Thursday, August 30, 2007

Just a lil Ratchet today

So today is my good friend's Ashley's birthday but I will not share her age. She might want to fight me. But her age is such an attestment to our generation: reaching the Big 3-0. Oops, I let it slip!
Here I am, 28 with my first child and many have wondered why I have waited so long. When is the right time to have a child? Those folks who question me on why I waited so long, did they wait for the right age and are they still convinced that their children are a blessing to them, despite their "ratchet" and dysfunctional ways and means.
Yes, I have picked up on some new lingo today. Bourgie or not, I am selective in my music and every once in a while when I've grown tired of my CD playlist or don't have my XM Radio in the car, I must suffer through Clearchannel Communications negotiations of what they feel are R&B/Hip Hop/Urban Adult Contemporary. Since late last year, I've been hearing of this rapper named Lil Boosie, who from the sound of their voice, I just knew it was this big chic reminiscent of Lady Rage (some of you might be too young to remember). But, no, just a lanky brother from Baton Rouge with a strange sinusy tone who claims we all got some ratchet in us...

His notoriety is surely building and certainly so if the New York Times did a piece on him. Kalefa Sanneh wrote this pretentiously objective piece which had my friend Ashley and I giggling hysterically. Don't get me wrong, I love hip hop like the next person but for some reason I just can't give it up to a rapper who some feel has a conscious Machiavellian take on the world. I can just imagine Lil Boosie getting his next rap together with the word "Machiavelli" in it.
Anyway, you can tell that this journalist, Sanneh, is really trying to break down the particulars and alienness of hip hop to their readers by explaining one of Lil Boosie's partners name, Untame Mayne: “Mayne” is regional slang for “man,” but his verse isn’t as marvelous as his stage name. Despite his inability to spell man correctly and is a subpar rapper, Sanneh has clearly delineated his skills and colloquial knack to the very practicality of his name - merely untame. Ouch!

Read on for yourselves:

Inevitably, Lil Boosie steals the show with a wonderfully shrill, sing-song
verse. He cheerfully salutes a money-making mother in the club: “She got ’bout
nine children, but she be makin’ ’fetti/But I can’t talk ’bout li’l mama ’cause
I got three already.” And in the chorus, he sums up the state of the world: “He
ratchet, she ratchet/Man, we all got some ratchet in us.” Visit
myspace.com/lilboosieratchetbadazz to hear it.
All of this raises an obvious question. And on Tuesday night, during a visit to the Atlantic Records office in Midtown, Lil Boosie was happy to provide an answer, of a sort. What does ratchet mean? He chuckled, then provided a few examples. “Outside, your car might be clean as a” — well, finish the simile yourself — “but junky inside. You might be Miss America, but with yellow teeth. Everybody got
something wrong with ’em.”

Charming...

So, I say all of this to go back to my original issue of people deeming children as a blessing, but our rearing of them is clearly ratchet from the start...OK, that's my last time using that word. It just ain't me, playa!

toodles,

mdgg

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