Snitching Done Been The New Rap…
^ Butching up for the 2009 Handsome Boy Modeling School calendar [ll]...
Excuse me for getting back to the column so late. It wasn't like I was doing a victory lap for being in the Vibe.com top 50 Hip-Hop Bloggers list. I know better than to be hyped for that shit. I still need some money to pay my light bill. My fat ass was camped out overnight at KFC with a fistful of coupons trying to come up on some free chicken. What on God's green Earth is better than free KFC? Free pr0n you said? Hells chea!
Avoid 'Pr0n & Chicken' though
So what did I miss other than the leak of Eminem's latest album? For all that consternation about white dudes taking over Hip-Hop I am hyped for Em's return. He's one of the dudes that you have to press rewind to grasp, and even then you hear some new shit on repeated spins. This is good news for the rap game. Not so good news for the rap game is the fact that the Grand Hustle record label has more confidential informants than they do platinum selling rappers.
Have we all come to grips with the fact that T.I. sang like T-Pain on autotune when the Feds put the squeeze on son? Let's be grown-ups in our understanding of how the Feds play their game. Plus, I don't know anyone who ever got pinched for arms trafficking that got sit in his livingroom while the trial was ongoing and make video clips and records while in his boxer shorts [ll]. That is a luxury reserved for embezzlers and money launderers like Bernard Madoff, and well, snitches.
Rap music adopted so many of the cultural nuances of the mafia lifestyle why wouldn't rap then be filled with a grip of snitches just like the mafia? Anytime you read the news about a racketeering case the Federal government's lead witness is one of the thugs, or one of the mobsters, or one of the bosses. Sometimes its an accountant too. Everyone becomes a singer when the Feds push up on you. And why not? Even Fed time is a bitch being away from your family. Unless you have a family like Gotti. Not Irv, the studio gangster using the stage name Gotti, but the REAL niggas that made the name infamously famous.
As far as mafia trends go snitching is pretty high on the list. Kissing other men on the mouth with your eyes closed? Not so much. But certain mafia tribes have certain customs I'm sure. Throughout the history of organized crime we have always seen the rat.
Most kids always confuse the rats with the dead meat. In Black communities the 'dead meat' was the person who had no affiliation with the mafia biut reported their dealing to the police as if that would help restore civility in the neighborhood. After the police 'ratted' this person out to the mobsters it usually meant a visit from the thugs and funeral music shortly following. The snitch has to be someone who profits from the illicit activity they are reporting. Most people don't know the difference between a snitch and a dead person so I just wanted to plug that in as a public service announcement.
T.I. should have kept Alfamega along for the ride. It's not like Alfamega snitched on him. Plus, how sick official is it to have a studio filled with rappers wearing wireless microphones, rapping on wireless microphones using Wi-Fi service to download season 5 of 'The Wire'. Some shit like that could have broken the time-space continuum and unleashed a Bizarro reality onto the Earth. You know, the reality where people actually do what they say. Fantasy is reality in rap music, and snitching done been the new rap ever since a rapper talked about how many drugs they have sold.
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