In a fine example of what Ann Powers defined as "violator art" in a 1999 Village Voice article-one which is now being taught as a four-credit humanities course at Mt. Holyoke!-50 Cent's G-Unit henchman Tony Yayo has been making some great, awful rap music lately.
A couple weeks ago, he leaked a song called "Obama" that will appear on a new mixtape, Gun Powder Guru. "Obama," Yayo says in rhyme, is a new brand of heroin he's selling. ("Dope bags stamped 'Obama," as he puts it, to go with "Sammy Sosa" cocaine, and "Lady Gaga" ecstasy pills. This is the best celebrity drug nomenclature since U.G.K. labeled marijuana "Bobby" and coke "Whitney" on 2007's "The Game Belongs To Me.")
Now, even better, is "Bullets Whistle," which makes murder sound sexier than one would maybe hope murder could sound. The beat, with that cold worm synth reminiscent of vintage Dr. Dre.
And the video. Jesus Christ! Tony Yayo sure likes guns. And grenades, apparently, one of which he swings around on his finger before pretending it's a basketball and miming a fadeaway-jumper. If there was ever a time to warn kids not to try this at home. What can you say about this? It's terrible. It's terrific.
Seriously? This song definitely does NOT make murder sound sexy. If anything it makes it sound like a drugged drawl of someone who will OD in their own puke waaay before anyone will get a chance to kill them.
and you don't find that sexy? To each his own.
When you put it like that...
This is murder, Dave. There are rules! From "Bad News":
Rule number one pick a target and study him for weeks
See where they rest at and lay with their peeps
Now you got the drop, know their daily routine
So the 2nd rule please leave the crime scene please
3rd rule pick a day, 4th rule pick a time
5th rule pick a fifth, 6th rule pick a nine
And the 7th rule make sure your sidearm sweet
So in the shootout you leave him 6 feet deep
8th meet in a fast car with disguise
Use a ski mask with shades on your eyes
9th rule don't say shit cause Po-Po listen
Fuck around you end up being stuck in the system
And the 10th rule don't put a tag on a broken heart
Just put a toe-tag on your mark
And rule number 11, you caught a body but you not a legend
You better watch where you heading
yup. when tony yayo's in the house, it's definitely bad news.
^ From the Yayo verse, to clarify. But also--the first verse of that song? LLoyd Banks says, "They all want a nigga to stop / Cause I rap slick enough to slip the ring off of Vivica Fox." Yet this song was released a full year before 50 had any kind of commercial success, so Banks was just some nobody dreaming about banging Vivica Fox. (Which 50 then did.)
love all that Doc Edgerton action in the interludes.
Nice shattered-skull-MRI there at the end, too! ...ouch
Tony Yayo's verse on "Wanna Get to Know You" was pretty tight.
I thought "Bobby" in that UGK song meant dope because brown = heroin and because generally "Bobby Brown" when used to refer to marijuana refers to low quality "brown" weed--and why would UGK be bragging about pushing pounds of shitty weed? It's been a while since I heard the song though.
Oh. That might be. But "Bobby" has been a term for pot for a long time, from "Bob Marley." So I thought they were just putting a more modern spin on the wordplay. And I thought heroin was generally sold in kilograms, too, as opposed to pounds? But I could be wrong.
It just strikes me as strange lyrical construction to use a Bobby-Whitney pairing while intending "Bobby" to refer to Bob[by] Marley, not Bobby Brown.
But I also haven't heard the short-hand "Bobby" (from Bob Marley) for pot; I've only heard "Bob Marley" used in the way that any well-known reggae artist's name could be used to mean weed, e.g., "I got that Sizzla."
You're definitely right about the pounds vs. kilos thing. I saw it as artistic license, since repeating "key" within the line would have been bad writing. And the unit of measurement for heroin is less canonical than kilos is for coke and pounds is for weed, if only because selling heroin is itself less widely referenced.
It's gross. Minstrel show for pimply white teenagers in the parking lot of the mall.
Awesome. This dude somewhat inexplicably lives across the street from my aunt in a nice little suburban town on Long Island. She's a white accountant in her late 50s and reports that he is in fact a very good neighbor who stands outside with his kid every morning while he waits for the school bus. Not sure whether I should show this to her or not...