURES DEEPER INTO CRACKERFACE

As Kid Rock reinvented himself as Bob Seger for the crystal meth era, so goes Yelawolf.  In a transparent bid for that Macklemore crossover appeal, Yelawolf refines his target demographic to the 21st Century Cool Dad.  This shit is made to be pumped in a Prius as they drop their fauxhawked little hellraiser off at soccer practice, all the square dads totally buggin out on their righteous Sailor Jerry style sleeve.  Earlier he collaborated with Ed Sheeran and Travis Barker, but has since found his niche as the Rap Game Jeff Foxworthy.  I find it highly offensive that he's perpetuating redneck stereotypes for monetary gain, so let's reflect on all the cliches in "Whiskey In A Bottle."

Whiskey.  Countless country artists know: if you wanna get a redneck vibe poppin off, mention whiskey in the title.

Flannel.  Flannel is the whiskey of the fashion world.

Rockabilly haircuts and face tats.  The rockabilly haircut offsets the ex-con connotation of a face tat, while still leaving open the possibility you got some thug in you.

Choppers.  The Ruff Ryders favored Asian crotchrockets, but Yelawolf and his comrades are fetishists of old-school American craftsmanship.  It's a powerful symbol.  Whereas the crotch rocket conjures memories of beatdowns on the West Side Highway, the chopper represents the paler, more picturesque rebellions of Easy Rider and James Dean.   We at RMH regard all motorcyclists as violent thugs who must be stopped.

Leather jackets, fedoras, and a traditional American tattoo parlor round out this slur against hipster redneck culture.  What, no barber's pole?  Surely some Americana-obsessed yuppie will blast this in his mancave of leather furniture and single malts, raising his glass high as he condescends to the hopeless souls cashing unemployment checks in Walmart country.  This is the most hateful indictment of '50s greaser nostalgia since Reverend Horton Heat.

BEFORE THE BANKROLLS: YUNGER MONEY FRESH

As much as I liked Bankroll Fresh's Life Of A Hotboy tape, it was little more than a workmanlike exercise in highly competent rapping.  Bankroll (nee Yung Fresh) got skills, but IDK if he has the personality to jump from good to great.  No one's expecting him to have the same charisma of Gucci, but on this 2013 Zaytoven jawn he gets killed on his own shit by Rocko channeling Plies.  The late, flamboyantly eye-patched Doe B also gets in on the action.  Side note: what are the odds that Doe B got shot by another eye-patched dude?  Eye for an eye for real; that's some Spy vs. Spy type beef.

This 2009 cut, again produced by Zay, finds Fresh rapping inna OJ Da Juiceman style.  It's always a good look to bite OJ, the most influential rapper of the past 10 years, but as a creative writing teacher might say, Bankroll, you need to put more of yourself in the work!

"Faces" has Yung Ralph and Fresh goin over yet another vintage Zay beat, with Gucci in the late So Icey Era.  Hearing the exuberance in Gucci's voice makes me miss 2008, before his work took a paranoid turn.  Someone gotta divide Gucci's shit into different eras cause he's on some Picasso shit like that.  Right now he sounds like he's rappin thru a down comforter after sleeping off five gravy-boats of Actavis.  He peeks thru the blinds lookin for thieves in the night, back aching cause he fell asleep on a 40 cal.  Gucci's Loner Period or his Grey Era?

RICH GANG AND THE RAP CULTURE WAR: IT'S MORE THAN TIGHT PANTS!

Seems 2014 was the year of RICH GANG with all these crit hoez bending over to get spit roasted by RICH HOMIE QUAN and YOUNG THUG, but why exactly did they become such a cause célèbre?  It seemed to go beyond music, a get with it or get left behind ultimatum on the future direction of rap.  Da Yung Turkz drew a line in the sand, tellin old heads to get with the program or fuck off - a flip of the bird to the conservative coalition, with RICH GANG as the extended middle finger.

Other day I was posted on the corner suckin on a chili dog with my lil homie, just bumping some OG MELLENCAMP and passin a Kool back and forth.  Exhaling the mentholated essence, my patna tells me QUAN is a hipster rapper, totally changing my perspective of his standing in the rap universe.  I felt like 18th century headz pobably did when Galileo dropped his Origin of the Species mixtape talkin bout we evolved from Magilla Gorilla.  It's true, but not in the sense SHABAZZ PALACES or YUNG LEAN are - hipsters like em, but they ain't the sole or primary audience.

Full disclosure: me and the lil homie dipped the Kool in the wet up, so by now I was seein diagrams of the stars like my man Saint Francis Drake when he discovered that Pluto was actually just a cartoon dog.  I thought back to the Culture Wars of '04, when Kelefa Sanneh hit em up with that rockist dis track and Pitchfork realized rap was about more than white dreadlocks and dudes in Che shirts.

Surprising many, hipsters rallied around DIPSET.  CAM's Purple Haze was especially galvanizing.  The choice was understandable if unexpected: THE DIPS pillaged '80s cheese in an ironic way, but they kicked a kind of diddy-boppin Harlem flyness that was new without being drastically removed from East Coast classicism.  They were charismatic, absurd, and visually outlandish, comin off like a hood take on the garish-fabulous David La Chapelle schtick.   It was a radical departure from the rappers presented themselves, and their contribution to rap aesthetics still hasn't been appreciated properly.

These days RICH GANG occupies the same role.  YOUNG THUG and RHQ kick two styles of raps that are equally controversial and relevant.  QUAN is one of the more visible practitioners of the ATL strain of melodic rapping, a particularly troubling development for OGs who see it as the end of straight rappity-rappin.  Everyone knows THUGGA is a weirdo and that's nothin new in hip-hop, but the way he's acting out that eccentricity is.   We had cats like DEL and SHOCK G who made some noise in the mainstream, but at the end of the day they were cult figures standing on the sidelines of the mainstream ball.  On the other hand, LIL B is too much of a self-contained concern, and the underground freaks don't count for quinoa.  WAYNE and ANDRE are the closest antecedents to YOUNG THUG, but WAYNE's weirdness declined once he became a pop star and got off the drugs.  ANDRE is more about kickin knowledge, with a style that owes more to SOULS OF MISCHIEF than KILO ALI.

Where ANDRE was workin in the mainstream and critiquing it at the same time, YOUNG THUG accepts convention only to bend it out of shape.  If he's critiquing anything, it's only implicit.  This could just be a byproduct of the times they came up - 'KAST laid the groundwork for Atlanta rap on an international scale, so there wasn't yet an established idea of what it was "supposed to be" - but ANDRE is an outlier within hip-hop and in pop culture at large.  His subversion is undisguised; THUG is doing something subtler.

On top of that THUG occasionally puts on a skirt, so of course hipsters gonna rally around this shit!  Ol' hatin ass LORD JAMAR would call them beta males (or worse), and what are hipsters if not beta males (or worse)?  It's cool, good music is good music, but let's hope they don't start pandering to the new audience or gettin high on themselves cause that's how you end up with an Idlewild.  I'll accept some Speakerboxxx/The Love Below self-indulgence, but first they gotta drop their ATLiens.