So, Atlanta rapper T.I., who was born with the much more prosaic handle of Clifford Harris Jr., is off on his latest marketing tour. This one for more “street cred.” This one to the federal prison in Arkansas to serve a year on a weapons conviction.
Apparently, the slammer is where rappers go to get their “street cred.” And for the record, Talent Imposter — or whatever the hell T.I. stands for — was arrested for trying to buy, among other less-than-standard household items, machine guns and silencers. Indeed, who could be credible without packing at least a semi-automatic weapon?
Apparently Threatening Intimidation’s rap lyrics, as odious as they are, still needed a complementary stretch in stir for the proper, credibly thuggish image. And here, courtesy of Cynthia Tucker of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, is an example of those vile “lyrics”:
“We know where yo’ family live/ Trust me you don’t want me up in yo’
crib/ Wit a ski mask on duct taping your kids/ You can pray all you want/
But I don’t forgive.”
This is a prime example of why rap has been labeled – ok, by me – “the anthem of a dysfunctional culture.” It is Barack Obama’s and Bill Cosby’s ultimate bete noire and a cultural and security nightmare to all those who think misogynistic, murderous nihilism is in no society’s best interest. But this is what’s out there. And this one example, however despicable its theme, is relatively sanitized.
At the risk of outing myself as the ultimate philistine but with new-found respect for Jackson Pollock’s drippy canvases, I say this is not art nor its practitioners artists. Moreover, Truculence Incarnate and other “rap artists” are merely oxymoronic examples of what you can do with a rhyming dictionary, an anti-social ’tude, no meaningful job skills and a gullible marketplace not yet sated by cultural chaff passing for societal wheat.
In fact, let me take a few seconds, and I’ll demonstrate:
“I’m a cultural diversity ho/ Knowin’ wiggers and liberals think it’s a show/
I’m a dysfunctional menace, don’t you know/ Now let’s see how low/ This fukkin’
bar will go.”
Sorry about that.