I’M DA MAN, MUHFUCKA!

Last night’s DJ Report: Man, older bourgie art-patron weekenders are NOT feeling Sticky and Ty. Neither Angie Martinez and Eve. JJ Fad, Stacey Q, Sleeze Boys, though: some sounds they can get down with.
Today on Pocos Pero Locos, the featured guest was Lil Rob. When he and host Khool Aid were not emphasizing Lil Rob’s consistant holding-it-down for Latino hiphop, and his vehement desire to cross over w/his new single, they were discussing bootlegging. Bootlegging robs Lil Rob. It discourages him, and all other artists populating Latino hiphop, from making more records, because it decreases their already nonexistent revenue. I can feel that; I do believe in ethical downloading. (For instance, support the dudes who are obviously running their shit out of a basement. And don’t DJ downloaded music, lest you violate/rupture the natural economic cycle of DJing.) But when they played the title track off Lil Rob’s new record, “Neighborhood Music,” which is released this Tuesday, they actually put a “Pocos pero Locos” digitized voice tag over the track, a la Murs “The End of the Beginning,” I hung that shit out to dry. I think it was a good track, but I DON’T KNOW FOR SURE, BECAUSE OF THE WACK ROBOT.
Speaking of Murs: I guess it’s not surprising that this interview got printed.
Apparently the amazing Memphis-based Freetoes Records comp SOUTHERN RAW DIVAS is getting maje airplay onWFMU.The album came into my possession last spring via my friend/partner in Miami basspreciation, Jennifer, who went back home to FLA and came back with copies for all her ladies. (Burned and xeroxed ones; unlike Lil Rob, possibly-a-producer Mr. Troll ends SRD’s album by shouting out all the bootleggers, thanking them for helping spread the SRD gospel. That said, for SRD booking info please contact (901) 315-0832.)
The SRD are the collected ladies of TN crunk; trunk-junking booty beats and pitch-shift-crazy synths abound. SRD get just as nazty as their male counterparts, but assert their strength via direct role-reversal switch-up*. Mostly it’s economic power they want (Miss T’s “I Be Pimpin”: “Pimpin is my game, you know/Gotta get the money, yo”; “I’m a Mac,” where Ms. Unique advises listeners to keep freeloading dudes at bay), but they have no qualms about telling papi exactly what he needs to do to get ’em off.
Skit, featuring the SRDs smoking gunja and gossiping about sex:
“I was with this muhfucka last night talking about ‘who da man? who da man?’ I told that motherfucker, ‘I’M DA MAN! I’M DA MAN! I’M DA MAN, motherfucka!”
Followed by Ebony’s “Bootie Call,” which begins with the rhethorical question, “Do they ladies run this motherfucker?” “Bootie Call”‘s chorus features a posse of said running-the-shit ladies coyly advising any potential suitors that if they like the titties, first they gotta lick the kitty. Makes “My Neck My Back” look like Khia’s application for nursing school.
As production/performance goes, my favorite SRD song is “Ready 2 Rumble” by Lady C, Ms. Monet, Dee-Dee and Ms. Unique, the super-amped precursor to a whole posse throwdown, rapped lightning-speed over the luscious din of booty-invoking sub-bass and tinny, trebly, canned snare. They’re asking if “U ready 2 rumble, bitch?” but they’re not just talking about any bitch: they’re ready to rumble ANYONE–man, woman, or Ego Trip staffer–who dare talk even amorphous modicum of shit, a kind of crunk “Gossip Folks” but with stratospheric fear factor and, presumably, bigger subwoofers (the real test of strength).
The kind of shit-talking that provokes Eminem prodigy Dina Rae to rumble is more specific. In the new song “And?”, which is just hitting Portland big-time, she expresses her weariness at those gossip folks who hold her to her past, who say she ain’t shit without Eminem, who “think they know but don’t think,” call her “a video ho, stripped in the club, hooked on drugs.” Ms. DR’s response: “AND?” The main message being, “I have to deal with enough in the industry w/out yr BS.” On the moderate success of song-I’m-obsessed-with “Can’t Hold Us Down” and “Gossip Folx,” (whose intro D.R. bites like her teeth are coming in), it’ll probably work as a single, mainly because the chorus is delivered in the Eminem style of snotty consonant overemphasis. And also, because she’s now one of like, three girls they ever play on hiphop radio.
*PSA: This is a really Bust mag ca. 2000 thing to do, and in bell hooks’ definition of patriarchal destructure, will ultimately fail because it still reveres trad male roles, which always result in power imbalance/gender friction.