PURPLE SHIRTED YUPPIE IN A$AP'S "PESO" VIDEO: A SYMBOL FOR DA GENTRIFICATION OF HIP-HOP OR MERELY HILARIOUS?

FIGURE I

So yo, I was watching dat A$AP ROCKY "Peso" video da other day, tryna remember who made dem bone shoes in the video.  I was invited to a very high society wedding and wanna ensure I'm not gonna embarrass myself with some bum-ass gear, you feel?

As I was watchin, I paused to read dis cat's tshirt ("OUR TAXES PAY 4 COPS WHO PROTECT BANKING ELITES BOYCOTT FEDERAL RESERVE" - dat's some convoluted shit, bruh bruh).  After digesting dat white-T agitprop, I noticed a curious figure in da background.  In the midst of A$AP's "mobbin with the crew" moment, a staple of da NYC rap video, one notices a chubby white dude in a swagless outfit consisting of a purple shirt, khaki shorts and I dunno, probably dem clunky-ass New Balances.  He even got a bitchass totebag or some shit slung over his shoulder, probably from Whole Foods or some wack wine store that don't even sell Mad Dog 20/20.  Typical NYC yuppie.  Wasn't there an editor who could've ixnayed this simp?

Now we all know A$AP ain't exactly the most thugged-out cat on the block, but does this not in itself reflect the gentrification of his native city?  I means, take a look at a MOBB DEEP or JAY-Z or WU-TANG or BLACK MOON video that features mobbin shots.  Ain't no white yuppies accidentally steppin in the frame!

FIGURES II & III
 

Now these two images is, respectively, from M.O.P.'s "Ante Up" video and GROUP HOME's "Supa Star" video, precursors to the mobbin-in-front-of-da-bodega trope that A$AP's "Peso" continues.  These dudes look hard (no homo) - good heavens, da cat on the right in the GROUP HOME video is in the act of drinking a 40 oz. of malt liquor! - and contextually, it's hard to imagine they would let a NPR-listening poindexter pass without some form of rude commentary and/or public humiliation.

What's the basis for this change?  Does NYC's gentrification coincide with NYC hip-hop's own cultural gentrification?  A$AP occasionally raps about some street shit, but it's usually half-hearted and unconvincing.  His thematic focuses are swag, fashion, and exploring the multi-layered Pretty Motherfucker persona.  All da aforementioned '90/early-'00s rappers were decidedly on some street shit; fashion for them was limited to KARL KANI or FUBU.  Is this shift in subject matter rooted in da gentrification of the artist's surroundings?  Is it a sign of racial progress that soft white cats can stroll breezily through a Harlem video shoot and not be hassled by a young black rapper and his posse?  Was the purple shirt dude in FIGURE I actually gettin heckled but blocked it out by listening to his IRA GLASS podcast?  And where was the video editor for all of this?

IDK.  The world is changing.  There are ski slopes here in Jackson Hole that I wouldn't have dared sully my Salomons with just a few years ago - now I can shred the gnar without having to clutch my purse close or look over my back.  CHUUUUCH!

DA CIPHER HEARD ROUND THE WORLD!

 

Oh shit dude, it been a minute ain't it?  But fo rilla, ya boy been locked up.  Got roped on some bullshit indecent exposure charges, but ain't you supposed to diddle yoself in a porno theatre?  I think it was all a set-up, 'cause the MAN wants to contain the dangerous truths I be leakin' on this website.

But yo, what I really came here to talk about is this legendary BET cipher featuring NICKI MINAJ, OJ DA JUICEMAN, and WAKA FLOCKA early in they careers.  I think it was '09 or something?  I dunno.  Dey was rollin fresh off the noise GUCCI MANE was kickin at the time; we talkin Burrprint and Cold War era, before the cocaine, before the ice cream face tat, before GUWOP!

At this time, WAKA FLOCKA and OJ DA JUICEMAN were just Brick Squad weed carriers hungry to eat the waffle cone crumbs from GUCCI's bib.  NICKI had yet to release an album.  Da Internet straight clowned dis cipher when it dropped, e.g. Who da fuck is these shortbus-ridin cretins?,  but let's revisit it with three years worth of hindsight and context.

Before this NICKI was mainly known for her breathy, unremarkable appearances on LIL WAYNE mixtapes.  When da Internet heard her new weirdo style in this cipher, they clowned her cause they wasn't ready.  It was a classic case of the SHOCK OF THE NEW, like when STRAVINSKY dropped his Rites of Spring mixtape and heads went nuts moshing and punching bitches.  We was all, "What the fuck girl, is you on crack?"  But now that we have been familiarized with NICKI's style, it don't sound as silly as it once did.  Yeah her performance is a bit awkward and goofy like she popped too many Valiums before grabbin da mic, but now it's just NICKI bein NICKI with a subpar delivery.

OJ has had a lower profile in recent years, but his verse is prolly the best of da three.  Just straight greazy ignorance.  He raps like a happy illiterate child and who are we to knock the special guy?  He's just a simple soul havin fun pretending to be a big bad cool rap guy.  Don't burst his bubble.

WAKA's verse is the strangest.  When you think WAKA you think energy.  It's fight music for when you've been smokin crack all night and wanna get antisocial.  But here he's just all sheepish and shy, as if his aunt brought him out at her bridge night and was all, "Joaquin, you're a rapper!  Sing one of your rap songs!" and instead of rappin in da trap with his Brick Squad Killas, he was forced to rap in front of nice middle-aged ladies eating crumpets and drinking Earl Grey who don't really understand what he's doin, but he loves his aunt and wants to make her proud so why not rap a few bars?

WHAT WAS THE FIRST INCIDENCE OF RAP MUSIC IN HISTORY?: A REVISIONIST PERSPECTIVE (PART ONE OF MANY)

So yo, most of deez uptight Ivory Tower academics will tell you that hip-hop began in the South Bronx in 1973 when DJ KOOL HERC drunkenly yelled over a skipping record at a block party.  But we all know this is some propaganda BS better suited for the lie-bary, where they bury the lies!

Nah, anyone who truly understands rap music knows that it is a force of spiritual energy, a primordial pulse that has informed and nurtured human life since the dawn of time.  In service of the truth, we here at RAP MUSIC HYSTERIA plan to rectify the gross oversights perpetuated by the myopic establishment of rap music academics and charlatans.  Here we go, bruh!

So if you into evolution and shit, you believe in da big bang theory.  Basically the Universe was like, "Yo, Earth, you my son," farted real loud and shat out the Earth as we know it.  As we all know, to be called "son" is one of da worst insults in rap music.  So whenever da Earth get all uppity like, "Look at all my peoples, I got enough gold for chains on chains on chains, I got enough black diamonds to make a motherfuckin suit," the Universe be like, "Bitch, I am the father of your style.  Simmer down, son."  And that is straight hip-hop.

If u a Christian, you believe dat God created the Heavens and Earth, i.e., "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."  Word!  I like to think the Word was, "Yo," or "Swag," or "CHUUUUUCH," but I wasn't there so I dunno.  Whatever the case was, in my scriptural interpretation (and many respected Biblical scholars share my opinion), it sounds like God was rappin one day, probably solo dolo, and was like "Yo, we need a cipher in this bitch," and thus created the Heavens and Earth so he could have people with whom to battle and collab.

This is why it's so offensive when JAY-Z calls himself GOD MC or HOVA, cause he's just a pretender.  His whole career he been trying to erase God's contributions to hip-hop from the history books.  His lil album Watch the Throne was basically a dis aimed at God, 'cause we all know Hov is just a jealous herb watchin the throne for the real GOD MC.

Dis is also why people be sayin JIGGA is Illuminati or a Satan worshipper or whatever, cause he so closely resembles LUCIFER in the way he tries God's gangsta.  He think he on that level but at the end of the day he just a wannabe aiming darts at the king, hoping he can piggyback on God's fame by getting a response on God's next mixtape.  But yo, that shit ain't gonna happen.  Ain't you ever seen Waiting for Godot, Hovito?

Obviously, hip-hop begins at the dawn of existence.  But what was the next occurrence of hip-hop?  Tune in for the next installment of this thrilling series, as RAP MUSIC HYSTERIA traces the unspoken, forgotten, and surpressed history of hip-hop!

RICK ROSS IS NOT A RAPIST OR A RACIST OR RACIST RAPIST (BUT HE DOES THINK YOU ARE CUTE)

Does this look like a rapist to you?  Hell naw, he wearin a suit and we all know rapists don't wear suits.  Well they do I guess, but they usually polyester leisure suits and that's a whole 'nother animal.

Anyway, my mans RICK ROSS a/k/a ROZAY a/k/a OFFICER RICKY a/k/a WILLIAM ROBERTS, JR. been catchin mad static over his line in da otherwise CHUUUCH-tastic "U.O.E.N.O," a barnburner featuring the likes of ROCKO and Tigerbeat pin-up FUTURE.  I guess RICKY felt the heat thru the slabs of blubber padding his skeleton and empty soul and decided to respond.  He explained, "there was a misunderstanding with the lyric, a misinterpretation," citing as evidence that the word "rape" was never used in the song.

So fall the fuck back, feminazis.  Even doe he rap about droppin a molly in a bitch's champagne without her knowledge, taking her home, fucking her and enjoying it ("and she ain't even know"), he never sez da word "rape," so obviously it ain't rape!

Maybe some of you dumb feminists and/or victims of sexual violence should've paid more attention to your critical theory when u was at ur liberal arts school, understood that the author is dead, content is secondary to form, and art need not be moral.  So when RICK ROSS drugs you and rapes has sex with you, you can have an aesthetic appreciation of da act and be like, "Yo, I ain't really feelin dis content, but the form is sublime."  Then you can be on par with us phallocentric male rap bloggers and understand rap on a deeper aesthetic level, i.e., a social vacuum of detached sophistication.

Peace fuckboys!

IS DRAKE THE RAP GAME FDR?

 

So yo, I think my greatest contribution as a rap blogger - besides the hardboiled street tales I deliver post after post - is da connections I be makin between the rap world and the world beyond.  And y'all may not know dis, but I took an American History course once and now I got wisdom out the bootyhole.  Scopes Monkey Trial?  Sacco and Vanzetti?  Yeah, I heard of them shits!

So recently I got to thinkin bout the relationship between FDR and DRAKE.  For those who don't know, FDR was an American president way back in the olden days when things were black and white and Yahoo was the only search engine in existence.  Now many people don't know this, but FDR was left paralyzed after trying to pull of a Christ Air on this huge-ass halfpipe and had to keep the fact that he was in a wheelchair on the d-low.

But despite all this, FDR ran his shit.  The dude was straight up gangsta, serving as president for a record three terms and droppin the A-bomb like it wasn't no thang.  One might call him the MICHAEL JORDAN of the American presidency.  Some people have even called him a dictator cause he was such an OG kingpin.

So for like 12 years it was nothin but FDR.  Turn the radio on now and who you gonna hear? DRAKE all day.  He is currently the FDR of Clear Channel radio.  But there's more!  As many of us now, DRAKE was on Degrassi before he was a rapper.  The character he played, Jimmy Brooks, was left paralyzed after he slipped on a piece of Canadian bacon.  So dude spent time in a wheelchair, perhaps learning how to see the world from FDR's perspective.

Now, I ask: is there a certain power derived from the wheelchair itself?  Look at MF GRIMM:

Dude goes hard on the mic and was able to get his life together after being shot in connection with his involvement in tha drug trade.  Maybe like HOMER and MILTON, some OG blind rappers whose loss of sight may have substantially affected their subsequent mixtapes, seeing the world from a different perspective endowed GRIMM with unique poetic insight.

I mean look at PROFESSOR X. Dude was mad smart, he could bend spoons with his mind and shit.  And STEPHEN HAWKING, too, he also mad smart.  I dunno yo, I just be thinkin bout things.

AN ELEGY FOR OJ DA JUICEMAN BY A DECEASED ROMANTIC POET!

So yo, one of da most beautifullest things I've learned in my time in the rap music trenches is that HIP-HOP HEADS come in all shapes, sizes, and colors.  I once had dis midget friend and to my surprise he was mad hip-hop!  Who woulda thought?

I thought I'd seen everything after I met a hip-hop midget, but I was wrong.  This cat Pasquale who lived down the street from me fancied himself a poet in the Romantic tradition.  He styled himself after LORD BYRON and wore mad poofy shirts.  We gots to talkin once and he started blatherin bout how BUSTA RHYMES embodied the "spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings recollected in tranquility" that them Romantic dudes was all about.  I was like, "Chuuuuuch!"

I ain't seen dis cat in years when I ran into his mother on da ski slopes.  She told me Pasquale had died in Tunisia.  He was thurrr teachin a coterie of young men about poetry and eroticism when he was taken by the consumption.  I was all, "Sheeeit, RIP."

She forwarded me a stack of his poetry.  Most of it was mad gay and not very hip-hop, but this one elegy for OJ DA JUICEMAN spoke to my soul (no homo).  In honor of JUICEMAN'S new mixtape, I thought I'd reprint this soul-tickler for y'all.

ELEGY FOR OJ DA JUICEMAN

OJ da Juiceman, where hath thou gone?  Your giddy "Aye! Aye! Okay!" no longer brightens the barbed paths and dark hallways of our wandering souls.  Your ooze of noble savagery has waned and O! we no longer thrill to your crudely enunciated verse.

What malady befell you?  Wherefore the absence and quietude? Beneath thy buffoonery was a depth the masses could not understand.  O, cruel fate of the visionary ones!  Disregarded in their time as common rabble.  Verily a kernel of gold amidst landscapes dreary you were.  The refuge of future glory is but a cold consolation for the insults you endured.

They cursed you as a plague upon culture, but soon they shall prostrate themselves before thy alter as they did with Van Gogh.  Your flame has diminshed, but Rejoice! -- your torch of genius burns eternal.

DOES CHAVEZ'S DEATH MAKE VENEZUELA MORE OR LESS HIP-HOP?

So yo, I ain't gonna enter the fray about whether or not HUGO CHAVEZ was dope-ass or broke-ass as a leader.  I got mad friends who be like, "Yo, CHAVEZ rocked that shit for the peoples."  But I also fux with ascot-wearin ass rich fucks who be like, "adios, puta madre!"

Nah, what we here to talk about today is if Venezuela is more hip-hop or less hip-hop following CHAVEZ'S demise.  On the one hand, hip-hop was originally about empowerin the disenfranchised and givin them a voice.  It crawled out of da South Bronx, multiplied and politicked, and now we got heads like JAY-Z becomin the 21st c. HARRY BELAFONTE (or at the very least BILL COSBY).  So in this way, HUGO CHAVEZ was mad hip-hop.  You could say he was the CED GEE of social equality.

On da other hand, hip-hop has long been about capitalism and unbridled materialism.  JAY-Z has his stature only because he got that money - we owe TONY MONTANA fo dat lesson.  I mean, if we was goin strictly off talent, we'd be honoring LARGE PROFESSOR or MR. CHEEKS instead of HOV.  For better or worse, today's hip-hop is totally in cahoots with the capitalist system.  Fo all his fake-ass revolutionary bullshit, HOV is more likely to give a shout out to WARREN BUFFETT than GOGO CHAV.

So what y'all think: was HUGO CHAVEZ hip-hop?  Or did he merely embody the hip-hop of a different era?  Damn, I gots to go smoke 15 blunts (in a row) 'cause my head be trippin on da slippery nature of hip-hop, and by extension, reality and the world itself.

Peace bitchez.