I listen to rap and such every once and again, but the thing that always gets me, always repels me a bit like the proverbial bad breath of the proverbial coworker, is that so much of rap is comprised of metarap–that is, rap about rapping.

I mean, call it hypocritical if you must, because technically more than half my writing is about writing, or else about words. But I guess the difference lies in the ego-flashing involved. Someone totally new to rap might try it out one day and catch a line like:

I’m blickety-black, lay my raps like the mad hatter,
My rhymes is fresher than a caesar salad party platter,
Got more zest than my momma’s tuna casserole,
You can wolf it down whole, but my beats is much phatter.

For example, anyway. So someone would listen to this. What would they make of it? Their first reaction might be, “For someone acting so tough, he sure is obsessed with food.” My fault. But their second reaction might be, “This guy’s kind of a douche.” It’s no small feat and no small opportunity to release an album. And all this guy has to say, all he wants to express is how good he is at rapping? Can you imagine that kind of behavior anywhere else? Like a writer, where all he ever writes about is how good he is at writing? It’s like every damn rap song is a commercial for itself. But if the song is the commercial, then where’s the song? Where are your guts, rappers? Whatever happened to letting your work speak for itself? It’s like an architect who only designs giant block letters reading “I’m the shit” and idolic statues of himself. Or herself.

Ultimately I believe people should do what they want with their creative time. But it seems to me that the cosmos have dictated a direct correlation between the amount of masturbation in a song and the number of dollars that song earns the artist responsible. Artist? I’m not sure how this works or what moves people to make these purchases when they hear a guy stroking his proverbial schlong on the radio, but I think it’s that people just aren’t listening to the words. Consequently, the meaning only enters their heads on a subliminal, subconscious level. Before they even know what’s going on, they’ve got all these ideas about how much of a badass the guy is.

Best Buy Customer 1: “Who’s this G-Mac dude?”

Best Buy Customer 2: “I dunno, but I’ll bet dollars to donuts he’s blickety-black AND his rhymes is phatter than his own mom’s tuna casserole.”

Best Buy Customer 1: “Yes, let us bet some dollars on this. Post-haste. Donuts not currently being available.”

Best Buy Customer 2: “I concur, amigo. I concur.”

There you have it. Soundest theory I’ve ever presented.

P.S. Rappaz R N Dainja!

“In hip-hop’s atomic structure, I an the NUcleus that represents the GROUP we us.”

We us.


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