for 25 May 1999. Updated every WEEKDAY.

Subject: Go, white boy, go,
white boy.

Me 'n my dawgs be sittin'
'round the muthafuckin' Phi
Alpha Gamma hay-youse
studyin' for finals 'n shit.
What we be wondering is how
come you didn't mention no
GREEK rappahs?!?!?! What up
wid dat, bee-atch?

You live near a university,
boi-eee, you know whaddafuck
I talkin' 'bout. We be livin'
large in daddy's cars kickin'
it old school, new school,
don' mean shit to us. We got
the muthafuckin' Rockford
Fosgate. Drinkin' 40s wid our
fine rich girl hoes. Y'know,
keepin' real. 'Cause our
portfolios got the flavah.

So where's our fuckin' props?
You talk like we ain't got no
damn cred.

Peace out,

Todd A. Martin IV
<tamartin@ cei.net>

You had me sold until that
bit about the "40s" -
everyone knows any really
tight wigga wit' fratitude
drinks Night Train
exclusively - served very
cold. Or if they're on the
health tip, Wild Irish Rose
with ginseng.

Huck

I went to a pretty
well-respected NYC jazz
school and it was like I
couldn't possibly ever get it
because I wasn't black - we
were in so many words told by
the mostly black faculty that
we could never be truly great
jazz artists.

I say fuck 'em.
<matt@ brandscape.com>

Yeah, fuck 'em. Because if
they were truly great jazz
artists themselves, they
wouldn't have had to resort
to teaching; they'd earn
enough playing. So what did
they know about it anyway?

Huck

A whole article on white rap
and not even one mention of
Beck.

Sure, a lot of tightie
whities were responsible for
spurring on the creative
development of rap (a good
point by the way), but I
think Mr. Hansen deserves
props for helping the hippie
hip-hop scene evolve, as well
as for transcending, as an
artist, the foibles and flaws
of the genre (advocating
violence and sexual
objectification and doing
movie soundtracks).

Let's not forget the African-
American MCs who served the
same purpose as Mr. Van
Winkle during the early '90s:
MC Hammer and, still
struggling to get out of the
ghetto, Will Smith.

There are more poetic devices
than rime and rithm.

<castleking@hotmail.com>

You know, I only listened to
Odelay once, so I can't
really speak to Beck's
influence. As for Smith and
Hammer - I was going to
include Smith in my shoutout,
since it certainly was mighty
white of him to sample the I
Dream of Jeannie theme song
back in the day. Hammer,
well, I hear he has his own
public-access evangelism show
on TV now; that sounds pretty
promising, so maybe I'll end
up giving him the attention
he deserves yet.

Huck

When you mentioned MC 900
Foot Jesus, I couldn't tell
if you were being cynical or
not. I really like MC 900
Foot Jesus. I'm almost hurt
or something.

<hime1@ gte.net>

Actually, I only ever
listened to his first album,
so I don't know if he got
better or worse. Haven't
listened to it in a while,
but I remember it as being a
pretty excellent example of
old-school white rap - really
stiff and awkward at times,
with an overall kind of
cheesy synthesized sound, but
also, in stretches here and
there, pretty good in its own
cross-cultural way.

Huck

I've been puzzling over this
for years, because it seems
to me I know of a case of
something that can only be
categorized as rap in the
modern sense of the word, and
it was written in the early
1950s by Preston Wilson as
part of the classic stage
show and later movie The
Music Man. (With not a single
black face appearing anywhere
in River City, Iowa, it's
clearly as white-bread as it
can be.)

I'm referring to the sequence
at the very beginning where
all the travelling salesmen
are talking to each other
about what the business is
like, in rhythm with the
railroad car: "Cash for the
merchandise!"

Now if that's not rap, what
is it? Yes, it doesn't talk
about killing cops or making
girls pregnant or what a
bitch it is to live in the
ghetto, but on a deeper level
it's clearly part of the
genre. And it predates the
genre by at least 20 years.

Have any rappers ever
acknowledged Wilson's
contribution to the form?

<sdenbes1@ san.rr.com>

Well, there are a lot of odds
and ends that prefigure rap -
both in white and black
culture. There's Irish
talking blues, there's old
prison songs, there's Lord
Buckley, there's that "Hot
Rod Lincoln" song, there's
the dozens, etc., etc.

But, yeah, "Cash for the
merchandise!" "You can talk,
you can talk, you can dicker,
dicker, dicker." A classic
piece of verbal artistry, and
it wouldn't surprise me if it
had been sampled by someone,
because it's filled with
phrases that would sound
great in a contemporary
hip-hop song.

Huck

Skinner,

Let's see. Olympic hockey.
Hmm. The USA Men's Team
knocked out with no medals
and a huge bar- and room-repair
tab. The USA Women's Hockey
Team: Them women came back to
this great land of ours with,
umm, oh yeah, the gold
fuckin' medal.

Take your Title IX and shove
it. Next time, do more
research before penning.
Maybe you'll accomplish more.

Not shocked to see
ignorance,
Nate Stinson
<nb1812@earthlink.net>

Sadly, ignorance - like sex -
sells. Thank goodness we're a
satirical webzine, so people
realize we often mean the
opposite of what we say. I
wish I could report that the
NHL on Fox is being replaced
by hot girl-on-girl hockey
action, but alas.

If we were a little less
goofy about it, we might have
said it like you said it,
which was right on. But
goofiness is right up there
with ignorance, in terms of
the demands of publishing.

Best regards,

E. L. Skinner

I must confess that this is the
first I've heard of hockey's
failure in the United States.
Here in Canada (where the
news of Gretzky's retirement
did indeed receive media
attention), there is a lot of
hand-wringing about the death
of the game (due largely to
the Canadian franchises'
inability to afford to
maintain competitive teams).
There is no small amount of
resentment toward the States
(more than usual, that is)
due to the fact that a
Canadian team has not won the
Stanley Cup in, what, five
years. Not to mention the
attempts at dumbing down the
game, which hardly seemed
possible until Fox invented
the "streaky puck."

What could have saved hockey
in the States? Maybe Don
Cherry, whose intermission
rants during Hockey Night on
Canadian broadcasts would
have been right at home on
Fox (or The Howard Stern
Show).

Personally, I prefer baseball
- another sport losing its
grip in Canada - and
football. Not the CFL - Lord,
no - but real football, known
in North America as soccer
because a bunch of pussies in
armor have usurped the word.
If only that sport were on
the wane.

Scott Marshall
<superiorstudio@hotmail.com>

Oh, Scott - I feel your pain.

I must confess that the shock
of girls playing hockey was
nothing compared to the news
a few years back that my
beloved Minnesota North Stars
were moving to FUCKING
DALLAS, Texas. That's what's
really sick: All these
big-market, Sunbelt
franchises where they don't
know their zamboni from their
gelato.

On the other hand, aside from
your laudable enthusiasm for
soccer, I'm concerned about
your taste for baseball, a
purely American phenomenon.
I've forwarded your message
to Canadian Culture Minister
Sheila Copps, who may wish to
limit your access to
non-Canadian sports
programming.

Best regards,

E. L. Skinner

You are a waste of skin. You
should be shot and dragged
through the streets.

<nplst+@pitt.edu>

And they say civility has
broken down at the nation's
most respected universities!

Well, this is kind of the
point: an escalation in your
demands for entertainment.

E. L. Skinner

The Shit

Left for Dead in Malaysia, Neil Hamburger, Drag City, 1999 The Pyrotechnic Insanitarium: American Culture on the Brink, Mark Dery, Grove/Atlantic, 1999 Crazy from the Heat, David Lee Roth, Hyperion, 1998 Keep It Like a Secret, Built to Spill, WEA/Warner Brothers, 1999 Abbott's Pizza Company, near the corner of Abbott-Kinney and California, Venice Beach, Los Angeles (delivery hours limited) Piper at the Gates of Dawn, Pink Floyd, CD remaster, EMI 1994 Motorhead, CD remasters, all Det Som Engang Var, Burzum, Misanthropy, 1998 Bicentennial Capitol Mall State Park, Nashville, Tennessee A History of the Modern Fact, Mary Poovey, University of Chicago Press, 1998 V., Thomas Pynchon, HarperCollins Publishers, 1999 The Coffee Mill, Emeq Refaim, Jerusalem, Israel The Salesman and Bernadette, Vic Chesnutt, Capricorn Records, 1998 Good Morning Spider, Sparklehorse, Cema/Capitol, 1999 Third Floor, Anderson Building, Los Angeles County Museum of Art