we get unpredictable

i spent my sat nite texting w/sean fennessey–him, wifey, and boddingtons at the computer (dateline: Manhattan) vs. me, roommates, corona and diet cola at the kitchen table (dateline: BKLYN)–and all i got was this bright, gleaming bright blogspot. My outgoing messages say: “it’s the hook! the hook is the prob” but i didn’t mean it like that. the hook isn’t the hearth for me, either–i meant it like this.
:
The hook, ever-imperative, is a grandstand, razzle dazzle to rabble the capital. You’re right: invoking my hyperbolic license, I will say THE 50 CENT HOOK TRANSMOGRIFIED RAP INTO… ???? This was precogged by Nate DOGG, who developed an early prototype of THE G HOOK and deadened the new jacks to boot. (Tho context dictates whether I indulge THE HOOK before the MIC, what can I say, I’m a dancer: I aint hearda that, diamonds on my neck, bling blaow. A! Put the hook on loop, it’s good for the choreography.) But I do believe those rap dudes kowtowing to THE HOOK are faintly hoping to glimpse the waistband–even just the waistband!–of 50 Cent’s sextuple-platinum pantaloons. Or, shit, probably hoping for access to the Hot 97 breakroom onna off-peak hour, maybe score a coffee in a styrofoam cup.
THE 50 CENT HOOK, and the paper that trails it, is at this particular moment, the focal point of the artform (BY artform, I mean “capitalistic medium,” not “Temple of HipHop”). Is it a HOOK vs. MIC situation? No, it is “Drake Coffee Kake” vs. “Tofurkey Holiday Dinner.” It is “Frottage” vs. “Intercourse.” It is, most accurately, “I play men” (Puff) vs. “I spray llamas” (Jay) or maybe that’s a bad example. But you’re right, S. Dot Fennessey, because you’ve got a fierce mind: the hook’s the dinero. Also, I think the 50 hook contains all that nihilism uncut, but I will have to “go to the research” (Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking, 2005)* or “go do [the] research” (Jay-Z, “Go Crazy (Remix),” 2005)* to further develop this theory/art project. Thank you.
*synergy
I bought the new G-UNIT mixtape yesterday, just for the Mobb Deep.
It’s called “G-Unit Radio Part 15: Are You a Window Shopper?” On the cover is “Curtis ’50 Cent’ Jackson,” iced and standing inside a car dealership, arms crossed and dangling the keys to a Ferrari from his pinkie: power’s epitome. DOLLARES. Jada and Joe and Nas and Ja gaze at him through the window, all wearing the uniforms of various minimum-wage jobs (Burger King, UPS, Jiffy Lube and Jiffy Lube): wishing they could be 50. You know, when Kanye’s like, give a dude respect for working hard at his minimum-wage job, I’m like, yes! That’s real (even though my feelings on golddigger are: clever, irresistable, piggish. duh.) 50 is a monolith and, Queens roots be damned, might as well be Ronald Reagan by now. (Did somebody say “Thought Piece”?) I was talking to this guy on Friday, a manager of rappers and rockers, cordial fellow, cool and witty and not trying to get over. He asks, “You ever meet 50?” I go, “No,” and he goes, “He’s a genius and a megalomaniac. If he’d been born in a rich white suburb, kid would be president,” and I’m like well, yeah. Yeah.
Basically, yeah.
In lieu of Camelot: sales figures. The octuple platinum paradigm.
But money is a boring muse. Endless sums of it kill the dream.
Evidence: G Unit Radio Part 15 Mixtape: Are You A Window Shopper? (Get Rich or Die Tryin’ Starring Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson In Theatres November 9)
The song “I don’t know officer,” though: I am wowed despite myself. G-Unit plead the 5th, prove they are not snitchers in their grimiest voices, but it’s their grimy voices that betray the truth. They know everything. 50 sounds like he’s been awake for 5 days straight, stubble to match. Spyder Loc’s computer reference: “I don’t know why they told you that we sold stones/we on the internet, tryna get our email on.” (vs. jadakiss: “my favorite crack spot/is protools on my laptop.”)
Prodigy’s “Fuck Bitches” has a slightly misleading title; he is actually just “trying to find the right one,” and being vulnerable, as much as Prodigy can express vulnerability in RE: women. But because it is G-Unit, we can’t stray too far from the paper: the track immediately following “Fuck Bitches,” Young Buck’s “Fuck Bitches Pt. 2,” retorts, “I got no time to chase that bitch/I’m on my grind I’ll flip them bricks.” Buck mentions “bitches” exactly once thereafter (though he does offer to pimp out any young lady who may be unfortunate enough to cross his path). Unlike Prodigy, he is unconcerned with matters of the heart or libido. Instead, Buck details such experiences as: running up on the club, snatching chains, and making money. When he actually gets back around to talking about “bitches,” the namesake, it’s to ridicule a man who expresses his love (or whatever) for his woman by buying her accoutrements for her vehicle: “Your bitch rims bigger than yours, man! What kinda shit is that?! You’s a sucka for love!” and so on. On the outro: “I still looking for a New York ho. Where she at?” My guess is that she heard “Fuck Bitches pt. 2”?
Two songs later, Olivia, the sole woman in G-Unit, is singing, offkey but convincing, “so sick and depressed that i gotta get upset/ for a guy ’round here to show me some respect.”
THREE SONGS LATER, Lloyd Banks sings his hook from a woman’s perspective: “Sometimes I feel ugly/cause i’m givin my all to a celebrity/ that doesn’t even tell me he loves me/and I act like a clown/ when he’s not around/ cause of him the other girls tease me/but we’re more than lovers/i tell him that i’m not like the others/but nobody believes me/so I don’t think he claims me/I thought I was his baby!” Ostensibly about Lloyd’s girlfriend, but uh.. whose album is 50 releasing next, again?
DR JUNG, PLEASE HOLLER AT G UNIT HQ ASAP. The misery is palpable.
I am currently obsessed with Big Mike R&B Jumpoff #19. I love Ludacris’ guest verses on R&B tracks: he keeps rapping ’em in the same rhythm pattern. I want to reclaim R&B as a refuge for hip-hop, rather than a vestige of it. And seriously, friends, that Jamie Foxx f. Ludacris track, it is hot. He sings, “Girl get comfortable/we bout to do something you never done before/baby not the usual/tonight we gettin’ unpredictable.” Jamie, with his slightly lurid pick-up-lines, adopts R. Kelly stance–did you hear the dark fantasy “Extravaganza”? Foxx is such an understudy for “Trapped in the Closet”; I mean, he rhymed “Embassy” with “Tennessee” and “Hennessey”! Jamie’s leer-game is slightly more innocuous, though, ‘cuz he asks: “Girl I know you’re used to dinner and a movie/ why not be my dinner while making the movie?” P.S. that track is from Big Mike’s R&B Jumpoff v. 19, which I now own (no thanks to Sean Fenness”SORRY, I ONLY LISTEN TO DJ SMALLZ R&B MIXTAPES”ey)
PPS> apparently the new jamie foxx has production by polow da don, who you BETTER remember from last year’s “Fallen (Polow Da Don Mix)” by Mya (and the Missourian “powerballer” who shant be named). I am pumped.