The Awl http://www.theawl.com/ Be Less Stupid Tue, 27 Oct 2009 09:52:08 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.2 P Is For The People Who Can't Understand http://www.theawl.com/2009/10/p-is-for-the-people-who-cant-understand http://www.theawl.com/2009/10/p-is-for-the-people-who-cant-understand#comments Tue, 27 Oct 2009 09:52:08 +0000 Dave Bry http://www.theawl.com/2009/10/p-is-for-the-people-who-cant-understand
So Jay-Z's booked to perform "Empire State of Mind" before the opening game of the world series at Yankee Stadium. Hard to beat something that makes that much sense. A big, bombastic anthem about the bright lights of the big city to match the big, bombastic Bronx Bombers and the bright lights of their big new stadium. (Even as that googolzillion-dollar monument to avarice and ostentation is already falling apart.) Alicia Keys on the chorus and everything. A-Rod's bound to pop a boner. The Evil Empire is stacking the deck.

How's Philadelphia-a place already afflicted with a severe second-city complex-supposed to compete? Who can open the show Saturday, when the series moves down the Turnpike to Citizen's Bank Park? Beanie Sigel and Freeway have been suggested. But they both came up under Jay at his Roc-A-Fella Records. They'd look like little brothers in hand-me-downs. Same goes for the Roots, who often serve as Jay's back-up band. How about Will Smith, in his ol' Fresh Prince rapper mode? Points for star power, but it's hard to imagine that would help the Phillies get their game face on. What's he gonna play, "Parents Just Don't Understand"?

No. The Phillies need to recruit someone that even Jay would have to doff his Yankee fitted to: the Philadelphia MC many people credit as the originator of gangsta rap. Help us, Schooly D, you're our only hope.

---

See more posts by Dave Bry

17 comments

]]>
So Jay-Z's booked to perform "Empire State of Mind" before the opening game of the world series at Yankee Stadium. Hard to beat something that makes that much sense. A big, bombastic anthem about the bright lights of the big city to match the big, bombastic Bronx Bombers and the bright lights of their big new stadium. (Even as that googolzillion-dollar monument to avarice and ostentation is already falling apart.) Alicia Keys on the chorus and everything. A-Rod's bound to pop a boner. The Evil Empire is stacking the deck.

How's Philadelphia-a place already afflicted with a severe second-city complex-supposed to compete? Who can open the show Saturday, when the series moves down the Turnpike to Citizen's Bank Park? Beanie Sigel and Freeway have been suggested. But they both came up under Jay at his Roc-A-Fella Records. They'd look like little brothers in hand-me-downs. Same goes for the Roots, who often serve as Jay's back-up band. How about Will Smith, in his ol' Fresh Prince rapper mode? Points for star power, but it's hard to imagine that would help the Phillies get their game face on. What's he gonna play, "Parents Just Don't Understand"?

No. The Phillies need to recruit someone that even Jay would have to doff his Yankee fitted to: the Philadelphia MC many people credit as the originator of gangsta rap. Help us, Schooly D, you're our only hope.

---

See more posts by Dave Bry

17 comments

]]> http://www.theawl.com/2009/10/p-is-for-the-people-who-cant-understand/feed 17 Beanie Sigel, "In The Ghetto" http://www.theawl.com/2009/08/beanie-sigel-in-the-ghetto http://www.theawl.com/2009/08/beanie-sigel-in-the-ghetto#comments Fri, 21 Aug 2009 13:40:16 +0000 Dave Bry http://www.theawl.com/2009/08/beanie-sigel-in-the-ghetto
If you're looking to counter the oddly antiseptic aftertaste left by Jay-Z's ostensibly warlike hit "Run This Town," there's this new video from Jay's old Philadelphia recruit, Beanie Sigel. Sit through the corny Vincent-Price-from-"Thriller" voice-over in the beginning, settle in to the swaying organ line and the tinkling piano and, um, brace yourself.

"Ain't nothin' worse on the ears than a crying mother," Beanie says, sounding like he just left her at the wake. "Seeing her baby dying, stretched in a ghetto gutter."

The guns on the screen aren't shiny. The little girl with her arm in a cast doesn't look like an actress. And the guys smoking wet cigarettes appear to have smoked ones like that before. (You get the feeling that if Chris Martin from Coldplay walked up to someone around here and asked for directions, he might be told, "Don't approach me and don't address me.")

It is, yes: kinda serious! But what comes across most clearly is that Beanie means every word of every rhyme he says.

---

See more posts by Dave Bry

4 comments

]]>
If you're looking to counter the oddly antiseptic aftertaste left by Jay-Z's ostensibly warlike hit "Run This Town," there's this new video from Jay's old Philadelphia recruit, Beanie Sigel. Sit through the corny Vincent-Price-from-"Thriller" voice-over in the beginning, settle in to the swaying organ line and the tinkling piano and, um, brace yourself.

"Ain't nothin' worse on the ears than a crying mother," Beanie says, sounding like he just left her at the wake. "Seeing her baby dying, stretched in a ghetto gutter."

The guns on the screen aren't shiny. The little girl with her arm in a cast doesn't look like an actress. And the guys smoking wet cigarettes appear to have smoked ones like that before. (You get the feeling that if Chris Martin from Coldplay walked up to someone around here and asked for directions, he might be told, "Don't approach me and don't address me.")

It is, yes: kinda serious! But what comes across most clearly is that Beanie means every word of every rhyme he says.

---

See more posts by Dave Bry

4 comments

]]> http://www.theawl.com/2009/08/beanie-sigel-in-the-ghetto/feed 4