You don't need an old man farting in public to know how hot Black is at the moment. The melanin is straight up fire these days, son. Sometimes it feel like the whole United States of Obama is throwing up their hands to chorus: N to the izz-E, GR to the izz-O right now.
Yes, there's that post-buzzword buzzword that titillates the MultiCulturati. You read it in the newspapers, or while browsing the Post-Racial Porn section of your local video store. You see it in the blue-green-tangerine eyes of mixed-race-babies-with-the-pretty-hair on every urban professional street corner. At night you may spot it on the walls, capitalized in red horror-movie-blood italics: "POST-RACIAL!". Or maybe even on some girl's behind written in Juicy-Coutoure cursive. I have no links, but trust me, it's everywhere. A ten-letter reminder of the looming tectonic shift in the foundation of America's cultural infrastructure.
All signs point to Yes: the post-racial apocalypse is coming! It’s the end of racism. Or at least the end of abiding by a lot of White bullish! Either way: sound the alarm, and call out the exclamation points: Look on yon horizon, the end is nigh! The signs are all around us, we are surrounded: Oprah controls media! Tiger has conquered sports! Will Smith charms the world via music and movies! And now, Obama, leads us all to the promised land! -- We hope! -- Using powers derived from their adamantium melanin-mutation they have become invincible; they are the four horsemen of the post-racial apocalypse!
Like the Great Pyramids, these four kings are less human and more force of nature; avatars of Black America's will to power. They are pillars on which a legacy of consequence and respect can be built. If life were a baseball game, they would be our Ruth, Gehrig, Mantle and DiMaggio.
So give them some love/dap if you're lucky enough to see them:
THE QUEEN
Name: Oprah
Horse: Media
Story:
Black Power: The Razor-Edged Sword of Black Cool.
+
THE WARRIOR
Name: Tiger Woods
Horse: Sports
Story: Tiger, due to his “Cablinasian” background, is more like an adopted brother to the cause, but he has played a critical role in bringing about this Post-Racial Apocalypse.
+
THE KING
Name: Barack Obama
Horse: Politics
Story:
The Final Seal: Only black guy who can smack his woman's ass on a national stage and make everyone love it and yell: Holla!
funny thing now is Landis -- the man behind films like Animal House, Blues Brothers, and An American Werewolf in London, and also benchmark cinematic assimilator for Trading Places, Coming To America, and the MJ videos -- probably has more money and clout than the ousted King of Pop.
(come to think of it, TAN might have more money and clout than the King of Pop. Now if that doesn't get you to stop touching little boy heinies, nothing will.)
talk about the American Dream, is there any more quintessential American Tragedy/Nightmare than the tale of Young Michael? I can't wait until he ceases to be a quick sensational news headline/punchline, and we start mining his life/narrative in a substantive way...
It's a strikingly profound combination, this "Jaydiohead" project, especially for those of us interested in the science of assimilation; two mainstream/popular artists who also pack a lot of ethnocultural baggage. It's also one of those ideas, as many reviews note, that makes you slap your head and/or wonder how this didn't come about five minutes after Danger Mouse's "The Grey Album".
In this case, it's also sorta perfect to have Touré speaking on it. Touré is like the Obama of music-writers (i'm thinking every black person will be described here on out in terms of Obama; Jay is the hip hop Obama, Radiohead is a heroined-out indie-rock Obama etc.) and he's currently rolling as the Man-O-Melanin for a site competing for that coveted Obama of the internet-media position. If anything could alert us to the profundity seeded in this ode to biculturalism, 'twould be this perfect storm of Obamadom!
so.... i don't know, have i written enough intro yet?
1. The Jay Cameo is the best part: "Even Jay-Z knows about it. In an email, he told The Daily Beast, “Heard OF it but haven’t actually heard IT. (The gate squeaks as I close it back!)”
Yo, that parenthetical is straight fire! best lyrics from Jay since The Black Album. did he really write that, or does he have ghost mailers? does Jay use exclamation points and caps to deliver his e-jokes? holla! But yo, it was worth grooming (you gotta groom, y'know!). I'm trying to think of who I could use "the gate squeaks" line on ... are there only a handful of people who can do that?
2. Touré thinks Radiohead is funky: I was reading the piece and feeling like my afro was growing and the James Brown was getting loud in my ear, and other random cultural minutiae to indicate i was in the 70s and I was wondering why? Was I thin-slicing Touré as a bohemian neo-retro-soul dude who thinks everything is funky? Nah, I wouldn't want to do that to an Obama... but then everywhere I looked I would see him barking at the band:
give me a funky bass line! -- "But it has the advantage of Radiohead’s heavy, funky grooves..."
hit me with the funk again! -- (they’re a bit of a funk-rock band to me—the delicious bass lines on Kid A is what first drew me into them)
can you feel it?! -- "It’s fun listening to the puzzle coming together, and there’s a deep funkiness to this mixture of gangster tales and intellectual rock."
I said, can you feel the funk?! -- "Or on “99 Anthems,” the heavy, danceable funk of Radiohead’s "National Anthem" meets “99 Problems”..."
ok, now take me home to funkytown! -- "but Jay-Z gives us clearly delivered vocals that fill up the musical space and show you how funky Radiohead really is."
Now that's FUNKY. I can dig it.
3. The Problem with Jaydiohead: Here's Touré's nut graf, worth italicizing: "If this were just a good idea but not actually good music—just a thought exercise—then it wouldn’t even be worth commenting on. We’ve heard lots of mashup albums and they’re not news in and of themselves. But this is interesting because most of the songs cook."
Unfortunately, Touré is off on this one. It succeeds specifically as an idea, not as music. The first track "Wrong Prayer" -in the be-froed parlance- cooks, but the rest barely simmers after that.
I can see the falling in love with it though, the concept is so hot, and the first track validates the concept (in an interview the producer Minty Fresh Beats said that was the first outburst, then he sat on it and massaged it out over time. Classic blueprint for a great initial burst dragged out into an overwrought idea), any music writer positioned as an ambassador of assimilation would want it to work, like real bad. Like Obama bad.
It feels like a music analogue to the Pacino/Deniro combo; there are notable moments, but in general the execution falls well short of the seemingly epic possibilities.
I don't know how the third track "No Karma" got by Touré's sniff-check. It makes Jay sound like a white guy, and impossibly ruins the groove for Karma Police. Now that's impressive! If and when Jay listens to this, he won't get past #3.
All respect to Touré -- I'd still vote for him to write the piece -- but if he didn't avoid the "thought exercise" of it all in order to rely on "funk" as lazy code for all the ethnocultural baggage wrapped up in the artists, we'd have had some commentary that was, for lack of a better term, more Obama-ish.
"Wrong Prayer" -- hot
"No Karma" -- hmmm
4. The Problem with Jaydiohead, Part II: Further unpacking... part of the reason for the dissonance in Jaydiohead, I suspect, is that Jay and Radiohead seem complementary on the surface but are actually antithetical artists in sensibility. Jay in his own words, "is a business-man." "He's not trying to do numbers like The Roots." The Roots, of course, are artists. Maybe the closest thing to a Radiohead of hip hop. Also, the Obama of hip hop bands.
Jay's most artistic piece is The Black Album, and it's awesome fodder for mashups, but it was exhausted years ago. And the rest of his oeuvre doesn't jibe with Radiohead, who have a commercial frequency, but sacrificed numbers for art after OK Computer.
Again, if Obama ditched the skin tone, did some drugs, started making beats, playing guitar or whathaveyou ...he'd be radioheadish. More artsy. broad strokes, i know, but ...
The real mashup that would scratch the itch the Jaydiohead idea creates would be Radiohead and ...... Nas. RadioNas. Both Jay and Nas craft lyrics like artists, but Nas's content speaks to that artist disposition. More abstractions and emotivation. Valuing the thought exercise of making music more than the bottom line. Nas is sort of the Obama of thug poets, dontchaknow.
5. The Commenter Addendum: I'm too exhausted to do all the linking now, but the comments of both the Beast's post and other reviews 'round the net on jaydiohead provide a great testament to the value of an intelligent commenter community. In this case, their presence helps fill in the blanks a little bit, making it less of a he-said he-said.
Clearly one of the challenges in the post-election will be determining a new threshold for sensitivity to racism. In the Bush era, America 'twas a town ruled by fear and inflammatory sound bytes. At the drop of a stereotype, the race police would be at your door.
But with our new African-Articulate President, the rush to racist judgment is tempered, just a little, by a desire to be... thoughtful. We want to emulate his consideration of context and intent and code-switching. Yet and still, we know the racists will play....
And so sets the stage for one of NYC's first WTF??? moments in the Year One of Our Lord Obama 2009, courtesy of a little downtown bakery named Lafayette French Pastry.
Fox's Arnold Diaz is the reporter on the case, outing the shop as a shelter for insensitively-named confections, and catching tasteless Bakemaster General Ted Kefalinos, uh, black-handed, distributing inflammatory crumpets he calls "Drunken Negro Face" cookies to an unsuspecting public. ("Hey, this looks like Black-Jimmy when he gets drunk!," said Sarah as she bit into the cookies' choco-nappy-sprinkles head.) The exposé breathlessly premises the question: has a more pernicious proprietor of perversely prejudiced pastries ever, uh, existed?
Oh, and here's video and an After-cookie mint update:
I couldn't expound there, but I do think this and the Larry King incident highlight a newfound tolerance for this sort of nonsense. It's like: forgive them Obama, for they have sinned. They know not what they do...
It also underscores a new rule for racial politicking: Everyone gets one shot at oblivious denial.
The old Martin Luther King era racism was open and blatant and proactive. You asked people if they were racist, and they'd salute you and say, "you goddamned right i'm racist, and proud of it! Sun always shines a little brighter without any darkies around."
Those are the people that start real trouble. And if you ask them on camera about their racism, they won't act as our PC-challenged donut-maker here does. This guy has obviously switched hats from cookie maker to master cookie marketer/PR guru (when was the last time a cookie got this kind of pub), so y'know, he's fairly harmless, just trying to use freedom of speech to help line his wallet.
And honestly, if a cookie is delicious enough, you can name it whatever you want. We should judge them by the content of their character/recipes, not by, well whatever, moving on...
Saw this post on Gawker about Larry King's recent run of ridiculous, uh, rhetoric, and, OMG, I do believe Barack Obama has made racism adorable!
I mean, listening to Larry getting worked up about how "Blacks are in!" and how even his son wants to be black (which he probably just misunderstood when the son mumbled, "I want to be anyone but Larry King's wack-ass anachronistic son ..." oh, I'm just kidding Dr. King, look at your hair over there on the right, WHEEEE!) and it's just sooooo cute. (partial clip via Think Progress)
(Gawker has a better, i.e. more racist, clip with the audio from his other gaffe insinuating how Black Presidents are a gateway drug to Lesbian Presidents.)
See in an older more antiquated time, back when Larry could only interview dinosaurs (ha!), this type of thing would have put the whole Race Police SWAT Infantry A-Team on terror alert. Martin Luther King would have been mentioned, lawsuits would be filed, and Larry would have been sending mad black kids to broadcasting school, yo.
But these days we think WWOD. And Obama knows Larry means no harm. He'd laugh it off, or, if he was in Harlem, brush the dirt off his shoulders.
So now, faced with such silliness, instead of starting a riot, all you want to do is run over and pinch his jowls as hard as you can and ask him if the adorably racist old man can show me how old he is with his fingers *smiles and points at Larry* yessss, you, I"m talking to youuuu, how old are youuuuuu my racist shmookypants bummdy vooo viiivooovuuuveeegee....10, 20 ... mmm-hmmm, 30, 40, ... oooo you're old aren't you ... 50, 60 ...
*...still counting fingers.....*
Not that I'm overly familiar with this scenario, yet, but it strikes as an offense along the lines of an old man farting in public: Most people laugh. Some are embarrassed. Some might even get offended-- Just cause you're an old white guy doesn't mean you can go around farting in public, mister!
Awww, but I don't think that Larry. You go fart all you want. You ain't doin' nobody any real harm aside from stinking up the air a little bit.
Upon news of Caroline Kennedy's shocking withdrawal of her name -- The Name -- from consideration for the Senate seat vacated by Hillary Clinton there's a new question: Is the media crack-down on middle-aged white women in politics a permanent part of "Change" in America, or is it just a temporary thing? ...
a plane crashed into the Hudson River today, here are some thoughts...
1. Do we want intelligence from our journalists? Watching a couple different channels as they break this news and I'm shocked at how careful the talking heads want to be with their language. It's understandable, but you can't help but wonder how/why/what we're training journalists/reporters for. Do we want them to just be a lens/observation machine? No interpetation. No editorial. Or at least, as little as possible. Do we have those who just "document" in detail, and then "intelligence" people who give us comprehensive analysis/opinions and specialize in that? Sort of how blogs and MSM/newspapers like to position themselves; one's just the facts, the other is trying to crack the case. Is this dynamic an evolution? Doesn't feel like it when you hear intelligent people wasting time and energy picking over semantic packing-peanuts.
2. When Keeping It Real Goes Right! this will surely be the top takeaway of the day, all day: "you know, Jim, we so often we overlook the airplane safety schpiel ... and look, here, the safety schpiel put to good use! The irony of life, that which we choose to ignore and gloss over saves us!!! Yay!!! Back to you, Jim!" The thing is, it's true. We do have a problem with not hyping success at this fundamental human level. For most of us here in the USA, reading blogs and planning Inauguration parties, the fact is that good happens to us a lot more than bad. Even when Bush was in charge. Disasters are averted. People are saved. Lives keep on living. This accident gone right is a brilliant reminder of that.
3. Geese???!?!?! seriously, who knew? I don't know whether to hate them or love them. peep these facts from NBC NY:
Experts said that Canadian geese are one of a pilots worst nightmares.
A 4-pound bird exerts more than 6 tons of force if hit by a plane traveling 200 mph -- some geese weigh up to 15 pounds.
A U.S. Air Force plane crashed during takeoff at Elmendorf Air Force Base in Alaska in 1995 after a collision with geese. Twenty-four people died.
Birds caused another Air Force plane to crash during its approach to a runway in the Netherlands in 1996, killing 34 people.
GEESE??!?!?! Geese have bodies on their conscience! At least 58 of them! There's a corny hip hop slang-as-spoken-by-geese line/joke to make here, but I demur because some geese might jump out and snuff me, yo! I don't even have a plane to protect me, I would be helpless.
4. Good stuff happens in January. Someone needs to do the research on it, but I swear all the good humanitarian stuff happens in January so that we forget about it by the time we start talking about all the cool things that happened this year. My best example of this is Wesley Autrey, the father who jumped on the tracks to save a stranger from an oncoming train. When did that happen? January 2007. Paging Gladwell!! My theory is that the beginning of January is so friggin' cold that everyone is on their best behavior, and/or willing to go the extra mile just to get their blood flowing/get home asap. Or something like that.
5. It's Cool To Be A Survivor of a Plane Crash. Not only does it mean you're alive, but you have a cool story. And it's fairly one-upmanship proof, i.e. you tell about surviving a plane crashing into the hudson from geese attack and even the most obnoxious a-hole can't follow up with, "oh, you know that happened to me too!!!"
That's a cool feeling when you have a story like that.
This video is making the internet rounds. Specifically for the "Naw [homey], we straight [my niggy]" a little after the one minute mark. Also more dap at the end:
This was sent to me with the line "a study in code switching", and it's true, Obama does make a fascinating case. I have an old line in a rhyme somewhere, "writing for the man my vernacular switches, with my n's, I say n, more than Michael Richards..." The Barack slang/code switching reinforces the notion that, perhaps, the purpose of african-american identity politics is to help us all more easily reconcile the universal [existential] dilemma of having two selves. The "real" you, and the *you* in your brain. No one is more familiar with saying/doing something in their head, then having it manifest as something different than an Ethnic-American in the US. Eventually we'll all be spiritually calmer for it....
But speaking of rhymes, based on this coding analysis I think Barack must have some hot 16s. I suspect he's just young enough to have written some verses while he was in school. He's 47, which means when he was 25 (unofficially the age when you write your hottest lyrics, provided you've paid some dues to that point) it was about 1986. I would prob draw the age line at 45, i.e. every hip hop appreciating black person under 45 has at least one verse they wrote, but Obama is so precocious I bet he has a whole album and an array of aliases and a myspace page for his demos and all of that.
I'm not going to the Million Man Inauguration, but if Jay-Z or TI ask "The President" to grab the mic and spit something, and he does, remember you heard it here first.
I wrote about this Curry "gay-sex" scandal scam last night for NBC. But I didn't get to use this picture, which I love for the story.
It also reminded me of a line intended for a Knicks preview on freedarko, something to the effect of, "this is a man who rebounds like the back of his jersey should read 'No Homo'."
I did get to intersperse some groans without going offensive (nullus), noting the irony of Curry's driver filing harassment charges on a guy who wouldn't know how to harass a basketball, or opponent driving the lane, let alone this dude.
But the writing is a little soulless since it feels so obviously like a con-job by Mr. Kuchinsky. And not even a well conceived/thought out fraud. Dude basically made up the most egregious homosexual slanders he could think of and then asked for a $100K hoping it would be a small enough amount for Curry to not think about (correction, he asked for more, the $100K is just for back wages). So even annoying jokes feel as slimy as the charges in the suit themselves.
Anyways, poor Eddy Curry. He and Stephon should go start a team together.
I think the skit runs a little long, and at first I was raising an eyebrow at the hook... but then by the end i was like, "Lighting Bolt, Lightning Bolt, Lightning-Lightning Bolt!!"
More, I think Homeboy Sandman is the throwback NYC hip hop I miss and get a little misty-eyed over. The spirit of it wins you over regardless ...
We might have to get the Subway Begging Series going. At the least it affords me a theme with which I can drop my joint. Show me the money...
But to close it out proper, we know we got to bring in the caucasian to knock it out the park.:
can we get a lil DVD poppin' or something? waddup fellas?
DON'T EVEN TELL ME D-NICE IS DOING A HOT-ASS SERIES ON SOME CLASSIC HIP HOP ISH! DON"T EVEN TELL ME DAT! MY CAPS LOCK AIN'T EVER COMING OFF!!!!WELL, MAYBE AFTER THE FU-SCHNICKENS EPISODE. OR MAYBE LARGE PROFESSOR. OR MAYBE BRAND NUBIAN. OR CHUBB ROCK. OR SPECIAL ED. OR THE WU. OR 3XDOPE. OR PRIMO. OMGOMGOMGOMG! SOMEONE CALL JERRY BRUCKHEIMER CAUSE THIS IS ABOUT TO BLOW THE F UP. PLEASE EVERYONE GIVE D-NICE A NICKEL SO HE NEVER HAS TO DO ANYTHING BUT THIS AGAIN.
I just posted video of Masta Ace discussing The Symphony and Dana Dane talking about Nightmares. Now we know why technology was invented! How do we even still exist? This is must see tv like Gossip Girl having an orgy with The Daily Show/Colbert and an Obama speech before it, with Beyonce dancing during the speech, and Justin spoofing the dancing, and soundtracked by a new Kanye album dropped in protest of so much attention going to those previously mentioned. Also, bacon.
Alright, now I'm gonna check out the vids and see if they live up to that intro ....
So after doing the Jewcy jawn the night before, the Okayplayer Holiday Jammy provided a nice compare and contrast opportunity. And while getting ready to go I had my first ethnocultural epiphphany. wanna hear it? well, here it go: at caucasian parties, clothes/fashion etc. matters from the waist up. At urban hip hop parties clothes/fashion etc. matters from the waist down.
It's true! As I was getting dressed for okay I was rocking these new jeans and sneakers (pumas for $25 @ Woodbury Commons, holla!), and felt like I wasn't quite able to nail the upper portion of the ensemble. But then I said, wait a minute, it's a hip hop party so no one was going to look at anything other than my jeans and sneakers anyways.
See hip hop parties, I think, are the only parties where you could actually abide by such a seemingly ridiculous rule of fashion. Your cashmere hoodie matters less at a hip hop show where it just blends into a sea of hoodies and parkas and whatnot. But those high contrast sneaks will steal the show. On the flip side, the ladies will rub all up on that cashmere at the more traditional office party. And the sneakers will only identify you as having a likely history of credit issues.
Moving on .... my team for the okay jam was a strong one. We had a multiculti assortment of ladies in tow, natch. Someone from Gawker. A girl who is friends with Quest. Plus me a former blogger for the site. So while, amazingly enough, the line stretched long in to the vast deep cold, we were able to slide right up in there.
That was just a quick aside before getting revealing Ethnocultural Epiphany #2: The patter for an Okayplayer crowd has to be of a certain standard. The host was cute, but relatively weak in terms of controlling the crowd, or providing any witty, funny form of banter. And I realized this is another big difference between cauc and negro parties. She was probably doing well enough for a Jewcy (or other media) soiree. All people demand from you there is effort and honest intentions. But for a crowd of assimilateds it's a different challenge because 1. the more NYC black people in the crowd, the more folks who think of themselves as capable of doing the hosting/performing better. Even if it's the furthest thing from the truth. It's like the stereotype of black people dancing, even if it's not true, we're still steeped in believing that we should know how, so a big crowd of black folk will think they can dance even if they're hit-or-miss on an individual level. 2. Because we were raised on pointedly witty/smart lyrics, the usual ol' corn ball jokes for a big crowd don't work. You have to step your host game up. It's like the difference between a network sitcom and HBO crowd. You need that extra edge to get over...
One of the opening acts, Tanya Morgan, performed to a somewhat hostile crowd. The Roots actually opened the show with a song, maybe two, but then Tanya Morgan came out, so it was a little confusing in that how-come-the-superstar-group-has-been-replaced-by-these-no-names sort of way, and I suspect TM suffered because of it. They got into a classic amateurish moment of yelling at the crowd who was heckling them. sigh. Point #1 above applies extra hard when it comes to rapping. Anyways, I gave them another look and thought this video they have was cool, creative, and well worthy of my html.
Here's the Tanya Morgan myspace again. I remember always seeing VonPea on the okay message boards back in the day, so glad he's been able to stick to his guns etc. etc.
Next up was an act with serious veterans of the game: Idle Warship, fronted by emcee Talib Kweli and urban singer/songwriter Res. Now this proved it was a tough crowd, because i don't know how Kweli and Res struggled to get love from a crowd that was in part born of their DNA. My best guess is that fools were tight over standing out on line in the cold to see The Roots for the five millionth time. In any event, here is a video for an Idle Warship song called "Black Snake Moan"...
Video's cool. I like this other song, Industry Diary, even more for its transparency in airing out beefs with the business.
Ethnocultural Epiphany #3: A song going pop can shade your image of an artist. I say this because Estelle came out and held down a nice set, complete with the 2008 summer jam of the year. But boy must I be one programmed son of a b, because she came out and I was like, yoooo, Estelle is mad dark, yo. She don't look like no Beyonce or Rihanna or nothing. sigh. yes, i deserve your shock and shame for that.
Finally, as I move through my notes here, I have jotted down: is bilal a crackhead? A question i did not ponder specifically, but was forced to make note of after my table engaged in a somewhat heated debate over the possibility of his crackheadedness. My crew was obviously in snark mode a little, but he also did one of these assimilated old 60s-70s performances where you end up sweating and yelling the same song riff/refrain for ten minutes to a rising crescendo of music by the backing band. And he had a fro-hawk, and shredded clothes (i think), so if you're thin-slicing the situation the possibility of crack being in the mix is something you have to consider.
Personally, I liked it. I like when the artists zone out. But I can't deny "the zone" is sometimes a euphemism for "the crack". So I don't know, I guess it's a thin line between crackheadery and genius or something.
All in all, 'twas a good show. But after seeing The Roots six million times over the course of an assimilated career, I must admit to being more intrigued to see how they do as the first hip hop house band on network television. Whose karma will win out, the good of The Roots or the evil of Jimmy Fallon? Now that's something to watch out for in the 2009.
Jotted some of the oppositional Yin Yang forces at play in the Eagles Giants game. Not included there, but somewhat TAN related-- this may be the last bid for the recent generation of black mobile quarterbacks. From Randall to Vick, Culpepper, McNair, McNabb etc. None of them made it happen.
One of my favorite TAN days was when I got to post an interview I did for Jewcy with Julius Lester the same day I did an interview for King Mag with the "Read A Book" guys. That's the type of racial-synapses firing you get when i'm fully charged, knahmean?
So much to my delight, during Holiday Party Week I was able to get my Tao of Assimilated Negro on by going to a Jewcy-Does-Xmas and Okayplayer Holiday Jam back-to-back.
I'll have some notes/words on the Okay joint following this. But for the Jewcy we're gonna try out the new media party game that's sweeping the country: How Many Black People Were At Your Party? This game is played by seeing how many pictures of different black people you can accrue at any given white-washed NYC media party. It's fun! For the whole family!
And with that we present TAN-Jewcy Party Crash... in pictures:
cute black girl and Santa Claus? no, i said i'm looking for the JEWCY party...
waddup, homey. we will call you #2.
is that you, Jimmy? No? Oh, my bad, all those black guys and white guys look the same
this is #4, pretty impressive showing at this point. and everyone sure seems happy about it.
oh wow, 2-for-1 recession special here. also, this should be the cover of the Jewcy course catalog. Jewcy or Wesleyan.
how YOU jewin' doin'! i meant doin'... cause that's funnier
it's ya boy! waddup rachel! (& rachel's husband!!). i only chat up lady-writers on the daily beast
jeah!
challah!
For those actually keeping score, final tally was ....7. One for each day of the week!
You don't need an old man farting in public to know how hot Black is at the moment. The melanin is straight up fire these days, son. Sometimes it feel like the whole United States of Obama is throwing up their hands to chorus: N to the izz-E, GR to the izz-O right now. 
THE QUEEN
Black Power: The Razor-Edged Sword of Black Cool.
