Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Robitussin



Roach Gigz of B.I.G.just posted a new track, I'm Up, which is pretty much a new On One with a focus on dextromethorphan [not sleepy] cough syrup (not promethazine [sleepy]).


Im Up "The Drug Song" - Roach Gigz and Lil 4Tay "B.I.G."

"The only thing down are my thumbs." "Like I'm so up I can't feel life." "Fuck my face I can't feel my knees."

I'm not mad at the song at all. I've been noticing that ough syrup is really making a come back in the Bay and inspiring a lot of shit music *cough*robocop*cough*.




It's yung squad shit ho
We stay getting that dough
We'll take our ass to the 'sco
To drop your ass to the flo'
Yeah you already know, that we bang this shit
And we be reppin the clit
*Garble*Gargle Front Butt*
I'm from the East, boy
And I will snatch your hoe
And bust nutz
*Gerble*Garble*Large Hamster*
So, I'm gonna hit you on the space, bitch
So we can get to my place, quick
We sippin' 'bo, yeah
*Alien*We in outer space, bitch*Alien voice*
On our dick faggot nigga
So you need to switch
And that's why we called you bitch
I bet you

Kids, don't drink cough syrup, it makes you fucking retarded.

Just remember, live every week like it's Shark Week, ya feel me?

Yelle!

Ooh la la!
This little French hipster babe is just cute as a gosh darned button:

YELLE - A CAUSE DES GARCONS
(we featured the remix of this song in our B&B WORLD TOUR)

Those BANGS! Sacre bleu!

In this one she smilez AND exercises AND mocks penises:

YELLE - JE VEUX TE VOIR
apparently this is a diss track about some french rapper having a small wiener or something (i'm not mad at her). 2 CUTE!

Put ur lips 2gether and BLOW:

YELLE - CE JEU
I think she's sponsored by Krylon.
And her sunglasses are made of French fries. Yummy!

INLINE SKATES, YOU PUNKROCKS!

INLINE SKATES ARE BACK YOU PUNK ROCK MARKANAUTS! and if you don't believe me, take it up with trendsetters Larry & Sergey (the motherfucking founders of Google, you buttholes!)!!!

Check them out, introducing the G1, google's new cell phone, in New York, where everything is ironic and cool and you don't know shit about it!!!


P.S. TUCK IT IN!

(photo copyright 2008 Jacob Silberberg/Reuters)

TUG-BOAT




TOOT TOOT!
A LL stow-away on the SS Tuggernaut

Monday, September 29, 2008

Gumjob



Q: Are Whale Sharks the Lot Lizards of the sea?

White Chocolate on the Shelf

Jason Williams retired today. Since his highschool days dishing alley oops to Randy Moss, J-Will has been tickling fans with his stubborn dedication to ill-advised passes, haphazard crossovers, and questionable shot selection-- "he'd try anything." Thanks for all the highlights, J-Will:

Jason Williams Highlights
Behind-the-back-off-the-elbow, OH BOY! Too bad he passed it to soft-serve Raef LaFrentz.


And he could rap!

By the way, whenever I'm watching basketball highlight mixes on YouTube, there's always some mix with a ridiculously incongruous song playing over it. For example, I bet White Chocolate has never even heard this song:

Bruzzo Wanna Bruzzaho

A followup to last week's Conservative-D-Bag-O-The-Week, Rep John LaBruzzo (R) LA talks about his plan to pay poor women $1,000 to tie their tubes:

LaBruzzo on CNN

In response to this butthead, Rep Beezbraham A. Bankrolls (D) CA, has proposed a much better plan:

The Smart Choice For Your Future

(brilliant bruzzaho headline courtesy of Man-Man)

Sunday, September 28, 2008

I Keep A Mirror In My Pocket

Those little shitlocks Earl's been rocking makes me think 40's been forgetting to pack his mirror lately...

I just don't how much more of his new Southern garbage I can take, I need my old Magazine Street style 40water back.

Saturday, September 27, 2008

All In My Nasal




Bonus:
Great post on Nation of Thizzlam about the beef between Messy Marv and San Quinn
New Thrasher magazine interview with Andre Nickatina

Friday, September 26, 2008

No Hoe

It's basically a lifestyle...



D-Lo - No Hoe

The Recipe



40's recipe on singles and album tracks is starting to become pretty evident. While the whole let me teach you how to make drugs track is a little tired, this song has a couple things goign for it. It features two of the best rappers out right now, Gucci Mane and Bun B and it has a catchy Three 6 Mafia-esque hook. I'm not mad.

E-40, Gucci Mane, Bun B - The Recipe (zshare)

B&B's new mission statement:
1. Ride Lil Wayne's ding dong as hard as possible
2. Promote throat sex and front butts with all our might
3. Leotards 4 Lot Lizards
4. Never forget Master P



The other Ball Street Journal tracks out right now

Imagine...

Getting throat on a throat boat


I'm like the Martin Luther King of blow jobs

Lil Wayne is a commercially successful rapper and major sports fan.

Beezies & Bankrolls' sweetheart, Lil Wayne, started doing a sports blog for espn.com.


I also love tennis. I had a lot of people over to my place to watch the Wimbledon final this year, and we went crazy. I love Federer but Nadal is my favorite. He's the man. I love his motivation and his heart is big. He leaves it on the court. And when I found out he still lives with his family despite his success, that was it for me. That's unbelievable right there. That just goes to show you where his heart is at, how much love he has.


Despite all his raps about gun clapping and murdering, he's really just a big teddy bear. Wayne has done a lot to break down social sterotypes in the past, and this is just the next step. Gushing about your love for tennis is no longer set aside for lesbians with man hair, now gangsters can do it too.

Wayne could do better, this first blog entry for ESPN has nothing on the quality blogging he is doing over on YouTube (the ESPN blog really doesn't have any remix potential). I still commend Wayne for his constant trend setting. It takes a big man to make it okay for America to wear gay hipster scarfs and chain wallets and sing about sucking other rappers off.

B&B <3's Weezy 4eva


Thursday, September 25, 2008

CONSERVATIVE-D-BAG-O-THE-WEEK

LaBruzzo considering plan to pay poor women $1,000 to have tubes tied


by Mark Waller, The Times-Picayune
Tuesday September 23, 2008, 10:40 PM



Worried that welfare costs are rising as the number of taxpayers declines, state Rep. John LaBruzzo, R-Metairie, said Tuesday he is studying a plan to pay poor women $1,000 to have their Fallopian tubes tied.


"We're on a train headed to the future and there's a bridge out, " LaBruzzo said of what he suspects are dangerous demographic trends. "And nobody wants to talk about it."


LaBruzzo said he worries that people receiving government aid such as food stamps and publicly subsidized housing are reproducing at a faster rate than more affluent, better-educated people who presumably pay more tax revenue to the government. He said he is gathering statistics now.


"What I'm really studying is any and all possibilities that we can reduce the number of people that are going from generational welfare to generational welfare, " he said.


He said his program would be voluntary. It could involve tubal ligation, encouraging other forms of birth control or, to avoid charges of gender discrimination, vasectomies for men.


It also could include tax incentives for college-educated, higher-income people to have more children, he said.



LaBruzzo, 38, is white, married to a lawyer, has a toddler daughter and holds a bachelor's degree from Louisiana State University.


He is serving his second term in the Legislature, where he drew attention this year for advocating the controversial legislative pay raise and for trying to abolish the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway Commission and its Police Department.


His 81st House District runs from Old Metairie north to Bucktown and west along Lake Pontchartrain to the Suburban Canal. In a somewhat different configuration, it is the same district that sent white supremacist David Duke to the Legislature in 1989.


LaBruzzo described the tube-tying incentive as a brainstorming exercise that has yet to take form as a bill for the Legislature to consider. He said it already has drawn critics who argue the idea is racist, sexist, unethical and immoral. He said more white people are on welfare than black people, so his proposal is not targeting race.


LaBruzzo said other, mainstream strategies for attacking poverty, such as education reforms and programs informing people about family planning issues, have repeatedly failed to solve the problem. He said he is simply looking for new ways to address it.


"It's easy to say, 'Oh, he's a racist, ' " LaBruzzo said. "The hard part is to sit down and think of some solutions."


LaBruzzo said he opposes abortion and paying people to have abortions. He described a sterilization program as providing poor people with better opportunities to avoid welfare, because they would have fewer children to feed and clothe.


He acknowledged his idea might be a difficult sell politically.


"I don't know if it's a viable option, " LaBruzzo said. "Of course people are going to get excited about it. Maybe we'll start a debate on it."



Contact LaBruzzo or learn more about his office.

. . . . . . .


Mark Waller may be reached at mwaller@timespicayune.com or 504.883.7056.



(ARTICLE RECOMMENDED BY MAN-MAN)

KMD: Sweet Premium Bastards

Kausing Much Damage
MF Doom's group in the 90's (when he was called Zev Love X), KMD's album Black Bastards (pure fire) was scheduled to be released in 1994, but was canceled because Elektra was uncomfortable with the cover art (see below). Finally in 2001, the album was released by Sub Verse records.


KMD - Sweet Premium Wine


KMD - Smokin That Shit


KMD - Black Bastards!

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

OBAMIX




KING MOST - THE OBAMIX

The intent of this mix was to try and capture what WE'VE all been feeling these past months: hope, struggle, and the importance of facing a challenge. It also serves as a reminder, and perhaps an introduction to what OUR candidate is all about. With that being said enjoy, register, & get involved

History, Change, & Victory In November
-King Most



Intro/Smoked Sugar: I'm A Winner
Roy Davis Jr.: People Get Ready
Jackson 5: We're Almost There (DJ Spinna Remix)
Erykah Badu: Solider (Sasaac Remix)
Masta Ace: Beautifull
Black Spade: We Need A Revolution
Skull Snaps: It's A New Day
Marvin Gaye & The Mizzel Brothers: We Are We Going?
James Brown: Mind Power
Antibals: Si Se Puede
Grandmaster Flash: The Message (Next Message Blend Version)
Dj Day: A Place To Go
Double Exposure: Everyman For Himself
Donald Byrd: Change Makes Ya Wanna Hustle
Stevie Wonder: Blackman (Kay Sputnik Re-Edit)
L.T.D.: Love To The World
Cymande: Bra
Pitbull: American War
The Dynamics: Move On Up

What's So Funny?


Laugh Your Abs Off

Update: Ball Street Journal

Say what you may about the direction Earl has taken in the past five years, I can say without a doubt that Beezies & Bankrolls will continue to ride for the man and his music. I cannot say that we ride for the many failed products he has been hocking these past few years. Around the time of Breaking News he started hyping his “dictionary book of slang” (have you seen it? I haven’t), this is the same time when his music making started to suffer. Here are some of his other Entrepreneurial endeavors:

The San Jose Earthquakes Anthem (Listen)
Fatburger franchises
Cloud 9 Liquor
The Ambassador’s Lounge
Wingstop Restaurants
40 Water
The Hyphy Movement

Here are five songs that are supposed to be on the Ball Street Journal, take a listen for yourself.



E-40, Turf Talk - Get Rich Twice



E-40, Lil Jon - Sweat Box



E-40, Shawty Lo - Break Ya Ankles




E-40, Akon - Wake It Up




E-40, Lil Jon - Turf Drop

How long do you think it will be before 40 and Lil Jon start endorsing Just For Men hair color for dreads?

Deep Throat



I bet her eyes don't water

Tuesday, September 23, 2008

EVERYBODY: DOWN TO MACDONALDS!

When you're from a small town and you're too poor to move out of your parents' house but they won't let you drink with your friends and play your Papa Roach records loud... and neither will your friends' parents... then you need a place to go...


Electric Six - Down at McDonnelzzz
from the new album, "I Shall Exterminate Everything Around Me That Restricts Me From Being The Master"

FIRE IN THE TACO BELL! DANGER! MOOSE RIDING and SEXOPHONE SOLO!

Electric Six - Danger! High Voltage!

Monday, September 22, 2008

Emotional Animal Monday

If the PBS Documentary "Ferrets: The Pursuit of Excellence" taught me anything (and it did, like, TONS), it's that animals love being dressed up in fun little costumes:



So bust out your six-teeted mini-coconut bras and let's have ourselves a great Monday!
Wait... it's Monday, all animals hate Mondays, even in fab outfits, Mondays can get emotional:


Loney, Dear - Saturday Waits

Saturday, September 20, 2008

VAMPIRES: Wooden Spoons to Heal The World

We've learned a lot this week about vampires, from their banking habits to the jeans they wear-- and we've come to realize that vampires are a lot like the other misunderstood objects of society's hate: gays and Scientologists. Just look at how people respond when a vampire is running after them (probably just wanting to swap Negroni recipes):



A GUN? OMG! Survey says: Y'all are haterz! Vampires are the victims of a lot of negative stereotyping and fearmongering, so stop mongering and let's heal this crazy world:

Friday, September 19, 2008

VAMPIRES: Vampire Bakery

Thursday, September 18, 2008

Interview With a Vampire Effer

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

VAMPIRES: Working The Night Shift

Imagine: you just finished working the night shift and are wiping the yolk from your lips after another delicious Grand Slam at Dennys, you pay the bill, walk outside to smoke a clove and watch the sun rise, only to be greeted by an angry mob of pitchfork-and-torch wielding townsfolk. WTF!? They're all mad because you're stacking paper, feeding yourself. Really, they're pissed about your job, they say it's harming people, even killing some... TELL EM:


TI - Just Doin' My Job

Do you see where I'm going with this? All kinds of folks do things that kill other people to survive. Drug dealers, bartenders, politicians, vampires, hair bands...


Great White - Once Bitten Twice Shy

What cruel double standard.

BTW: Pitchforks&Torches is the name of my new slow food restaurant in Silverlake (come for the heirlooms, stay for the angry misguided rural resentment)

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Happy Birthday Elvira!

I'm really glad to see Elvira (originally Vampira) has decided to celebrate her birthday smack-dab in the middle of Beezies & Bankrolls' Vampire Week -- Vampire week would be a good term for the bloody front butt week. The Mistress of the Dark might be one of the sexiest vampires I've laid eyes on.



After watching this I can't stop thinking about her busty deep-dish cleav, her Valley Girl twang only adds more BLOOD to the ragin' cajun in my pants.

I bet her labia are so flawless. I am usually pretty good at sensing droopy batwing inner labes, and I'm not picking up on anything.



If you have any information on 57 year old Cassandra "Elvira" Peterson's junk, email the B&B team, we're dying to know.

VAMPIRES: Transylvania Groupie Love

Vampires are orally fixated (duh) and will mouthify just about anything with a pulse, but they aren't necessarily ONLY after your blood, there's a new breed of clever teenage vampire gold-diggers, and they're after designer purses and trucks as well:



But what about those people who in return LOVE vampires? Sound retarded? Totes. Check out this fine pair of angry bat-humping groupies:



He's a model, so STFU!

Anyway, it’s well known that if you’re indiscriminate about how many vampire cocks you suck, then you’re a slut. But let’s try to look beyond the common mythology behind vampires and the groupies that coddle their pale immortal ballsacks and listen to some classic synth pop exploring vampire groupieism:



We all just want to be wanted... and Dolce&Kabanna?

Tuesday, September 16, 2008

VAMPIRES: Are You Buying It? Pt II

Campari, the liquor your stepmom mixes with orange juice and drinks all fucking day (get a job, whore), is also the favorite of another kind of bloodsucker: vampires. Campari was concocted in the 1860's by an Italian fellow named Gaspare Campari, and 150 secret years later Campari still made from the same secret formula of secret ingredients...



Obvi, this commercial gave me intense (and confusing) boner-guilt. But it also raises several fascinating points:
1. Vampires will eat you no matter your genitalia. Boy vampires will eat boys, girl vampires girls-- in that regard, they are enlightened.
2. Eyes Wide Shut was a neat film and I liked the scene where Tom and Nic share a joint and then fight in their undies!
3. Campari is people!-- a fact Charlton Heston was close to uncovering before he imploded into his own front-butt.

Further evidence:

VAMPIRES: Are You Buying It?

Vampires love designer jeans. Especially ones that have been processed heavily to look “vintage.” The wear and tear of eternity exhibits especially well on CK jeans.

In the 80's, Calvin and Brooke Shields teamed up to produce some very compelling vampire propaganda:

The origin of an entirely new species indeed...

Monday, September 15, 2008

VAMPIRES: Are WE The Suckers?

Vampires are as hot as ever (True Blood, Twilight, Katy Perry) and they aren't just after our chapstick-- they're out for our hearts. So this week BEEZIES & BANKROLLS is putting on its investigative journalist hat and brazenly muckraking the blood-barrel politics of "Big Bat." Not convinced vampires exist? Fine, I'm not sure Sting exists either, but that doesn't mean he's not worth all those fan letters I wrote him:

Dear Sting,
I'm interested in hanging out with you in your fields of gold. They sound awesome. Do you like baseball?
If I Ever Lose My Faith In You...
Evan

Dear Sting,
On your album Dolphins, you sandwich track #4 "When Dolphins Dance," between songs more masculinely titled "Fill Her Up" and "Ghost Story." I don't think you're gay, but I can see why you might be worried people might take "When Dolphins Dance" the wrong way. Good move.
Be Yourself No Matter What They Say,
Evan

He never answered my letters, masterfully lurking obscured in the shadows, free to murkily inhabit whatever forms my imagination may dream... Being that he's an expert on pretty much everything, I thought Sting should lead off our investigation into the vampire psyche (with a visual assist from Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise):

Sting - Moon Over Bourbon Street

When a flaming torch just isn't practical, vampires floss a playful decorating sense, juxtaposing lavish classical antiques with modern pendant lamps. BTW, if you thought the French manicure was dead (or just for sassy Latinas) guess again! Vampire style, like themselves, is timeless.

Wayne = My Hero

Saturday night Wayne was on SNL with Michael Phelps and Tina Fey (no Barack. Wayne's performance of Lollipop confirmed a few things in my mind, mainly his supreme rock star status, and his access to supreme drogas. Even if Wayne isn't a guitar hero, he is my hero.



If you sell a million in a week, you can get away with a guitar solo like that without many people saying shit.

Start Your Monday Morning Right


Bullys Wit Fullys - Orange Juice & A Blunt

Sunday, September 14, 2008

Berkeley Shit.

Friday, September 12, 2008

SKEET

"You and a friend could easily visit your local gun club, shoot a few rounds and still have time for lunch."

All-American Skeet Champion Todd Bender explains how the game of skeet shooting is played and some of the terms used in enjoying this fun sport.

Neat Outfits, Fun Dancing! (A 9-11 Tribute)


"Let Me Know" - Róisín Murphy


"You Know Me Better" - Róisín Murphy

Thursday, September 11, 2008

You Listen to that Weezy?




This is a great article about a few of my favorite subjects. My experience subbing in Richmond was very simular,

Substitute New Orleans with Richmond and Lil Wayne with Mac Dre.

I Will Forever Remain Faithful By David Ramsey (Oxford American)


1.



Complex magazine: What do you listen to these days?

Lil Wayne: Me! All day, all me.





2.



Like a white person, with blue veins



In my first few weeks teaching in New Orleans’ Recovery School District, these were the questions I heard the most from my students:



1) “I gotta use it.” (This one might sound like a statement, but it’s a request—May I use the bathroom?)



2) “You got an ol’ lady?” (the penultimate vowel stretched, lasciviously, as far as it’ll go).



3) “Where you from?”



4) “You listen to that Weezy?”




I knew that third question was coming. Like many RSD teachers, I was new, and white, and from out of town.

It was the fourth question, however, that seemed to interest my students the most. Dwayne Carter, aka Lil Wayne, aka Weezy F. Baby, was in the midst of becoming the year’s biggest rapper, and among the black teenagers that made up my student population, fandom had reached a near-Beatlemania pitch. More than ninety percent of my students cited Lil Wayne on the “Favorite Music” question on the survey I gave them; about half of them repeated the answer on “Favorite Things to Do.”

For some of my students, the questions Where are you from? and Do you listen to Lil Wayne? were close to interchangeable. Their shared currency—as much as neighborhoods or food or slang or trauma—was the stoned musings of Weezy F. Baby.

The answer was, sometimes, yes, I did listen to Lil Wayne. Despite his ubiquitous success, my students were shocked.

“Do you have the mix tapes?” asked Michael, a sixteen-year-old ninth grader. “It’s all about the mix tapes.”

The following day, he had a stack of CDs for me. Version this, volume that, or no label at all.

And that’s just about all I listened to for the rest of the year.





3.



My picture should be in the dictionary next to the definition of definition



Lil Wayne slurs, hollers, sings, sighs, bellows, whines, croons, wheezes, coughs, stutters, shouts. He reminds me, in different moments, of two dozen other rappers. In a genre that often demands keeping it real via being repetitive, Lil Wayne is a chameleon, rapping in different octaves, paces, and inflections. Sometimes he sounds like a bluesman, sometimes he sounds like a Muppet baby.

Lil Wayne does his share of gangsta posturing, but half the time he starts chuckling before he gets through a line. He’s a ham. He is heavy on pretense, and thank God. Like Dylan, theatricality trumps authenticity.

And yet—even as he tries on a new style for every other song, it is always unmistakably him. I think of Elvis’s famous boast, “I don’t sound like nobody.” I imagine Wayne would flip it: “Don’t nobody sound like me.”





4.



Every few weeks, Michael or another student—for this piece, the names of my students have been changed—would have a new burned CD that was supposedly Tha Carter III, Lil Wayne’s long-anticipated sixth studio album. “This one’s official,” they would say. I learned to be skeptical even as I enjoyed the new tracks. Nothing “official” would come around until school was out for summer, but Lil Wayne created hundreds of new songs in 2007 and the first half of 2008. Vibe magazine took the time to rank his best seventy-seven songs of 2007, and that was not a comprehensive list. These songs would end up on the Internet, which downloaders could snag for free. He also appeared for guest verses on dozens of other rappers’ tracks. He thusly managed to rate as the “Hottest MC in the Game” (according to MTV) and the “Best MC” (according to Rolling Stone), despite offering nothing new at the record store.

While Wayne claimed to do every song “at the same ability or hype,” the quality varied widely. He wrote nothing down (he was simply too stoned, he explained), rapping off the top of his head every time the spirit moved him, which was pretty much all the time. The results were sometimes tremendous and sometimes awkward, but that was half the fun. His oeuvre ended up being a sort of unedited reality show of his wily subconscious.





5.



Ain’t ’bout to pick today to start running



During the first few days of school, Darius, one of my homeroom students, kept getting in trouble for leaving classes without permission. At the end of the second day, he pulled me aside to tell me why he kept having to use the bathroom: he had been shot in the leg three times and had a colostomy bag.

When I visited him in the hospital a few weeks later—he was there for follow-up surgery—he told me about the dealers who shot him. Darius’s speaking voice is a dead ringer for Lil Wayne’s old-man rasp. “I told them, Do what you need to do, you heard me? I ain’t scared, you heard me?”

Then he leaned over and pointed, laughing, to Sponge Bob on the television.





6.



Lil Wayne, rumor has it, briefly went to the pre-Katrina version of our school. Same name and location, but back then it was a neighborhood high school. The building was wrecked in the storm. Our school, a charter school, is housed in modulars (my students hate this euphemism—they’re trailers) in the lot in back. Sometimes I went and peeked in the windows of the old building, and it looked to me like no one had cleaned or gutted it since the storm. It was like a museum set piece. There was still a poster up announcing an open house, coming September 2005.





7.



I taught fifth-grade social studies, eighth-grade writing, ninth-grade social studies. Sometimes I felt inspired, sometimes deflated.

One time, a black student vehemently defended his one Arab classmate during a discussion about the Jena 6: “If you call him a terrorist, that’s like what a cop thinks about us.” Another day, when I was introducing new material about Africa, a student interrupted me—“I heard them niggas have AIDS!”





8.



Pain, since I’ve lost you—I’m lost too



Our students are afraid of rain. A heavy morning shower can cut attendance in half. I once had a student write an essay about her experience in the Superdome. She wrote, without explanation, that she lost her memory when she lost her grandmother in the storm. I was supposed to correct the grammar, so that she would be prepared for state testing in the spring.





9.



Keep your mouth closed and let your eyes listen



Lil Wayne is five-foot-six and wiry, sleepy-eyed, covered in tattoos, including teardrops under his eyes. His two camera poses are a cool tilt of the head and a sneer. He means to look sinister, I think, but there is something actually huggable about him. He looks like he could be one of my students—and some of my students like to think they look like him.

The other day, I saw Cornel West on television say that Lil Wayne’s physical body bears witness to tragedy. I don’t even know what that means, but I do think that Wayne’s artistic persona is a testament to damage.





10.



One of my favorite Lil Wayne hooks is the chorus on a Playaz Circle song called “Duffle Bag Boy.” In the past year, he started singing more, and this was his best turn. He sounds a little like the neighborhood drunk at first as he warbles his way up and down the tune, but his singing voice has an organically exultant quality that seems to carry him to emotional delirium. After a while, he’s belting out instructions to a drug courier with the breathy urgency of a Baptist hymn. By the end of the song, the standard-order macho boast, “I ain’t never ran from a nigga and I damn sure ain’t ’bout to pick today to start running,” has been turned by Lil Wayne into a plea, a soul lament.





11.



On New Orleans radio, it seems like nearly every song features Lil Wayne. My kids sang his songs in class, in the hallways, before school, after school. I had a student who would rap a Lil Wayne line if he didn’t know the answer to a question.

An eighth grader wrote his Persuasive Essay on the topic “Lil Wayne is the best rapper alive.” Main ideas for three body paragraphs: Wayne has the most tracks and most hits, best metaphors and similes, competition is fake.





12.



My flow is art, unique—my flow can part a sea



Once I witnessed a group of students huddled around a speaker listening to Lil Wayne. They had heard these songs before, but were nonetheless gushing and guffawing over nearly every line. One of them, bored and quiet in my classroom, was enthusiastically, if vaguely, parsing each lyric for his classmates: “You hear that? Cleaner than a virgin in detergent. Think on that.”

Pulling out the go-to insult of high schoolers everywhere, a girl nearby questioned their sexuality. “Y’all be in to Lil Wayne so much you sound like girls,” she said.

They just kept listening. Then one of the boys was simply overtaken by a lyrical turn. He stood up, threw up his hands, and began hollering. “I don’t care!” he shouted. “No homo, no homo, but that boy is cute!”





13.



Lil Wayne on making it: “When you’re really rich, then asparagus is yummy.”

Lil Wayne on safe sex: “Better wear a latex, cause you don’t want that late text, that ‘I think I’m late’ text.”

Lil Wayne on possibly less safe sex: “How come there is two women, but ain’t no two Waynes?”





14.



Okay, but it’s not any one line, it’s that voice. Just the way he says “car in park” in his cameo on Mario’s “Crying Out for Me” remix; it’s a soft growl from another planet. It sounds like a threat and a comfort and a come-on all at once.





15.



I am just a Martian, ain’t nobody else on this planet



Right before you become a teacher, you are told by all manner of folks that it will be 1) the hardest thing you’ve ever done, and 2) the best thing you’ve ever done. That seems like a recipe for recruiting wannabe martyrs. In any case, high stakes can blind you to the best moments. One day, I was stressing over what I imagined was my one-man quest to keep Darius in school and out of jail, and missed that a heated dispute between two fifth graders was escalating. Finally, I asked them what was wrong.

“Mr. Ramsey,” one of the boys pleaded, “will you please tell him that if you go into space for a year and come back to Earth that all your family will be dead because time moves slower in space?”





16.



And to the kids: drugs kill. I’m acknowledging that.

But when I’m on the drugs, I don’t have a problem with that.




On one of his best songs, the super-catchy “I Feel Like Dying,” Lil Wayne barely exists. He always sounds high, but on this song he sounds as though he has already passed out.

A lot of the alarmism about pop music sending the wrong message to impressionable youth seems mostly overwrought to me, but I’ll cop to feeling taken aback at ten-year-olds singing, “Only once the drugs are done, do I feel like dying, I feel like dying.”

First time I heard a fifth grader singing this in falsetto, I said: “What did you say?”

He said: “Mr. Ramsey, you know you be listening to that song. Why you tripping?”

My students always ask me why I’m tripping at precisely the moments when the answer seems incredibly obvious to me.





17.



After Michael cussed out our vice principal, I did a home visit. Michael was one of the biggest drug dealers in his neighborhood, and also one of my best students.

His mother was roused from bed. She looked half-gone, dazed. Then she started crying, and hugged me, pulled my head into her body. “No one’s ever cared like this,” she said. “Bless you. Thank you.”

Michael smiled shyly. “I just want to get in my right grade,” he told me.

“We’ll find a way to make that happen,” I told him.

A few weeks later, I gave him a copy of a New Yorker piece on Lil Wayne.

“Actually, that was good,” he said, later. “You teach me to write like that?”





18.



Born in New Orleans, raised in New Orleans…




You live here as a newcomer and locals are fond of saying “this is New Orleans” or “welcome to New Orleans” by way of explanation. They use it to explain absurdity, inefficiency, arbitrary disaster, and transcendent fun. Enormous holes in the middle of major streets, say, or a drunken man dressed as an insect in line behind you at the convenience store.

Our challenge in the schools is to try to reform a broken system (the “recovery” in Recovery School District doesn’t refer to the storm—the district was created before Katrina, when the state took over the city’s failing schools) amidst a beautiful culture that is sometimes committed to cutting folks a little slack.

I have heard the following things speciously defended or excused by New Orleans culture: truancy, low test scores, drug and alcohol addiction, extended families showing up within the hour to settle minor school-boy scuffles, inept bureaucracy, lazy teachers, students showing up hungover the day after Mother’s Day….





19.



Once, a girl’s older sister looked askance at one of my best students after school, and about five minutes later there was a full-on brawl in the parking lot. I lost my grip on the student I was holding back and she jumped on top of another student’s mother and started pounding.

On the pavement in front of me was a weave and a little bit of blood. One of my ninth graders was watching the chaos gleefully while I tried to figure out how to make myself useful. He was as happy as I’ve ever seen him. He shrugged beatifically. “This is New Orleans!” he shouted, to me, to himself, to anyone who might be listening.





20.



Sometimes my students tell me they are sick of talking about the storm. Sometimes it’s all they want to talk about. Might be the same student. Some students have told me it ruined their lives, some students have told me it saved their lives. Again, sometimes the same student will say both.





21.



From an interview in early 2006:

AllHipHop.com: On the album, did you ever contemplate doing a whole track dedicated to the Hurricane Katrina tragedy?

Lil Wayne: No, because I’m from New Orleans, brother. Our main focus is to move ahead and move on. You guys are not from New Orleans and keep throwing it in our face, like, ‘Well, how do you feel about Hurricane Katrina?’ I f—king feel f—ked up. I have no f—king city or home to go to. My mother has no home, her people have no home, and their people have no home. Every f—king body has no home. So do I want to dedicate something to Hurricane Katrina? Yeah, tell that b—h to suck my d—k. That is my dedication.





22.



I am the beast! Feed me rappers or feed me beats.



Lil Wayne mentions Katrina in his songs from time to time. He has a track that rails against Bush for his response to the storm. But, to his credit, he doesn’t wallow in his city’s famous tragedy.

The world needs to be told, and reminded, of what happened here. But New Orleans is bigger and more spirited than the storm. So its favorite son can be forgiven for refusing to let it define him. For my students, Lil Wayne is good times and good memories, and enduring hometown pride. All they ask of him is to keep making rhymes, as triumphant and strange as the city itself.





23.



Ever since I was little, I lived life numb



Michael stopped coming to school. His mother told me, “He’s a man now. There’s nothing more I can do.”

Darius got kicked out for physically attacking a teacher.

I have lots of happy stories, so I don’t mean to dwell on these two, but I guess that’s just what teachers do in the summer months, replay the ones that got away.





24.



I read over this, and I got it all wrong. I fetishize disaster. I live in the best city in the world and all I can write about is hurricanes and dropouts.





25.



One time, after they finished a big test I gave them last period, my students started happily singing Lil Wayne’s “La La La” on their way outside.

“Come on, Ramsey, sing along, you know it.”

And so I did. “Born in New Orleans, raised in New Orleans, I will forever remain faithful New Orleans….”

That I wasn't from New Orleans didn’t much matter, so long as I was game to clap and dance and sing. It was a clear and sunny day, Lil Wayne was the greatest rapper alive, and school was out. It was time to have fun.


I really feel its important for educators to connect with their students through media and pop culture, especally when you're talking about middle school students.

P.S.

Beezies and Bankrolls: What do you listen to Mister Richmond?
Jim Richmond: Lil Wayne. All day, all Wayne.

Cougar Rebel

DJ Mark 7's Best of Cougnut Mix

It has already been 7 years since he died. R.I.P.

Wednesday, September 10, 2008

jibber-jabber-bum-stiggidy-whibbidy-who-HA?

Hearing Jay-Z get all lyrically frisky yesterday made me nostalgic for the days of goobity-gobity mother-goose cartoon rap, when nonsensical suffixes flowed freely from sewer dwelling vegetarians (so no pork sausages, mom, please!):

Das EFX - They Want EFX

Sigh. A simple time, when we were all just trying to answer Barry Mann's age old question:

Barry Mann - Who Put The Bomp?

But the gangsters just didn't get it. They were like: HA!?

Juvenile - Ha

And Soulja Boy was all: YAHHH!

Kids these days. They just don't get it.

Tuesday, September 9, 2008

Funk Inc.



Covering Kool and the Gang
Funk Inc - Kool is Back

Can I Get Open?

Interesting question:

Original Flavor - Can I Get Open?
(Jay-Z's group from the 90s, check out his nimble tongue)

Monday, September 8, 2008

Planned Parenthood

Down There Song

Planned Parenthood's viral (pun?) campaign to teach kids about their junk.

Here are some of the lyrics:

Beaver
Bunny
Front-Butt
Bushy Catchers Mitt
Easy Bakin' Oven
Hootchie
Hot Pocket
Hoo-Ha
Na-Na
Furry Pink Canoe
He-Ham
Love Log
Ankle Sanker
Dong
Twinkie
Trumpet
Gherkin
Captain Winky
Shlong
Hum-Diddler
Finger-Fiddler
Whamalama-Do
Sergeant Stiffy
Super Soaker
Panty Hamster
Peach
Tinkle Flower
Donut Holder
Chubby
Backyard Treat
Harry Manilow
Sloppy Slappilow
Bing-a-dang-a-doo-ding

Fill In The Beeps

I never could understand what this song is about? what is a ha-ha-ha? what is will.i.am playing with while looking at her ha-ha-ha?

Pussycat Dolls feat Will.I.Am - Beep
UPDATE:
with the help of Mr Richmond's above post i think i have the lyrics figured out:
[Will.I.Am]
It's funny how a man only thinks about the front-butt
You got a real big heart, but I'm looking at your front-butt
You got real big brains, but I'm looking at your front-butt
Girl, there ain't no pain in me looking at your front-butt
[PCD]
I don't give a fuck (obvi)
Keep looking at my furry pink canoe
'Cause it don't mean a thang if you're looking at my furry pink canoe
I'm a do my thing while you're playing with your ankle spanker
Ha, ha-ha, ha-ha, ha-ha

Friday, September 5, 2008

Bitch Lick It Off

This whore's limp jello tongue makes me wanna barf



Madison - Lollipop (Lil Wayne Cover)

sub URBAN

I did a little YouTube search for "beezies" just to see what'd turn up. Oh boy did i find a couple gems. Pure cringe.






For more videos of girls making fools of themselves see:
Hyphy Is Wack
How Dead Is Hyphy



Speaking of dumb beezies check out this blog href="http://sarahpalin.typepad.com/">http://sarahpalin.typepad.com

Thursday, September 4, 2008

The Counts



It's What's Up Front That Counts

Happy Friday!

SONGS RE: ANAL

Mr Richmond's previous post reminded me of another great song called Tighten Up by Lee Perry:

Lee Perry - Tighten Up

and then i thought of this song which is clearly about how they knock on the back door in Kansas City (off of the same great compilation titled "Tighten Up"):

Kansas City - Joya Landis

and i don't think there's ever been a more popular song about losing one's booty virginity than this pop gem (disclaimer: the lyrics of this song are quite graphic, watch while holding your parents' hands):

Natalie Imbruglia - Torn

Tighten Up

This video really inspires me deep down in my loins. I like to pride myself in my ability to come up with catchy/viral dances... much like Soulja Boy. But how the fuck have i been sleeping on the skipping in place dance? It's so next level yet so throwback all at once. It will make me feel like Filmore Slim and Pippy Longstocking all at once.



Archie Bell and the Drells - Tighten Up

Wednesday, September 3, 2008

BALLIN (there are no words)



courtesy of Eric "What Does He Really Do At Work?" Wilson.

Tuesday, September 2, 2008

Deer Shuggie,

A classic example of a unofficial user-created youtube music video that is better than any music video director could have done:

Shuggie Otis - Strawberry Letter 23

i especially like when the deers glow pink, black out, then morph into flying cubes.